This from Peter Hitchens is a lovely and thought-provoking essay about the mystery at the heart of natural occurrences. It also gave me a bit of new information. Otmoor in Oxford was so squared off by hedges and ditches that it helped inspire Lewis Carroll (or Charles Lutwidge Dodgson if you prefer) to write about the Red Queen's chessboard. That chess game took place in Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, of course.
Thus far I haven't found any pictures of the area at the time, which would be mid-nineteenth century. There are contemporary pictures, of course. It doesn't look anything like a chessboard now. It does look very beautiful and distinctive. Yes, Virginia, the English countryside does have a romance of its own.
1 comment:
That really was a most remarkable essay by Peter Hitchens as he waxed lyrical about the mysterious forms starlings make in the sky at particular times of year with the insightful remark that murmurations are dances of joy. I continued reading in amazement as he wrote about seeing Alice running away through the fields of Otmoor, and how he was stunned by the majesty of the Himalayas and the Grand Canyon at dusk. "How," he wondered, "could anyone believe all that had been carved by eons of erosion?" * The reason I was so amazed I'm almost ashamed to tell is that I had confused him with his brother Christopher - an infamous athiest. Apparently Peter was one too until he reached his mid-30s.
Otmoor sounds like a place I should have seen, like so many more magical places in the English countryside. What I did find this evening is an article on wikipedia called 'Alice's Meadow'. Some years ago there was a proposed plan to put a major highway through the wetland. The field was purchased by Wheatley Friends of the Earth and then sold off to supporters in small plots. This was intended to delay the construction of the motorway significantly by allowing protesters formally to appeal the compulsory purchase of each of the 3500 individual plots.
* The Electric Universe people believe it was made by humongous plasma bolts.
https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2023/12/24/matt-finn-enigma-of-the-grand-canyon-thunderbolts/
Post a Comment