FINGERS OFF BUTTONS

We are an­i­mals.

The shiver be­tween the shoul­der blades crawls up my neck. The pound­ing of my heart echoes in my ears and res­onates down to my fin­ger­tips as I stop to haul in air. Am I push­ing my weak­ened body too far, too fast?

The going is get­ting tricky, and the zigzag climb up through the Pri­o­rat tan­gle of leaf and branch of the es­carp­ment dis­ori­en­tates me. I grip the stem of a broom, turn and dig my heels into the slope of hol­moak leaf loam and pine nee­dles, wedg­ing my bum onto a lip of rock. Acorns tum­ble away. It ap­pears far steeper look­ing down. De­scent is al­ways trick­ier. The red sand­stone, mot­tled with the fire­work lichens of cream green and ochre, stains my hands.

I sink into the de­tail.

Lichens gar­land the necks and limbs of the oaks. They cloak dead branches, pat­tern every rock. They colour not just this place but our world. Yet these star­bursts of hues, one of the great­est sym­bi­otic suc­cesses on the planet, are typ­i­cal of so much of the de­tail of cre­ation I al­most lost sight of for such a lump of my life. My first mem­o­ries were of going wild, feed­ing my senses, liv­ing in the mo­ment. Then the human con­di­tion grew like a Trif­fid, the pre­oc­cu­pa­tions with in­no­va­tion, self, species and the opin­ions of oth­ers, and the ar­ro­gance to con­sider our­selves non-an­i­mals.

To my back, above the rock, is a cush­ion of emer­ald moss with tiny ferns spring­ing from it, both flour­ish­ing in the damp­ness of the north fac­ing shadow. I look up again, won­der­ing whether to press on, but the un­der­growth shields the se­crets.

Veer­ing off the nar­row trail to aim for what might be a cave open­ing in the lime­stone higher up the face of the es­carp­ment, a sliver of black­ness I can no longer see, may have been a mis­take. I look around and glance back down into the shad­ows and tan­gle. I am in deep and the growth and rock breathe with bio­di­ver­sity, the faintest kiss of the el­e­ments. I am alone, and yet any­thing but. I am out of my com­fort zone and back in touch with my an­i­mal senses. It once was and has again, fi­nally, be­come a habit, a need. Here I can un­plug my brain and let the rest of me come alive. Yet it is still merely an­other toe dip. The um­bil­i­cal cord, the wig­gly, nar­row path back down to the river, be­yond to shel­ter, ease, fa­mil­iar­i­ties and noise, may be out of sight but I know it is there, some­where below me. Head­ing out as I love to do, I am tak­ing pre­cious mo­ments (and per­haps the odd risk) to be self­ish, to look long at a lichen, to gen­tly press my palm into moss, to bris­tle and rely on the fee­ble radars of my eyes and ears; to make con­tact with na­ture and a part of me that is in­stinc­tive - yes, an­i­mal.

It breaks my heart that in the name of war some con­tem­plate Ar­maged­don, that we have cre­ated such an abil­ity: to wipe away the ge­nius of ex­is­tence, to have no thought of that which cre­ated us and how won­drous our world is. Our Mother Earth.

We have be­come a virus.