Lighting my darkness, without faith

SO Mike Horder (ODT letters, 24.3.17) is saddened by the fact that those of us without faith are in a spiritual culdesac. He claims Sir Lloyd Geering is too much of a thinker and lacking in imagination, intuition, vision, and feelings. I find this to be condescending in the extreme.

I was brought up by atheists who rejected religion after the damaging experiences of their own childhoods. I have never had religious faith myself and never felt I needed God’s grace to lighten my darkness. Perhaps this is because I do feel awe and reverence when I embrace the silence on a deserted beach, or stand at the top of a mountain looking over ranges, or indeed sit for a moment in a cathedral, rapt in its architecture and cultural history.

Please don’t feel sad for those of us without faith Mike; we are not without our own sources of comfort and inspiration. Diane Brown

Dunedin

Horses on beaches

RESEARCH by PhD candidate Gareth Taylor on the impacts of vehicles and horses on shellfish in the wet intertidal zone of beaches (in Pegasus Bay) showed that both horses and cars crushed them.

He found that the faster a horse moved the more likely it was to kill shellfish and also the more frequently horses and cars rode/drove over the sand, the higher the mortality. This echoed findings from Australia. Softbodied animals which also burrow into the wet sand, like polychaete worms, are more affected. The most sensitive area in the beach is the wetzone. Shellfish in this zone help clean seawater by filtering debris, as well as being a vital part of the food chain.

Our beach management needs to reflect this: Gareth Taylor wrote guidelines for Environment Canterbury on good management of beaches, suggesting ways of minimising impacts from vehicles and horses to low levels.

Joseph Dougherty Sawyers Bay

To correspondent

Max McFeat: Postal address please.