The Nomadic Alternative – Page 206

daily round is inflexible, always predictable, for they feed on

roots, the natural product of the earth." This diet of perpetual roughage toughened the stomach lining and their continence greatly prolonged their lives. Mary the Egyptian, the reformed prostitute, roamed the desert for forty seven years. Sophronius the Browser sat on the shore of the Dead Sea for seventy.

By an unlikely set of manoeuvres the eremitic ideals of the Desert Fathers came to rest in Ireland, where Christianity survived the swamping of barbarian invasions. On the mist-covered shores of the North Atlantic the Irish hermits imitated the apostolic ideal, and taking no "thought for the morrow" encouraged contemplation of, and unity with, the Divine. They wandered freely over the moors and along the sea-shore, and composed some of the world's most exquisite nature poems, which resemble the Zen-inspired Haiku of Japan, but are simpler, and in some ways more moving, for they are hinged directly to the processes of life.

The Creator is identified with cyclical time; he is the "King who moves the Sun". Time is an active principle. All nature's laws obey natural time, and if men wish to find peace and tranquility of mind, they must accept what each season brings. Here is a description of Winter, which I have adapted from Professor Jackson's translation.

Sharp wind
Sun low
Snuffed out quick
Sea swell runs high

Russet bracken
Shapeless tangle
The wild goose raises
Its winter cry

Frost congeals
Bird wings
Season of ice
This is my news

Stones were their pillows, flagstones their beds, and shelters of ivy their rough covering. They gathered all their food and thanked the Creator for his daily provisions - a clutch of eggs, "the green purity of the wild leek", hazlenuts or the wild plum.

1. Each night my supper
2. Fruit and greenery
3. Picked by me
4. In dark oak woods
5. Blueberries and apples
6. Nuts and blackberries
7. Raspberries and rose haws
8. Wood sorrel
9. Field sorrel and watercress
10. Save me from starvation
11. Berries of the moor, bulb of wild onion