A man sees only what concerns him. How true this is, most people do not even recognise or notice what they see. They remember the high powered fancy car someone drove past them on the way home and tell their wives. They do not tell them of the flock of geese that flew across the sunset. They saw it, but they did not ‘see’ it because it did not concern them. Nor did they notice the deer in the field next to the country road they took as a short cut to get home. Those things are of no concern to most people, but what a difference they can make to your ability to know the world, the natural world.
Notice that when you walk along a path there are multiple variants of plants, bushes, trees and hedgerows on that one short area. Many many species, yet you may only see one. Or see weeds. Some may only notice the rosehip because it is eye catching and produces red fruit you remember from childhood, or the pretty pink flowers that are light and have a very subtle smell. But do they notice the thistles that climb nearly as high, the nettles that cover the ground around it, the coniferous trees that shade it or even the oaks that guard it?
Know the land, know what to expect, what you should see and then when you do see something wonderfully out of the ordinary, like the flock of geese flying over the sunset, it puts the other things in a much bigger and better context that extends cosmologically if we dare to go that far. We do. And I’d rather hear that the rosehips are growing large due to all the rain than that someone somewhere has a fast car.