NORTHERN PLANNER

I get up early, very early. Some of that is to get to work before the traffic builds up, some of that is plain old early birdness. And to be honest, a mild case of insomnia is making me rise even earlier at the moment.

I could gloss over the stress of new job…. taking so much stuff in etc but that’s not my style. Now of course things will calm down, but that doesn’t help when your brain insists on processing a zillion bits of new information at 5am.

But I like being awake before anyone else. I like the feeling of existing in some sort of parallel universe. It feels like some sort of place that exists out of time. Everything seems somehow slowed down. You get a better sense of of the world around you without people in the way.

And that was one thing that struck me this morning, on a quiet motorway, hills in the distance. We don’t worship nature anymore. Nearly every religion used to hold it in awe…..they used to pray to the sun, the moon, the sea and even animals. And we were at its mercy. You get a much better sense of how big the world is when a horse and carriage takes you days and weeks to get anywhere, when every time you cross the sea is literally taking your life into your own hands. Take Edmund Hillary conquering Everest – it was such a pivotal symbol of the strength of the British Empire. Explorers were heroes. Nature was a challenge, now it’s an inconvenient truth.

Now our gods are technology. We worship the car, the Ipod, the plasma screen. These things are considered beauty. Nature is scenery – an optional extra. Technology may well save us from this eco mess we’ve got us in, which I find ironic since it’s what got us here.