Reimagined Landscapes
Geomorphologically speaking, our climate has never been more stable these past 12,000 years. I learnt that one at college and somehow it stuck in my memory and I have often thought on that lesson since.
From a human point of view, our climate is raging right now - flood and fires engulf people and places where life was once just simple day to dayness.
When humans rebuild together they can achieve great strides, especially when disasters strike - news grabbing miracles happen.
Natures recovery from the embers is less represented in shock reporting. Our flora and fauna and every living thing in between, comes back in stages - highly mobile flying insects first, invertebrates and small plants follow in the early recovery years, larger insects like butterflies and crickets over 3 years and more. This is a heath land example.
From an insect’s point of view we can imagine the equivalent devastation level.
I joined the youth of tomorrow this week for Professor Slugs House of Bugs picnic of local wiggly worms - and boy did this audience sit still and listen.
The outdoor theatre at Thorington is a place to behold. It is where majestic trees hug a wooden amphitheatre. It is a magical feast for the senses, not least in sound and vision.
Indeed, it felt like entering Shakespeare’s Forest of Arden, deep in the forest, our world represented on a stage.
Today, this venue stands as remarkable canopy island, a symbolic education oasis nestled in a recently burnt-out landscape.
It is just 10 mins from this month’s Suffolk fire at Dunwich Heath damaging large parts of neighbouring RSPB Minsmere on the Suffolk coast.
T210 football fields worth of our most cherished landscape went up in flames. For a heath land dung beetle that is a lot of dribbling - to the power of ten in fact!
Alongside collecting donations for this local disaster, Thorington Theatre educates our next generation on what it means to appreciate, to protect and prepare for nature’s way.
It’s not about standing in the way of control. There is no gaping at the destruction. And only a little to do with spraying and squirting to make way for us humans.
In future we need more of a coming together in response. Just like the children and parenters did last week. Just as the community of Westleton did this month for the Dunwich fire rescue effort.
We see the importance of standing tall with resilience. By taking action, through practicing trust, in the support of friends, a way to courage can be found - even when faced with obstacles that seem impossible to overcome.
The dung beetle can push efficiently fifty times its own body weight, navigating by the sun and by the milky way until the job is done.
There are all manner of disaster stories to share in these testing times. Not least because instability is all around.
How can we push on through it altogether?
Not forgetting those living beings who hold less space to do.
Dunwich Heath by the sea is one of the UK's rarest lowland habitats
- an estimated 92% of it has been lost in England over the last 120 years.