In the recent past almost every child would have known which of these plants was edible and which was poisonous.
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They would have learnt the local names, the legends and their uses.
They knew where to find them and at what time of year they flowered. They listened to the old stories and even added to them with their own experiences.
In this way, the children became a living part of a breathing animate landscape. They knew that they were of this ecology and would one day return to it.
All around them were the whispers and memories of the ancestors, inhabiting as they do the ancient rocks and sacred corners. This ancestral knowledge sinks into the cells of the living through an experiential osmosis.
Nature, in this time, was not an otherworldly reality, the realm of the supernatural. It was a present, everyday, joyous presence.
That spark remains with as small children, existing inside of us, as something deeply instinctual.
It gradually becomes extinguished under the heavy layers of modern day experience. But, the memory remains still, and sometimes the call of a wild bird or a flaming sunset pierces these layers and for those of of us thus stirred, it becomes impossible to find peace again within this world of concrete and objects.
It is even possible to suggest that our true nature may simply reside within nature and not in the gilded temples and ancient scripts of forgotten languages.
It is time to start rebuilding the hoop and walking back towards the centre.