Raping nature or finding empathy with nature?

 Every year at this time I get upset by the rape of our hedgerows, as tractors with massive scythes attached drive down the verges hacking at the hedges, reducing their height and/or depth, and causing goodness knows how much carnage at the same time. 

I think of all those animals and birds and even smaller wildlife whose habitats are so brutally and suddenly destroyed with no warning.

 And I think back to when I was a child and the winters on the farm were spent "hedging and ditching." This was the process of clearing the ditches of debris so that the flow of drainage water was maintained away from the fields, and layering the hedges in the old craftsman's way, bending the thin live twigs over horizontally, nicking them at the bend to encourage shooting, and weaving them along the top of the hedge. This over time created hedges that were thick and more than capable of keeping animals in.
 This old skill is still practised on some more enlightened farms, but of course "time is money" these days, and few have the patience and skills required any longer.
 
The two pictures below show examples of some layering of a young hedge. Not only will the hedge become thick and strong, it will become an excellent home for our nesting song birds, and small mammals.

And the craftsman (or woman) will feel an empathy for nature, impossible to feel by any tractor driver dragging a massive scythe through his hedges.

So very very sad!

Reverence for nature

Do you get upset when you watch a tractor and its machinery in tow going down the road hacking indiscriminately at the hedgerows along the side to cut them down to size – both in height and thickness? Do you silently weep for the poor little voles, mice, birds etc that must perish. Does any one else care as I do?

When I was young growing up on a farm we used the short cold winter days to do “hedging and ditching.” This involved tough manual labour, and skill, going around all the hedges and ditches on the farm, clearing the ditches out, making sure any water could drain away, and layering the hedges. Hedge layering is a vanishing country craft. It involves choosing good strong upright growths in the hedge, nicking them from underneath so they can be bent down and woven horizontally into and along the hedge. New shoots spring from those nicks. The result over time is a tough and thick hedge capable of keeping even the strongest livestock safely in the fields.

But of course such crafts take much more time, and time is money, and instead those monster machines hack their way along the hedge, weakening it, and blindly destroying anything, plant, animal and bird, that may get in the way. In fact nothing really stands a chance in the path of such massacre and I for one cry for these ravages of nature. Do I cry alone?

What is the alternative? The alternative is that we nurture a reverence, a love and respect for the natural world around us, listen to what it is telling us, be open to its healing powers.

Then we will no longer want to destroy it. We will no longer want to defile it with our gas guzzling cars, our litter and filth, our plastics, our bottles and our cans. We will regain our spirituality and seek a simpler life. We will discover humility and vulnerability and a compassion for all living beings. We may even walk barefoot upon the earth, because as Alastair McIntosh has observed, we “tread on the earth so much more gently barefoot.” Then we will experience a harmony of body, soil and soul and we may even become Wounded Healers for a fractured world.

I made the snowman in our front garden by the way!