It’s funny. I mean, I very rarely subscribe to YouTube channels or anything and, even when I do, it is normally for just a week or so before, like the Star Trek fictional Federation explorer, Captain Kirk, I fire up my starship, abandon any temporary distraction that may have captivated me and, instead, activate my warp drives and head deeper out into the online universe of Youtube in search of refreshing new alien content.
But no longer because Wildbeare’s down to Earth channel now holds me in its orbit, being a sparkling gem of a production that broadcasts a polish and patina that always seems to delivers way more than the sum of its individual parts.
So, yes, in a first for me, with the intention of subscribing and staying, I am thrilled to appreciate I am now joining a community of over 320,000 like minded souls who already enjoy an author, director and producer who delivers so many human layers and levels that the channel effortlessly examines and radiates. (And it is fascinating to appreciate that so many subscribers would fill the UK’s Wembley stadium 3 times over.)
To be frank, though not to be confused with Wildbeare’s own pneumatic sidekick companion Frank, I’m entirely intimidated by Claire’s formidable photographic, video and drone based technical expertise to the point of being humbled and inspired in equal measure and, given time, (a resource I poignantly don’t have so much of these days), I realise I will have to up my own game if I ever wish to use my own arsenal of creative equipment, (Nikon p950 camera with 83X zoom lens, Insta360 x3 3D 360 VR camera, GoPro camera, Meta Rayban smart photo / video AI based sunglasses, dedicated personal WordPress website, (currently private), to, one day, ever produce the calibre of production I witness here on Wildbeare’s extra-ordinary channel.
Anyway …
*Solar Camping Under Northern Lights*
_”It feels so profound to me_
_The vastness of the human experienced_
_The burden that we carry as emotional sentient beings_
_To feel. To care … sometimes too much.”_ *Wildbeare*
Yes. And just like your own bewilderment while viewing the ethereal beauty you witnessed at Eryri, sometimes the wonder, the mystery and the unfathomable terror of the unknown can be unsettling; _though would we wish things to be any different?_
Not gonna dwell on it, (and life is fab, thanks), but I have inoperable prostate cancer and, as hinted at, (above), my own time is finite so, sure, although I’ve always been a passionate and inspired individual easily capable of becoming profoundly moved by even the simplest or subtlest expression of nature, these days, my lens upon the world has become a searing, searching magnifying glass where I see and experience everything at a far higher resolution.
*Escape Or Arrival?*
With home being a little coastal market town in West Dorset, I’m currently documenting and physically visiting all of my county’s mysterious ancient iron age hillforts, mystical standing stones and prehistoric henges along with other sites of geological and archaeological interest including an unscheduled Anglo-Romano villa site where I’ve been plucking Roman coins, brooches and pottery shards from the soil for over 40 years!
Side note: Whenever the farmer’s tractor deep ploughs the rich mineralised soil, I find Roman coins by eye, being the first human being to view the bronze or silver face of a Roman emperor staring back at me in nearly 2000 years; from an age when Jesus Christ himself was, allegedly, alive and handling exactly the same, now ancient, coinage.
*Gratitude*
Wildbeare’s own adventures, often out in some spectacular ancient landscape framed or bathed in the light of the stars of our own Milky Way, earths so easily with my own sense of belonging to this little spinning rock we currently call home and I find myself pondering, “Am I exploring the mysterious and oldest corners of my ancient Dorset topography as some form of an emotional escape from my ails? OR am I, rather, aligning myself with a primeval, innate, natural sense of just being”, and in that process, emotionally arriving at a sacred location or place or space in time that requires neither a token, a name or any kind of a label to explain or define itself at all?
_”To live through fear, trauma, pain and loss_
_but also to love and be loved_
_To achieve things both big and small_
_To feel excitement and wonder_
_To be able to experience and appreciate unspeakable beauty_
_what a convoluted, messy and wonderful thing it is to be alive”_ *Wildbeare*
Ah, but we need such stark contrast, Claire.
We need such context and conflict because, in the same way we may need salt to act as a backdrop on our tongue to appreciate the taste of our food, we need the conflicting contrast of good & bad or dark & light or life & death to deliver us a calibration and meaning to this “convoluted, messy and wonderful thing” we call life.
Whether it is you experiencing the discomfort of your “floppy joints” or me experiencing one of my own occasional “challenging days,” we all need the negative aspects of existence to be present in order for us to even be able to evaluate the blessings of the gratitude we sometimes find ourselves humbly accepting at certain times in our lives.
*A Comforting Thought?* (For me anyway)
Sometimes we humans get things very wrong.
2,200 years ago, (c. 310–230 B.C.), a very bright Greek chap by the name of Aristarchus of Samos, (an astronomer and mathematician), deduced that the Earth probably orbited the Sun.
Unfortunately for humanity, Aristarchus’s paradigm shifting idea was ignored by all for a further 1,800 years before polymath and astronomer Copernicus, independently, prove that very same fact scientifically.
100 years later, the astronomer Galileo took one for the team when, near the end of his own life, he published his own, carefully formulated heliocentric findings about the Earth’s place in the universe; a view deemed heretical by the Catholic Church of the time and, allegedly, putting Galileo under house arrest.
Verdict? Yep. The Earth isn’t the centre of the universe as had once been previously thought for millennia. Rather, it is just one tiny grain of sand in a universe teeming with over 200 billion trillion stars.
And I wonder …
Not being a religious man … I wonder … are we wrong about many other things we struggle and come to terms with in this world?
*Consciousness?*
_”It feels so profound to me_
_The vastness of the human experienced_
_The burden that we carry as emotional sentient beings_
_To feel. To care … sometimes too much”_ *Wildbeare*
You describe the _burden_ we carry as emotional sentient beings where we might assume and describe “sentience” as being some expression of consciousness.
“Cogito, ergo sum”
The philosophy of Rene Descartes.
“I think therefore I am”
But what if consciousness is *fundamental* rather than emergent? (Like mass or electrical charge.)
What if consciousness, itself, is the source, the Lego building blocks of existence?
_What if we humans are as wrong about the concept of reality and existence as we once were about believing that the earth was the centre of the known universe?_
What if every atom, proton, electron or neutron, (or the very heart of quantum phenomena itself), is an embodiment of some, all encompassing, underlying universal consciousness?
Intriguingly, the world over, there are many religious, spiritual and cultural beliefs that share exactly such a view.
It is one of the oldest philosophical theories mankind has ever posited and the philosopher, Plato, a student of one of my historical heroes and role model, Socrates, first pondered the concept 2,400 years ago. Indeed, during the 19th century, it was the most popular European belief of the day!
And maybe, that night on the 10th of May, 2024, you personally witnessed an expression of it manifesting in the skies above your head.
And yeah. “It’s weird” and “It’s mad” and I can, very much, understand your wish to have wabnted to have “Someone to talk about it.” Someone to share the extra-ordinary surreal experience you witnessed that night.
Final thought?
Whether we are a moss covered rock on a remote Eryi promontory, a hovering hawk in a wild northern landscape, a lone camping Wild One battling storms in a tarpor a swirling black hole gobbling up stars, we are all, somehow, connected just like the more than quarter of a million subscribers who enjoy viewing your channel here on YouTube.
Beach