View to the Orchard

I loved this view out to a small orchard on a crisp October morning. Views from dark to light, or vice versa, are personal favourites. Through a window, a door, a gate, the entrance of a cave – the transition is not just between states of light, temperature and smell, but also a way of being. Going out, how often do we stretch, or take a deep breath of air? And the other way may bring a stretch of weariness and a yawn. Transitions involve body and breath.

In the orchard, The apple trees seemed to move and beckon me out into the light, out of the darkness of the room. Trees often have this inviting quality. They invite us into their dynamic world and this can be experienced as uncomfortable, even uncanny. Our modern attitude to trees as fixed insensate things that are only of value for being beautiful, or as a resource, is slowly beginning to change. Science is now uncovering the intelligence of plants, but the ancients needed no such proof. The awful peril that we now face, of imminent climate destruction, is a direct consequence of Cartesian dualism. Descartes, by deciding that the world was soulless and insensate, began the great disconnection with nature that symptomises our modern age.

Here is a similar window, Limnerslease.