Children and Nature

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Extract from Planet Dancing.

 

‘Perhaps we will never know reality through science alone. A biologist may throw out a line and draw in a very small fish – but he cannot pull in the water in which the fish swims. Science can tell us something of fatty acids. It can tell us of zygotes and polar bodies but it cannot give us an understanding of ‘whale’ or of the ‘silence of butterflies’. It cannot talk to us of the ‘comprehension of ghost fish’. It cannot tell us of the ‘sadness or of the happiness of kelp flies’. Perhaps most things will never be known through science. Perhaps most things will never be known at all. 

The Hawaiian people have a word – Lokahi – They use this word to define Unity-Nature-God.

Lokahi should be the conservation word of this new century.’

(Extract from the book – Planet Dancing.)

Patrick.

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The Frog and the Princess.

 

The air was particularly fragrant that morning. the scent of the lily pads across the entire pond was never finer. It was a good place to be a frog.

He sat on a half-submerged leaf with the sun full on his face and thought, with particular satisfaction, of the three lady frogs he had covered the evening before. Many tadpoles would issue as a result of that profligate dalliance with those notable dainty strumpets.

Then his patch of sunlight suddenly darkened. A large princess, notable for her extreme ugliness and gross weight, sat herself down without invitation on the very edge of the frog pond. It was clear to the frog that she intended to sit there for a considerable time blocking his place in the sun.

He said to her: “If you kiss me I will turn you into a beautiful creature.”

The princess was not to pass up such a tempting offer. She got down on her fat hands and broad knees and leaning out over the pond kissed the frog – and was immediately turned into a beautiful butterfly.

The frog ate the butterfly and the sun shone down on his pond as before.

 

(More from the book Planet Dancing.)

Patrick

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Children and Conservation – a World Dance-Day for Nature!

 

Clearly we are not winning the battle to conserve species. At this stage, to shake all of us out of our lethargy, we need a world event for nature.

What if we were to pick a day and on that day let the children of the world dance for nature? Let them dance in their own country but let them know that children in other countries are dancing too. Let them know that English children and Dutch children and Japanese children and American children are dancing on that day.   

Let them know that they dance for the joy of being children; that they dance in the delight of their own existence; that they dance to celebrate Nature in all her wonders. And perhaps, we reserved adults that we are, might dance a little as well.

We should dance for the starfish.  We should dance for the snow worms and the musk turtles and the silence of the great whales.We should dance for the symmetry of tuna and the beauty of sea hares.We should dance for the snipefish and the magpie larks. We should dance for the ice fields of Antarctica.

We should dance too a requiem for the species that tried and failed. We should dance for the Great Auk, the Japanese Wolf, the Labrador Duck, the Elephant birds, the Quagga and the Giant Irish Deer. We should dance too in remembrance of species we have recently driven to extinction – even before we had time to give them the dignity of names.  

 

And when the dancing stops we should cheer with the joy of knowing that all the children of the planet, and some adults too, danced that things be made better for nature: That we become aware that planet-wide movements for nature are now needed if conservation is to become significant.  Such a Nature day would be worthy of remembrance.

Patrick