Morning Reflections

It seemed as if the sunrise had been gone for too long, that those old pagan priests were right all along. Maybe we had turned our back on her during those winter months and that friendless, we had weakened her and a mythical beast or giant had stolen her away. This morning she was back, the seasons were moving on, light was returning to the morning of the world, the black brooding rain clouds that had seemed like a permanent fixture over the last few weeks had finally run dry. Instead of the normal gun-metal grey skies, I was greeted by the first rays of light edging over the distant hills beyond the town as I stumbled still more asleep than awake towards the window and the new day in all its glory.

By the time I was driving through those same hills, the scene had evolved into a wonderful advert for the coming spring. It may still only be January now, still winter, but this was a sumptuously tempting tease of the months to come. As I travelled towards my goal, I scarcely knew where to look. To my right a full moon still hung, washed out, waning and looking out of place in the dawning light. To my left the suns rays had turned the underside of the clouds into a striking fish scale pattern, a myriad of hues, orange, purple and red colouring its strange form. Ahead of me the last wisps of silver dew lingered in the meadow on the edge of the villages and all seemed well in the world. Smoke spiralled from a fire in a distant field, a comforting and age old sign of mans activity, a small and insignificant mark on this rural scene, as man is small and insignificant when weighed in the balance against natures wonders. Such a morning as this often puts the same thoughts into my own mind, thoughts of the transient nature of mankind and my own mortality. Nature endures, man does not. Some day I will move through these hills no more, will the world notice or care, will it even know that I was ever here. It is journeys like this that make me want to change the world.

Ever onwards into the green and grey of this rolling land, where the stark white chalk hills meet the cold West Country clay, the town in my rear mirror growing ever more distant and insignificant. Cooling towers; cathedrals to mans desire at harnessing natures energy, stood proud amongst the morass of urban decay, a now indecipherable mess of concrete and steel. I was happy to leave behind me these monuments to mans temple dedicated to his ability to live outside nature, I was embracing it to the full, back in the realm of the Earth Mother.