The many good things to come out of lockdown

I was drinking in the fresh air on the high earth wall of my farm dam last week, when I saw a low white cloud coming straight at me from the northwest. The distances you can see up here are immense, across tawny savannah towards blue hills on the horizon, an unfenced land stretching for days and days of travel to the Ethiopian frontier. As I was standing there, filling my lungs and feeling free and happy, the white mist got ever closer and began to resemble confetti. The low, fluttering cloud was entirely silent. And then I saw it was a multitude of white butterflies, all flying on exactly the same southeasterly bearing. In the days since, they have migrated in never-ending millions from dawn to dusk, pausing on flowers to fill up on nectar, before taking to the skies again.

Where they are going and why, we have no idea. Perhaps they have a plan, like the red and blue dragonflies that recently arrived en masse from the east — the wonderfully named globe skimmers, pale-spotted emperors, blue perchers, twisters and vagrants — having migrated here from southern India, flying on the monsoon jet stream across the seas to stay with us until March, when they will set off for their return journey to Asia.

After a year like this, it’s high time to switch off from the outside world and rusticate on the ranch. Wake up well before dawn and turn in early to bed, after drinking a cold beer under the stars. Fill the lungs with air in the sunshine, look at butterflies and flowers, walk the dogs across wide-open spaces, kicking up the scent of fresh grass, hear the birds and, ankle-deep in cow dung, count my cattle each morning.