Is teeming with miracles the time to stop and look
of stupendous wonder that has just come to a sky near you.
That’s because I lost the faith. I was a mad naturalist as a boy, fascinated by everything that lived, but in the complicated times of teenagerdom and young adulthood, I got distracted.
I stopped noticing. But I got it all back in what the French call a coup de foudre, a thunderbolt moment of falling in love. Or falling in love again.
It happened when I saw an avocet – the wading bird – when I was on holiday in Sri Lanka. Ever since that moment I have been in a missionary position: wanting to explain to the world that these wonders are not just for the television screen and for great experts, but for the likes of you and me.We can all help ourselves to wonders.
All my life I have loved The Chronicles Of Narnia. You may remember that, at the beginning of it all, Lucy walks into a wardrobe – and finds herself in the enchanted country of Narnia.That’s what it’s like when you discover – or rediscover – nature.
When Attenborough is asked, as he has been a million times, how he got his love of nature, he usually replies, “How did you ever lose yours?”
Love of nature is something we are born with; it’s part of the human condition. But alas, it’s all too easy to lose. And, being in a missionary position, I keep trying to help people to find it again. So let’s go back to Narnia, where Lucy says a spell for making hidden things visible. The spell is so powerful that it makes Aslan himself – the great lion – appear before her.
That’s how nature is. If you learn a few simple spells, you can make it appear before you, as wonderful as Aslan himself – and once you’ve said the spell, nature will never disappear again.
ONE simple spell is to learn the names of half a dozen garden butterflies. Knowing a name changes everything: it’s like being formally introduced.You know it’s not a butterfly, it’s a peacock. Now you will always know, now you will always notice.
You can also learn a smattering of birdsong: one or two garden birds will get you started.
The relaxed whistler from the roofs of houses in leafy suburbs is a blackbird, the loud trill from round about knee-high is a wren, the bird with the chiming doublenote is a chiffchaff.
Here’s a good trick: take a small piece of corrugated metal or roofing material and leave it in some undisturbed spot.
Lift it up every time you pass: one day you might even discover a reptile lurking beneath.Where I live in Norfolk, it’s usually a grass snake.
I have been locked down beside eight acres of wild marshland, and that has made every day a count-your-blessings occasion.
We manage this land for wildlife and, as I write these words, I have just seen two brand new, just-fledged kestrels cavorting above it.
I have watched their parents hunting on our marsh for the past few weeks looking for food for their chicks: our marsh helped to give these young birds life. Is that not a cheering thought?
I watched them – sleek as falcons should be, but slightly fluffy around the edges – try their hand or rather, try their wing at flying, trying to work out what kestrels are supposed to do.
The wild places of Britain are becoming available again as lockdown eases. But lockdown can still teach us important things about the nature that is right in front of us – and here is the best of all ways to appreciate it. Stop. Sit. Look. Listen. And that’s it. I have called this the Bottomless Sit: just find a nice place and let nature come to you.
Take your time. Don’t check your phone. Expect nothing.
Enjoy what is in front of you. Useful tip: keep a supermarket plastic bag in your pocket. Now you can sit anywhere, confident, comfortable and dry-bummed.
You can change your brain, you can change your mind, and you can change your world for ever.
Take just a few minutes and you will find that you’ve gone through the wardrobe with Lucy, that you’re standing among wonders with Attenborough. Things you never knew existed are all around you. Now you will always see them.
●●RewildYourself: 23 SpellbindingWays to Make Nature More Visible by Simon Barnes (Simon & Schuster, £8.99) is out now.
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