Hawk-eye

The theatre was meant to happen and then it didn't. So I went to Kairos and thought about what I have learned from trees.

• Don't be greedy and expect revelations. The transcendent is in the immanent. That which is given, directly experienced - the ghostly heron launching silently on vast wings; the bounding muntjac; the wren, courageous and vocal; the raven unseen cronking; the snuffle-marks left by badgers; the sinuous reach of the oaks; the beeches' blushing bark - all that is the wonder and the blessing.

• That time can be other than clock-time. It cam be kairotic, when it morphs depending on attention and engagement or with the awesomeness of a magical moment. It can be block time, the sense that all-time is here now, only we, with our limited consciousness, have to perceive it as unfolding.

• That those who fully inhabit a place belong.

• That scars heal.

• That there is beauty in the dying and in the ultimate act of generous reciprocity: decomposition.

• That there need be nothing other than this.

It was very cold.

As I was running back up to the car, for the third time, I flushed out a large bird. I could tell, I was so close this time, that the raptor was a red kite. Before they had flown north. This time, I clucked my tongue and the bird circled above me. The wings swept when they were not directly above, slowed to just a movement of the tips when they were close and stopped when they were directly above, we looking at each other. They seeing me in all my humanity; me seeing them as a shape against the sky, with an awareness of their agency, intelligence, animistic splendour. This happened again and again as the bird circled... until my neck began to hurt.

I was seen. I was seen and seen and seen. And yet what was the bird seeing? What was I seeing?

We were connected by some thread of the deep passion of curiosity and the longing to be real in the gaze of the other.