Earth Pilgrim - A Year on Dartmoor Natural World

My name is Satish Kumar.

I call myself an Earth pilgrim

because the living earth, in all its grace and beauty,

is my inspiration and the source of my spirituality.

I've lived in Devon over half my life

as a writer, ecologist, a pacifist.

When I discovered Dartmoor, I was enchanted.

Spellbound by her rugged beauty.

Walking the moors is my prayer, my meditation and my solitude.

God is nature and nature is my god.

To be an Earth pilgrim is to revere the earth.

I call her Gaia.

You might call her Mother Nature.

My pilgrimage started a long time ago.

Many footsteps have brought me here.

Dartmoor - my wild paradise.

So different from the place of my birth, Rajasthan in India,

where I grew up and became an Earth pilgrim at age nine.

60 years on, my pilgrimage continues, wandering the moor.

I look at this land through different eyes

because I am a child of the desert.

CROW CAWS

When I was a boy, my father died.

I left my mother.

I left my home.

Forsaking all worldly possessions,

I became a Jain monk.

I had many questions to ask of life and death.

In becoming a monk, I hoped to find the answers.

Jain religion believes in the practice

of complete and total non-violence.

Being non-violent to yourself,

being non-violent to other people and being non-violent to nature.

All living creatures have equal rights as humans.

Even though now I am 70, I am no longer a Jain monk,

still I adhere and embrace that principle of non-violence

and I practise the principle of non-violence even now.

I spent nine years of my childhood in a monastery

practising meditation,

learning the teachings of Jainism,

an ancient Indian religion.

This was enlightening,

but I felt something lacking in my life.

My direction in life changed at 18,

when I discovered the wisdom of Mahatma Gandhi.

"Practise spirituality in everyday life," said Gandhi.

So I left the monastery behind

and walked the world in the name of peace.

SQUAWKING

Gandhi had inspired me to put my body on the line

and make a non-violent protest

against the violence of nuclear weapons.

Between 1962 and '64, I walked empty-handed and without money,

across the deserts of Persia...

..the high Himalayas of Pakistan...

..and the snowy expanse of Russia.

An 8,000 mile pilgrimage for peace,

which took me from the grave of Gandhi in New Delhi

to the grave of JF Kennedy in Washington DC.

My journey confirmed my belief that there can be no peace in the world

if we make no peace with the earth.

Having walked the world,

I discovered Dartmoor and made Devon my home.

40 years I've walked the seasons of Dartmoor.

40 years of memories.

40 years of connection to the moor's magnificence and mystery.

In winter, Dartmoor is bleak,

but not barren.

A murmuration of starlings at dusk in January

is one of the great delights of Dartmoor.

Enough birds to darken the sky.

More than a million starlings,

homing in on their ancestral roost for nightly communion,

gathering for warmth and safety in the protection of numbers.

They stream from every direction,

joining, breaking ranks, floating free like some black aurora.

The collective power of the flock of small birds.

Small is not only beautiful but also powerful.

They are one immense organism,

pulsating like a single cell.

This sight reminds me how small I am under a January sky.

Starlings lift my spirits on cold nights

and give warmth to my heart.

Life returning once more to Dartmoor.

BIRDSONG

I come to the moors to breathe the air,

for the aroma of wet grass,

and coolness of water.

For peace.

The ancient cultures of pagans and druids

understood the meaning of peace.

For them, peace was a way of life.

They revered the earth

and respected the seasons.

They made pilgrimages to nature too.

In winter, I come to Wistman's Wood,

a sacred grove of oak, high up on the moor.

"Wistman's Woods" means "woods of the wise".

So, wise people come here for inspiration, celebration and wisdom.

ROBIN SINGS

I come here and find peace and tranquillity.

Local myths and legends

speak of nature's spirits inhabiting these woods.

The Celtic word for oak is "dart".

Dartmoor was "moor of the oak".

Sadly, this is a remnant of the woods

which used to be everywhere on Dartmoor.

These trees are like poetry to me.

Paintings.

Like songs of the earth.

I don't have to go and think and look for paradise above the sky.

When I come here, I'm in paradise.

Life is vibrant and resilient here.

Lichen and moss thrive.

These species are exquisite,

and form a vital link

in the interconnectedness of all living things.

Life - dancing into existence in this fragment of ancient woodland.

It is mid-April and cuckoos have returned from Africa.

CUCKOO CALLS

Their song signals spring.

Long ago, people of Dartmoor would catch and cage a cuckoo,

in the hope of keeping spring eternal.

CUCKOO CALLS

When the cuckoo arrives, the moor starts to come alive.

Metamorphosis is a miracle.

A journey of transformation

that confirms my belief in reincarnation.

A caterpillar changing into an emperor moth.

This emperor's new clothes can be seen by all,

full of vibrant colour.

The female waits on heather for males to find her on the wind.

Once again, life renewing.

A little magic in the vastness of this wilderness.

Dartmoor is my temple.

A glorious cathedral of nature.

Millions of years old, formed by the powers of geological time.

In spring, I make my pilgrimage to the Dart,

a river flowing through the heart of the moor.

The waters of the Dart evoke memories of my father.

His death was a journey into water.

When he died,

my mother and I immersed his ashes in the holy waters of the Ganges...

..believing this sacred river would carry him to Nirvana,

the heavenly realm of eternal peace.

Ganges water is holy.

So too is the water of all the world's rivers.

BIRD SINGS

I believe drinking water from the Ganges,

with one's last breath, connects the soul to eternal life.

Bathing in her waters brings purity to body and mind.

I say a prayer to the river.

May all my fear, anger and attachment be washed away.

Water is the matrix of life.

Wondrous clouds deliver it free of charge to every household,

every field and every garden.

Water for birds, for animals, for plants and for us.

Water is precious.

Water is sacred.

The way we use water is a measure of us.

A reverential relationship with water is an ecological imperative.

We abuse water at our peril.

There is one creature that wouldn't be here

if the water was anything less than pure.

The beautiful demoiselle.

Damselflies are one of the oldest creatures on earth.

They were here long before dinosaurs.

They are flying jewels.

Extravagant.

Iridescent.

Aquamarine.

I am in awe of this mating ritual

that's been going on for 300 million years.

A fleeting moment in the great continuum of life on Earth.

A beautiful demoiselle

lays her eggs carefully, only in the purest of water.

Their presence is a sure sign of a healthy ecosystem.

Sometimes a walk in May

is rewarded by a fleeting glimpse of a mother fox and her cubs.

The fox is a creature I love for its wit and intelligence.

When I came to live in Devon,

I was shocked to see men in red and packs of dogs

engaged in the ritualized killing of these innocent animals.

I value all life equally,

irrespective of its use or annoyance to humans.

In human arrogance, we play God

and issue judgment on what should live and what should die.

We talk of human rights.

We also need to recognise the rights of nature.

Live and let live, I say.

# When I hear them say

# There's better living

# Let them go their way

# To that new living

# I won't ever stray

# Cos this is heaven to me

# Long as freedom grows

# I want to seek it

# If it's yes or no

# It's me who'll speak it

# Cos the Lord, he knows

# That this is heaven to me. #

The bluebell is the sapphire queen of May,

a most seductive flower.

One of my favourite poets, Gerard Manley Hopkins,

called the bluebell, "the very glory of God."

He praised them for their intoxicant perfume, washing wet like lakes.

And said, "Long live the wet and wilderness, yet."

The pristine white of hawthorn flowers

bridge the gap between spring and summer.

This is the time of year I look up and hear a song.

A gift from above.

Skylarks keep me enchanted forever and ever.

The moor is one of its last strongholds.

William Blake called it "the mighty angel"

and Wordsworth, "the ethereal minstrel".

Seeing a lark ascending,

Vaughn Williams was inspired to emulate its song in music.

Their glorious song is so firmly embedded in my sense

of the Dartmoor landscape,

so much part of the air and soil,

that I cannot imagine this world without it.

On Dartmoor, I see the extraordinary

in what could easily be dismissed as ordinary.

# Can you blame the sky when a momma leaves her babies behind?

# Can you blame the sky when a momma leaves her babies behind?

# Oh-oh-oh... #

This little meadow pipit is a foster parent to this huge cuckoo chick.

CHICK CHIRPS REPEATEDLY

The chick's parents have flown back to Africa,

entrusting the noble pipit to feed their young.

How amazing that the cuckoo can fool other birds

into nurturing its offspring.

This young cuckoo, without parental guidance,

will soon find its way to the warmer climes of Africa.

A miraculous journey,

only possible because of the cuckoo's innate ability

to navigate by the sun and stars.

While I was growing up, among the sand dunes of Rajasthan,

I heard stories of England.

To a desert child like me, this "green and pleasant land"

seemed like a mythical place, beyond my imagination.

When I finally found my way here,

I was overwhelmed by lush vitality.

What contrast.

These trees give pleasure to a pilgrim like me...

..in total harmony with the wind and the rain.

They give shade to a deer, berries to a bird,

beauty to the land and health to humans.

I'm sitting under this tree

and I am thinking that this tree is a temple to the Earth.

And I'm thinking of my mother because she used to say to me,

"The tree is the true teacher of humanity

"and the greatest teacher that we have,

"even greater than the Buddha."

And I would ask her, "What do you mean, greater than the Buddha?"

Because Buddha was the greatest teacher in India.

And then Mother would say, "But even the Buddha

"got his enlightenment whilst sitting under a tree."

Nowadays, people don't get enlightenment

because they don't sit under a tree.

And I now realise how right she was because when I come to the tree,

I feel a sense of calm, a sense of healing.

It is the true sustaining force of the Earth.

Earth is our gracious host,

but are we gracious guests in return?

In these final two weeks of August,

I come to Haytor to celebrate the wild beauty of heather and gorse.

I see the bees buzzing,

collecting a little nectar here and a little nectar there.

Never too much.

Nature in balance.

But this balance is tipping.

In the past 20 years, human impact has caused

the majority of the world's bee population to vanish.

If they fade away,

then so too does all of this.

So profound is the bee's role in pollination,

the impact of their demise is unthinkable.

I believe Einstein said,

if the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe,

then humans would only have four years of life left.

No more bees.

No more pollination.

No more plants.

No more animals.

No more people.

Their fate is in our hands and ours in theirs.

Human beings go to nature and take, take, take,

until all natural resources are depleted.

Honey bees never do that.

If I can learn that lesson of frugality and simplicity,

I will be learning the art of living.

# Born a poor young country boy

# Mother Nature's son

# All day long, I'm sitting singing songs for everyone

# Sit beside a mountain stream

# See her waters rise

# Listen to the pretty sound of music

# As she flies

# Mother Nature's song. #

The hovering kestrel

is a truly inspirational sight of avian perfection.

These are young birds,

searching the moor for tiny grasshoppers.

Holding acute vision.

Motionless.

Ted Hughes wrote of the kestrel's mastery of the air,

"Effortlessly at height, hangs his still eye.

"His wings hold all creation in weightless quiet."

Back in the early '60s, when I arrived in Britain,

the kestrel's survival was threatened

by our fatal use of pesticides.

They recovered,

thanks to the spirit of conservation.

It is autumn.

The fruits have fallen,

the leaves are decaying and becoming one with the soil.

Feeding and regenerating the earth.

STAG MOANS

It is the twilight of the year.

Its golden hour, and still new life abounds.

The red deer rut marks the beginning of a fresh cycle of life.

STAG BELLOWS

When we say "nature", nature means what is born and what will die.

Nature is not only the trees, the mountains, the rivers, the animals.

I am born and I will die, so I am nature too.

We all humans are nature.

We are nature.

Therefore, I welcome death,

and I welcome birth.

I welcome autumn, I welcome spring.

So, I come to Dartmoor to celebrate the autumn,

as I come to Dartmoor to celebrate the spring.

Long, long time ago, when I was only four years old,

I remember my father dying.

And my mother was full of sorrow and my sisters and brothers were crying.

And I thought, "What a terrible thing death is.

"Can I find a way of living without dying?"

And so, I left home, in search of a death-free existence.

And then I realised that death is not the end of life.

Death is a door into birth.

Death is a continuum of life.

Death and birth are two sides of the same coin.

So, I need not fear death.

I need not fear autumn.

I celebrate autumn,

I celebrate spring.

This is how I understand the meaning of eternal life.

Even at this time of year,

when it appears as if all around is dying.

Universe is one poem.

One song.

One verse.

It is manifesting in millions and millions of forms,

but the unity of life in the universe is always there.

Totally interdependent, interconnected, self-managing,

self-organising, self-healing system.

It is a miraculous system.

Sadly, human species seem to consider themselves

as a superior species.

We try to control nature, manipulate nature.

The way we treat our animals,

the way we treat our forests,

the way we treat our oceans and rivers -

that appears as if we are at war against nature.

And in waging war against nature, we create problems for ourselves.

Because we are nature,

and global warming, pollution of rivers, depletion of resources,

is like cutting the branch upon which we are sitting.

And in this war, we are driven by fear of the end of civilization

and fear of catastrophe.

I'm inspired by the love of nature,

love of earth, hope for humanity, and not by fear.

Fear-driven existence for humanity

cannot lead us to a sustainable future.

It seems to me that one of the fundamental failures of our time

is our disconnection from the natural world.

No longer are we humble enough to identify ourselves

as just a part of the whole.

The consequence of this separation is grave environmental crisis.

We are challenged as humankind has never been challenged before.

To prove our mastery, not of nature,

but of ourselves.

To make peace with the earth and appreciate it for what it gives,

not for what we can take.

-HE CHANTS:

-Om...

Shanti...

Lead me from death to life,

from falsehood to truth.

Lead me from despair to hope, from fear to trust.

Lead me from hate to love, from war to peace.

Let peace fill our hearts, our world, our universe.

Peace, peace, peace.

I am an Earth pilgrim.

If I've learnt anything from wandering the paths of nature,

it's that the Earth does not belong to us.

It is borrowed from the future of our children.

MUSIC: Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley