By the end of the year I had caught a seasonal virus or bacteria. I cough a lot. So I write the last post of the year sick. For weeks I've been amused by the thought that my name and a date pair below it is 1978-2023. I'll die next year. Hello, I've already done what I wanted to do in my life! That means I can die in peace and you can do with my spiritual legacy as you see fit. I don't fucking care. I'm tired of talking to you. This is worse. To talk intelligently you would have to think, but you are so afraid that you are incapable of thinking, and so caught up in the consumer frenzy, so wrapped up in the shackles of necessity that you are prisoners of terror with an ugly future. There, that's the truth. Do what you can with it. Yes, nothing? Because you are prisoners. Why the fuck should I speak nicely? I've been talking so nicely to you for over ten years that you didn't even notice. You don't react to what doesn't hurt. Well, I hope the weather extremes of 2023 will be painful enough to make you chew off your handcuffs and finally act, to curb your own mindless greed! I should be more precise, but between two coughs, that's as much as I can manage. I prefer to mind my own business. One thing that life has finally beaten into my head is that I really only have power over my creative power. I can manage my own power. I have absolutely nothing to do with you, but nothing. I have no need to chase noble aims and waste my kindness unnecessarily. I moved to a warmer climate. Only in my mind for now, but I'm already feeling better despite the illness.
I wrote a post on 29 August, and I could rewrite every line of it now, but it's easier to link to what I wrote then. I'm just a little angry with myself because right at the time of the post, the weather situation changed and a crazy period started, and at the height of it, I couldn't see out of the mushrooms. Since then, I've searched in vain for an escape, on a planet with a finite surface area and all the habitable space already crowded with us, where could I run? The collapse of civilization is inevitable. Who knows for how long, this is the last Christmas of peace. December 2023 will be hell. I wish what I see at the end of the causal chain would not come true! It is understandable that everyone is under illusions. What else can you do? However, the tempers that flare up behind the scenes, the family meetings that turn into hatred, say a lot about our situation and about us. As a teenager, I was deeply influenced by the song. I understood the message. P.S.: I'm in such a bitter mood right now. And I'm found by clever and cruel songs. Life is cruel, unfair and people are capable of anything, at the mercy of their needs. Starving people see only the last of the potatoes.
In 2022, this is one of my favourite photos of the shaggy inkcap Coprinus comatus. It was the first mushroom I was introduced to as a child. It's become my favourite mushroom for life, and so are the jelly ear Auricularia auricula-judae and field blewits Lepista personata. The jelly ear fruit body is absolutely hilarious, I love it. The field blewits gave me my first ever lavish haul. A wonderful autumn memory from the airport field in 1998. Mushrooms have been with me all my life and I'm grateful to have spent 12 years working with them. I started the blog in October 2010 and it has over 2000 posts on all kinds of topics. I have taught courses, run a club for six years, led tours, worked as a mushroom inspector in the market and published hundreds of beautiful photos. I really gave it my all. I proved to myself that I can work hard and with determination. This is a very valuable experience. I'm grateful to the people who have helped me in my work, in my mission, because I take the dissemination of knowledge about nature seriously. There are things I don't give in to, and don't take it to heart that I'm belligerent on these issues. Nature is the foundation of our lives. This is a fact, an eternal truth. And the mushrooms are fascinating. I love mushrooms. But the world is changing. I have to move and leave Hungary. I still have "dreams", plans that want to come true. They are as constructive as my blog was. I love to give, to share the joy, the wonder of life. Yes, as weird as I am, I have an ancient good in me. When I started writing the blog, I felt the same insecurity. I didn't know what it would become. I was hopeful, a tiny bit of joy and excitement was bouncing around inside me. I was 32 at the time and will turn 45 next February. I wonder if I'll have the same amount of time to create something good and look back over the years in the same way at the end of the next phase of my life. Some of my photos from this year.
June 2020 was a rainy month. When abundant rain falls on Békés County, that's when we really see what we have lost through landscape conversion and drying. If we destroy nature, our species will also suffer the loss, because as living beings we need a living natural environment to survive. The opening image is from the blog's Facebook page. Although I don't see much point in running my social pages anymore. I'd rather lock myself away and write one of my novels. My stories compete for my attention in an amusing way. I studied the wildlife of my homeland with genuine enthusiasm and shared most of my knowledge for free. But my patience is also limited. If it is hopeless, there is no point in fighting for it. Békés County is losing its natural assets and large-scale agriculture is failing due to lack of water. Irrigation? Come on. Our rivers are drying up. It would be soul-destroying to watch the decline. Even I'm not that sadistic, and I'm just as hard as a gray cattle. It is shocking the extent to which the Hungarian nation is self-destructive. I don't want part of this bizarre tragicomedy. Understandably, in the late autumn of 2021, I entered the infinite space of my imagination, left the humans behind and brought my heroes to life. If I'm going to die anyway, I'm going to live dozens of other lives in my head first. I leave the big work to those who come after me to save life on earth.
Once upon a time, the walls of the green fortress rose up beyond the limits of human cognition. For thousands of years, the valley had been guarded by the generations of the queen, her ladies-in-waiting and her knights, and thanks to them, it was full of life. Though it looked barren at the end of winter, a closer look showed the unrolled jewels of the treasury everywhere, yellow, purple, white flowers, and up high on the mistress's crown new green diadems were sprouting like on the others trees. The breeze of spring flew through the pillared walls of the fortress and just caressed the crowns. The noble ladies giggled, delighting in the playful awakening of spring. Their gaiety rushed through them and reached down to the earth and even below. The first knight awoke, who lived directly below the queen. He shook the dark dreams of winter from his mind as soon as he looked up at the lady of his heart. They'd lived together for centuries, both huge, one bursting skyward, the other spreading underground. 'Queen Fagula, my lady' 'Sir Bolet, my knight' Came the answer from above, and sweetly the words flowed. The oldest tree could afford to reward its faithful companion lavishly. 'My lady, the lines are glowing. May I pass on messages?' Fagula had no eyes in human terms, and yet she could see. She could sense distance and knew who was where, how they felt, what they needed thanks to Sir Bolet. She had no mouth in human terms, yet she smiled and Sir Bolet understood every sign she gave him. 'Kantrell, Ruszul, Laktar, Amanat, Kortin and Tubre all send their warm and affectionate greetings and hope you slept well, Queen.' 'My sleep was deep and good, faithful knights. I will post my instructions shortly. ...and tell them not of this... The storm of winter has broke off a grand branch. Sir Bolet's heart skipped for two moments, and he said at once: 'My Queen, my first duty is to protect you. Let me redirect the resources of your domain to your recovery.' Fagula looked over her domain. Around her, her daughters giggled, lost in the play of the breeze. Their youthful trunks slim and strong, bursting into the air. Their crowns were almost touching her crown, but they still kept a respectful distance. On the valley's edge, from beneath the dark foliage of the gorges, two courtiers, Pinela and Pinula, watched him. On the border, Lady Kverka and his daughters waited for a message from him. Popula, Betula, and Karpina complimented their mistress meekly, not urging her on. There were thousands of them. The estate grew large under her rule. 'Two hundred springs and summers have enriched us. I feel my age now. What a beautiful life I have had, and what a beautiful life we have made here. It's all right, my old knight. Time has simply caught up with me.' 'We have always been and always will be together.' 'Yes. Until our bond is broken. Let's not keep the others waiting. Time to go green.' By the time the spring breeze had melted the last patch of snow on the ridge tops and the flowers of spring had bloomed, the green fortress was green.
Today's post would be better written in January, as 2022 is not over yet, but for me it is over and has taught me many lessons. One word that sums up everything about the year and whispers in my ear: uncertainty. I took the opening photo from the bus early in the morning three days after my birthday this year. It reflects my mood very well. And as I gather my thoughts for this post, I notice the cold tentacles of fear trying to hold me back. The first lesson is that our negative beliefs are our serious internal enemies. Looking at my life realistically, I have everything I need for a productive and creative life. What is particularly fortunate is that I always find the few people with whom I can form a valuable alliance. And the second lesson is that you don't need more than 100 people to live a happy life, but you do need to have an actual relationship with them. Surprisingly, it's true. Take care of your living human relationships and stop acting! Those you have problems with, talk to them. Stop poisoning each other. Everything I write about, I have experienced.
I am not religious, I learn from reality and measure myself against the real world. When I need strength I can look in two directions, up at the stars or inwards. Jupiter, the giant planet of the solar system, is the protagonist in this early spring photo. I've been tracking its Galilean moons with 10x50 binoculars for decades. My thought yesterday was that the places on Earth where you can't see the sky on a clear night are all in hell. Looking out into space is important for your mental health. If you are unable to position yourself accurately, because you have nothing to measure your position against, you will drift and perish shockingly quickly. This is a concrete world phenomenon. People are getting lost. And many villains even play on insecurity, as many like to exploit the weakness of others. As I noticed in the Hungarian elections this year, our politicians are just people who act based on their own wealth and not on the interests of the country. This is partly why the drastic fall in the quality of public services has occurred. You must realise, it is vital for you too, how vulnerable you are when you believe a politician who wants his good at your expense.
The sky is one abyss you can look into, the other is the past, as the solar system is about five billion years old and life on Earth appeared about three billion years ago. Great depths, above and below which we drift like grains of dust if we do not give ourselves a purpose. Another reason is that people have become purposeless in the age of ready meals. Everything seems to work outside of us and we are just consumers. Surprisingly little real value is produced and most work is mechanised. Those who are biodroids next to the production lines are astonishingly disenfranchised. How can you enjoy comfort when you know that your fellow human being is a nobody in another part of the world. That's right, you are a nobody, a data, someone's livestock. The inner voice doesn't lie. The ancient key to our survival, observation of our surroundings, has not been lost on us. Everyone gets messages from their ancestral part about the dangers. However, in an age of terrible media noise, it is very difficult to see through the conscious distraction. We have given up too much. We made bad compromises, and we are now paying the heavy price.
For the second time this year we had a terribly hot and dry summer. Eight months have been very dry, three have been moderately rainy and one has given us a positive rainfall anomaly. While we are trapped in a consumer society, our civilisation has destroyed wildlife and accelerated climate change. Unfortunately, this is not a lie, anyone who walks in the remnants of nature can see the destruction. It is an eternal truth that as living beings we need a living natural environment. This is a fundamental truth! Specifically, it cripples us if we can't move in the green. Disconnection from nature destroys us. This is seen in both adults and children. Besides the lack of nature, the other shortcoming is intimacy. I implore you not to give your child a "smart device" before the age of ten. Living humans need other humans the most in the early stages of their development! Specifically, we crave safe closeness, eye contact, positive support, stories.We are becoming incapable of intimacy. But without it, our decline will accelerate. I once read a study that babies can die from lack of affection. Why do we become inhuman when we are human? A rhetorical question, I have been constantly giving you the knowledge of the causes of our decline.
I'm a small woman, and there's an interesting contradiction in me, because I've been getting richer over the decades of my life. I feel like a small woman with a big bag of experience. I am torn by contradiction, and despite the fear, I must act. I know I have to go. I looked around, and everyone was running away into illusions, lying to themselves, while the will to confront destruction was growing in me. I spent a lot of time in the green, taking in the real values. Yes, there are very good things in life! I have experienced them. Along with fear, there is gratitude. I am indebted to the good. This is a very strange and surprising situation. I am a grown woman and I have made a decision. I act on that basis.It's a difficult situation, but I really have all the tools to live a productive life. I just have to cleverly ignore the fear, because of course it tries to keep me trapped. But passivity is a guaranteed early death! The living move, the living act, the living leave a living environment for their offspring. This is a good lesson to take into 2023.
This picture was taken of me on 23 July 2014 at around 1000 metres in a spruce grove. Ever since I was a child, I've always loved the "green" - coming and going outdoors, in the fields or in the woods. This is a guaranteed good thing in life! For example, in the autumn I had a tiny cut on my leg that wouldn't heal for days. I went to the green for a few hours and it healed by the evening. The nature walk revitalised my body, zeroed out stress and my body quickly closed the wound. If you can, really get out in winter and enjoy the peace and quiet of the cold season. Otherwise, animals are easier to spot, such as squirrels in parks. It is also instructive to observe how the animals cope with the many challenges of winter.
If the sky is exceptionally clear, it's a good time to gaze at the stars in the evenings and look through smaller binoculars for brighter Messier objects. This is the Orion Nebula, or M42. For me, it is incredibly inspiring and fascinating to be in the Milky Way galaxy, 95,000 light years across. The Sun and its solar system are in the spiral arm of Orion, and it takes about 220-250 million years to orbit the centre of the galaxy, which is 30,000 light years away. I love the photos of the Milky Way. It's spectacular in summer when viewed from Europe, with its centre in Sagittarius. It is obscured from visual observation by dense dust clouds, but can be studied in infrared. The Sun is a tiny bit larger than most stars and white in colour. Literally the mother and father of our planet. We are made of stardust.
Plants are the real masters of life on earth. Their production of organic matter through photosynthesis is important for all living things, including us humans and fungi. The forest, even in the temperate zone, has an impressive diversity of species. I'm very appreciative of the forest, and I've always been bothered by wood heating. I've seen beautiful oak groves, not plantations, and to burn the wood from them, to cut it down for that purpose in the first place, is a crime. The forest ecosystem is also vital to the water cycle. I encourage everyone to really go to a real forest, not just walk in urban groves. It's a different experience. Nature is the foundation of our lives. We should take much better care of it! It is in our interest.
This is a recent photo from the library, books with green covers imitating Christmas trees. The evergreen pine has symbolized the tree of life since the 19th century in our country. Unfortunately, pine trees are dying due to climate change. Humans - us - need too much wood. While we put the pine tree in the main place of the room during the holidays, we cut down the forest. We throw wood into the stove and burn it. And of course you need wood to make paper. The Gutenberg Galaxy made the written text, knowledge, accessible to the masses. The book changed the way we think. Before the written word, there was only the spoken word. It is hard to imagine what the oral transmission of knowledge and its impact on the development of our minds was like. Then we have the digital data of the early 21st century, the handheld computer=smartphone, which also has an impact on us. It is important to have knowledge in your head. Stay in reality.
Imagination is as important as knowledge, nature, connection with other living beings, and the realisation that we are all part of something bigger. Without imagination, you become vulnerable. This was a picture taken at sunset, and I added a picture editor. I saw the imaginary idyll in reality. By the way, I never mix real reality with fictional reality, because I know exactly when I look out and when I look in. I consciously switch between them. A person's personal development is influenced by the stories they hear as a child. We are incredibly deeply imbued with shared stories. The cultural impact can be surprisingly powerful. And the best thing is to tell each other constructive stories about how people can have a future. For example we should shift our focus from consumption to conservation. This could be the subject of a separate post in the near future.
There are more good things in life than that. But there is no denying that life is hard work. If just one little virus weakens us, we start to feel the weight of life! Life happens to us once, but life on earth has a history of billions of years, and the Milky Way is just one of hundreds of billions of galaxies. We are part of a fascinating adventure. Beyond our daily survival, we must see the greater purpose, or our species will have no future, we will be wiped out. If we do not focus our attention, if we give in to our fears or our greed, we will lose to ourselves. While I too am consumed by the fear of what I will be living on from January 2023, I am not losing sight of the values. I cling to them to stay human and keep my ability to act. I suggest you do the same, otherwise our societies will inevitably descend into anarchy and all hell will break loose! As happened repeatedly in the 20th century.
I am now one of the hundreds of millions of people on the planet who need to change their lifestyle, move, find a job=livelihood, because the worst is coming. This is a May self-portrait, before I talked about the mushrooms' fruiting bodies. I was no better off six months ago, but you can keep your sanity as long as you keep doing. Once you stop and give in to self-pity, that's the end of it. Fortunately for me, I have made creation my main goal in life. I'm always working on something. And I don't care how special my life's journey is, that I can't be graded by the standard. Get to know me, and then decide what kind of person I am. If you only see the data, you're looking at a tool and not taking into account that you're dealing with a sentient being. The data is building a path to the gas chambers. I know exactly what it means to lose human values. The crisis of values is happening before my eyes.
I will be forty-five in February. I have no intention of spending another year in my homeland. I will give a presentation, but not here. I remember in 2017 I received a book published in 1984, which describes the local hiking trails. It was with genuine curiosity and enthusiasm that I discovered my homeland with the help of this book for tourists. I was happy to immerse myself in the history and natural values of the landscape. With little exaggeration, I almost felt love for my homeland. My feelings were pure and tender. I wondered at millennia and living things. I wanted to share the treasures. I didn't stop. But I realized that all my efforts were futile. Wasted energy makes me angry. After twelve years, I am taking my life in a completely different direction. The passion is there and I have gained a lot of experience.
The ancient attachment to the land remains. My heart really leaps when I smell the wet earth. I love natural light and colour. I am also surprised by the immense passion I feel when I step on the earth. It is simply amazing the life that has evolved on our planet. I don't really understand how most people can be so detached from the living world. The tiny moss cushion is also a pleasure for me. I need to significantly improve my presentation skills and really learn to speak a world language clearly and I would also like to know Romanian. It is important for me to know and use the language of at least one neighbouring nation. There are so many good things in life worth preserving. It would be so nice to come together and restore ecosystems. In Romania too, natural assets are being destroyed at an astonishing rate. From there come the rivers that feed my homeland.
Do you hear and understand what I'm talking about? Mushrooms have taught me a lot. The way they adapt to their habitats and do their thing. The jelly ear is a common fungus, yet its fruiting bodies always bring a smile to my face because they are truly ear-shaped. They also have medicinal properties. Black elder is also a common shrub, and its fragrant white flowers and black berries can be used and its hollow branches can be used to make a whistle. Its dead matter is broken down by the jelly ear. One of my favourite mushrooms. I've loved it for decades. It is good. The mushroom and also the positive feeling. It is also very important to take children outdoors in all seasons and give them a piece of reality. It is not normal to keep them in rooms and virtual spaces. And emotional security is gone. And the destruction of nature threatens our physical existence.
Tourists take photos of the castle ruin, but they don't learn their lesson. Most people have become incapable of making connections and drawing conclusions. People think that reality is virtual. That the whole world is an amusement park where the play - the consumption - never ends. What kind of play? It's an ugly eating game. We eat the world. We give up the good things. I was thinking today about how the right to life is being violated in my country. People no longer perceive the danger! The instinct for life is also damaged. I stand stunned. What the hell has happened in the last thirty years?! I want to do something about these worrying trends. That is why I am moving out of my country. Maybe I can find alliances and make enough money to take my mission to a higher level. I feel I need to evolve to really do something for my loved ones.
With a few thousand forints = eight euros in my wallet, on the first day of the festive month, I watched the festive lights and decorations with a frosty smile on my face in the main square, which was very nicely decorated by the city administration. My poverty was caused by my own stupidity, and you don't have to feel sorry or worry about me. I am completely transforming my life. The way it was is over. Or I really will die of poverty. Although I take seriously and practice the other values of life, it is essential for effective work that the creative person has the necessary material capital. With no inheritance, no annuity income, I can really only live on what society gives me in return for my knowledge. I have specialised knowledge, and specialisation is risky. I'm seriously thinking of going to Brussels and working as a cleaner in one of the EU's head offices. I want to be where the real important things happen. Being a middle-aged woman vegetating in south-eastern Hungary is not a very attractive prospect. I'm tired, worn out, almost stinking of poverty. I'm a hair's breadth from the bum level. I didn't buy the camera either, a very dear friend gave it to me as a Christmas present two years ago.
I feel like a stinky guberator, crawling around under the bushes in semi-crazy mode and about to die there in the company of his beloved mushrooms. I was going to write about Christmas, but despair overrides my beautiful thoughts. I'm angry that I can't earn enough money to successfully complete my mission. I hold on to the things I value. And money is not my god. I am angry that I am worn out, that there are no people around me with whom I can have constructive conversations, that generosity is a rare quality, that society does not know fair play and does not give a shit about life and nature. They wander the decorated town square like night moths to around a flame, and no, no, they simply ignore the deepening crisis. What do they teach their children? Sweet lies are whispered in credulous ears when reality kicks us in the face on 1 January.
How I have hated the senseless wandering in local habitats in recent years! I should have left in the autumn of 2018. I threw away four years of my life. I am really angry with myself for that. So now I have a long lost determination and passion. What I wanted to give to my country in value, in strength, in the desire to give well, I now keep for myself and use for my own benefit. There is no saviour. The hero does not come to do good for you, nor do I come to do good out of overflowing philanthropy. I am motivated by a different realization. Earth's wildlife is an unparalleled wonder, and its preservation is important. It is important to preserve nature, if only because it is the life support system of our species. Destroying it is tantamount to suicide. And I like mushrooms. When I saw the fruiting body of Lepista sordida in the garden, I was delighted.
Two lie in the picture, because the bear is actually an apex predator and the heart symbol is the woman' bottom in reverse. And we decide not with our hearts, but with our right brain. And our poor left brain tries to rationalise our decisions, lagging behind the faster right brain. Lies trap you in a labyrinth and destroy you. Then reality comes down hard on those lost in illusions. Buried in my thoughts, I watched the lying charade. Such is the dance of death that separates worlds. In the sad revelry, one fades away, and in the process, the next is formed. There is no end to history. And I want to be where things are happening. Why would I bury myself alive in the south-eastern corner of Hungary? It is madness to waste the talent I was born with! I see the beauty! I have a natural sense of proportion, an inner moral compass and I love when people are happy. Some of the best memories of my life have been when I have managed to make them happy and they have been overjoyed.
My mission is to preserve a part of life, to save a species or two, to ensure the survival of a habitat, and to set an example, to pass on knowledge before I die. The meaning of life is to leave behind useful knowledge that will continue to empower younger generations. Our current lifestyles, our conveniences, our consumerist stupor, are all our undoing. Here, my voice is completely lost in Hungary. There is simply no meaning to my efforts, even though I have been conscientious and persistent in my mission. There is nothing good about this. I'm wasting away. I have created Eures and Europass accounts. I wrote my CV. I wrote the truth about myself. Huh, I am a special case. However, my hands and feet are intact, my brain is in the right place, and I have life experience, knowledge, and surprisingly, I'm even honest. And despite all the difficulties, my goal is still to do good, and to preserve life. At Christmas, when we are actually welcoming the winter solstice, the return of the light, please ask yourself if you are really doing all you can to sustain life on earth?
I was very much a child when I first heard the song and it became an instant favourite because I really couldn't sing or dance and I still can't. I really like this kind of humour. Self-irony is cool. This song had a subconscious influence on one of my novels, in which the extremely handsome hero falls from one awkward situation to another, but he has a great time with them because he's troubled by a very big problem. I love my stories. They warm my heart. True, no one understands why I'm giggling. It is when I am adventuring in my imagination with my lovable and feeble heroes that I am truly alive. Reality is harsh and cruel, but fictional reality is exactly what I make it. I fill my imagination with wonder and dance and sing out with my heroes. Okay, there are no professional singers and dancers among them, so it's a bit of a weird party. Everyone is clumsy, but it's overwhelmingly fun to see the fallibility and grandeur come together.
The novel is a major intellectual work of European culture. There is an interesting correlation between the development of the novel and the development of societies. The characters in the novels are all relatives of Dr Faust and are equally part of our lives and dreams. Nothing new under the sun. What was the experience of the ancient Greek citizen is the experience of the modern man. I was not even twenty when I realised that my consciousness was deceptive, that I was a clever illusion of brain activity at work inside me, and that I was nothing but a mass of information. In fact, my awakening to consciousness occurred when I had enough information available to my brain to present me as a person. Of course, my physical endowments, determined by my genes, also influenced the development of my consciousness, but I was shaped more by information from the outside world. Very quickly my head was filled with modern-day versions of ancient stories embedded in culture. I chose heroes, or types, with whom I could identify. Who am I? I am the role that best serves my survival. The human race's survival strategy, which includes a cataclysm, is remarkable. I will write about this later in another article, now back to the role of culture, the novel, in our lives. Both God and the soul are cultural genes (memes) that have been passed down for thousands of years. Funny, but I know I don't have a soul and I am guaranteed not to be an earthly double of any celestial ethereal being. As a middle-aged woman, I have enough experience to see through a meme or two and laugh at them. It's very important to be introspective, to analyse my actions and thoughts, because that's how I've discovered a lot of deception. Oh yes, it is controversial that the deceiving mind is introspective. Absurd. That's right. Funny. But for all its strange flaws, the brain is an important tool. It is our only means of knowing the world. It is the only tool that allows us to see the human in each other, and to work together. It is the illusion of the brain, the consciousness, that allows us to see ourselves as a person who is different from others and yet similar to them. This is very important. Diversity and similarity shape our society in a dynamic interplay. The shared knowledge, the heroes, the stories of progress written in novels are all to our benefit. I'm trying to wrap my mind around something much bigger. A mass of almost half a billion people, and millennia, ripple before my mind's eye. The story is not over. Although our global civilisation is pervaded by a kind of melancholy death wish, this is also a mistake. Anyone who has seen rocks dating back hundreds of millions of years knows that we are on a bigger adventure than this postmodern digester. Most importantly, never forget what you are heir to and what you need to preserve so that our species can be part of the million-year journey that is just beginning.
I walk at least one hundred kilometres on my two feet every month throughout the year, but if there's something to document, I walk a lot more. In October I walked more than two hundreds. One of my basic ideas is that the main characteristic of life is movement. That which lives, moves. I spend a lot of time sitting at my laptop as a writer, so exercise is vital for me. No bad weather, just bad clothes. Each month has its own beauty and value. So I was delighted with today's walk. I was accompanied by my three shroomer friends. Together we enjoyed the gifts of late autumn. While looking for mushrooms we also went to the biggest and oldest oak tree in Póstelek. Sadly, the majestic oak is dying. We should take the plight of the oak trees more seriously, because we will soon be negatively affected by the persistent water shortage! It looks so wet now the land, but we only had 11mm of rain in October and 45mm in November. This year the annual rainfall has not yet reached 400 mm. This is very little, not enough for the trees! In fact, it was the floods of the past, the extra water, that allowed the oaks to colonise the landscape. Rivers are dammed, floodplains no longer get extra water, groundwater is extremely deep, the county is dry, oaks are dying of thirst. Then, twenty years later, we too...
The old oak is taller than the other trees, and its remaining branches are more extensive. Less than ten of these giants remain in the county. What do you think the future holds for the people of Békés County if even the old oaks are dying? Something is fatally wrong here. I've written a lot about this on my blog. But change never happens in the absence of interest. Those who still have the vitality, like me, prefer to leave. And rightly so! What wants to die must be allowed to die. Those who want to live should go where people really live and act. "Don't disturb a dying man with his live screaming!" It is important that you see this and then run away. Hungary does not want to live. It is old and demented and does not like loud people. This is another lesson of November for me. If people are not interested in life=nature, there is no point in me being here. It was important for me to realise that I was really alone and that I had no business being here. I did what my conscience told me to do.
For you, this picture means nothing about dirt roads and tree plantations. A boring piece of landscape. But I know that two hundred metres away there is one of the oldest oak trees in the county and the younger oak plantation next to it is full of blooming hollowroots in April. Moreover in the plantation there are a few of broad-leaved helleborine. I toured the small wooded areas of the county. I was actually very fond of the landscape because I was really interested in its values.But apart from me, very few people are interested in values, and I have been editing and growing the blog for more than ten years in vain. Now I'll stop. My body is changing and my interests are expanding. Before I die, I want to know more and get my message to more people. It's not a big thing, but it's the mission I was born to do. I will finish the article. See the photos.
