Green Wizardries, A Safe and Happy Place, by Maxine Rogers
I was walking in the woods with some friends and we came across one of those huge old stumps that may well have been cut before the First World War. The stump had been burned over and the pileated woodpeckers had been drilling holes in it over what looked to be many generations. In one of the holes, one of my friends spotted a neat, little tiny nest. It would have been the right size for a wren.
That got me to thinking about how very lucky we all are to live on our tiny islands, away from it all. Denman and Hornby got through the First World War with the loss of some of the young people but little real inconvenience to everyone here who was not doing military service. The Second World War was much the same but we did have a Japanese-incendiary balloon land on Denman in a field. I do not think it did any damage.
It feels to me that we have never been so close to a nuclear exchange between the great powers and be damned to the rest of us. The Americans refuse to hold diplomatic talks with the Russians when what is most needed is a diplomatic solution and an end to hostilities.
I found an interesting documentary on the Babushkas of Chernobyl. A bunch of, mostly, women who were evacuated from villages inside the forbidden zone around the worst parts of nuclear contamination. They missed their homes and way of life so much that they hiked back and dug under fences to get to their homes. One old lady said that she was so hungry and tired when she got home that she ate a berry and said, “If I die, it is God’s will.” She didn’t die and the old ladies all seemed quite healthy and spry.
The wildlife is burgeoning in the forbidden zone. Somehow buffalo, which they call bison, found their way to the zone, travelling through some very heavily populated country to get there where they met up with red deer, elk (which I suspect are the critters we call moose), horses that had gone wild, stray dogs, wild boar, wolves and heaps of birds and fish. The forbidden zone is a kind of paradise where nature has taken back the land from human depredation and stocked it with an unbelievable richness of wildlife.
A recent study on the wolves of Chernobyl, who are at the top of the food chain, found they have developed a resistance to cancer. I suspect a lot of other creatures have also developed a surprising resistance to cancer. The old ladies who returned to their homes in the forbidden zone keep chickens, geese and some pigs. They have beautiful, lavish gardens. They forage for wild herbs, berries and mushrooms. Some of the mushrooms were very contaminated but the old ladies ate them and were very healthy and robust. Yes, I am puzzled too but that is what happened.
So, a limited nuclear exchange will not be the end of the world although it may well be the end of the more wasteful parts of our civilization such as consumer culture as I think such an exchange would cause a lot of what passes for normal to unravel.
Our islands are like that tiny nest, tucked away in a hidden place. I reckon that this is going to be a great year to learn to live locally and to garden intensively. Gardening is soothing to the nerves and promotes good sleep and is inexpensive. That is more than can be claimed for therapy.
This spring is cold and this means you still have time to plant lettuce, spinach and peas. We are trenching and filling the trenches half full of compost, then a seed potato, then more compost, wood ash and a layer of sand as our soil is a bit of a heavy clay. It is essential to make the garden soil richer every year. The more organic matter that you put in the soil, the better it holds water.
I have my peas planted in pots in our polytunnel and the pots are sitting on hanging shelves so no mouse can get at them to eat the peas. We do this with beans and corn too. I have lots of tomato and pepper seedlings inside the house on shelves under LED lamps. I also have seedlings of petunias, pansies and zinnias to delight the heart and feed the pollinators.
Other things to do to prepare for whatever might come include learning to knit, and work wool. Learning to nurse family members through common illnesses at home. You really want to stay out of our local hospitals as people go in for one thing but sometimes come out with a case of life-altering clostridium difficile, an infection of the colon. Symptoms range from diarrhea to life-threatening damage to the colon. This is due to inadequate hygiene in the hospitals.
On that note, I will wish you happy gardening and good fortune.
