In the unlikely event that I was ever quizzed about it, I would describe myself as someone genuinely interested in nature. By nature I mean not essence or the inherent character of something but all that green and brown and blue stuff out there. Trees, paddocks, earth, sky and clouds. The animal, bird and marine life that gets on with things between earth and sky. And the winds, storms, heat and cold that sweep over it all.
From the time I first heard of it, I loved the idea of 'natura naturans' — 'nature naturing', nature doing its thing. This concept, popularised by the 17th century metaphysician, Spinoza, allows us to contemplate nature as a discrete system going about its business regardless of us and taking account of us only when forced to — like when we blow it up, cut it down, kill bits of it off, poison it etc.
The Romantic poets reckoned that there was a spirit within the natural world that you could connect with — something 'more deeply infused', as Wordsworth called it.
But Darwinism messed that up and Matthew Arnold, gazing at 'the mute turf we tread ... The strange-scrawled rocks, the lonely sky' decided if these had a voice they would say they were simply enduring, not rejoicing. Romanticism was done for; nature simply natured, regardless, so if nature was God, God was dead.
But even those of us who find comfort of whatever kind in nature can sometimes get too much of it. In the first fingers of pre-dawn light a week or so ago, I saw that the kangaroos were back, about six of them, each with an anxious, fussing joey. Around the same time, the ducks appeared leading a squadron of ducklings up from the dam to the garden mulch their parents had told them about.
In the same week, a large fox stared insolently at me when I came upon it in the scrub. A long Eastern Brown snake oiled its way into the curvaceous native grasses that the Higher Power of our domestic hierarchy had lovingly raised and planted. A rabbit irritably abandoned the lettuces when I inconveniently arrived to pick one. Crows expertly snipped, shelled and ate the broad beans, though not anywhere near as fast as we did. Magpies strutted and quarrelled with their querulous young wherever they chose to, including on the back doorstep. And flocks