The Lamp of Learning

In the Wadi 'Amd this family remained, and gathered in their hands and guarded through many vicissitudes all civilisation that the valley contained. Just so, in the Dark Ages of Europe, the lamp of learning was fed--a feeble flicker, yet sufficient to light a greater flame when the general illumination of the Renaissance ushered in the modern world.

How many obscure heroisms, what invincible patience and hope must have gone to carry through those blood stained ages the the mild treasure of wisdom!

Psychologists tell us that the impulse of sex is the fundamental mover of this world, and we are perhaps getting a little tired of hearing it so often. But there are two impulses stronger than desire, deeper than love of man or woman, and independent of it--the human hunger for truth and liberty. For these two greater sacrifices are made than for any love of person; against them nothing can prevail, since love and life itself have proved themselves light in the balance; and the creature man is ever ready to refute the Matter-of-fact Realist and his statistics by sacrificing all he has for some abstract idea of wisdom or freedom, unprofitable in every mercenary scale.

What with popular lecture, compulsory instruction and the belief that one is educated if one can read and write, we sometimes forget that this hunger of our soul exists: but in the Wadi 'Amd it is difficult to satisfy, adn therefore more easily recognised for what it is, ...

Quotation: The Southern Gates of Arabia by Freya Stark, 1936.

A Decent Shape

I've discovered people I've never really met before: natural simple people.  People who've made a decent shape out of their lives.  And I'm coming to think they get their values straighter than people like us ever will have.  Oh, I know we can talk more ingeniously, and we can out-argue them every time; and we can read books written by people like ourselves and make-believe that what we think of life, and what our writers think of life, is all life is.

Quotation from  The Search by C.P. Snow

Woodland Walk

A woodland walk on a Saturday autumn afternoon, well its early winter I suppose.

Hard to think it had a snowed on Tuesday, sufficient to bring the city to a full stop.

The temperature high then was a mere 2degrees, brrrr very chilly. But temperatures since then have been balmy, and today we had a high of 14, yesterday was 16 which meant I was decidedly overdressed with anorak and jumper!


These bracket fungi were growing on an earth bank and well hidden from most passers-by. Not surprising really as the mountain bikers who frequent these woods are too intent on keeping upright and generally move at a quicker pace than I do.

With the low sunshine, however, my attention was caught by the straight larch tree trunks. Its clearly a planting of european larch trees, my guess is it was about 70 or 80 years ago when the area was included as part of Dunedin's water-catchment.

Several trees, near the vehicle track, were felled some years ago and their stumps are steadily rotting. providing a habitat for lichens, mosses, and fungi.