After a while, I spent much of my time in my room reading, separated from nature. My next nature experience comes from my two final years of school. I took Advanced level biology, and we went on a field trip to Flatford Mill, which is featured in Constable's picture The Haywain. You can read more about it here at http://www.thelilypad.co.uk/haywain.html The building on the left (Willy Lott's Cottage) is where I stayed! There we did line transects of the seashore (nice walk DOWN the hill, tough climb back!), a salt-marsh (where one boy got his boot stuck in the mud and had to be rescued by our teacher, much to our hilarity), and a foot-path. We did pond dipping and stream dipping. We hiked around the villages near Dedham Vale, and went to Church in an old Norman Church, which was shared by the different denominations, each attending church at different times. We walked through fields of cows, watched the ducks outside the classroom window and enjoyed the beauty of nature. I knew then, that I wanted to learn more, and decided to study biology at college. It didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped, but after a false start in biochemistry, I transferred to biology and had fun again. We marked the boundaries of robin territories in the winter. We captured small mammals, marking them and then seeing if we could capture more or recapture them, in a population density study. I watched the rabbits on campus, with their rabbit babies, I saw fungi growing including this rather deadly specimen, the Fly Agaric or Amanita muscaria from the English Country Garden Webpage.
"I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania some time of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight
-A Midsummer-Night’s Dream (2.1.260-5)