Camio Story 5 Notes from a conscientious protector

Nature at its most glorious 

I have lived in Glenhordial for thirty one years, the attraction was a small hill farm for sale. When I got there to view it,  there were three hares running about in grounds of the derelict farm, it seemed somehow auspicious. The peacefulness and serenity of the place was striking. I knew I had come home.

Over the years I have walked, run, camped and cycled in the Sperrins . With my children I have walked up the Killyclogher burn looking for damsel flies and otters. We have camped by the stream, built dams, made mud pies, lit fires, toasted marshmallows and at the end of the day, sat and watched the moon rise up over the top of Mullaghcarn. These mountains are really our holy/home lands.

 

Killyclogher Burn Feeds The Glenhordial Reservoir 

So you might well understand when I discovered mineral drilling rigs less than a mile from our home I was utterly shocked . I could not believe this would happen here and I knew I had to speak out. NIMBYISM I hear the voices cry and thank goodness for the power of it! Because if we as local people don’t speak out when our health, homes and livelihoods are at risk, who then takes up the mantle of stewardship?

I am the first to acknowledge the pressing need for jobs and the importance of creating employment for our young folk .When I ask folk why would they support extractive industries .There is really only one answer job creation.

Imagine this, if the money spent facilitating the mining industry was used instead in the Sperrins augmenting and creating sustainable livelihoods in the Agri/ Tourism/Health and Arts sectors

Money that is/will be used for 

 

• PSNI explosives escort- totalling almost £440,000 - 
• Inward investment agencies such as Invest NI for extractive industries promotion 
• Future public enquiries re: inevitable environmental catastrophes 
• NHS for associated extractive mining illnesses amongst local population 
• Roads, Water and Electricity infrastructure . 

We would be future proofing our wonderful Sperrins area for generations going forward. Building and strengthening our communities by supporting our entrepreneurs, ushering in a time of creativity innovation and change. Nurturing an existing way of life without repleting our natural resources.

I am a stand for the possibility of a community of stewardship for the Sperrins to remain and prosper as a sanctuary of peace and tranquility in an increasingly crazy world.

I am a stand for all those who farm, fish and run small agri/tourism business to continue to flourish from generation to generation.

I am a stand for the health and well being of every generation coming behind us, that they too will flourish and thrive, confident of the quality of the very air they breath and the water they drink .

I am the kind of person who stands for such things in the world regardless of whether they are realised or not. I will be working, consistently, relentlessly and implacably towards making this possible and when tough times come as they surely will, I will focus on my commitment of creating a different narrative for the Sperrins and will handle the circumstances that come along with this.You can count on me for this.

Visualise This

Glenhordial Reservoir for Omagh's Water Supply

It is one hundred years into the future . You are a teenager, a grand mother in a car, a visitor, a farmer, a walker, a child. You are out and about enjoying the Sperrins. You are driving up the Glenelly Vally, you are chasing sheep on the hills above Glenhordial , You are cycling on the ladies view trail up the Gortin glens, You are an artist on the Green road capturing the beauty of the present moment . 

You stop for a moment admire the view and take a breath of air. You are struck by the profound serenity, beauty, peace and tranquility of the natural world that surrounds you . You have that aha moment as you feel a surge of gratefulness wash over you. For a moment, you pause and give thanks to your ancestors who had the foresight to make this happen .

My question to you is: Will we the ancestors be the architects of this future ? What will we choose?

The Camio Story Part 4 A World Turned Upside Down

One time even the cover !

As a child I turned upside down without thought, flipping through cartwheels, walking on my hands, rolling head over heels, launching into handstands, standing on my head . I brought the mind of a child to it . As an adult I am a bit more circumspect and realise that there are consequences if I turn my body/life upside down. To turn upside down you need the following.

1. You have to grow your courage. In my early days of practicing yoga I had to learn that courage comes in teaspoons . In a handstand once I fell off my hands and onto my face it made me afraid for years. Using the mantra fall down seven times get up eight I gradually got my courage back.
2. You have to be strong before you turn your life on its head, a weak body or mind and you will crumble and fall. 3.You have to want to do it because there will always be consequences if you fall . 4. You have to be patient and persistent.

Example of full page weekly advert

On the 4th October 2018 It was with a heavy heart that I decided that I could no longer write my yoga column for the Ulster Herald while it continues to publish Dalradian sponsored content (Dalradian are the mineral prospecting corporation who are endeavouring to open the biggest cyanide processing facility in Europe here in the Sperrin mountains ) To set the context . I have always had a good relationship with the paper and would be the first to say that by and large they do a good job. I had recently submitted my 200th article to them and looked forward to submitting as many again. However I am very well aware of the appalling cost of extractive industries as I have seen/experienced with my own eyes whist travelling in Australia . I witnessed the utter  devastation caused by the Mount Isa goldmine in Queensland and met people who had not only lost their livelihoods but developed many life threatening illnesses because of same. So you see if I continue to write for the Herald  I would be equally culpable of supporting and promoting gold mining here in our lovely Northern Ireland . Sure I could talk myself out of it with petty excuses and fob myself off but because of what I know about toxic mining I knew I had to speak out. On the 4th of October 2018 I turned my world upside down and resigned from the Ulster Herald . A small act of protest in a world that does not care.

About sums it up

#Don't Mine Us : The Camio Story Part 3

#Don't Mine Us : The Camio Story Part 3: So the stage is set . After our first public meeting in July 2018 . We formed a committee and constituted ourselves as a community o...

The Camio Story Part 3

So the stage is set . After our first public meeting in July 2018 . We formed a committee and constituted ourselves as a community organisation with elected chair person, secretary and treasurer. We set out our aims and objectives which are listed here on this page . And we went into action.

We were acutely aware that there was a huge need to raise awareness and educate locally . We also knew that Dalradian were taking out full page advertorial each week in the local papers which told only one side of the story. We contacted the local papers and invited them to stop accepting advertising from Dalradian .... in our naivety thinking that perhaps as they called themselves community papers that they would see what they were doing was not serving all parts of the community.

Laughable now when we look back at it. Their answer to us was, if you provide the news we will report it. We complained loudly about their inadequate coverage  of both sides of the story. They came back with all the evidence of how many pieces of editorial they had written, but not with the total amount of advertorial space that was given to Dalradian each week. To this day, it irks the hell out of us, how little good editorial comment is written about the whole contentious  issue of toxic mining in the Sperrins and indeed  the rest of Ireland.  Arthur Miller's quote  “A good newspaper is a nation talking to itself.” rings hollow in our ears. We suppose business comes first before news.

By now we are beginning to understand exactly what we are facing. On one side we have big business coming uninvited into our local communities, creating utter devastation , to our nature, poisoning our water, contaminating the very air we breathe. In return they offer the  jobs, the wealth, the supposed spin offs for associated industries .

They never tell us about the uselessness of the land after toxic mining, the mine acidification that when turned on is virtually impossible to turn off . The lead poisoning that occurs with contaminated air. The tailing's pond collapses . The erosion of community and the loss of a whole way of life.

Two sides, with two absolutely opposing views and then, all the reluctant  players, no discernible referee, and a slope on the pitch in favour of  the toxic mining side. The wind blows against us, the less favoured, weaker side: US THE PEOPLE .  We may not have much money, we may not have many resources but we have solidarity, community support, time, energy, commitment and passion. We don't get paid for what we do; we do it because it is important to us, we do it because we care. Many's a company would wish for the workforce that is available to us,  wish for the ethos, drive and integrity of purpose  that shows up everywhere amongst us. We are part of something that is beginning to come awake, alive and take on a momentum of its own. It will probably be the game of our lives.

#Don't Mine Us : Life

#Don't Mine Us : Life: It was itching around in me all day long, nagging beneath the surface of my consciousness, like a barely noticeable shadow .Tro...

The Camio Story Part 2

Drill locations that we know about
 in the Glenhordial area 2018

The  night after finding out about the prospecting for gold that was happening in our local area I was restless and slept badly .  I had every right to be, for my mind kept dredging up memories from a different part of my life. Back in the 80's I spent some time in Australia and lived for a while near what was probably the biggest copper, lead, silver  and zinc mine in the world at that time  Mount Isa.  Taken over by  Glencore  in 2013.

Not withstanding the absolute and total devastation of the environment local to the city of Mount Isa, its diseased tentacles reached into every aspect of the lives of the folk who lived there.  Mount Isa had a history of contamination from emissions, the authorities were aware of lead emissions since the 1930's. However the mine always denied it and spent decades  rebutting  the  research that linked the contamination to its mining and smelting operations.

In Feb 2017 Mount Isa Mines released the official report into the lead contamination that has blighted the city for decades.The report, commissioned by the mine’s owner, Glencore, and produced by researchers at the University of Queensland, says that household dust contaminated by airborne lead from the mining and smelting operations is the dominant source of the city’s exposure.

Processing all of this over and over again  I decided as I lay tossing and turning  that I would make a stand against any mining in Northern Ireland.   Awareness had to be raised  and there was a need for our local communities to be educated  to all of the possible  consequences mining could bring to our local area. That is all the details that are brushed over in the glossy marketing brochures and the sexy online sales campaigns.

Mount Isa Smelting Stacks

Where to start ? Apart from my lived experience near the mining town of Mount Isa in North Queensland I knew virtually nothing about mining. So spent the next three months reading documents like:

•  Guidebook for Evaluating Mining Project EIA
•  Gold Production from beginning to end :What gold companies do to get the shiny metal into our hands by Mariusz Skonieczny and
• Gold Inside the Race for the world's most Seductive Metal Matthew Hart
• Scottish Gold Neil DL Clark

Whilst still feeling ill equipped for the job in hand at least I felt I had some back ground knowledge  to make a start and a stand  against toxic mining in the Sperrins in Northern Ireland. The next thing was to raise awareness, I started to write about it in as many ways as possible . Starting with a simple  email out to a few folk that I thought would be interested relating to them what I had discovered about the potential  mining camp being set up  all across the Sperrin mountains and beyond . We at once started a facebook page calling it CAMIO. Cooperation Against Mining in Omagh  followed almost immediately by an Instagram and Twitter account and we also called a public meeting . This was to be in the Bamboo Loft .

 Eighty people came to that meeting  Gordon Dunn from CAMIO  and Fidelma O Kane from Save Our Sperrins (SOS)  delivered the first CAMIO  presentation . Many parties with vested interests turned up , there were the folk from the Greencastle Peoples Office , there were folk from Dalradian, there were neighbours from Glenhordial, there were people there from Omagh town. We had the press and also local politicians .  There were other campaigners from across the Sperrins. It was an interesting meeting, one that produced  more questions than answers.  More about this in the next post.  

Life

It was itching around in me all day long, nagging beneath the surface of my consciousness, like a barely noticeable shadow .Troubled by the cross currents of thoughts and emotions swirling around within, yesterday it made me tired . A needling presence bringing a sharp intake of breath every time it broke through. It wasn’t conscious avoidance , more like one of life’s small daily irritations. Snapping under its admonition, plunging into surrender knowing it would reveal itself through writing, I aquiesce, switch on the laptop and begin to write, glancing at the clock and smiling wryly, three quarters of an hour beyond mid night .

Was it one tiny part of a single conversation yesterday, a word , a phrase, or was it the low water mark at the end of a year of campaigning, a year of “being a somewhat reluctant conscientious protector” of the living world ? Who knows? But to use a cliche, something rattled my cage . All day today I wondered why I care ? I ask myself why is the natural world so important to me, beyond being a location that provides me with a place to call home with stuff to live off. As someone pointed out to me in the last 24 hours, “sure at the end of the day it does not matter, we probably won’t survive as a species, the biosphere will shrug us off and continue on , changed in so many ways, it may recover or not, or simply become a dead planet unsuitable to support life, and what did it matter what happened to the earth? It is irrelevant it’s going to happen anyways.” Factually that’s correct, eventually the sun will burn out and the earth will no longer be able to support life.

Why does it matter indeed? I remember as a young child about three or four years old watching a cat give birth to kittens. Even at that very baby age it felt like a precious gift to witness this life giving event, though I would have been completely unable to verbalise it. I just recall the feeling, I also recall even more vividly the surprise on hearing the kittens weak meows and knowing intrinsically and deep within my own being it was the very cry of Life. Those tiny scraps of Life were more precious than all the dolls or toys I would ever own. Why was this ?

Gradually I begin to identify what my current existential crisis is, and that it is somehow related to Life, that is my concept of Life. Life energy has chosen to show up in this, my body, it’s also given this body a conscience and the ability to communicate plus a lot of other perks .

That’s the same Life energy that is in the smallest teaspoon of soil which conservatively has about (1 × 10 to the power of 9) microorganisms or the same as the number of humans currently living in Africa ( Numbers taken from Nature magasine article Microbiology by Numbers) who say “the example numbers are mostly based on 'back of the envelope' calculations and should therefore be viewed as they were intended: ballpark figures aiming to inspire.”

But the Life in a teaspoon, or fist of soil is also much more . Ask any farmer about the Life in her soil, she will describe it first, using a number of terms such as claggy, glaury, mucky, clarty, clayey, heavy, crumbly, loamy, boggy, stoney . All of these local descriptions in a way point directly to the fertility of the soil, and to the corresponding presence or lack of the vital microorganisms, that is the Life of soil itself .

Life in my body manifests itself initially through my breath, without breath I am a lifeless cadaver. So how do I respond to the responsibility of Life choosing to show up in my body ? These are things I notice I tend to look after the body, to nourish the Life. When the body is hungry I feed it , when the body is tired I rest it. (Me) as a body has a responsibility to care for the Life that has shown up in it, if I am careless with my body, Life will choose to leave it. My body has also been given the extraordinary privilege, responsibility and choice of bringing precious new Life to this astounding planet on which we live. If I choose to, by association I now get to care for other small bodies with their own precious cargos of Life until such a time as those bodies are able to nourish their own Life energy.

So going forward there seems to be an inbuilt systemic way of being for us all, that we have a responsibility to nurture Life in all its forms . At this point opinions will diverge. Some of us believe that the Life in our bodies is unique to the personal body and unrelated to the Life manifest all around us, so these bodies think that the best way to care for the Life that they have responsibility for, is to accumulate resources, far beyond what is needed to maintain Life. This is achieved at the expense of many other manifestations of Life and at this point in our time, this comprehension of how Life energy should be nourished has been the dominant culture of our world for the last few generations. The impact of this way of nurturing Life for the resource rich threatens our natural world like never before. The diminishment and total destruction of irreplaceable resources and natural Life systems is the by product of dualistic thinking and our ultimate separateness from nature, from Life. We are out of balance and Life is becoming precarious for us all because of theses beliefs. Us with our resource rich body support systems do nothing to nurture the Life in the bodies of those who are resource poor .Those who are barely clinging on, whose struggle is a gargantuan daily task to merely maintain Life in their bodies, should those bodies be made of just one cell or many millions of cells.

Before that though, for millennia we knew the presence of Life to be something greater than our mere mortal bodies . Again and again it has been shown that indigenous peoples had no separate word for Nature, no conception of being apart from Nature. Why is it we have forgotten we all come from some indigenous people somewhere? Where have we lost the memory or the knowledge that all Life is the same Life energy? That we are all manifestations of Life and deeply connected to that Life. From the lowliest single cell amoeba to the great Leviathan whales of the deep, from the extraordinary cathedrals of the Amazon rainforests to the magnificent kelp forests of the ocean floors, from the aching dry Atacama desert to the glaciers of the Himalaya. That the life extant everywhere is us all, the very state of being alive means we are connected one to the other, to the sentient and the non sentient, the living rocks beneath us being the foundations of our biosphere.Connected to and part of the mystery of Life.

Life is a treasure a precious jewel, awaking this morning to a sunny day I am immensely grateful that I am alive a witness to Life. The whispering Maples outside my bedroom window were singing their song of Life. The noisy cockerel and his four ladies getting themselves ready for breakfast, looking after the Life that had shown up in them . Walking with a cup of coffee around my garden, checking out some new plants I had recently planted. I noticed that some of the blue eyed grass had not yet opened their tiny little faces to the sun. I noticed the young bull finches searching for dandelion seeds purposefully left to grow so that they could eat the seeds and nourish the Life within them.

It is impossible now to live without impacting Life on earth, for us not to impact on it, we would need not to have been born. However we human beings are beginning to realise that if we continue to use our resources in unsustainable ways, both our geo resources and our bio resources, we are going to end up in trouble . Life will gradually leave, first in small ways but in ever widening circles until we too, Homo sapiens are abandoned by Life and maybe that’s a good thing. I say this because of the wealth, depth, variety of non human Life is so huge and so varied that really Homo sapiens only makes up tiny percentage of all this vibrancy but has such a huge impact on the whole, that in truth Life, the whole of, would be better off without us .

So is this what is bugging me and the ultimate source of this essay, survival of the human race, my own investment in it because of the Life I brought to bear? I suspect it is, without Life we are nothing and the important stewardship of Life that we were blessed with has been wasted. Nonetheless in the future when folk approach me with irritation, at an awareness raising event in relation to the impact of toxic mining on our Life here in Northern Ireland , calling me a disgrace; When those who are farmers who have a stewardship of the land, who should know better tell me I am wasting their time and that the environmental damage is irrelevant; When people I know well, pass me in the street and are unable to meet my eye because they feel the beat of Life throbbing in their own deep hearts core, I ask you all whats it like in the small hours of the night?

.

The Camio Story Part 1

The Permaculture Farm and Nature Reserve
with Glenhordial Reservoir in the Back Ground

Today is CAMIO'S first birthday.To celebrate our Ist year as conscientious protectors of our Natural World we are launching our new blog . And here it is CAMIO'S first blog post. This time last year we started out on a journey that began with an action followed by a conversation . Living here in Glenhordial we often meet our neighbours on the road when we are out walking or cycling, its that kind of place that we like to stop for a chat . Chatting is useful, and one learns all sorts of things if you can just take the time to slow down and listen. One day however one of our neighbours was a little agitated and came down the lane to have a chat. He quietly told us that a company called Dalradian were carrying out exploratory drilling less than half a mile away from us. I was astonished and appalled and also inclined not to believe him so of course I went to see for myself and yes within 250 Mt's our local waterworks Glenhordial reservoir which is the main water supply for the town of Omagh in Northern Ireland, was a small exploratory drilling rig working away and no-one knew it was there!

Dalradian Drilling Rig for Prospecting

It was appalling news . I instantly imagined the waste, destruction ruin and devastation, how the country would be laid waste. Little did I know that in a few short months I would be even more concerned for our very health and well being as I began to understand the full implications of what mining in the Sperrins would bring to the lives and lively hoods of everyone who lives there.From the very deepest part of my being I was shouting No! No! No!. Images captured in the video below rioted through my head. Memories of time spent living beside the biggest mine in Australia Mount Isa came flooding back.

Images of the Sperrins and Toxic Mining

15 Second video

My next action was to ring my friend Gordon Dunne who is the chief source of all the photos on this blog. He flies a paraglider and has been flying for many years in the wonderful skies above the Sperrins I asked him had he seen much signs of prospecting in this area? His first response was NO but later that evening he came back after looking through his archive of photos and this is what he discovered. Six if not seven drilling rigs working in the area ! See aerial photo below.More to follow with this story .

Sites of Exploratory Drilling Rigs

in the Glenhordial area July 2018.