A Time to Dance

Lat May I sat at the trusty – though somewhat battered by the three-year-old fella – kitchen table to write about a time to grow. Well, talk about an understatement. Where do I start?

Leaving the comfort of my well-worn battle ground of bogs and trying to get them restored was a moment filled with mixed emotion. Was I overly institutionalised? Was I too specialist? Was I too brow-beaten by the winds in the business world where nature came at the bottom of a sad and pitiful pecking order? At the National Biodiversity Conference last year I listened with great intent to eve

Red sky at night - flying over the Irish Sea,
looking back towards the west (Oct 2019).  

ry word of our inspirational flame-bearer – President Higgins. I’m not ashamed to admit that I near wept the whole way through his speech. Whether he wrote it or not, his delivery and his spoken words of camaraderie, respect and understanding for us ‘weary in the trenches folk’ hit me right in the core. I know I wasn’t alone. Sometimes we don’t know if we can go on.

With all these questions in my head, I walked on. I followed my gut and stepped off a corporate motorway onto a rugged path, with a well self-enforced speed limit, that I had never been on before. Scared? – does a duck quack? Excited? Levels were off the Richter scale, or that was nausea??? Free? As a bird. Think - off the north coast of Erris and an un-limited blue sky stretching over the horizon. Think John Lennon Free as a Bird. 

Six months later, how I have grown! Not physically (though I have spent a lot of time on my ass sitting and reading). More like - grown back into my curious, wonder and awe skin, back onto new neural pathways in my head, wriggled out of narrowing avenues and out into the limitless space of possibility. And how is that, says you? Well, I’ve had the time to read (part of the job - what a gift!). And it was science, journals, economics, philosophy, and the crossover of nature and business. Grasping nettles and taking the sting out them with understanding. Still plenty of nettles out there, takes time.

I’ve met some awesome people on this path – there are serious (wow) warriors out there armed with knowledge and understanding, and passion and fire for nature and people, together. Even to brush-off the energy of that fire feeds my own and brings to me great hope where I was probably a bit wanting. Maybe even more importantly, I got to spend more time with the hardy warriors I knew before but never really got to spend time with – you know who you are. Both these close encounters with awesome warriors have helped to rebuild – restore? – my own source of fire, to keep me in the dance. Nature’s worth dancing for, though in my heart of hearts - this I know - nature dances us.

Am I still scared? Yeah, who isn’t a bit scared if they are honest. Life is uncertain, but I have today. And tomorrow will be a gift. Am I excited? Even more than I thought I could be. The future needs us all to work together, from every millimetre of this intricate web. Not one more important than the other, though some can bear a more powerful blow to get us on the right course. And plenty of heavy lifting for us all to do, so hang in there. 

Free? Still flying, high.