Peter H. Marshall - Natures Web: Rethinking Our Place on Earth: Rethinking Our Place on Earth

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NATURES WEB

NATURES WEB

Rethinking Our Place on Earth

PETER MARSHALL

First published 1992 by M.E. Sharpe

Published 2015 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 1992 Peter Marshall. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notices
No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use of operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein.

Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Marshall, Peter H., 1946
Natures web : rethinking our place on earth / Peter Marshall.
p. cm.
Originally published: New York : Paragon House, 1993.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-56324-864-6 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Philosophy of nature.
2. EcologyPhilosophy.
I. Title.
BD581.M3197 1996
113dc20
96-10481
CIP

ISBN 13: 9781563248641 (pbk)

For Cai, Jack and Lucy

THE BIRTHDAY

It was my daughters eighth birthday.
There was a dark cloud girding Snowdon,
But then there are often dark clouds girding Snowdon
In this rain-drenched land.

Friends came from afar to our cwm,
Bringing quartz crystals, jays feathers,
Coloured shells and a hot-air balloon.
We played in the sloping field
Enclosed by stone walls and twisted oak.
The cries of infant joy echoed across the ridge,
Scattering sheep and sending the fox to his den.

In mid-afternoon the dark cloud rolled over,
Casting its shadow across the hills.
Heavy drops of crystal rain fell silently
On the heads of babies and sheep,
Glistening like dew in their curly locks.
We quenched our thirst from the swelling stream
And laughed and splashed in its cool waters.

Only later we learned by chance
That the dark cloud girding Snowdon
Had blown across Europe,
Bringing birthday greetings from Chernobyl.

Peter Marshall

CONTENTS

I would like to thank warmly my brother Michael and my neighbour Richard Feesey for commenting on different chapters of this book and for sharing their scientific and philosophical knowledge. Above all, I am grateful to Jenny Zobel for having deepened my vision, supported me throughout my work, and read the entire manuscript.

My children Dylan and Emily have brought me down to earth and helped me appreciate the essential things of life. Cai, Jack and Lucy in their different ways have enabled me to realize that human beings differ only in degree and not in kind from other animals. The conversations and experiences I have shared over the years with my friends Jeremy Gane, Graham Hancock, David Lea and John Schlapobersky have all greatly contributed to my understanding of our place within nature. Finally, I am indebted to the editorial director, Carol OBrien, the editor, Sian Parkhouse, of Simon & Schuster and the copy editor, Ingrid von Essen, for their excellent advice.

Croesor, 28 January

I read the proofs of this work off the Ogoou river, Gabon, during a voyage around Africa. It was on the same river that Albert Schweitzer realized that reverence for life should form the basis of morality. The ship I was sailing on was carrying hardwood from the Equatorial rainforests to South Africa. The principle remains; the problems continue.

Peter Marshall, near the Cape of Good Hope, 16 May 1992

I live in one of the most beautiful places on earth, in a small valley by the sea surrounded by mountains in Snowdonia National Park in North Wales. My dwelling is an isolated house called Garth-y-foel, which means in Welsh the enclosure on the hill. It can only be reached by a rough track which winds up and down through several fields and copses and over a river which turns into a torrent after heavy rain.

At first sight, it would seem an ideal place to live for a writer, halfway between heaven and earth, part of society and yet separate from it. To the south, a reclaimed estuary stretches out towards the sea; on all other sides, rugged mountains reach to the overarching sky. The house is surrounded by small fields scratched out of the rocky ground, with clumps of twisted oak, tall beech and silver birch growing near their stone walls. From a rocky outcrop at the back of the house, Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales and England, stands watch over the surrounding peaks. A few hikers sometimes wander by disturbing the sheep and crows, looking for a taste of the wild, free and natural.

They follow in the footsteps of earlier hikers who sought the sublime, like the Romantic poet Wordsworth. He gloried in the awesome grandeur of the mountain range, and found in Snowdon

the perfect image of a mighty Mind

Of one that feeds upon infinity,

That is exalted by an underpresence,

The sense of God, or whatsoeever is dim

Or vast in its own being.

Not long ago, I climbed a local mountain after the first fall of snow on the peaks. Following an old drovers track over rough pasture, I eventually came across a new barbed-wire fence. It marked the outer boundary of land recently reclaimed from the ancient bogs and moors of the uplands. The contrast between the two sides of the fence could not have been starker.

On the one side were the dull browns and greens of a great variety of sedges, rushes, grasses, mosses and lichens in uneven terrain criss-crossed by little streams and brooks. On the other stretched a flat expanse of bright green grass on heavily limed and fertilized soil. The sheep rushed off in a great white mass at my approach. The barbed-wire fence marks the battle line between nature left to itself and mans steady and inexorable encroachment.

What place does barbed wire have in natures web? Only industrialized man, who learned how to mine coal and iron from the earth and fuse them with fire, is able to create barbed wire. It was barbed wire that destroyed the American hinterland; it continues to unfurl throughout the world, transforming the earth into the preserve of our rapacious species. Nature has evolved for all beings to enjoy, but only human beings have tried to control it and make it their own. By trying to humanize nature, they have denaturalized themselves.

I continued on my walk further up the mountainside. There were signs of earlier human workings. The tumbled stones of an ancient hut circle could just be discerned, suggesting that the climate must have been warmer several thousands of years ago for humans to live comfortably at 800 feet in these parts. The Romans had come this far north, scratching for copper and silver in an otherwise barren land. I then came across a sweeping track which ended in a jagged heap of broken slabs of slate, clawed from the subterranean depths of the mountain a stark reminder of the demand earlier this century to shelter the bursting population of Europe. Wordsworths perfect image of a mighty Mind lay for ever blasted and scarred. Medieval thinkers likened mining in the earth to the rape of Mother Nature; it is easy to see why, with the discarded workings of the violent boring into the mountains womb.

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