Microcosmic!

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour

You scan the horizon, your view an expanse of hill, field and sky, then you focus in on a detail, maybe a bird or a tree. Does your perceptual world contract to a shrunken fragment?  No, it stays the same size or maybe even expands.  As your attention homes in, so there is a mental blossoming – what was coarse-grained becomes finescale.  Uniform  Mondrian blocks show their true nature as a filigree of delicate tracery.

Like a baby in a pram, whose universe consists of its mother and perhaps some toys, it seems limited, but this is the canvas upon which everything plays out – all the sights, smells and sounds to feed the baby’s developing brain.

And this is what I’ve found when I’ve concentrated on a ‘patch' - my mind is focused  - I've gone microcosmic!

My first incarnation as a patch watcher was enforced.  A decade long stretch of chairbound  illness largely confined me to a living room.  My patch was the view through the window.  I had swapped the people, job, relationships and fully working body of my previous life, for a garden full of birds.

Luckily for me I had an obsession with birds. This exchange isn’t one that I relished but it was made bearable by my fascination with all things avian.  It would only be a slight exaggeration to say that I spent 10 years looking out of a window.  I didn't do things by halves, I recorded and documented everything, I produced an annual report and a website – nothing less than would be expected of the true obsessive!

The brain is greedy for input. If it doesn’t get the big screen, surroundsound experience it makes do with the portable TV version.  Not only does it make do, it compensates by elevating the smallest sight and sound into a kaleidoscope and a symphony.

Parkinson’s  Law states ‘work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.’  There are many corollaries of this. Mine would be: ‘perception expands so as to fill the amount to be perceived.’

Although I'm still affected by illness my body is in working order a lot more than it was, and I've held onto my patching proclivities. My daily walks take me around an area of fairly ordinary countryside in South Lancashire.  Starting the blog has given me the impetus to fully explore patch’s wildlife, and so aspects of nature have unfolded themselves in wonderful and unexpected ways.

When I started out I was primarily a bird watcher.  I then started to nurture, what had been fledgling, interests in other branches of natural history. This has boosted my enjoyment many-fold.  For example I used to experience a July slump in interest, as the birds had their post-breeding respite. Now, it’s a time of peak activity with moths to trap, dragonflies to photograph and plants to identify.
I had expected to hang up my patch-plodding boots in November and December, but this was another peak time for me, thoroughly enjoying getting to know the fungi, bryophytes and lichens of the patch.

If you just look for birds you’ll just see birds.

This is something  that’s struck me again and again,  the contrast between what’s ‘out there’ – in nature -  and what we perceive ‘in here’ – in our brains.  There seems to be an almost infinite wealth of species, behaviours, interactions, but all we ever see is the very tip of nature’s iceberg. We are the prisoners in Plato’s cave – all we see are the shadows cast by the fire.

We can search out things that give us a glimpse into this hidden realm.  Owl pellets are a good example. The undergrowth is teeming with small mammals which we hardly ever see. Unlike the owls, we don’t  have the razor sharp senses to detect them, nor does our survival depend on catching them. However a rummage through a few pellets soon reveals a multitude of mammal bones – showing us just how abundant the voles, mice and shrews really are.

Then in October I was struck by the way morning dew revealed the amazing profusion of money spider webs – an almost unbroken carpet of gossamer.  An hour after sunrise the dew had gone taking with it the silken spectacle.

Opening the moth trap after a still night in August gives a window onto the usually unseen lepidopteran hoards that frequent almost every back garden. Another veil temporarily is drawn back – the scales lifted from our eyes.

Even with these peeks through the keyhole our brains only give us half the story - or less - just a small fraction of everything that’s ‘out there’ in fact. It’s tempting to think that when we look at a scene there’s the real ‘us’ inside our brains watching the world like a cinemagoer - getting the whole picture. However the brain is fooling us.  Only a small area at the very centre of the gaze is in high definition, the rest is a blurry approximation.  The eyes dart around absorbing information, the rest of the picture is seamlessly filled in by mental slight of hand.

So it is with all the senses – the brain drip-feeds sensory information to our conscious minds, very much on a need to know basis. The mental model we have of the world has only a tenuous connection with the physical reality.

So we have to make do with crumbs from the perceptual table. But what crumbs! If we take the time to look nature gives us a feast for our senses and a banquet for the soul.

,,,a heaven in a wild flower...and a universe in a dew drop

The life on a single rock – microcosms within microcosms

I still have some days when I can't do much walking but I can still get in the car then go a short distance and I can still go microcosmic!

I checked out this single rock - in the top left hand corner no more than a few feet across but has its own community, a whole mini universe.

...and there's nothing out of the ordinary about this rock - there are micro universes everywhere!

15 species of moss & lichen - Species in the collage (not in order) Bryum capillare, Grimmia pulvinata, Tortula muralis, ceratodon purpureus, Lecanora muralis, Parmotrema perlatum, Porpyria sp, Baeomyces rufus, Cladonia sp, Rhytidiadelphus squarrosus, brachythecium rutabulum, etc

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