The heating at Coombe Mill when we bought the house was primitive and inefficient and used open fires. I wondered about some ‘Green’ form of central heating, and was inspired by an article in the Farmer’s Weekly that described a grass-burning boiler. We grew several tons of grass each year, and this seemed a fine and Green way of exploiting solar energy indirectly. We installed central heating, with radiators and copper pipes joined to one of these grass-burning boilers, which I had placed in an old stone building near the house. We had grown the grass the previous summer and it was stacked in a haystack covered with plastic. A friendly local farmer had baled it for me in return for a share of the bales. The hay bales were about four feet long and eighteen-inches square. They must have weighed forty or fifty pounds each. The idea was to put a bale into the boiler, ignite one end of it and let it burn like a cigarette. In practice, it rarely ever did and more often than not, it would go out, usually at some socially inconvenient time, when we needed warmth. When I opened the boiler a vast puff of toxic smoke emerged, and it seemed to me a health hazard worse than heavy smoking. I had to wear a gas mask to tend this stove, and it slowly dawned on me that this was a mad way to live. I gave up burning grass and bought logs instead from Mr Thomas, a local forester, who always seemed to have thinnings for sale. They burnt better than the grass, but the smoke, when the boiler was open, was almost as bad. At the end of 1981, after an accident with my tractor hauling logs, I at last saw sense. I replaced the wood-burning boiler with an efficient, carefree gas burner, which is still there.
I vented my annoyance with three years of frustrated misery with ‘Green’ methods of heating by writing, with Michael Allaby, an article called, ‘Wood burning stoves, the trendy pollutant’, which New Scientist published. This successful collaboration led to projects that were more ambitious. Mike wrote a book based on some ideas I had about the extinction of so many species from giant lizards to ocean organisms 65 million years ago. The finding by the Alvarez family of traces of iridium and other extra-terrestrial elements in the rocks contemporary with the extinction were what stimulated me. They argued, and I believed them, that a large planetesimal collided with the Earth, and the collision devastated the environment so that few living things survived. Inevitably, many biologists, who preferred to believe that inter-species competition caused the extinctions, scorned the collision theory. The book that we published, The Great Extinction, acted as a lightning conductor for their scathing criticism, and the reviews were among the worst we had experienced. Now, the collision theory is widely accepted, and the site of the impact thought to be close to the Yucatan Peninsula, but no one among our critics has admitted that they might have been wrong. Not daunted by our rough treatment by reviewers, Mike and I wrote a second joint book, The Greening of Mars. It was on the impropriety of terraforming and written as a novel. It has done well in Japan, but poorly elsewhere. From working together, Mike and his wife, Ailsa, became our close friends.
The illness of the 1980s and these experiences reduced me to practice. No longer did I attempt heroic acts of farming like the characters in The Good Life. We decided instead to let the Coombe Mill land go back to Gaia. We tried to help by planting two-thirds of the land with the sort of trees that would have been there before mankind appeared. The other third we kept as meadow, to indicate the kind of pleasant ecosystem which man in harmony with nature sustains. We did this by cutting half of each meadow once a year in July. Now, sixteen years later, we have increased the land area of Coombe Mill to thirty-five acres by the purchase of a long strip on the other side of the river. It is woodland with grassy glades and is wonderfully moving back to Gaia. Wildlife, both plants and animals, are beginning to appear in a habitat that they find congenial. Sandy and I, with the unstinted help of our friend and accountant, Godfrey Rehaag, have formed a charity called Gaia. Its purpose is to promote meetings and research on Gaian topics, and also to own and care for the house and land at Coombe Mill. Sandy and I have donated all of this property, including the house and outbuildings, to this charity, so that the habitat here will be as much as possible free from human intervention and remain a true refuge for wildlife. Soon after this Margaret Cooper who, with her husband, founded the charity Earth-kind, asked me to serve as their president and I have happily done so ever since. Earthkind has aims close to my own and runs the small ship Ocean Defender that quietly does environmental good.
It would be wrong to give the impression that the inhabitants of Coombe Mill are entirely unsociable and live like hermits. On a typical day, the postman will call between 8 and 9 am, and often chats for a while as he delivers and takes our mail. Clifford Nosworthy and Geoff Francis have delivered our mail for over twenty years now, and are our friends. Later Margaret Sargent comes from the village to look after us, and my disabled son John, who lives in a cottage just near the house. Margaret is a farmer’s daughter, a true country-woman, and is so much a part of Coombe Mill that to us she is a family member.
We have a small circle of local friends, among them John and Truda Lane, who live in a manor house near Beaford, about twenty miles away. John is a fair-haired, tall man with a wonderful sense of fun coupled with an erudition that makes him the perfect companion and guide. Truda’s drawing has the delicacy of a fractal design in bone china, and she is one of the few women I know whose voice matches her trim elegance. They are among our most stimulating and amenable friends. Sandy has a love for music, and we travel to Taunton for musical weekends at the Castle Hotel. Here those most estimable musicians, the Lindsays, entrance us, and here we meet our musical friends Monica and John Pethybridge, who, like us, come to listen. Music links us to Yvonne and Walter Reeves, who live nearby, and to my old friend and scientific colleague, Peter Fellgett, the inventor of ambisonics and fourier transform spectroscopy. All of us meet at what we think is the best restaurant in Britain, Percy’s at Coombshead, just two miles from Coombe Mill, where Tina and Tony Bricknell-Webb care for us in style.
A remarkable friend is Satish Kumar. He was born in northern India, and as a child, he became a noviciate Jain monk. In his twenties he felt the call to protest against nuclear weapons, and chose to walk from India to the western side of Europe, and from there travel by ship to New York to the United Nations. He has vividly described his long walk, which included a large section of the then Soviet Union, in his book No Destination. He and his English wife, June, now live in the village of Hartland, some twenty-five miles away, where they edit and publish the journal, Resurgence. Satish was a key figure in the founding of Schumacher College in the grounds of Dartington. This alternative university is one of the first places to teach Gaia science and runs, in collaboration with Plymouth University, a Masters programme for Gaia scientists. The college is also prominent as a place for discussion about the philosophical and political consequences of Gaia theory.
Our pleasures are things we do together. One of them is walking on that grand mountain block of Dartmoor, or along the superbly rugged coastline of North Devon and Cornwall. Those places are not much more than twenty miles away at the furthest, and even in summertime, amazingly deserted. Few, it seems, wish to walk more than 100 yards from their parked car. The whole of Dartmoor is no larger than greater London, less than 1,000 square miles, and tiny compared with the vast national parks of the United States of America. Yet, once we have climbed the first 1,000 feet and we reach the open inland plateau of the moor, we seem to be in an infinite, never-ending space. We drove one morning the ten miles to Lydford, a village on the edge of the moor, and from there walked across the short turf to the rocky valley of the Lyd. Ahead lay the wall of the moor, rising in two steps of 600 feet each to the central mass, at 1,500 to 2,100 feet high. The first steps led from the valley to a small peak, Doe Tor, from which the panorama of West Devon, with its green and yet almost unspoilt fields and woods, lay before us. Eastwards, across a stretch of heather and bog, lay the next step up to Hare Tor. Past Hare Tor lay a stretch of almost featureless moorland, the central
part of the moor, where it is so easy to get lost when the mist comes down. We set off on a course slightly east of north on the compass, and after a mile suddenly came upon the single boulder as large as a house that marks Chat Tor. From here, the going was easier and Great Lynx Tor, with its castle-like rock pillars, lay in view to the northwest. Our destination was no more than a map reference that marked the furthest point of a twelve-mile round walk. We reached it by crossing the bogs that surround the Rattle Brook. On the banks of the brook is the ruin of Bleak House, which is well named. The manager of the peat mine used it as his home fifty years earlier. We wondered if he was a married man. If he was, how had his wife endured the lonely existence of so remote and inaccessible a place? We sat in the sun on a slab above the brook with the house shielding us from the brisk northwest wind and ate our lunch—sandwiches filled with good strong cheddar cheese, slices of beetroot and onions, followed by an apple or a bar of chocolate, and a soft drink. There are few events in life so good for me as the feeling of contentment that a good walk to such a place brings. Sharing it with Sandy fills my cup to over-brimming.
It was now one o’clock and time to continue to the furthest point of our walk. Like some of the other elevations on Dartmoor, it has an animal name, Kitty Tor. It was more of a map reference than a place, but we had planned to reach it. We walked back across the heather to the wind-carved granite of Great Lynx Tor. We find its sculpted rocks, with their sense of ineffable purpose, the most enthralling of all places on Dartmoor. Looking north we see the high slopes of Yes Tor and Great Willhayes, and looking west the Tamar Valley and Bodmin Moor. From here, it was an easy run down to the Lyd valley and to our drive home. Such a day would end with some experiments, a swim, or a laze in the sun, followed by an evening meal and an evening of music on CD. Such are the freedoms that work as an independent brings.
Although we have no desire to live there, London beckons, with its wonderful theatres, concert halls, and museums. In 1988 Sandy and I purchased a small flat in St Mark’s Road in North Kensington. It was a modest but comfortable place in a quiet road on the wrong side of the Westway, a monstrous piece of motorway that, like the angiogenesis of a cancer, keeps London’s malignant traffic alive. We bought it so that we could enjoy London’s unsurpassed supply of music and theatre. It soon turned out to be more expensive than we could afford, and in 1991 we sold it at a loss. We decided to sell when we found the Clearlake Hotel in that never failing source of good accommodation, the Consumer Association’s Which? Good Bed and Breakfast Guide. Hotels in London are comfortable, but far beyond our price, or cramped, noisy, and not for us. The Clearlake in 1991 offered all that we needed, and at a price we could afford. There was no meal service of any kind, but the hotel provided its guests with either a small suite of rooms or a ‘bedsit’, including an en suite bathroom and a tiny kitchen equipped with a microwave cooker, refrigerator, china, cutlery, and all things needed to cook a light meal. It has theatrical associations, and they have decorated many of their rooms with posters of plays once performed in London. The price in 1991 was £50 to £60 a day. This we could afford and the hotel has been our home in London ever since. Situated in a small road, Prince of Wales Terrace, opposite the west end of Kensington Gardens, it is almost an ideal site for us. We can walk the three miles across the parks to Piccadilly or Whitehall free of the noise and fumes of traffic. The lift does not always work, but that is a small disadvantage in what is a family hotel. We have grown fond of the Herkovits family who run the Clearlake, especially of Nava who welcomes us so warmly. The Clearlake Hotel was once the home of a Victorian family, a house in a proud and comely terrace in a fashionable part of London. The Prince of Wales Terrace is now wonderfully restored to its Victorian excellence and in its new usage is every bit a source of pride for Londoners as it ever was.
We stole down the two flights of stairs from our room at the Clearlake at 7.45 am in 1996. We opened the street door as quietly as we could and glanced back at the reception desk, wondering if someone had noticed our furtive departure. We walked into Victoria Road and turned south, past the blossom-covered villas of the somewhat rich. What had once been modest housing for the Victorian upper-working class or lower-middle class was now far up market. Soon we were in the Gloucester Road, with its vast array of terraced mansions; were any of them homes of a single family, I wondered? Most likely they were now flats or offices. Soon, as we walked on, that incredible bulk of the Natural History Museum loomed before us: a Victorian masterpiece of variegated marble and brick in a Gothic style—perhaps the unkind might say it had the look of a Lego construction. It was by now 8 am and we walked up the grand entrance steps to the doors of the museum. And once inside, the director, Neil Chalmers, welcomed us. He had invited us to attend a tour behind the scenes of the museum and a breakfast. It was a joyful event to be invited back to the Natural History Museum in these VIP circumstances. In my childhood, seventy years ago, I spent so many happy Sunday afternoons here whilst my mother and father were visiting the Victoria and Albert Museum just opposite. They were there for the works of art, and I was here, or in the Science Museum, learning all the things that were to form my life as a scientist. Dr Chalmers then introduced the other guests and made a short speech as we all stood in the shadow of the Diplodocus skeleton that fills the great hall of the museum. After a satisfying breakfast, behind the scenes on the top floor, we met our guide, Sandy Knapp. She showed us some of the tens of millions of plant specimens in what seemed an unending row of polished wooden cabinets. She provided an impressive account of the expeditions to remote and wild places that they had made to collect the dried specimens before our eyes. The quest for Gaia has also rewarded us with enthralling visits to the great gardens of Kew and St Louis where the directors, Sir Ghillian Prance and Peter Raven, generously gave us their time.
11
Building Your Own Bypass
The flight was nearly half an hour late and, as we circled Salt Lake City preparing to land, I was anxious. Traffic had delayed the departure from Chicago and now there were only twenty minutes left to catch my flight to Idaho Falls. I suspected that Salt Lake City Airport was no different from many others in the United States; there would be the long walk with my heavy bag from the landing bay to the departure lounge of my next flight. We landed with fifteen minutes to spare. Somewhat relieved, I began a fast walk, and then a slow run to the concourse. As I ran, I felt an odd pain grow in my lower chest, which I attributed to muscular pains caused by the imbalance of carrying a heavy bag whilst running and dodging people on the way to the departure lounge. Soon I saw the sign, TransMagic, and the door leading to the TransMagic Airlines plane. This miraculous airline flew a one-way flight to Idaho Falls. I could not help wondering if they disassembled the plane in Idaho and sent it back by truck. I checked in and thought no more of the pain; it had gone away. I boarded the small plane and flew across the Magic Mountains to my destination.
My friends at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, had booked me in for three weeks during September 1972 at a pleasant hotel near the Snake River. We were due to spend the time at the National Reactor Facility, a government institution sited in the lunar landscape of the lava fields of north Idaho. The facility itself was a remote place where strange nuclear reactors were tested; a place where an explosion or a meltdown would—they hoped—be less noticeable and less obtrusive. To my slight regret, my role there was in no way connected with these fascinating monsters: all that we had to do was conduct an experiment in air-mass labelling. So exquisite is the sensitivity of the electron capture detector that it is possible to detect as little as one part in 1016 of a tracer substance diluted in air. Our minds cannot deal with large numbers like this; we are not really much better than the apocryphal tribe whose number system was one, two, and many. One in 1016 means one part in 10,000 million million, or one with 16 noughts after it. This is too small a dilution for our imaginations to grasp; it is as scarce as three seconds out of the ag
e of the Universe. Yet, by collecting and concentrating a few litres of air, the electron capture detector is sensitive enough to detect the tiny amount of tracer in it.
My friend, Lester Machta, was in charge of the Air Resources Laboratory of the agency, NOAA, in Washington. He wanted to label air masses on the West Coast of America and follow their motion across the whole of the American continent. I believed that my detector was sensitive enough for this ambitious project, and we were in Idaho to prove it. Among the substances it could detect at great sensitivity, were the perfluorocarbons. These are strange volatile odourless liquids. In some ways, they are similar to the hydrocarbons of petrol, but have fluorine, not hydrogen, attached to the carbon. These substances are so inert that they are neither flammable nor poisonous, nor for that matter do they react with other chemicals. As I mentioned earlier, they are so benign that they are less poisonous than water. They were thus ideal materials to release into the air as tracers. These were chemicals that even the most sensitive Green would find difficult to condemn. NOAA was to conduct its experiment in parallel with several from other US government departments. The others were intending to release much less safe materials than our perfluorocarbons: for example, one group was using methyl iodide labelled with the radioactive isotope 131 of iodine. The release of so dangerous a substance was possible only on this remote site in Idaho.
Homage to Gaia Page 44