A friend rented me her cottage in the Lanaudière region during the month of September. A cottage, not a country house. As soon as the nights got colder, I started hearing strange noises in the attic, in the walls. Field mice, mice. I didn’t sleep well. Then, on the third day, I collapsed on my bed, exhausted. I could have left, but I decided to stay, to make myself small. Maybe we would tame each other, the mice and I. I need to be tamed.
Yesterday, I went for a walk in nature as I often do. I ventured into the forest in “freestyle”, not without having spotted a stream that I could go up, then back down so as not to get lost.
The place is bucolic. On the ground, roots, rocks and moss mingle. At eye level, the immaculate green of the foliage brings me the calm I need. Everything is so peaceful. I take a deep breath. In front of me, to my left, I see two magnificent deer that are there like a gift, and that run away as soon as they sense my presence. I smile.
I wonder if the red fruits of this plant on the ground are edible. Probably not, we would know. I remember what someone once told me: “If you want to know if a berry is edible, watch the bears.” I’m willing, but it would probably be a long study, not to mention the danger. Obviously, I refrain from eating them. But what if these fruits could cure something?
As a green woodpecker lands on a spruce tree and I stop so as not to scare it, I think of everything we have lost by detaching ourselves from nature, of all these values, this knowledge that have flown away as we have cut down the trees or dug holes in the ground around us.
I admit, I would be in a bad situation if I got lost in the middle of this forest, with my bottle of water and my apple as my only provisions. I would probably try to find a path. Where there are paths, there are men. I would have to light a fire for the night, find shelter, eat. I feel very small in this immense forest that reflects my insignificance back to me in large doses of humility. Honestly, it feels good to feel vulnerable.
We have lost a lot in this idea of man’s domination over the elements that surround him. I wonder if we are aware of it, thus locked up in our cities.
My personal assessment is rather harsh, it’s true. I don’t understand why, instead of looking at the impact of our actions on nature first, we find all sorts of roundabout ways to not act. A few days ago, for example, we learned that the Ministry of the Environment had set up a program that allows hundreds of animals to be killed: bears, wolves, coyotes and others, in an attempt to help the few remaining caribou herds survive, since soon, they will only be remembered by their image on 25-cent coins. I jumped. How can killing animals to protect others be a good thing?
For me, it’s turning away from the real solution, the one we don’t seem to want to consider, the one that involves leaving ecosystems in peace, far from the noise of drills and skidders. “It’s making other species pay for our inability to control our ever-increasing greed for resources,” Melissa Mollen-Dupuis, head of the boreal forest campaign at the David Suzuki Foundation and an Innu activist, tells me in a discussion. She’s right. I also question an Anishinaabe elder. He tells me that this is not a solution to protect the caribou, that the wolves kill one caribou at a time, not ten, and only the weakest. The solution is therefore not viable. Same story from the Cree-Eeyou. The problem is human.
Let us remember that if nothing is done, 11 of the 13 remaining caribou populations in Quebec will become extinct. With them, an entire territory, a vocabulary that contains so much knowledge, values of humility, sharing, and respect. And then, protecting the caribou also means safeguarding large areas of biodiversity, protecting forests that store carbon, and pure water. It means protecting our common natural heritage.
We have not heard the silence of the forests for too long. A silence that nevertheless brings us back to the essential to those who know how to hear. The caribou has become the tree that hides the forest. In this case, the tree that we choose to cut down to see what remains to be cut down behind it. The symbol of something like the man who knowingly chooses money before living beings. This was possible for a while, but at the time we find ourselves, the choices must be different. We must change the paradigm.
In indigenous mythology, there are many legends to warn us against the greed of man who eats all the resources of the territory without keeping the balance. One day, this man turns around and realizes that he has also eaten… the future of his children.
What do you think? Express your opinion