Save the Snails

TODAY WAS MY FIRST snail-saving of the year—it is very wet outside and I, gardener though I was for years, adore snails. So I save them. When they are on the wet pavements trying to slush along to the streets, I pick them up and point them in the direction of the bushes and greenery. I once saved at least 60 or 70 in one night! This time it was more like 20 at the most, but who's counting? Not me. I'm just glad to be of service to such creatures. As I've said recently, I'm only a part of the whole of nature—everybody is, but they just don't realise it.

When in Cornwall, I had seen the tiniest snail I ever saw: you almost had to have a magnifier just to see it—and it was on the wall, slowly slurping away, just like in Jeremy Fisher's book, in his house all slippy-sloppy. But the variety of snails in that region are different from the ones I so rarely encounter here: they had a tougher, more colourful shell, and they were often quite minute, and sometimes much bigger than the ones I've seen here.

I also in Cornwall saw the first ever fox: it was the biggest fox I've ever seen, and it had a very long tail, as long as its body; which, along with the tail, stretched all the way across the breadth of the roadway, which I admit is very narrow in Cornwall. That road was so quiet—but never as quiet as that fox, which bounded across that road with a single touch on the ground: from one hedgerow to the other, just like that.

When I first went out today, it had been heavily raining and the smell of the pine trees all wet with the rain was simply the most amazing fragrance I'd smelled in a long time. I like a good rain shower: it brings out the snails—and me too.

Going Out

A HUNDRED YEARS AGO in 1913, John Muir wrote in his journal the following: "I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in." 

When I first read this statement, I was excited—but found the return at sundown a disappointment: I recall when I, in a similar mood but perhaps with more adventure in my soul than in common hours, went outside and concluded that I would not go back in for at least a year. That's right: I actually decided not to enter a building for that length of time, and was never healthier or more robust of spirit than at that period of my life. 

Having phoned the world of lair-lurkers, I "called in well" and didn't look back nor return to that lifestyle till I'd gained what I'd wanted from the experience of non-dependence on human dwellings. 

One of the most amazing aspects of this way of life was truly being one with everything around me: the birds singing; the crickets and frogs chirping; sunrise and set; the same for the moon, with the many moods that accompany his waning and waxing. I was with the North Wind when she was angry; I felt becalmed when the sea settled and the clouds let the orange setting sun peep through for a few moments till it disappeared beneath the ocean. Everything that surrounded me—all of nature—I was but a part of and, moreover, it was a part of me. There's nothing like that feeling: it cannot be described nor bartered for anything better—for there is nothing better.

I pray I will hold these things in my heart till the last, and not lose sight of the beautiful horizon and its colours and sounds and odours. That's the sort of prayer you can only live, and which contains less "please" than "thank you."

Thank you.