Malinda Words: Gentle intrusions: the signature of 'Back of Beyond'

Pic courtesy www.backofbeyond.lk

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is 198th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below]

Pristine ecologies there very well may have been. Maybe there still are places untouched by human beings. That’s the qualifier: ‘human beings.’ One species but one of millions upon millions that have at one time or another inhabited this planet. We are human-centric whether we wish to be so or not. We can, at best, empathise with other creatures, try to understand them and their interests, leave as gentle a footprint as possible and hope for the best.

Hope for the best? That’s like leaving it to chance, isn’t it? Well, there’s very little we know about the universe, our planet, our fellow creatures and ourselves, even though we pride ourselves about knowing much. Arrogance mixed with ignorance generates tragedies. Humility tends to cause less harm.

Our planet was not how it is now. We don’t really know how it was aeons ago. We know a little and we extrapolate but the slightest error can lead us to wild conclusions. And we need to remember that just as our species has left and leaves footprints, so do all other species. We seem to have been the most arrogant and, despite our human-centric delusions of superior intellect, have demonstrated amazing degrees of ignorance, it is not the case that other species have by and large been benign. The play of relativity doesn’t give us an excuse of course, but let us not gravitate towards the opposite extreme, i.e. we are the only malevolent species this planet has known.

Throughout history our species, like all other species, have had to engage with the world around us, the ecologies we inhabit, the ecologies we move into and the ecologies we wreck, one way or another. Whether or not our actions are informed by what they may or may not precipitate, as individuals, communities, countries and as a global human family, act is what we do. What all species do, in fact.

Today there’s talk of carbon footprint. A long time ago there was no talk of carbon footprints, but the evidence stacks up to an irrefutable truth: the ancients knew more and were far more conscious of the impact of decisions made on the planet, then and later.

Can we go back to that time? I don’t know. Maybe we can’t or at least we won’t but we might be pushed into circumstances we probably would associate with a different era which we maligned as backward, unscientific, undeveloped, poor, miserable etc. The question we could ask and which some people do ask is ‘what do we do now?’ How do we conduct ourselves or how should we live our lives?

Non-engagement is not an option, because whether we like it or not, whether we are mindful of what we take and leave behind from and for the future, respectively, engage we must. We must eat and that involves foraging of one kind or another. We must breathe and breathe out, and that’s ‘invovlement’ too.

How, then, is the question.

There’s been a lot of debate on these kinds of issues. So much that it cannot be encapsulated. However, sometimes, there’s a small note or observation that makes us pause, reflect, nod our heads in agreement and compel us to reconsider how we live, the lifestyles we’ve chosen and the truths that have fascinated us. This is something that ‘popped out’ a few hours ago:

‘"Eco" is more than a hashtag. For us, it's the very ethos of our work. We want to create truly sustainable spaces. From the materials we use, the food we serve, our activities and engagement with the community, our goal has always been, to be respectful and to cultivate that same feeling amongst our staff and guests. The truth is, any interaction with our environment has its repercussions. It is an intrusion. This is the reality. But we try our best, to make our intrusion, and be mindful and as gentle as possible.’

It was a note on the Facebook Page of ‘Back of Beyond,’ a responsible ecotourism enterprise launched in 2007 by Dr Yohan Weerasuriya.

Yohan re-grows our nation. All the time.

[Yohan, an old friend, wouldn’t be too pleased with publicity. He works and that’s all that matters to him. In fact I’m pretty sure that most people who know him and have worked with him know only that particular slice of his life they’ve been exposed to. He will not be interviewed. It must have something to do with genes; it is only after a lot of persuasion that his father, the legendary photographer Nihal Fernando who passed away a few years ago, agreed to tell me his story. That was more than 20 years ago.]

There! Parenthetically footnoted to preempt an inevitable ‘you needn’t have, machang,’ from Yohan.

Just consider this line, which I extracted from the Back of Beyond website a few minutes ago: ‘Touch gently… Yes, we acknowledge we are intruding … but we hope we touch our natural and social environment so minimally that it feels nothing but a gentle touch…’

Caress. Always better than hard grip or callous brushing away. In all things. Most certainly with regard to the earth we live in, which sustains us and which we take for granted. It is possible in the back of beyond and right here where we happened to be, all of us, as individuals and as a collective.

19 August 2023

Gentle intrusions: the signature of 'Back of Beyond'

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