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Simon Parker is a scientist with a rationalist upbringing. In this podcast, he tells how his love of gardening led him to an interaction with a blackbird that transformed his opinion on nature's sentience.
Simon Parker:My name is Simon, and I live in Salisbury. I work in science, and I've done that for quite a long time. But I've got a passion for nature, and I spent a long time fascinated by gardening. And also this idea that that we can kind of like manage the the world around us and where we live and that we can interact with it in in different ways than the sort of traditional ways of like just going out and mowing the lawn and having flower beds. We can embrace that our our role as part of nature in the in the landscape around our living space.
Simon Parker:And so I'm fascinated by ideas of growing a forest garden, a productive forest garden, growing growing food, but in ways that doesn't mean going and going and kind of like putting in so many hours of down the allotment to grow some veg like ways of of like having an abundant garden that produces things that we can and need and give us shelter and but also, like, an amazing habitat for wildlife that's that's right up close and where we are rather than off at a distance, you know, somewhere somewhere over there in the countryside and but bringing that bringing that in close. That's been a passion for for quite a while.
Estelle:Do you want to tell your story? Yeah. So I've never heard this before.
Simon Parker:Yes. Yeah. Thanks for, yeah, not not asking me all the details in advance. It's nice to tell it without you having heard it. When I started growing a garden when my kids were younger, and with ideas about growing food, kind of saw it as like a an exercise in producing produce.
Simon Parker:And that really evolved as as I saw, like, the complexity and the the kind of beauty of it and and all the wildlife, all the yeah, from the smallest things, like I used to I used to do time lapse videos of of it growing. I like the apple trees growing and and like snails like eating the like the mulch on the ground and and and I used to love that. And and it really changed the way I thought about the all the different levels that these creatures were operating within, you know, such a small space, but overlapping. And through a series of events, ended up moving away from the garden, and the garden's no longer there in the in the form that it was. But I still live in in the same town.
Simon Parker:I spent a lot of time outdoors walking and but I sort of try to create this this garden, something similar maybe. But I feel like I've never really told the story about growing this garden either. A few really intense years where lots of lots of really big things had happened, lots of big life events had happened, and it had been really overwhelming in a lot of ways. One of the things I love I love looking around charity shops. I love, you know, that's something my partner and I do a lot of and, you know, looking for pottery and books.
Simon Parker:And I was on my own, was in British Heart Foundation charity shop. And I found this book and it was the title of the book was something like behaving as if the god and everything mattered. And I was like, oh. And I thought, well, this is gonna be a religious book. It's probably not.
Simon Parker:But I took I took a look. And it was and it was it was this beautiful story of an American woman. She'd had a very difficult start to life. Her parents split up when they were quite young, and she was living with her mother who was an alcoholic. And she was abandoned by her mother for months, months, maybe a year at a time and had to fend for herself.
Simon Parker:It was like 12 years old or something, a really difficult beginning to life. But she found her way, and and the book was about her sort of making peace with having really intuitive gifts and kinda like psychic kind of gifts. You know, I'm brought up in a really rationalist kind of upbringing. And those things are like, you know, I've always been kind of skeptical, but lots of my life experiences have made to think, you know, that the fact that we can't explain something doesn't mean it's not there. And, actually, there's a lot of people I've met and I trust have kind of, you know, that that's been part of their experience.
Simon Parker:And so I was I kind of read it at face value. And and kind of about halfway through the book, her her story changes. And she's kind of moved to the city, and she's grown up, and she's she's met a partner. And they buy a place, and and it's kind of like a small farm, like a small holding. I was like, oh, this is this is really beautiful.
Simon Parker:But what was really, really interesting was the way she chose to manage this garden and this farm and this kind of like crops there was she would use her intuition to listen to what nature was telling her in a very direct way. So she would listen to what she talked about, like the spirits of the different parts of the garden. The different plants were telling her. She would kind of it was kind of a process for her, but she started to trust that. And she had amazing results.
Simon Parker:And I was like, oh, wow. This is, you know, this is quite a story. And there's a little my my kind of inner skeptic was still, you know, had a kind of seat at the table. And I was going, yeah. But it's, you know, it's just a story.
Simon Parker:It's just a book. Right? And, and she was talking about and this was maybe in the eighties or something at this point. And she was talking about Fenton, Fenton community in Scotland. And that some of the parallels where they were really they used, like, intuition and kind of, you know, they they were open to sort of spiritual direction about how they how they maintain this community and how they grew things and had amazing results and all the rest of it.
Simon Parker:I can't remember whether it was a book about Finthorn or one of the people who been about Finthorn, but it was about, again, about nature. So I was kinda like, oh, this is really interesting. I can remember my mom, like, before she does. She used to be, you know, she'd go to Finthorn. It's amazing.
Simon Parker:Like, the store. And I was like, yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, it's anyway, so I started to read about some of the books from people who'd who'd been at Finthorn. And and some of the people who'd lived in Edinburgh and had had felt like they had a real connection, like a kind of spiritual connection to nature's spirits.
Simon Parker:And I was reading a book, and I can't remember the book. But I I was like, I'm gonna read this in the garden. It's a lovely sunny day. It was talking about, you know, this idea of nature spirits kind of like runs through our folk culture and and our and our literary traditions. Right?
Simon Parker:You know, it it's it's in, like, Tolkien and fairy tales and and all kinds of things. And and it was it was writing about how some people have really become very interested in the idea of fairies or trolls or or whatever. And and, you know, in different different countries, they're, like, part of folk tradition. It's like, oh, yeah. I can understand that.
Simon Parker:And I definitely met people who are, like, really into the idea of that. And I said, you know, some people just go out looking for them in nature. And but then I said I was writing this, and he said but in his experience, this intelligence in nature, it doesn't make itself known to humans unless there's a reason to. And that's either because it wants to make confirm its existence or or it's like just pure, like, celebration. As I read these lines, a bird out of sight landed on the crown of my head, and I was absolutely electrified.
Simon Parker:My body was like, what what happened there? Like, how did this, you know, how how is it I'm reading this thing, you know. I put down my skepticism, you know, like, long enough to read the, like, this book that's followed on from this other book. And and and it's literally saying, about being a confirmation of, like, this intelligence of nature and this presence of life. And I was like, no.
Simon Parker:You've you've imagined it. Do know what I mean? Because I could I've not seen it come down. I thought, oh, maybe I've just managed imagined the feeling of this thing literally on the top of my head here. And then I looked and the bird flew around and landed on the on the rail where that where I was sitting at the end of the garden on the on the decking.
Simon Parker:And and I didn't get a really close look, but it was like a robin size, but like a juvenile robin, like a like a like a sort of brownie, like, speckly kind of color. Like, maybe like a wren color, but bigger than a wren. And and I was just I was just stared at him. It stared at me. And I was like and I was just, oh, I've got no explanation for that, but I'm always gonna remember that that that experience and that connection.
Simon Parker:And and I thought, oh, yeah. I haven't got all the answers. Like but there's you know, I just felt like, yeah, we are we're just one form of intelligence in nature. And maybe one day this will make sense and maybe not, but actually it shapes my like, how I experience the natural world. Yeah.
Simon Parker:And and how I think about how I think about, like, creatures all all the sizes that that that we share it with and, you know, from and and that I don't need to go and like walk in in in the woods and look for the white deer and which I love doing and you know, but but at the same at the same time, I can just walk in the garden and just be open to that and know that that we share that. I'm part of nature and the earth and that's we've all we're all sharing that that intelligence that that links us all together and yeah, as a sense of liberation as well. It's like it's it's like our human intelligence, our sort of rational intelligence, like, it can't it it's not what makes the the world turn and all of these things happen. There's all of these things happening at all of these levels all of the time. And however we make sense of that, like, it's not it's not done by us.
Simon Parker:You know, we live in a technological world, and I think we get so used to thinking that we're in control. And so it was was a really humbling, but also liberating sense of, that's that's really beautiful. We're we're all here like together and connected in ways that we don't understand but it, you know, there's there's something there's something there that, you know, that and there are times in life when things just happen to you that you can't explain, and all you can do is is kind of maybe take a step back and think, that's that's really changed my world view. You know? I know that's gonna inform, like, yeah, the decisions I make, but I don't quite know how yet.
Simon Parker:It's really interesting from a like a gardening kind of point of view as well because, because like gardening, you know, some senses, it's this idea of like stewardship. You're kind of you're like creep you're looking after a space, you know, and and but I think we've got these really they were like really traditional ideas about like, oh, if you let your grass grow longer, you don't weed it, you're not doing your job as a gardener. You know, like, to to where we are now, which is maybe like we much more embrace the idea of, like, we can we can, like, garden in a way that accommodates all kinds of like wildlife. But in in the in that original book, behaving as if the god and everything mattered, like, it's really interesting the process she describes going through like sort of imposing her original ideas about how to do it and then finding all the ways that that can go wrong. And then when she starts to listen, you know, and I don't feel like I have that that gift to be able to listen in that way.
Simon Parker:But, like, you that her story is that, actually, there's all kinds of things going on that that, you know, just a simple plan is, like, is too simple because it's you know, you're ultimately imposing your will on, like, from a limited perspective. And it has an impact. And and I think yeah. That's the really humbling bit. So when you realize that, actually, you can have a negative impact.
Simon Parker:And and there's like, yeah, there's an emotional component to that, like, because you, you know, and I think we tell ourselves we we I think we often don't like to think about it because we it's easier to think, oh, well, I just need to do this because that's what I've got to do. It doesn't really matter what the impact is. But when you start to actually feel the reality of that, then all of a sudden it changes how you act. Yeah.
Estelle:That's really it's a really wonderful thing that you experienced and that you
Simon Parker:Yes. Really.
Estelle:It's a bit like a learning, isn't it?
Simon Parker:Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Like, you'll forever change.
Simon Parker:Yeah. Like, a simple thing. It was one other time, actually, when my kids were younger and I was in Salisbury. And I wasn't far I think we've been swimming or something or walking past the swimming pool into town along the river. And a small blackbird.
Simon Parker:It wasn't a blackbird, but about that size landed on my shoulder and and I was like, what just happened? Like and but it stayed there. It it stayed on and it was chattering. And and we were walking along and, I had the kids and yeah. My wife was, like, looking at me and, like, what?
Simon Parker:Like, what is that? Like and and it started to kinda get closer to my ear, and I was and I was kind of a strange mixture of just real excitement, but also like, it's actually going to like start pecking my ear, you know. And and and maybe it maybe it went on for like thirty seconds a minute. And and I and I was just like, oh, no. I'm freaking out now.
Simon Parker:And then it and then it and then it, you know, maybe I moved my shoulder and it flew off. But I was I think, you know, I was just smiling for, like, the rest of the day because it just felt like such an amazing close-up encounter out of nowhere, like, unexpectedly. And I think I wonder what it was saying. What would it if I could understand it? What would it have said to me?
Simon Parker:You know? Yeah. Yeah. So different if it's a if it's like a domesticated animal, isn't it? But a wild animal to.
Simon Parker:Yeah. Have that encounter like and that be their choice as well as yours like.
Estelle:Gonna say thank you.
Simon Parker:Oh, you're really welcome. Aw, thanks for, yeah, thanks for letting me tell my story.
Estelle:No. I'm really, really so grateful. They're really wonderful stories.
Estelle Phillips:Subscribe to Nature Talks With Humans for more true stories of people communicating with animals, birds, and landscape. Follow me on Instagram at Estelle underscore writer forty four, and TikTok at Estelle Phillips. Bye.
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