Doornspijk

I am in an oasis in a large forested area on the Veluwe near the town of Doornspijk. I will not say it is forest because there is much development here but we are surrounded by trees and sitting on the edge of a large heath, the zandverstuiving. That is a strange landscape of undulating sand and drifting sand dunes with, here and there, wooded tussocks. I can hear the highway – the A28 – a constant, bland tone like wind being forced through a tunnel way off in the distance. Apart from that, there is perfect peace, only the wind in the trees and the cries of some children playing over on the ‘beach’.

It is inevitable that you would be aware of mortality here, I think. The birds get on with their life all around us, without bothering with ponderous questions. The trees stand for years, decades, until they die quietly and without fuss. We have just been at a family gathering and the generation under us are now the elders whilst all those we knew are missing. I was going to say ‘absent’ but they are not that. Missing is a better word because they are missed. You know your place when you sit here among the trunks of high trees. We are all evolving. Towards what is a question that only seems to trouble humans. And, for all the good that does us or any other creature, we should find another question.

Two birds are fighting in a tree. They both want the same thing I suppose, and that is not possible, so life will see who is the strongest. The fittest – that is the correct term and we are mistaken when we think that that is necessarily the strongest and most ruthless. It means the fittest to survive. We live in a time when it is being decided if we are fit to survive. It’s touch and go and that is even true from a human perspective. Someone not human might look at us and think that the answer could not be more obvious. We can certainly be appalling – and horrifyingly so. But surely creatures that can have such a range of ideas and impulses are worth keeping alive.