You shall not pass!

You can't see me, I'm camooflaged!

Quite some time ago, during my first winter vanlife trip to Spain I spent a few days in the Pico de Europa national park and hiked up Pico Gilbo.  It was a cloudy late autumn morning as I set off walking across the unexpectedly terrifying road bridge over the lake and into the woods towards the mountain. After carefully negotiating my way around a small herd of thoroughly pig-headed unyielding cows I eventually came up out of the woods onto the side of Pico Gilbo itself. The views there are breathtaking. The blue lake below, the leaves turning every shade of red, yellow and brown on the hills around, all the sorts of lovely things real nature writers could wax lyrical about for several pages. Unfortunately you’ve got me, so you’ll have to be satisfied with “it was nice”. 

A picture is worth 1000 words - just as well really.

Proper nature writer required!

Here I had my first proper experience of a flock (or kettle) of vultures, I was vaguely aware that Spain had a few vultures but had not been remotely prepared for a real life encounter with them. There must have been at least 40 eventually, appearing from all directions and circling almost directly above me. Griffon vultures are huge, with a wingspan of almost 3 metres and as I later discovered Spain has around 90% of Europe's entire population - over 30,000 pairs, so maybe I should have been a little more prepared! Nevertheless seeing that many birds of that size flying together was a completely new experience for me. I sat and watched for quite a while, contemplating the idea of playing dead to see if I could draw them closer! However they already had a meal in mind, something I couldn’t quite see behind a rock was attracting them down to the ground and causing quite a few small scuffles to break out. 

Stretch those finger feathers!

A small wake of vultures

How do they not crash into each other?

As I sat watching something clicked into place. It just felt right. Sitting on the side of a mountain, overlooking a lake with vultures circling and Chamois hopping around the rocks above. This is ‘it’ thought my brain, this is Nature. This is the world that’s not all about people, about work, productivity, money, noise. This is where animals just get on with the business of being. Something I’d read by Alan Watts came to mind - "You are something the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is something that the whole ocean is doing." ie we are not separate from the world, we are not even just part of it, we are ‘it’. A vulture isn’t just some vulture shaped bird, it’s an expression of nature. What it does - flying, scavenging, arguing with other vultures, is what makes it a vulture. Without them there would be a vulture shaped hole in nature.

Hi there!

Sneaking up on a Chamois is hard

Look, are you gonna jump or not?

I think this idea is easier with something big. Say an Elephant. In the wild an Elephant is action, it is power, it is destruction but also creation. It dominates the environment, changes entire ecosystems, provides habitats for all sorts of other animals. It’s easy to see how it is an expression of nature, a natural force, like a wave in the sea. In a zoo, even one that genuinely looks after its animals, it is diminished, a smaller, weaker animal. It’s actions have no reaction, it is no longer changing its environment, rolling through the landscape it belongs to in charge of its own destiny. It is still an Elephant, but somehow less. It’s like trying to capture a wave in a box. Out of the sea it’s still water but has lost the essence of what makes it a wave.

All animals are like that. In their natural habitat they all are an expression of nature. Even us. Of course we have done our best to deny it, to cordon ourselves off and act like we don’t need nature, we create our own Zoos to live in through choice but we are still experiencing, we don’t stop being nature just because we’re stuck in an office or in traffic, we’re just diminished, like the Elephant in the Zoo. 

We spend so much time in this impoverished, colourless state that we can forget that we are nature, but nature doesn’t forget us. We “are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself” (Watts again). Our consciousness, our awareness of both ourselves and the universe around us is unique to each of us, this is the aperture to the universe, it is what makes us human - it's our expression of nature. When we diminish ourselves we lose the richness and variety of conscious experience in the mindless drudgery of daily life, the aperture dims, we pay less attention to the world. 

I think that’s what really hit me that day. My experience on the side of that mountain watching those vultures was so vivid and so complete, and at the same time so unique to me. It felt like the window had finally been thrown wide open.