Happy Christmas

A very happy Christmas from the magpie that eats leftover cat food; from the robin that perches on the aerial of my car, eats bread from the window and poos on the roof; from the copper-budded beech trees to which snow still clings; from the squirrel that crouches on a branch, body motionless, upright tail undulating like a snake; from dripping crystal icicles filled with light that hang from the gutter; from the two cats, John and me; from Iain mcGilchrist and Robert Twigger whose books I am slowly reading. At some level we are all connected.

Protecting Herself?

Here, it rarely snows before Christmas, and when it does it is something ephemeral, wet and slushy and vulnerable to the daylight rise of a few degrees. This year temperatures recorded in November set new records, and we had real snow that still persists days after we first woke to find the ground white. We were taken unawares. A hard winter once every few decades is to be expected, even at a time of global warming. Two hard winters in succession?

We are provided with plenty of news about the disruption caused by the snow, but no-one predicted its arrival, or gave a definite date for its departure, or attempted to explain why we should be blown upon by winds from Scandanavia and Siberia rather than from the Atlantic. In the absence of an explanation my mind has been seeking to provide an answer. This morning the name, James Lovelace, came into my head, and after James came Gaia. Perhaps a rise in the earth's temperature causes an increase in volcanic activity, and residual volcanic dust in the atmosphere, causing reflection of sunlight into space, brings about a lowering of the temperature. Gaia protecting herself through one of her homeostatic mechanisms.