Mar 27, 2007
I built a little hut on my bit of land and made it as comfortable as I could. It had a pair of bunks, (salvaged from the bach), at one end; a bench with sink, (salvaged from a refurbished entomology lab at DSIR) at the other end; a folding table, (home made) with two chairs bought at a school garage sale, and a pot bellied stove bought by way of an advertisement on the notice board in the Matapouri store. The hut wasn’t connected to the power but if I parked the car outside and left the window open I could listen to the car radio.
Pretty good, at least until it got dark. For that I had a little mantle lamp on a gas cylinder. But do you think I could get it to light? I tried every which way. Gas would come out of the jet alright but instead of setting the mantle aglow all it would do was produce a smoky yellow flame which covered the mantle with black soot. Nothing I could do would produce a glimmer of usable light. Total frustration.
In the end I had to abandon it, but since the moon was up by then it seemed a good time to wander round the property and inspect my sheep. Some were lying down chewing the cud, but most were still eating. They looked at me with that supercilious expression that sheep have - a sort of “What in God’s name is he doing here at this time of night, and what if anything does he think he is going to achieve by it?” Then they would return to their grazing with the air of those who have more important things to do.
With no encouragement from that quarter, I returned to the hut. The stove had gone out, so there seemed nothing for it but to go to bed. I mused on the way that stone age man was likewise obliged to organise his life by the rising and setting of the sun, and then on how the invention of fire, and of later forms of lighting, had built a nucleus around which society could grow and communicate, and how from this simple advance mankind had evolved step by step to his present pitch of civilised sophistication. And on this deeply philosophical theme I fell asleep.
It must have been quite a long night’s sleep, for I woke at about six am quite refreshed, as primitive man must have done too before the curse of artificial light drove him to extend his day and his boredom with it. I got up fully alert, lit the stove, made a pot of tea and fried a couple of sausages, scorched some toast and sat down to a pleasant breakfast, just as the sun came over the ridge and burst through the window. I didn’t bother with the car radio. It seemed an unnecessary intrusion.
I went to work in good heart, spraying the weeds around the youngest pine trees, and pruning the side branches off the bigger ones. It was a lovely clear day. The air was crisp and the sunshine clear. Even the sheep seemed to accept me as a legitimate part of their landscape, and got on with their eating with only an occasional disinterested glance in my direction. There is so much to be enjoyed and appreciated in the simple life.
At the end of a satisfying day I drove home, taking the miscreant lamp with me in the hope of repairing it. The fault turned out to be a blocked air vent at the side of the jet, and when I cleaned it out with a bent nail, what should it yield but a little pad of gossamer. Some tiny and industrious spider had seen in that vent a place of security where she could make a home and care for her young, and this she no doubt would have done had not some clumsy human fumigated her with a jet of methane, and then destroyed her careful construction with a rusty nail in order to heighten his sense of civilisation.
Thus does our sophisticated existence hang by a thread of gossamer.