Covid-19 diaries Pt 1: [Untitled]

Today in amongst all of it I managed to have one moment of pure, existential joy.

I was walking by the lake near my house and the sun was shining in a clear blue sky. The currawongs were out hunting and a beautiful egret sunned itself on a log by the water’s edge.

The rains have come recently, and now everything is green, the ground is lush with fresh mallow, plantain, clover and other edible leaves, flowers, reeds and grasses. In a time when we worry about the supermarket shelves being bare — you can still come down here and pick yourself a fresh bowl of salad greens and pay nothing for it. I will come down here one night with a bowl and pick myself a fresh salad.

The native grasses have grown long and tall, and a breeze swept through them, running through the long grass in shining waves. It was all so abundant, so perfect, exactly the way that it was.

It was the happiest I have felt in such a long time. I smiled and laughed and then I nearly cried because it has been so long since I felt this way.

I knew then that the only solution to this mess is for us to re-learn how to live according to the land. We need to remember how to love the wilderness and to put the environment ahead of our selfish individual egos and self-interest. With everything we have in modern society, we will never be as happy as we could be if we learned how to re-wild ourselves.

We are human. We are not above the environment, we are a part of it, and if we destroy it we destroy ourselves. We need to become part of it again.