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"From Dawn to Decadence"
Here, in a single mid-March day, I have been privileged to experience what all people used to possess every day of their lives - before towns took us over...and going back to Rome's Ides of March and all the years before.
Even at the time of my birth the majority of Western Civilisation still lived on farms. And a generation before, at the start of the 20th century, as many as ninety percent of the population of the United States was involved in agriculture. Today, less than five percent of the GNP of the US comes from farming, if my memory serves (which signals that those statistics need to be checked) In any event, I certainly remember when most people I knew watched each day of each season, rejoicing or worrying about the rain, the sun, the wind. Their livelihood depended on the land, and they knew their lives depended on a normal balance of nature.
In working with the elements they witnessed nearly every sunrise, and felt the joy and peace of nearly every sunset. They knew the natural rhythms of life. Apart from hunger; the poverty of the 1930s Depression; deathly or crippling afflictions such as diptheria and polio; crude dentistry and gross surgery - they lived wonderfully well. Or I should say that they seemed to appreciated life more than we do today.
But today I experienced it all. I looked at multibillion-dollar scenes that Turner and Monet could never capture. Constable might have gone mad at the colours, the light and the lines drawn by a sun slanting on the Hemel-en-Aarde valley. Monet could never match the evening colours of on the Klein River Lagoon which changed from blue to gold to silver and to soft, misty, dove-down grey as the sun sank into the sea. Moments earlier water and the sky, separated by a dark band of mountains falling into the ocean to the West, had exploded in a dazzle of red and gold. In the East, 'Moonlight Mountain' (Maanskynkop) caught the reflections and stood solidly in a rosy glow.
These are the moments which remind you of what the life-force in our little corner of the universe is all about.
If only I could summon the resolution to rise before dawn each morning to watch its glories.
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