skylark

I'm sitting at the back of a beach in New Zealand, and I've just been listening to some skylarks singing. I love their song.

Music, including the songs of birds, can bring back very strong memories. And for me, whenever I hear a skylark, my mind takes me back to Dartmoor. I've spent a lot of time walking on the moor, ever since the age of thirteen. Sometimes I say it's where I learned to walk: on the open moor. And there's not much living on the moor, it would seem, but skylarks are there. And their song is always enriching to the spirit, with its bubbly, joyful enthusiasm for life.

The strange thing today is hearing this song, in a completely different environment, is doing strange things to my mind. On the one hand I'm here, in the warm sun, watching the waves break, and at the same time I'm on Dartmoor, with its blustery winds, and ever-changing weather. The song of the skylark has linked these two places for me – two places on the opposite sides of the planet, very different landscapes. And yet today, somehow, they are joined. And this makes me realise that the mind, which on the one hand is forever chopping things up, separating things, is at the same time forming associations, and sticking things together in new ways, in unexpected ways.

Thank you, skylarks. Thank you for your effervescent joy for life. It's quite contagious.