Sunday 4 March 2007

I saw the lunar eclipse

"What a difference a day makes" as they say. I'm typing this on Sunday morning with the rain lashing down and a fair gale blowing. Fortunately yesterday was quite different, mainly dry with a good measure of sunshine. Taking advantage of the transient ridge of high pressure we had an easy 5 mile walk on the western side of Dartmoor. I do love contrasts and the wide open spaces on the moor are so different from the steep sided valley which is my home. Yet the two are but a few miles apart.

Luckily it was late into the night before the cloud rolled in and so it was possible to get a sight of the total eclipse of the moon. Nature and natural phenomena fascinate me, anything from the hatching of a dragonfly in my pond to observing an eclipse. The joy of a lunar eclipse is the fact that it takes place over a reasonable length of time unlike a solar eclipse which passes all too quickly. I still feel cheated over the total eclipse that occurred in I think 1999 when the weather was less than ideal in the south west! What was particularly frustrating then was the fact that the day either side of the 'eclipse day' was perfectly sunny!

Still on the subject of appreciation of nature I find it interesting that two labour politicians that I believe had an above average amount of integrity (John Smith and Robin Cook) were also great hill walkers and lovers of wide open spaces. Any connection I wonder. But for their untimely deaths I daresay there would have been no UK involvement in an Iraq war. Makes one think doesn't it.

1 comment:

Roger Thomas said...

I am sure there is s connection. I always lived in the country and spent a lot of time in the mountains and deserted coasts of Wales.

Scotland where Cook and Smith were based is another country again. i went up a mountain recently in Perthshire. It was higher than anything in England and Wales but wasn't the hihest in the county let alone Scotland.

I think the hills and mountains give that connection with true reality. Unfortunately most politicians are lawyers, accountants or similar. They exist in a small artificial man made world and have lost the feeling and nderstanding of the true meanings of life and existence.