Sorrows – What Should I Do?
It’s January 3rd and I’m angry. I’ve just got back from walking Lexi round the orchard and I’ve found the trees are budding, with one even sprouting two partially unfurled leaves – it’s just turned into the New Year for God’s sake – it’s not right!
Sorrows are an intrinsic part of life, like the passing of parents, the parting with beloved pets, the realisation of ageing bringing with it all its limitations. These are natural, inevitable resulting from the universal laws of nature and the universe – they are OK.
What isn’t OK is having to endure the aching despair of the loss of what should be timeless, immutable and just as much an integral part of nature’s natural rhythms as our own mortality.
I shouldn’t have had to witness the destruction of the great sea trout lochs of the Western Highlands the fishing void that is now the likes of Loch Stack, More and Maree. All the great drifts now barren. Stack’s Table and Dogger Bank, More’s White House and the Back of Island’s on Maree.
If only I’d known that I was fishing through the last throes of the wondrous Loch Leven evening rise before agricultural pollution and loss of fly hatches snatched it away from me.
One of the things that hurts the most is that we didn’t see what was to come, we knew it was better in the past but only by a matter of degree, we did not see the approaching Armageddon.
If only I’d known I’d have spent more time there wringing every last drop out of what now seems like a long lost angling utopia.
Now we do know and I slip and slide over the riverbed of the Upper Wye. Only ten years ago pristine now slime covered and putrid.
So what do we do? – what should I do?
I’ve been to an XR meeting and to my horror found that I agreed with most of what was said but was then put off by their performative view of protest, I can’t embrace demonstrating dressed as a wood nymph!
I’ve been on a huge march round Parliament, dressed as myself, been inspired by an angry speech by Chris Packham urging us all to step out of our comfort zones, the MP’s weren’t there and the press largely ignored it.
I’ve ranted at my MP whom I know agrees with me but doesn’t have the backbone to say it.
I’ve argued with good friends who just want to make cheap jokes about Greta.
I’ve even registered as a Citizen Scientist recording weekly levels of nitrates and phosphates on a tiny tributary of the Wye.
But I don’t feel I’m making any difference.
So what can I do? – please someone tell me!
