Knowledge of things

The winged seeds of the Norway maples are spiralling down in their hundreds this morning. I stand face upward and they clatter off me on their way to germination below.

An event in the true sense of the word, as is the dazzling scarlet of the chest of a single high flying bird as she wing-zips into a yielding birch top.

And then to encourage a three foot grass snake to quit the road outside the farm-hand's cottage.

And two feet away a small brown-haired caterpillar on its tread across the road in the opposite direction: I help it across the vast expanse of asphalt, but it curls on itself, becomes a miniature tumbleweed and blows off my hand where it had walked and rolls into the dry stems of rosebay willow herb.

Winged seeds like the maples' are known as samara; I do not know the name of the scarlet chested bird. Linnaeus wrote: "Without names, our knowledge of things would perish." But even knowledge cannot blunt the raw edge of pure awe in seeing scarlet across a blue sky or of a ripple of snake muscle across grey road.