And I rose up, and knew that I was tired;
And so continued my journey …
Inscription on the Edward Thomas Memorial Stone,Shoulder of Mutton Hill, Steep, Hampshire
In the forest the clay cracked, gaped and chasmed in awesome summer heat. Weeks of scorching drought had removed all moisture from the paths and rides, turning mud to earth, earth to dust, and dust to desiccation. Finally, the particles rose to hang low within pulsating air. At night the trees trapped the day's heat and held it close to the ground, threatening suffocation, only for the new day to add more. And so the heat accumulated and intensified, as if the summer was building towards some cataclysmic climax of intense power, and almost unnatural beauty. There may have been some grand purpose behind it all; it seemed almost so, but that remained hidden to man and was understood perhaps only by Nature. Each leaf strained for relief from the searing sun; some had fallen early, forming a carpet of crumpled Hazel and Silver Birch leaves upon the woodland floor. Beneath the shade of brooding oaks the Dog's Mercury had turned its leaves downwards, in abject surrender. The Honeysuckle leaves would follow, for they were yellowing and would soon turn brown and wither. The long hot summer had returned. Metaphor and reality had harmonised.
Somehow he had left himself behind. He had done this sort of thing before, though not always through the power of Nature, or through Psyche. Those early experiences now mattered little, being at best training exercises for the real thing. For now it was different, involving the truest reality, Faith. He had left himself staring up at some high tree, where something small and distant had flickered momentarily, once or twice, iteratively, perhaps calling from a different dimension of existence. Was it an Emperor, or an Admiral perhaps, or more? It mattered little, for the naming of something is only one small part of the experience of it. We can venture deeper than the meaning of words, as poets do; but, paradoxically, we can do this only through the medium of words, and words shimmer between their meanings.
The real him had wandered out of the wood and off down the oak-lined Marlpost Road; not quite as before, though still journeying from glade to glade, hurrying through the overhung sections where autumn lurked, and dallying in the sunlight glades where summer dwelt. Others had gone the other way, into the wood, bearing cameras and binoculars. Butterfly photographers – New Age collectors – seeking images, two-dimensional experiences; trophy hunters, collecting visual memories. But Nature would entrap them too, in time. The meaning of the experiences they were having now would kick in later, in ordained time. Psyche, the butterfly-winged goddess of the human soul, would entice them, further up and further in.
Now here, through the collective memory of place, some deeper, truer reality was being penetrated. The silliness had been left behind – a shame, as it was fun. Lucidity was breaking through, like shafts of sunlight in which hoverflies were dancing within the miasmic dust of endless summer days. It had been threatening to break through for some time, but had been resisted stubbornly, perhaps simply on account of innate humanity. There was no stopping it now, on Marlpost Road, where he had always been. He had never left the road he had taken as a schoolboy, though it had twisted and turned, perhaps trying to shake him off, and had never run straight as a Roman road, as now it did, calmly.
Some power had straightened it out. Through leaving himself behind, if only by mere lapsus, he had surrendered to that power. It had absorbed him. Nature had fulfilled its task with him. Nature was not his religion, and never had been, for though deeply fascinating it made no sense without a creator, and made most sense when given back its rightful name – Creation. Voltaire was right: a clock needs a clockmaker. Instead, Nature had been his mentor and had latterly become his cathedral, his place of spiritual development and, indeed, of ministry and worship. Of course, it had distracted him, but only as part of the teaching process. There was also a healing there, though from what and for what remained absurdly obtuse, and may not ultimately matter. He had failed worldly peer-pressure atheism rather splendidly – the myriad ecstatic experiences he had had in Nature had ensured that. Marlpost Road was his Road to Emmaus. In gratitude he had openly campaigned to give Nature back its meaning. Psyche, though, had proved to be a flibbertigibbet, a veritable minx, a green lady of the woods who flickered in and out of focus (mainly out), who practised beguilement and succeeded only in causing confusion. She was all too human. Metamorphosis was a doddle of a metaphor: we are caterpillars, we periodically change our skins; death is the pupal period, and then ... we are destined to fly!
Butterflies had long held his hand, for Nature is so vast, so utterly wondrous that we need a focus, we need to narrow it down. Send for the cameras and the binoculars, or even the dog lead! Butterflies had helped the development of his soul. He had long felt, as Keats most earnestly believed, that we are on this earth to grow our souls, whatever that may mean – it links to skin changing. Also, he had long suspected that butterflies, as members of the lower orders (not that any living thing is low), share some form of communal soul, as species. He did not need to understand any of this. Some things we are not meant to understand, but merely to believe. It is easier, though we consider it harder.
Then there is the small matter of ministry, of individual purpose on this earth. Many today do not believe in this. He did, eventually.
Iridescence
Scatter me, these living ashes, here
Within this forest, my cathedral,
For all I sought through ministry
Of place, was Nature's meaning,
Deep within the sanctum of a dream
That dreamt itself in wonderment,
And danced a wayward life
Along some woodland path
Before becoming, sudden, real,
Inside the calling of a summer day.
Spirit, on iridescent wings,
As words of life in living light
Descending, that all true dreams
May, through glory, be fulfilled.