A kernel of truth

Apologies for not putting up a blog last week. It’s just that I couldn’t find the motivation.

In his book, The Devil in Tim, author Tim Bowden has written:

If there is a piece of paradise on this earth, Peter Adams has come close to finding it with his coastal property Windgrove…

No, my motivation did not fall asleep in a gently swaying hammock whilst drinking rum. Living in paradise can be exhilarating, but it is not always a shield from depression, or more exactly, depressing news.

A couple of months ago, the environmental movement had a terrific day when Australia’s Green Senator, Bob Brown, won a landmark court case against Forestry Tasmania. The federal court decision found that logging of the Wielangta Forest in Tasmania’s east coast was illegal because the federal Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act was not being adhered to. By implication, this could be applied to the present logging practices in all of the old growth forests of Tasmania including the Upper Florentine.

Last week, however, the state Labor government joined forces with the federal Liberal government to change the existing laws governing threatened species thereby making any and all logging operations “legal”.

At the same time, the brave protesters trying to stop the destructive logging practices in the Upper Florentine continued to be harassed and arrested. Their actions were deemed “illegal” and they were hauled off to jail.

So much for the workings of democracy.

Climate change and the environment are certainly off the back burner in political and corporate circles around the globe, but Tasmania and Australia are still ruled by people who wouldn’t have a clue in understanding Thoreau’s dictum: In wildness is the preservation of the world.

And so I lost a bit of steam last week as I got caught up in my own and other’s despair over the blatant unethical behaviour of the two major political parties to “legally” find a way to circumvent the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

An ear of corn, however, showed me a way back into thinking positively.

For several months I watched as five seedlings grew into tall green stalks with each bearing one bulging ear of corn. Whether by myself or others, they were daily watered and nurtured. Everyday, that is, except last week when I lost interest and a bit of motivation.

Today, when I peeled back the leaves of one of the ears of corn expecting to find a nice juicy golden explosion of kernels ready to steam and butter, I found an inedible ear of corn, dry and starchy; the result of not being watered. I dropped my guard for just three days and all the good work gone into the cultivation and growing of the corn came undone.

Looking at the ear with its deflated kernels could have been depressing. Instead, I saw it as a lesson that when taking on a project, any project, to see it through to fruition, the garden, so to speak, must be diligently guarded. Nurturing becomes a constant responsibility.

We all want a more peaceful, sustainable world. To achieve such an end requires a sustained effort. Let’s not let the bastards diminish our resolve to make such a world a reality.

(Forest photo: Matthew Newton)