John Griff: Nature is making herself heard during lockdown

Lockdown has been producing some remarkable by-products of late.

Things that we have perhaps taken for granted in recent times have begun to make themselves apparent once more, if they ever didn’t before.

Is now the time for us to reassess what is important in our lives?

Ask someone what the most important things are to them and they will undoubtedly have health, family and friends, and perhaps an income somewhere near the top of their list.

Business has known this for a very long time; it explains a lot of marketing strategies as a result.

Imagine how business will be driving to re-establish itself once the current restrictions are lifted. Beyond those items, though, what else would rank highly?

I suggest that our surroundings might be something to consider.

Have you noticed birdsong; the volume of sound that falling rain makes on your roof or windows; or the accompaniment to life that a breeze through newly emerged leaves on trees provides?

If you stop to listen – and that is an active process – you will find that over the past month, the sounds of our surroundings have become far more apparent than was previously the case.

This morning I was awoken by the dawn chorus, clearly in rude health.

I appreciate entirely that we’re now well into spring and might expect to hear birdsong as a result. But to that extent?

Funnily enough, as I listened from my bed, the chorus disappeared almost instantly, to be replaced a few moments later by the sounds of the first drops of rain for weeks.

They, too, seemed to announce their presence loudly and as the rain fell more heavily it seemed as though either a proper deluge was hitting the roof; either that, or my senses were far more aware of it.

And here’s where my point can be made.

Is it that our world has become a place more dominated by the presence of nature and the sounds that it makes, or is it simply that in having retreated to our homes, taking noisy and polluting vehicles off the road, we have given ourselves a chance to take stock of what really matters to us? Perhaps there’s a fundamental lesson that we’re being given the chance to learn here.

Lots of people have said to me recently that the world will be a different place once lockdown is lifted.

I’m sure it will be, but why shouldn’t the world be a better place?

For so long our polluting ways have blinded us to the real, natural world.

I don‘t mean just carbon monoxide or industrial waste, I mean light and noise pollution and the simple awareness of nature itself, going about its own business but in a massively less damaging way.

I’m amazed that in the past month the climate change activists haven’t been more vocal in drawing awareness to how our world is responding to our reduced impact on it.

It’s thriving on it and we should be taking such evidence as a lesson to lead more harmonious lives as a result.

A robin has recently built a nest in our garden to rear her young chicks.

For a few days we marvelled at her industry, flying back and forth. Then, everything seemed to stop and we feared that she might have abandoned her new home for somewhere else.

I was on the point of clearing the ramshackle pile of leaves and small twigs away – until I suddenly realised that there were two small eyes and a beak staring out at me. Nature seeks to be harmonious... we should too.