An observation post:
I have been back working at the oil terminal this week on the island in the middle of the bay.
The oil/petroleum tank farm is surrounded with massive over seventy feet high in places grass covered bunds to take the impact of oil spillage or explosion.
Every Winter a big 13 tonne digger with a mulcher cuts the flora which consists of grass, gorse and Montbretia...? This week I have been stone picking and digging up small stones and boulders to prevent the mulcher having any breakdowns.
Hard graft and slipping and a sliding in the rain and if you have a good day dreaming head like me a day in the park looking at the bay and the pheasants and hares and goats and seagulls and waving to the passing fellow workers in their work vehicles.
There is also all kinds of flora living on the bunds and natural parts of the oil terminal. Nature always encroaches and lichens live on boulders, a sure sign of clean air.
Now and then I was levering out stones with a crowbar and underneath I noticed Beetles looking up at me and I looked back at them and the earth was bone dry and I thought those stones are little or big houses for the creatures. How resourceful of them to use a boulder to keep dry and for a dwelling place.
They don't even know what the expression "Living under a rock means".
They don't know there is a war going on in Europe or inflation is at a thirty year high at seven percent. They carry on regardless like us all.
Perhaps it's only me who is daft to be like that Led Zeppelin record 'Fool In The Rain'? Or perhaps I would never had this encounter with insects if I hadn't been stone digging and stone picking?
Perhaps that what writing is about. Write about anything yet notice that everything is important. Even the black scurrying creatures that live under stones on the side of oil tank bunds?
Zenith Energy should give me a press officer job after me writing this post.
My Dad used to say that nature abhors a vacuum - it has to fill it. Even bunds around oil tanks are an ecosystem for something. Strangely oil terminals have become something of a nature reserve at sea too - fishing exclusion zones. I understand that sea otters made a comeback around one of the sea terminals up north. The fact that is IS an exclusion zone serves nature very well.
ReplyDeleteYour dad was so right Tigger. Mother Nature will always recover and repurpose anything humans create or destroy. Be it a quarry or a jetty. Something will make an home and plants will set seed and return the earth to how it was. Thanks.
DeleteEven in the unlikeliest of places, such as an oil terminal, you can find beauty. Thanks for such a great post today, Dave.
ReplyDeleteSo so true JayCee. A comment like yours is the reason to keep writing. Thank you so much.
ReplyDeleteI love you for your attitude. I will not kill a single living thing if I can help it. While the old shed was coming down I was busy removing snails and slugs that had made their homes there and my son thought I was a batty old lady. lol
ReplyDeleteWe do not know what or how animals interpret things we think we are so superior.
As for the troubles in the world, they will never go away all the time man is in charge, nothing changes if you look at news from years ago so I try not to let it all get to me.
Have a lovely Easter and good hunting, lol
Briony
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I love your attitude Briony. It's a fragile Earth and we should help it protect itself. Have a great Easter and thanks for your comment.
ReplyDeleteI would be the same Dave. Lovely isn't it being at one with the creatures and nature and thinking with them! Great post.
ReplyDeleteYou are probably the most gifted blog writer I know of Rachel. You can write about anything and make it interesting. That's what writers do. They write. I am definitely at one with nature. Especially Mother Nature. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteThanks Dave. I write as I speak/think. When I used to have trainees working with me and they said they didn't know how to write a letter I said write it as if you are speaking to someone. That's always a good start. (You're pretty good yourself too Dave).
ReplyDeleteGood advice Rachel. I try to be amiable and write in a chatty style. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteYou remind me of Gerald Durrell in Corfu studying the myriads of bugs and beetles in a stone wall. They are fascinating societies
ReplyDeleteThanks Linda. All God's creatures great or small. I loved watching The Durells and I remember Gerald and his menagerie and their amazing Greek house. It was like I was reading your blog about Poros.
ReplyDeleteI remember picking up stones in our garden when I was little, and thinking that there was a whole world going on under there. Now I wonder whether this world is just something going on under a much bigger stone.
ReplyDeleteGood point veg artist. Us humans aren't making a very good job of it. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteZenith Energy should give you a written warning..."We don't pay you to study creepy crawlies you find under rocks! So pull your socks up mister!"
ReplyDelete"Where are the poets, where are the visionaries? " Fugazi lyrics: Marillion. I knew I would mention Prog Rock somewhere.
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