Reforest Erris!

mayo | environment | opinion/analysis Monday September 15, 2008 10:24 by John Baker Earth_repair at yahoo dot co dot uk

Let’s plant trees in Erris. Let’s plant a f**k load of trees in Erris. Let’s plant enough trees to balance out any past and future damage done by Shell or other invaders and indeed by ourselves, for we are all part of the same fossil fuel based economy with our cars, our boats, our flights abroad, our central heating and our food from far away, and given this maybe it’s not enough to fight against the system that left us with no choice but to be part of it, perhaps it falls to us to create something different, to demonstrate our commitment to another reality and to get our own bodies involved in the building of it.

We can build a whole economy based on forestry, growing material for building, for food, for medicine. We can stop landslides, reduce flooding, purify water. If we plant enough over long enough we can even stabilize climate.
More than all this we can feed our own spirits, give ourselves hope for the future and hope for future generations. If all this shit with Shell does one thing let it be that it wakes us up to the wrong road that we’ve taken and let it move us to make amends. Planting trees is a real, tangible, obvious way to do this and it has the potential to draw many more to the area.
These islands were all forested long ago until we humans overran them. Maybe we all have an ache in our souls for the majesty and the mystery of deep forest. We didn’t know enough then not to destroy them. Now we do.

This is a call out for people to do this. We can easily get something started this year. All we need are trees, land to put them on and tools and bodies to plant them with. Please share this idea around Erris and beyond. Let’s organise an event to kick it off. Start small but let’s aim to get whole communities involved in this.