I have just finished walking one of the many beautiful, multi-day tracks, here in New Zealand. At one point on this particular walk, my stride was interrupted by the incredible stillness of the moment. There was not a breath of wind and all was silent, save for the occasional call of a bird. I had to stop and let the stillness touch me more deeply.
I was deep in a forest. Strong patches of sunlight percolated through the foliage, alighting on mosses and ferns and all things green. And as I looked around, it seemed to me that this was a primordial forest: it might have been unchanged for millennia. Then the realisation came – more as a feeling than a thought – that I was in the Garden of Eden.
We humans have made such an ugly mess of so much of the planet, with our buildings and our cities and our roads, with our noisy, smelly vehicles and other machinery. The list is endless. It’s all ugly. Little wonder that, by and large, we go through our days without this feeling of being in the Garden of Eden. We are no longer surrounded by natural beauty. In the name of comfort and security, we have besmirched the garden.
The challenge, as I see it, is partly to return to a more natural way of being, more in tune with nature, as uncomfortable and insecure as that may be. However, the challenge is also to see the Garden of Eden even where we have created ugliness. I, for one, still have a long way to go with that!
