Day +2: A snail and a blackbird

Like so many in the aftermath of Covid I’m recovering slowly with ongoing fatigue and heart palpitations which the doctor tells me are no cause for concern but which jolt my attention multiple times a day. How hard it can sometimes be to stay calm and breathe evenly. I relate this frustration at my own body and mind to some of my feelings about the wider world in this time of ecological crisis and change.

 
Reading other blogs in this challenge has helped me think more deeply about how different system levels interact. This has been empowering but I also keep coming back to thinking about the limits of our power, not in a bad way but in the sense of relinquishing the need to control outcomes. Maybe accepting we don’t have control is also strangely empowering? For me a big part of this challenge has been to pay more attention in a way that doesn’t overwhelm or paralyse, but instead helps nurture and keep up the momentum for change. And maybe stopping to pay attention to the world and the beings of all kinds around me can help me get that balance right a little more often moving forwards?

Patience is needed. It’s hard to find the right balance between stretching or pushing oneself and abstaining and reflecting. And sometimes it’s very hard to know the right thing to do.

Twice this last week I intervened in small ways and I still don’t know if I did the right thing.

 
One evening walking home while it was still warm I stopped still, appreciating a yellow snail in the middle of the grey-black pavement. Without a thought I picked it up and placed it out of harm’s way in the hedge by the side of the road. But walking onwards my mind suddenly clouded with doubt as I remembered a good friend once questioning me for this exact same action years ago – who was I to know where the snail wanted to go? What if it had spent all of its day getting to that point? I’ve since learned that slugs and snails have excellent navigational abilities.

Another afternoon, walking back a different route along a busy road I found a blackbird crouched still on the pavement ahead, his orange eyes wide open, body quivering. This time, after a long pause I called my mother. In one of my earliest memories I can still see her stepping out into the middle of a pond in Birmingham Botanic gardens to rescue a goldfish stranded on a lily leaf. This evening I looked to her more for reassurance than anything. We agreed I should pick the bird up gently and place it away from the road under the bushes where it could either recover or perhaps die more peacefully, away from the stress and glare of the traffic. Aware of the current devastating wild bird flu epidemic I should also be careful to wash my hands thoroughly after.

Now, a few days and many handwashes later I can still see its bright eyes and feel its small soft beating warmth in my hands. I felt so much power and so much love in that moment, I didn’t want to let it go. Sometimes stunned birds recover. I still wonder though, if I could have done more.

We can always do more I think. It’s not easy to get the balance right but in the spirit of trying to do more, and aware of my own limitations, here are some things I want to try focus on in the coming months. Inspired by the actions of others during this challenge I want to make more of an effort to:

1. buy less stuff in general and shift more of my weekly shop to support my local refill shop and the local market rather than buying most of my foods in plastic supermarket packaging. I used to get a local veg box in Bristol and in Exeter before that, but I’ve found none yet where I live now. This can be a step back in the right direction.

2. continue to engage with the climate action community in my workplace – I’ve been hugely grateful for people’s positive feedback and inspiration, and for the chance to begin to integrate more of my ecological values into this sphere of my life.

3. continue to engage with my local community – I’ve not mentioned here about the community gardening I’m involved with, but I’d like to belatedly end/continue the spirit of this challenge with this hopeful note. Because over the past year it has been a great source of delight to find myself becoming committed and engaging more consistently with a diverse group of people in the relatively deprived seaside town where I live, with the common goals of learning and raising local awareness of growing food sustainably, and hopefully working towards all of our resilience for the future.