To thine own self be true.

Travelled today to the Botanic Gardens in Edgbaston to attend the annual awards dinner for the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management. I was lucky enough to be sat at the same table as the Chief Executive of the Society for the Environment (Emma Wilcox) the Chief Executive of the Wildlife Trusts (Stephanie Hilborne) and the president of CIEEM (Stephanie Wray). To spend some time in the company of another three leaders as inspirational as those would take some travelling and the advice on my own progress to Chartered Environmentalist status was warmly and humbly welcomed.

Less joyously, a conversation with another alumnus of Liverpool University led me to discover my course leader for my BSc in Feshwater Biology died in early June. Professor Brian Moss was a true Renaissance Man and the guy who channelled my love of things watery and green into a career and a passion unabated despite, and indeed in fact of, the obstacles that present. He also introduced me to books, texts and authors that I return to frequently. The following passage, the quote on the frontispiece of his seminal book "Ecology of Fresh Waters" is one I go to constantly to keep my own fire lit.

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.”

He also used the title of this post frequently when he taught us. It'll forever ring true, as will what he did.
What a man.