More often than not now, I’d go off through the fields on my own. There were fields that I loved. Fields with a sward of natural, wild herbs. In the Hill Meadow I saw hints of Paradise. It was the only name I had for the flowers that grew there, primroses and cowslips in the dry parts of it and in the more marshy parts, buttercups and orchids.

And I wondered. How could something so yellow as a buttercup come up out of brown soil? How could something so purple as an orchid come up out of it? How could something so perfect as a cowslip come up out of it? Where did the colour and the perfection come from? And what else was down there? What else was I walking on? To me to inhale the fragrance of a primrose was a Eucharist. A Eucharist without suggestion of bloodshed or blood. Sometimes I’d inhale the fragrance down to the very soles of my feet. Then I could walk the earth without hurting it. Then I could walk in Paradise. Right here, in our Hill Meadow, I could walk in Paradise.

(Nostos 13-14) John Moriarity