DO YOU REMEMBER THE WAY TO THE GREAT VALLEY, 2021
I did this piece listening to the soundtrack from The Land Before Time, probably my favourite animated series when I was growing up, about the incredible creatures that walked this great earth (unrecognisable to us now looking back at geologies of a whole other epoch). This was their home – our home, the same earth we walk now, equally vulnerable to the same ebb and flow of environmental and climate changes.
The dinosaurs were incredible creatures, highly adaptive and far more intuitive than we could ever hope to be in their experience of the natural world and all the whims and fancies of volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, droughts – and yet, despite an existence steeped in resilience, were also a species that with a singular crisis eventually surrendered to the unpredictability of existence. And perhaps there is a place and a lesson there for us. Sometimes though, with the passing of the ages, we lose our way –
"Dear Littlefoot, do you remember the way to the Great Valley?"
"I guess so. Why do I have to know the way? You're gonna be with me."
"I'll be with you, even if you can't see me. let your heart guide you. It whispers. so listen closely."