And I wonder, is it really so difficult to enter, in some slight degree, into the mind-frame of an animal? Are we not all beasts?

Wordsworth once wrote of ‘spots of time’, experiences so intense they expand and inform existence ever after. They have a ‘renovating virtue’.

To stand alone in a field in England and listen to the morning chorus of the birds is to remember why life is precious.

I have decided to sleep under the stars... Tonight heaven is my roof, and the hedges my walls... The field folds me in soft wings.

Such are the inconsistences of humans in uniform, that the same endothermic vertebrates, which were believed a blessing, an aid to nostalgia, a sign from God, could also be shot for food (see p281-88) and employed as tools.

Nothing conserves like poverty.