Save Oaken Wood: Musings on lizards & climate change

"Early morning and my tentative footfall on parched grass, spurred tiny grasshoppers to jump in all directions.

Late Summer's sunny ragwort blooms, no longer festooned with their incumbent, stripy caterpillars, were now haloed with gossamer crowns, but there was barely a breeze to cast them away.

The relentless heat that kept gatekeepers and blues from alighting on what little was left of  thistle and burdock, was almost intolerable, even at this early hour, in the arid, narrow strip of meadow that fringed the orchards development...yes, there were orchards there once.

Bleached branches of birch, scorched into late summer drapery, seemed like the prologue of a story, a foolishly wishful 'not-yet' kind of tale, of the time to come for hominids and all living species alike ...an unthinkable time, summoning existential dread...the stone in the stomach... but for now, in the absence of thinking, my eyes were on lizards... and I found her.

She was stretched out on a fallen sycamore branch, amidst the copper leaves in the early morning sun. Even my cast shadow wouldn't  nudge her sluggish limbs to scuttle her away and so she sat, side-eyed watching and waiting.