Setting sun over ancient submarines

Top Gear is being smug in the background, with talk of the setting sun over ancient submarines.  Luxury cars (minus the Bentley) proving an altogether jaunt of amusement and murder. So. I have cooked the magical tomato/ pepper and chilli soup. It smells amazing and hopefully I will get to taste it tonight too. I have had a Roast dinner today so I’m not 100% sure I can fit it in.  We shall see.  Soup-wise, the best recipe is that which I am sure I have shared with you all before.  It cannot be beaten. Of that I am positive.  Match of the day is beginning, and what I watched in between the two aforementioned programmes is what I really want to be chatty about. The Arctic.

The final stage of Bruce Parry's six-month journey was through Arctic Europe.  And it was amazing.  I watched and made comments of surprise out loud, and longed for the chance to see the Northern Lights play in the sky.  I made notes to do some research into communism, into the possibilities of forest foraging and the medical properties of fungi... and also about the Arctic ecosystem.  Watching Bruce reminded me that I am still halfway through reading Walden by Thoreau.  I also now want to read Utopia again, by Sir Thomas More, and never forgetting A Cave in the Snow, by Vicki Mackenzie about Diane Perry, the Buddhist nun who survived for twelve years in a Himalayan cave.  These stories, all written as the people involved surrounded themselves with the wilderness and made the most out of absolutely everything they came across.  Using everything they knew, the gods and the earth, to survive and embrace life to its fullest.  Bruce has reminded me about these remarkable ideals and sparked a crazy intent for self study and the eagerness I have to learn.

 

Bruce Parry travels to the Boreal forest and speaks with a Russian woman, in a conversation throughout which she explains in the healing properties of the mushrooms (Cancer & Arthritis), and of their vital foraging of the forest that surrounds their village to their lives.  The change of people’s attitudes to each other, not to the forest, in the theft of animals from traps, of the nets in the trees; it’s a battle to survive, and a reminder of the startling reality of the world that we live in.