February 2015 53
How optimism lifted
Of babies, cadences and death
Shirley Clerkin
CULTURE
IN THE STICKS
T
HERE was optimism and all the babies slept
peacefully in their beds among the quiet,
velveteen hills. The piano played cheerful
melodies, tinkling beads on a necklace out the
open windows to the birds that flitted content-
edly on the air. Plans were gone over, knitting clacked,
beds were dug, bees hummed.
Geology moves glacially, mostly. The drip drop of
water on stone erodes, slowly. Even grykes start with-
out trumpets. Summoning latent defects, you might
say. Roots loosen too, making way for opportunists
into the ecosystem balance. Cleavage.
Tranquilised by parental oblivion the babies still
sleep soundly. Some sort of birdsong lifts from the
land. Cadences stack but hollowness creeps into the
resolutions. Missing notes pass unremarked as the
ability to hear the complexity and richness of sound is
lost. Bookended music is enough. The piano goes out
of tune.
The water whiles the time away with the moon. Under
the enchanted cloak of darkness, a minor key sounds,
an orthostat rolls closed the crescent moon and rea-
son goes backstage. The babies grow into adults and
disquieted by the silence, one day they stir and wake.
A plaintive requiem pipes from the hilltops. Where are
the missing notes? The quavers, the crotchets, the long
held minims?
They feel like erratics in their own place. No one can
measure or know their alienation. Sorry for your loss,
the handshake at every wake in the country has no pur-
pose now.
The Living Planet Index, which measures the trends
in thousands of mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibi-
ans shows a 52% decrease between 1970 and 2010, my
lifetime. The WWF, alive and kicking for many years,
measuring, recording, advocating, campaigning, pro-
duced the report, but there is little comfort for them
in the new data. No good looking down at the coffin of
loss, looking to your neighbour and saying, “I told you
so”. ‘The Living Planet Report – Species and Spaces,
People and Places’, peddles the message that we can
change, we can grasp the opportunity that we have so
far failed to grasp and close this destructive chapter of
our history. But can we?
Maybe I am writing in February. Maybe my fingers
type loss and pessimism but late in the month and into
March, when little signals of life push forth to keep the
snowdrops company, optimism will restore me – about
human nature. During another dark winter night, in
November at the Guth Gafa (Captive Voice) Film Festival
in Headfort, Kells, I was left bereft and grieving after
watching the film ‘Virunga’.
This gripping documentary, now available on Netflix,
follows the Virunga National Park rangers led by chief
warden Emmanuel de Merode,
a passionate French journalist,
Melanie Gouby and gorilla-carer
Andre Bauma, as they try to
secure the Park, which is home
to some of the last mountain
gorillas on the planet. Bauma
has an unswerving and beau-
tiful belief that his purpose in
life is to protect the gorillas. His
affinity with them is the human-
ity grounding the film, but his
is an attachment not shared by
all. In the midst of armed con-
flict, the UK Oil Company SoCo
International tries to muscle up oil exploration in this
World Heritage Site, a place that is of Outstanding
Universal Value. Virunga World Heritage Site meets
three of the requisite criteria – to contain superlative
natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural
beauty and aesthetic importance; to be an outstanding
example representing major stages of earth’s history;
and to contain the most important and significant
natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological
diversity, including those containing threatened spe-
cies of outstanding universal value from the point of
view of science or conservation. Virunga National Park
is a refuge for 22 primate species, including one third
of the world population of mountain gorillas. It is uni-
versally important.
In the film the oil interests cleaved every potential
niche to access the oil resources of the park, encourag-
ing dissent among the local supporters for the National
Park while appearing to offer bribes to park rangers.
Like old cartoons, dollars per barrel gleamed in the
eyes of Homo sapiens, extinction saddened the eyes of
Gorilla beringei. Following the WWF campaign and the
film, SoCo has committed to withdraw from Virunga
but, worryingly and typically, oil concessions still exist
for the park.
The Belgian Director de Merode, was shot and injured
just before the release of the film last April, by unknown
men. Courageously the rangers battle on, even though
real risks to their lives exist – over one hundred rangers
have lost their lives since 1996. They believe that a sus-
tainable development model can secure the landscape
for their and nature’s future. I believe it too. But, wheel-
ers and dealers always have their eye on the prize.
Writer Christopher Potter asks the only question:
“The story of the survival of human beings is particu-
larly difficult to tell as a story of adaptation in nature.
How did the weakest ape come out so far on top?”.
‘How?’ is my preoccupation as February drops,
so cold. •
How did the weakest ape
come out so far on top?
“

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