We are designed by nature to notice and to be affected by them, fine-tuned to the minute changes in the environment, fractal hunting and gathering, second by second, every day of our lives - micro-experiences of dynamic, infinitely wonderful nature feed our minds, bodies and spirits, making us happy. Most are happened upon, whilst others are about being in the right place at the right time.

It is a momentous celebration of our lives on Earth, just as we now realise, we have put everything, including our human selves, in mortal danger. The fact remains that even in the anthropocene scenario; there is beauty and joy everywhere to be sensorially explored. Even more so, this perceived jeopardy means all moments are rarefied, as we come to value what we are about to lose, with ever greater intensity.

A simple conservation alchemy arises from noticing nature’s natural wonder at all scales, breath by breath, for as we fall in love even more with the detail of our world, we will do anything to help it recover and thrive; in our momentous living in Nature, we will love it back to full health, improving our own well-being at the same time. It really is that easy to save the planet.

It is fashionable in conservation circles to promote nature re-connection through getting people involved in events and experiences and increasingly to broadcast through social media posts what nature means to them. Twitter and Insta are ‘wick’ with billions of these images every day, of latter-day hobbyists and biophiliacs capturing their daily fix of wild. It is entertaining and amazing. This is momentousness in action.

However, it can also be a personal vanity project and an expression more of human ego than of the intrinsic value nature represents in our lives. It’s a big start though. As long as increasingly more people are posting these images than posting other junk or nasty stuff it must be positive, though that is not the case yet; by far, it is still a niche activity of us planetary cherishers! However, it is a demonstrable modern link to being excited by, thrilled, in Nature. It is part of our slow reconciliation with nature.

Every June, like increasing thousands I sign up to #30 Days Wild, where people are encouraged to tell all about an experience in nature every day for a month. It is powerful and increasingly popular, just as the mindful game of garden birdwatch has been such a citizen science success through the RSPB, attracting thousands of informal recorders to notice what lives around them.

I struggle with doing it, though I do try to express my routine, daily, connection to nature through a continuous catalogue of ‘special’ curated experiences. But in my reality, every single day, every minute and second, I am noticing and recording, mentally if not digitally, the habitats and landscapes with all their wild things I pass through. We all are, we are programmed and built to, and we just have to tune in.

It’s hard to be selective and define what to post for me from the myriad of things I notice and feel even when engrossed in doing other things, like writing blogs and council papers! But I do try at least capture fragments of what I daily experience as a ‘human assimilator’ of the micro and macrocosmic ecology of being a human animal. Truth is though, away from my mobile phone and other devices, when things just happen and are unphotographable, the best things always seem to happen.

So I’ve lots of ‘fractal moments’ from my June 2019 #30 Days Wild so far, the outtakes, the moments too personal and too good, too instantaneous and fleeting somehow, to generally share with the Twitterati perhaps.

Sometimes it is a pleasure of itself to leave our recording devices behind and just see with our own senses, not even with an intent to share at all, for the pure sense of connection and intimacy with nature in that moment. Go on, be brave, leave the mobile at home or switch it off next time you walk out and watch, maybe just do the odd post? The important thing is to feel your way in nature and love every second. Everything else is secondary.

For this time, one time only, here is a stream of my nature consciousness over the last few weeks and days… shared but never to be repeated, because some things are just for us to experience and beyond sharing, certainly in any detail, may even be inexpressible in words and pictures, as we feel our way through this infinitely wondrous world, but here goes..

Mike’s stream of consciousness wild encounter-experiences…

… yesterday I heard a water vole plop into the water for the first time in 34 years, where I used to see them as a kid, there was a barn owl floating along the hedge as I drove past on the way home from my tai chi class, I found myself running with a hare for nearly a minute next to me, before it handbrake turned and sped off, I happened upon a daytime sleeping badger cub on a cliff top sett, snoozing in the sun under a bush, and as I watched his tummy rise and fall I held my breath, a grey wagtail sat on my car wing mirror this morning to greet me before I drove to work.

….I realised I love the little pattern inside a flag iris, I have got into the habit of lolling over the bed of a morning, window open, listening to the screams of swifts, vipers bugloss by the roadside makes me smile habitually, I laid on my back on the beach and watched fulmars playing planes, I saw an owl in the dark over the road, saw a lizard, quick as a click, on a moor-bog, I was hit in the face today by a painted lady in Whitby, last week there was a bee swarm on a willow down the lane that looked from a distance like someone had shed a long beard.

…my two most romantic moments this summer so far involved badger watching and stalking a cuckoo in twilight, I watched a tuned in little owl on top of a zeppelin listening station, I remembered after Mam died, I scratched her name in the sands where she ran as a child, and as the tide absorbed her, a rainbow appeared on the horizon, then I found a heart shaped pebble, two weeks past, on a work conference, I was surprised by a hoodie crow on a Manx strandline, a stoat run along the wall next to me, a milliseconds ginger streak bristling with violence, swifts materialised from a dark cloud after the storm as if spat out, and skimmed low over the fields, I heard three yellowhammers today, after being sick it was the fresh cold wind on my cheek that revived me and a sighting of a shearwater, near Hadrian’s Wall, there were loads of big bats round an old lamp post feeding on cockchafers in the rain, I decide serenity is a gull’s flight, heard my first skylark fledglings of the year, found a frog hopper beetle and watched it somersault, I loved that smell of wild thyme, I swear I felt the clouds move, the day after my operation I climbed a tree because I could and wanted to disappear in leaves, that chiffchaff has never shut up since it arrived in April! We knew there were young choughs inside the barn, we just couldn’t see them….enough for now!

Keep noticing, keep feeling, notice every moment, we are animals living in our habitat and ecosystems, we are part of the aliveness of the world, not just observers and reporters of it.. We are nature!