Great storm clouds hung in the sky that day. The dark grass in the fields rippled like water. In the valleys there was hawthorn blossom heaped at the side of the road like newly fallen snow, while higher up there were gorse blossoms scattered everywhere on the tarmac. The petals were surprisingly white; once they separate from the mother bush, they lose their characteristic deep yellow.
On the Coa Road, I saw a single black eye peering up at me from the verge. I bent forward, like the boy in The Borrowers when he spots little Arrietty lying in the garden. I was halfway through Mary Norton's classic and this scene was fresh in my mind.
The eye was set in the sleek feathered head of a cock pheasant. He was lying completely still. Passing cars had probably frightened him and he had bedded down. Then, not hearing very well, he had failed to detect my approach until too late and I was towering over him.
We spent a long time regarding each other. The eye was dark, like wet liquorice. The body was utterly still. The bird must have been terrified. I was so close. It struck me that when my chilly shadow fell over him it was exactly like the moment when the shadow of the boy falls over Arrietty.
I had my stick-an old South African knobkerrie. I always take it when I walk because occasionally I meet unfriendly dogs. I was holding it by the stem. The heavy end, the killing end, was in front of me. If this was a hundred years ago, I thought, I'd have had no qualms about swinging this. Even if, first time, I had failed to kill the pheasant, I'd certainly have broken his wings and prevented his cumbersome flight. With the next blow I'd have finished it off. Then I'd have had him for supper.
For a moment I entertained the thought of doing this now. I could carry the bird home and hang him in the shed. Tomorrow I could bring him to my local butcher. They clean and pluck game birds for 50 pence a go the last time I asked (although prices may have risen of course).
Then, as quickly as it had come, the thought vanished. It was unbelievably pointless, I decided, to deprive the world of something this beautiful. It was also probably illegal. This, incidentally, in the list of reasons not to act, carried the least weight.
I walked on, my face turned to the world. On the verge great ferns reared up, their leaves sticky with sap and rigid like cardboard. There were pairs of cabbage whites fluttering about. Further on there were vividly coloured bluebells-more purple really than blue-and tiny white wood anemones, like the polka dots on the day dresses my grandmother wore in my childhood. In the sky there were magpies, their wings moving jerkily as if powered by clockwork motors, and in the ring fort up on my right there were wood pigeons cooing.
Further on, in the drive of an abandoned house, I came on half a dozen quivering grey balls of tweed. These were rabbits. There seems to be an epidemic of them at the moment. They watched me with their bulging glass eyes and twitched but did not move.
In the gully, at the side of the drive, I spotted what appeared to be a ball made of moss. I turned it over with the end of my stick. It turned out to be half a sphere with a small egg shaped indentation set into it. This was lined with wool and feathers and trapped in the lining were tiny little crumbs of eggshell. I decided to take this perfectly made nest home to show my children. I picked it up and continued on my way.
I walk most days in the Fermanagh lanes around my house. I get fantastic pleasure from the hedgerows and spinneys, the abandoned houses and unproductive bits of land that I pass. I love these places where nature flourishes untrammelled.
What I fear in the Ireland of the future is that all this will go. The hedgerows and spinneys will go to make better fields, and the old houses and unproductive bits of land will become dumps or the sites of hideous modern bungalows. I've only lived in Fermanagh ten years, but I am aware that in the space of a decade there is less of what I describe above than when I first came (the rabbits excepted) and more human mess.
I'm not saying that in the future we're going to make anything extinct. To be sure, every thing I describe above will still be around. It just won't be lying around. I'll have to drive to it and I'll probably have to pay too. Now driving and paying are a bore but my real objection is to the absence of happenstance-random, unplanned, everyday entanglement. And why does this matter? Well, if we're not interacting with nature, which we can't if it isn't lying around, we'll forget we're only one species among many, and that way lies pride which comes before a fall.
