Liberating Wings

Guatemala Scarlet Macaw Chick Exam

Examining Avian and Human Virtue

At long last I have up a video in three parts that shows the Wildlife Conservation Society team of veterinarians and biologists examining wild Scarlet Macaw nest in Guatemala. It depicts a fairly thorough physical examination of wild parrots that is possible under field conditions. We learned so much about the birds, and about ourselves while doing this work in April of 2009. As you watch these videos perhaps you too can learn about what it means to be human in a community of mixed species, for me a primary religious, ethical, and hence scientific question. Like us, birds have the virtues of caring, compassion, protection, prudence, and nurturance. The parents care for their young, feed them, protect them, treat them with kindness, while also keeping a safe distance from we humans climbing the trees. You can hear the parents calling out in warning while we handle the chicks.

 

Like us, birds are anxious for the well being of other birds.  The calling of the parents echoes our own anxiety about what will happen to the younger chick, and what can we possibly do to save this one bird, let alone an entire species that is under threat from poaching, forest fires, and habitat loss that results from an economic system that is based on addiction – to consumerism, to drugs, to satisfying one’s own needs, now, at the costs of meeting others basic needs.

 

Like us, birds demonstrate perseverance, strength, and adaptability.  The youngest chick in this nest (the second one to be examined) is frightfully thin and over the next several weeks falls further and further behind in weight as her/his sibling thrives. Yet the bird lives for several more weeks as one or both parents still feed the ailing chick.

 

 

Like us, birds are beautiful, defiantly so as it seems against all odds that such a rainbow of colors and social complexity survives from egg to the powerful, gliding adults circling over us during the examination. How did such beauty come into existence and how shall it survive we ask? To answer this question we continue to examine our own lives, our own complicity in a system fraught with harm for ourselves and others, and we continue to examine these birds and their chicks, for the hope of understanding what is ours to do in this world. How shall we liberate ourselves as we liberate the birds, and love ourselves as all our neighbors?

A Bird's Eye View on Earth Day

                                                                   

                       

  Scarlet Macaw Parents Flying During Chick Exam (photo by Marcial Alvarez, WCS)

 

I arrive back to the USA on Earth Day, a fitting point of reflection to capture my month in Guatemala.  I recall an editorial in the Prensa Libre on April 21 about “Día de la Tierra.”  The author said that the earth like our body can regenerate and that it has mechanisms to break out of the ashes of a crushed forest, but only to a certain point. I wonder if we are getting close that point as I recall my month of fire and ashes in a country that loses more trees per year than Brazil, losing about 1% of its natural resources every year. When asked who is responsible for this I heard such anger, shame, and remorse come from the hearts and mouth of Guatemaltecos. Blame was placed on themselves, other biologists and conservationists, the narcotraficantes, the government, the wealthy, the indigenous people, the land invaders, and internationals.  One conservationist described people as porquería (garbage) and others said that their hope for the future comes from the possibility that the human species to go extinct.  It was rare that I heard praises sung of our kind.  If we cannot have faith in humankind’s good, I wonder if we might turn to the birds to see what they see in us and what they might say…..

 

               You ask me what I see in you when I look down on you from a high.  I see such caring and compassion.  You are spending so much effort and resources to save my kind from annihilation.  There is kindness in your voice when you speak to my chicks below during your exams and when one of our chicks is sick I can feel your heart carry the concern with you as you walk from my home to yours.  And still you find a way to laugh, play, and care for one another in your conservation projects.  We share so much – we too care, protect, and prudently care for others and ourselves.

 

                

              

            I worry though about how you see yourselves.  There is blame in your voice and disgust of your own species.  We don’t experience this as parrots.  Perhaps it is because you don’t have the over view vista that we have.  Blame isn’t even in our behavioral repertoire.  What we see is that we all are beings interacting in complex ways trying to meet our individual and collective needs.  There is no bad or good, just the process of ecology.

 

               This doesn’t mean that I don’t get angry with you.  You’ve heard my voice call out when you take my chicks’ temporarily from the nest. It is hard to trust your kind in general for from up here I see my forest burning, my food trees being cut down, and those who do not replace my chicks once they are roughly taken from by beloved nest cavity.

 

 

               Even still I wish your kind no harm. I wish you well for my heart aches for you.  There is such addiction in you, for I’m guessing you wish to still the pain.  If only you could see what I see and know in my being.  We are all inextricably interrelated, we are one.  If I could give you anything it would be this knowing that I have; that happiness isn’t what life is about.  The best that we can is to rise in love and in awareness of beauty out of the ashes of death.

 

               We have a legend of our kind that we share with you – the Phoenix Bird as some call her.  From her far up view as she circles the earth she can spot the fires over Guatemala and her heart breaks as she sees life disappear and suffer. 

 

Guatemalan Fires 2005

 

But from that view she sees too the beauty of the whole, so she flies on and on, tail dipping in ashes and feathers burning with fiery loss.  Though sometimes she falls to the earth under the burden of awareness, always she rises again with lightness in her heart. There is no other path for her. To hold the love and light she must also hold the darkness and the despair.  As the witness for mother earth she holds us all in love, compassion, and kindness, no matter the harm we experience or cause.  Hers is not an easy path, nor is yours, or ours.  But we are not alone.

 

 

We travel together, helping each other fly above the mess of our daily lives to see the long perspective – that we are here to love another, love the earth, and love ourselves.  Even though there is pain, there is always love.  Love may not be enough to quench the fire of human desire, in this moment, in this decade, but I see it rising in you ever stronger throughout the years. 

 

I want so desperately for my chicks to grow up and fly free.  This too I wish for you and all your kind that your hearts soar like the Phoenix.   May we all fly free together, forever.

 

Vuele juntos y vuele libre, para siempre!

 

             Wearing the "Fly Free" wristbands during a chick exam    

Bearing Fire in Love

For the last 5 days we have been at several areas climbing nests, El Peru, El Burral, and La Corona.  These are the same three areas that the Prensa Libre newspaper states on April 14^th have out-of-control forest fires threatening.  Indeed air around the nests is getting increasingly hazy and one cannot escape the smell of smoke in the air.   There are biological stations (rustic camp sites) at all three areas which serve as staging points for biologists, the army, CONAP (those in charge of protected areas in Guatemala), and us.

(El Peru Station)

La Corona is the farthest, a 6-hour drive from Flores.  It is also possibly my favorite because it seems that the deeper we go into the forest, we enter not the heart of darkness, but the heart of light and love.  Flora and fauna abound, and this permeates into our own beings.  With every gut wrenching jolt in the road it seems clearer and clearer to me that I am not separate from jaguar, macaw, tree, monkey, and ape (that would be we humans). 

If I am one both with forest and fire starter, then it seems that I too am on fire, and am killing what I love.  This is not an easy truth to hold but the beauty and tragedy call to my soul to be a chalice that can hold fire and light, and forest and darkness together.  Every tree climbed may show us sick or dying chicks, nests emptied from predators both human and nonhuman, or bright rainbow splashes of bird being that are displayed as the chicks grow into their feathers for their first flight.

 

 (Scarlet Macaw chick in nest - photo by Marcial Cordova Alvarez, WCS)

We never know what the news will be, or what each day will hold for us.  On Saturday, April 18 we got up at 3:30 a.m. to leave at  5 a.m. for El Burral, a two-hour drive into the forest with 4 macaw nests along the way.  We don’t get very far before the air changes with a sense of warmth too early for the sun’s position, and then around the next curve, fire erupts along the side of the road.  We get out to calm the flames down and ride on, only to find the fire and burned areas becoming increasingly more abundant on both sides of the road.  We grow concerned because the fire is close to macaw nest trees. 

 Soon we find the road blocked with burning trees, but we are four with two machetes and we clear the way.  With us this day are Melvin Merida (veterinarian WCS), Alejandro Morales (veterinarian ARCAS) and Kender -tut Rodriguez, climber and tortilla maker par excellence.  Further on there are more downed trees and if we can’t cut up the trees and pass on the road, we make a path through the forest and go around. 

(Kender fighting forest fire with machete)

Atop a hill we find telephone reception and call WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) headquarters to let them know of the threat and they send their biologists to the field for the next several days to clear out brush around the nest trees so they won’t burn.  Over the weekend it seems that WCS personnel are alone in fighting the fire and saving what life they can.  There is a tremendous shortage of resources, and perhaps coordination and will as well.  We leave the last nest unclimbed because it would mean we would be driving at night and this could be dangerous if we encounter more fires and blocks in the road, which we in fact do. It’s a long drive out from the fire area as every kilometer or so we disembark with machetes to find a way forward.

 

 (Burning tree blocking road)

 

(Melvin and Kender glad to get truck around block in road)

What is the way forward?  How do we look at a dying bird and see a smile shining through it, feel the glory? (see previous post "Preying and Praying for Life") How do we determine what is killing our planet and what is ours to do?  

(A female Masked Tityra found on side of road as we come out of the fire. She has just died and we cannot fathom why)

How do we have faith that our attempts will be enough?  That love is enough?  How do we go on knowing that our work or our love may never be enough to build the world we wish to live in?

(Melvin fighting fire with our drinking water)

I leave these questions unanswered for now for I leave tonight for Guatemala City on an overnight bus, to catch a flight on Tuesday, April 21.  Suggestions for which bus to take are abundant, and part of this discussion includes which ones are most likely to get robbed.  This is mentioned as casually as the other considerations such as likelihood that the air conditioner will work, that the bus will be late, and that I will be able to get any sleep. I experience confusion as well as gratitude that I have privileges and can afford safe transportation, when others ride in terror.  Since January 1, 2009, 43 drivers and driver assistants have been murdered in Guatemala.  This happens during robberies and when a particular driver refuses to pay the extortion fees to the gangs that roam the streets. It is perplexing to me that we live in a world where violence and harm are taken for granted, where we allow forests to burn with little intervention and people to be murdered in the streets. 

 

Not everyone is passive. Every week in the paper there are reports of towns that hunt down those committing violence or robbery, and hang them, burn them, or both.  My path does not lie in that direction, of using more violence to end violence.  The world and my heart have experienced enough of that.  Instead I look to the work of WCS and ARCAS.  They yield machetes, hammers, syringes, binoculars, cameras, and computers as they fight, sweat, and toil for what they love, with their love.  Their hearts lead the way through the darkness as shing chalices of hope.  In the forest my eyes burn from the smoke, my tears mix with the ashes of the beloved forest, and I lend what moisture I can to a world on fire as my heart fills with joy for knowing these people and their land.

 (ARCAS Veterinarians Fernandez Martinez and Alejandro Morales, WCS Volunteer Merlina Barnes, and me at ARCAS)

Around the year 500 CE “Fire is Born” came from Tenochuacan (current Mexico City) conquering Mayan cities, including Tikal.  The first evidence of him entering the Mundo Maya (the Mayan World) is on a stella in El Peru, where I spend my last night in the forest.

 

(Stella at El Peru)

I go to sleep, my dreams dancing with moon and stars and wonder what shall be born from this experience of fire.  My dear people, what sparks in you that we might turn to one another with the hope of love, and a prayer of forgiveness and peace in our hearts?

 

(Flag placed atop hill of town Paso Caballos right outside the Mayan Biosphere Reserve.  It indicates that today is dangerous to use fire to clear land)

Sounds Along the Ages

 Slaty Tailed Trogon

 (Listen to some bird songs in the early morning)

 

We are back in Flores for one night before heading off to other nest areas in the opposite direction of where we were yesterday.  Entering the Mayan Biosphere Reserve is as if we were suddenly transported to a place where animals magically appear for us to view.  There is a cheerfulness in the arriving.  When we leave the reserve, we don’t see or hear nearly as many beings in the midst of smoke and ash, and there is a sense of loss.  It is as if we go forward in time when we enter the world of devastation when the world is more and more like this every day, and it is as if we go backwards in time when we enter the forest, and hear the sounds along the ages.

(Listen to Howler Monkeys in the Reserve)

(Listen to a Scarlet Macaw parent call during our examination of his or her chick - Dr. Melvin Merida presiding)

Ruined for Life

I’d been in the field for nine days and we come out with a car full of people to return to the city of Flores and to the other cities nearby where the biologists live.

 

While staying in Flores I learn the history of this island, once known as Tayasal. It was the last stronghold of the Mayan people before being entirely conquered by the Spanish with their military and missionary tactics.  We too retreat to it as a stronghold of conservationists, for it is the home of the Wildlife Conservation Society, Guatemala and ARCAS (Asociación de Rescate y Conservación de Vida Silvestre – Wildlife Rescue and Conservation Association).  They both have toiled for over 15 years to keep birds free in their natural homes, and to liberate those imprisoned, including the human heart.

 

 (Captive raised Scarlet Macaws getting ready to produce the second generation - ARCAS)

It is Semana Santa (Holy Week) and a time when the country basically stops for vacation, going to the playa (beach), eating fish, and watching the processiones. (parades).  Each day here and in towns all around the country people walk around their cities carrying large platforms of carved characters that play out the Easter story according to Christianity.

 

Here we see vestiges of more ancient rites as the streets are adorned with artwork (alfombras) made up of painted sawdust, fruits and vegetables, and plant material.  When asked, one Mayan woman told me her art was an offering of gratitude to God.  These are walked over by parade participants, ruined perhaps as a sign of the transitory nature of life and an offering of God’s gift of life in the presence of so much death and decay.

 

 (Before the parade - photo by Merlina Barnes, WCS Volunteer)

 

(Same art after the parade)

I spend my Easter morning traveling out to the Yaxhá Mayan Ruins.  I am seeing parrots everywhere, in symbol if not in reality for one guide tells us that the parrot chicks are stolen from the nests here.  The symbol of the park is Mayan art of a macaw and we spend time puzzling over the Stela de Pájaros, a huge stone monolith with carvings of birds all over it. I ask our guide what this means and what birds meant to the Mayans, and he cannot say.

 

 (Bird Stela)

As we scramble up and down pyramids, I cannot help but wonder how the Mayans loved over the millennia and if their lives had joy and meaning, and how they translated this into their treatment of each other and the mundo (world) around them.  We see evidence of the rise, fall, and rise again of these people who built city states in the forest, warred with one another, and over populated their environment beyond sustainability.  This doesn’t seem so far removed from the reality today with the drug cartel strongholds sprinkled throughout the forest which is reported to be 50% to 80% desparacidos (disappeared) depending on with whom you talk.

 

 

We have rested up during our four days here, considered alternative strategies, and return today to my last week here where I hope we can climb as many Scarlet Macaw nests as possible in a relative small area where they have retreated. Still it will take us hours to get to some nests and the weather promises to be over 100 throughout the week. 

I wonder if some time in the future those who inherit the ever hotter winds of this forest will walk along paths of our ruins, marveling at conservation stations, artificial nest boxes, and engraved signs with scarlet macaws on them.  What stella do we leave behind for others to puzzle over what birds and bosque (forest) meant to us and why we warred so much only to lose what was most precious to us?  Will they find evidence of how we loved and discover a pattern of how we connected our values to our treatment of all species, especially the ones that are the hardest to love, those of our own species?

Let this part of the Reserve not be the last of its kind, but a flowering that gives seed to the birth not of nations, competing drug cartels, or fortressed family homes, but of a home for all beings.  May our desires fall like ruins about our feet, for the sake of all life.

 

(I’ll be gone to the field, so catch updates on the nest climbing on Twitter – you can sign up here on this site)

Preying and Praying for Life

(Riding up to the nests with journalists from National Geographic, family members, volunteers, and biologists - all eager to see beauty)

We come to our last nest of the second week of macaw chick observation here with a near fiesta atmosphere.  Our ailing chicks from last week that we treated are improved, and the one failing chick has food in his crop this morning.  His hunger cries do not disturb our mornings, though the calls of his aggrieved circling parents haunt my soul, as do those ghosts of all birds I have known and lost.  There is something primal, emotionally deep and so very real in their voices that speak of threat and unanswerable pain.  Indeed there will be losses this morning. 

The very last nest we climb that contained two relatively healthy chicks last week is now empty, their rainbow visions now only for cameras, never to soar over this earth. 

(Beloved chicks captured forever on film and in hearts - photo by Merlina Barnes, WCS Volunteer)

Evidence points to the nest being predated by a Collared Forest Falcon, who in feeding its own must kill another’s.  It seems a final statement on all the tragedies of a country beset by poverty, violence, and genocide.  Human beings must harm to survive, but desmasiado (too much).

We walk back from the nest through Mayan ruins and we hear above us a Forest Falcon calling.  It’s voice taunting us from above echoes through the forest and in our hearts.  Melvin climbs over covered ruins in pursuit of a closer view and picture of this wondrous predator.  Now he is the one stalking beauty that beats within the same breast as does tragedy and death.  If we forgive the falcon in a matter of minutes, might we learn somehow to forgive our own species?

I recall a quote from the movie, The Thin Red Line.  The hero caught up in the destruction of World War II in the Pacific looks down and sees a parrot chick struggling in ashes, bombed out of it’s nest from the shelling on the enemy line. The soldier muses, “One man looks at a dying bird and thinks there’s nothing but unanswerable pain.   Another man sees that same bird and feels the glory – feels something smiling through it.” 

In my return to parrot conservation in Guatemala I recall the pain of loss and death, for it is with me always, but I also cannot, and will not be separated from the beauty of falcon, forest, and fires, for they are in me too.  We humans come out of the ashes of dead stars, out of earth, out of Africa, and to ashes and dust we return.  Our foot prints on this world need not mark our days with thoughts of only harm, for in the history and evolution of our past is the story of wholeness, and though this web of life catches us with messy interconnection, I pray we can answer the ravaging ways of our kind with love and with forgiveness.  Kindness and earth first, for there is never a second chance for this moment again, no matter what it brings.

 Praying Together With Life

(baby Howler Monkey at ARCAS Rescue Center near Flores, Peten, Guatemala)

A Work of Love

 

If you have this world a place for sleep,

Burn it! and pass what merely seems;

You can’t deceive the Truth with sleepy dreams.

Let fear persuade you, and the fire is lit;

Burn your bed now if you would rise from it.

                - Farid Ud-Din Attar (Conference of the Birds – A Sufi Text)

 

My first morning at El Estacion comes before sunrise, like all the other days to come, and we head east on a road deeper into the forest over an hour on a 4-wheel drive road.  Calling it bumpy would be to under describe  it. We can drive up and park the truck, and then it is a short walk up to each nest, about a kilometer or so at the maximum.  We have five nests to climb before Friday at noon, and we’re learning that for our own sake and the birds’ you better be done long before the day reaches that level of heat.

 (Climber up a Macaw Nest Tree - A Cantemo Tree)

My veterinary role here is clear. I am to consult with and train the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS Guatemala) ) veterinarian, Melvin Merida, as well as any other workers on the climbing teams.  It has been nearly 14 years since I did this work and it’s as if not a day has passed.  I know this work, I love it; it was a gift to me then to be able to do it and it is now a gift I can offer others. 

 

They seem deeply appreciative and our climbs are full of awe and wonder, as well as worry and concern as we find some chicks shining with their rainbow colors in undeniable health, while others are thin with mites and fly strike, and one is in poor condition and I think it will not survive.

 

 

I also have a few other sombreros I wear here as well, including that of conducting a pilot ethno-ornithological study (this is great fun for me try to pronounce this in Spanish, let alone explain it).  I ask a lot of questions as we ride, hike, and share meals together.  One question stands out in particular because I am surprised with the consistency of the answer.  What do you make of your work and of the Scarlet Macaw conservation effort, including our work this year with the parrot chicks?  Across the board at all levels, from technician to administrator, I hear something like this;  I work with the birds because I love them, or I am encantado (charmed, delighted, bewitched).   I ask where does the love come from and they say it is because they work with them. Through their work comes their love as they grow in understanding of the lives of these birds over the long, hard years of front line conservation.  For others the love comes instantly as one tells me that he had always been a reptile and amphibian man, and then he climbed his first Scarlet Macaw nest and in the moment when he saw the chicks in the nest he had a conversion experience.  It was love that he says grows stronger every day.   

A number of them also answer they have a love of the birds because it supplies a paying job, and this is important to them and their families.   Some move their hands in a sign eating food while they tell me this.  Indeed, I wonder how one can love anything when one is in the position of having to destroy it to merely eat each day. 

An ever bigger unknown that I hear throughout the ranks here is why are people who are in the position of abundant wealth destroying the bosque (forest)?   One biologist told me that the survival of the bosque depends entirely on how much private land owners love the birds and another said it is difficult for them to save their land from burning it when they do not live on their ranches and have not grown to love it, to work with it and the people day in and day out.  So many of these land owners manage from afar, it being too dangerous or too difficult to live where you work. 

It is difficult here, but there is also glory and joy.

 

(Melvin getting a climbing lesson)

Some find a way to love what also through their hands has set this place on fire with human desire.  These desires though are not just for survival or wealth, but for beauty, awe, wonder, love, and the chance for meaningful work.  I see this in Melvin and young Sandra, a Mayan young girl from the neighboring village of Paso Caballos as she scrambles around the station barefoot with her three younger siblings. 

 

Shyly she finally comes up to me and we talk as the sun sets into the smoky haze, made worse this day because a fire from a milpa in her village has gotten out of control and threatens the reserve.  I ask her what she wants to do when she grows up and she looks confused (there are three languages at work here – English, Spanish, and her Mayan dialect).  So I rephrase it, “What do you like to do most in the world?”  She answers, “I like to walk in the monte (country).”

I fear though that by the time she is my age there will not be enough country for her children to walk in.  For a variety of reasons too many of we humans have become strangers on this planet and are destroying what we love.  We have made our bed and now must sleep in it.  What though if we don’t sleep in it? We wake instead from our dreams and greet each day with the wisdom of reality and then get to work with the birds, with the forest, with the oceans, and with each other.  Then love may come and this nightmare may end.

 

(Hazy sunrise from fires nearby)

Quest for Fire

 

 

(Monteczuma Orependala)

The fire surrounds you, and with every breath

The scorching flames reach out and threaten death;

But they are quenched when we achieve our goal,

And look – there waits asylum for your soul.

                                   Farid Ud-Din Attar (Conference of the Birds – A Sufi Poem)

   In order to look, to see, to witness, I continue my journey north to Isla de Flores (Flower Island) on Sunday night, March 30 and I notice what everyone notices when they get off the plane from Guatemala, it’s hot.  Of course, I don’t know what hot is until several days later when we hit about 105 or so degrees at the Estacion Biologico Guacamaya (Macaw Biology Station) in the Laguna Tigre National Park.  There we only get electricity from about 6 p.m. – 9 p.m., and no air conditioning.  The amenities there are quite lovely though.  Mot-mot birds come to bathe me in beauty as I sweat over a pre-sunrise bowl of cereal, howler monkeys constantly gracing the trees above with their pure demonstrations of nature’s power and triumph, and Red-lored Amazons tittering excitedly about the thrills of forest life and the mysteries of darkly shadowed nest cavities.

 

 

Another thing I notice in Flores and later at the Station is what exists everywhere in Guatemala, or near abouts; the smell of smoke.  Except here it seems stronger, which is hard to believe after breathing in the destruction of the south coast with the fires of sugar cane.  The front page of the paper, the Prensa Libre, in fact speaks to the fires that are threatening the national parks of Guatemala and the Reserva Biosfera Maya (Maya Biosphere Reserve). 

These fires rise up for many reasons, the major one of which are the invasores (invaders) that come to the Reserve to set up infrastructure for the narcotraficantes (drug traffickers).  The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) office this Monday morning is all a buzz with the article because it highlights the areas they study and protect.  In fact, it shows pictures of a clandestine airstrip near where we will be working and the threatened river San Pedro over which the Station perches. 

 

The publicity is working because the army arrives in the Reserve promptly to protect this bountiful forest.  In other ways, the publicity is not working because the WCS conservationists are concerned that names were included in the article, making these people a target for assessinations and kidnapping.  A couple of years ago some WCS personnel were kidnapped and help for ransom and Yiri Melini, a conservationist mentioned in this article, received death threats in the past, as has the WCS office, and Melini was fired upon.  The forest too is fired upon; smokes colors up each sunset that rises from the burning of milpas, cattle grasslands, African Palm farms, air strips, and illegal fincas (ranches). 

 

(Out of control fire from burning milpas that threatens the forest near the Station where we are staying - photo by Melvin Merida, WCS)

There is so much going against the birds and beings of this treasured forest, but I am to learn that a treasure buried deep in the realm of humanity colors the struggle against extinction, and that is the hearts, hopes, passion, and commitment of the conservationists working for a different future than the one the Prensa Libre forecasts.  It is with these people that I am to spend the next three weeks, and who bless this world with their vision of the beloved community of all species.  They risk their lives for the sake of love.

So many errors throng the world – they why

Should we not risk this quest?  To suffer blame

For love is better than a life of shame.

            Farid Un-Din Attar

Trees of Life, Trees of Death

From the heights of tierra alta I ride down through the volcano pass to la Costa Sur00 in (south coast).  I am in the good company of Marco Centeno and Dr. Juan Pablo Duarte Sagastume.  In the early nineties I worked with them in Proyecto de Loros (Guatemala Psittacine Project).  Marco was a student biologist that worked with us, and in those years, Juan Pablo was a student at San Carlos University studying veterinary medicine.  We reunite to count the Yellow-naped Amazon (loro) in their roost site in our study area and to purvey the changes over the last time we were here in 1995.  The loros roosted in a group of trees near the corals of Finca Ilusiones, some 100 thebreeding season in which we are now, and over 200 in the nonbreeding season.  In that breeding season of 1995 the three fincas we worked with started converting from cattle ranching to sugar cane, and we lost half of our nest trees that season.  We fear the worse of what the fires of desire might have wrought to these birds, their remaining nest trees, and the roost site.

(Cain, Marco, Juan Pablo)

Using Google Earth I believed I could see that some of the trees were still standing, but not the tallest two, one of which could be seen from miles away, named La Chinga Ceiba becauseit was so difficult to climb and we lost much gear learning to climb up to the loro nest over 30 meters above us.  As we approach the finca I cannot see and only hope that there are some trees there left.  Outside of the finca we meet up with Don Ernesto, administrator of the finca.  We worked with him years ago in the time when the previous administrator had been killed by the guerillas in the sugar cane fields to which we travel now.  When asked about the changes that sugar cane has brought and he says it is “doloroso” (painful) to see the changes in the 37 years he has lived here.  Cain Hernandez drives up in a rusty truck with his family to join us.  He was a main stay and foundation for our project all those years ago. The kidding begins immediately, the introductions end, and we drive down the dusty road to the corals, every 100 meters asking, “Is life still there?  Do the trees still stand?”

 

Indeed they do, and Google Earth was correct, the two tallest Ceibas are gone, one still with a burned remnant of a trunk pointing towards the sky, like an exclamation mark.  I walk around the remaining trees and see that there is little burn damage and they, with care, might just make it another decade or so.  But will there be any parrots to perch in their branches?

 

As the sun sets and darkness comes, we settle down in the burned sugar cane fields whispering our awe when we see our first lone parrot flying over the roost trees, likely headed off to a nest somewhere.  Then a pair comes in and we grow excited.  They are still here!  Though by dark’s final approach, we count only 12 among us – down to about 15 % of what once was.  They all came in pairs, no visible juvenile flocks gather that once were the predominant demographic in the nonbreeding season.  With the approximate 95% poaching rate of our times, it is no wonder that there are no young birds to replace their dwindling elders.

 

Usually at this time the loud conversations and squabbles of the parrots settle down into a peaceful gratitude for the stars above, but in this moment, all we hear is the clamor of the constant movement of sugar cane trucks in every direction.  There are no stars to see, obscured by the haze of fire and dust from the dirt roads. The only lights we see are the headlights of sugar cane trucks.

 

There is death in these fields and we all carry the mark of responsibility.  Who here does not consume food with sugar from Guatemala, the 3^rd largest producer of sugar in the world?  I leave the field with ashes from the burned Ceiba smeared on my forehead in this season of Lent, reminding me of the sacrifice of the land for our human desires and how if not hope, then love may be resurrected.  In fact, it never leaves us though the birds and trees do.  This is the cross we all carry, loss and dolor (pain) which shines the mirror of our heart to reflect ever more the beauty within and without.

We drive down the dusty road in silence, with beauty behind us, before us, above us, and below us. In us.  Amen.

 

A Seed in the Ashes

If feathers and birds are a sign of love, what then of fire and ashes?

 

 

I leave Mariana Aviaries in the good company of Olmeo Duarte Sagastume, once famous Guatemalan soccer player and brother of my good friend and colleague Juan Pablo Duarte Sagastume.  We detour up the road, La Reforma, to get an overview of the sugar cane and to see if I can see if any of the amazon roost trees are still standing in Finca Las Ilusiones.  We are blocked from driving because of a fallen tree.  It fell because the burning of land to plant sugar cane got out of hand and hit the trunk of this elder tree. 

 

 

Instead we take a detour into the burning fields, adorned by Turkey Vultures eating what lies dead in the fields.  We hear a pair of amazons with their fierce territorial calls in a nearby field, shouting in protest perhaps at so much destruction around them, perhaps even their own nest or food trees now gone. 

 

The next morning we visit ARCAS (ASOCIACION DE RESCATE Y CONSERVACION DE VIDA SILVESTRE) headquarters in Guatemala City guests of Colum Muccio, Director.  This group is doing an amazing number of projects with a variety of species in many parts of Guatemala.  Together we talk of the loss of habitat and the difficulty of the work, and here too I see hope in their work over the years and how much they have contributed to conservation in Guatemala.  I knew them when they were but a few people and a few cages of birds in El Peten.  Now they have hundreds of volunteers working with them every year and have taken on collaboration to save the Scarlet Macaw, a project I will join in 3 days.  Colum says that no matter the situation, we continue to look through “rose-colored” glasses so that we can sustain the work.  We talk of many ways Lafeber Conservation might aid their efforts in the future, and in reality, it is ARCAS that supports me and others with their courageous persistence over the years.

 

Olmeo outside ARCAS

Our next stop is lunch with Dr. Dennis Guerra Centeno, faculty in wildlife management and veterinary medicine at San Carlos University. 

 

 

We talk with animation of many possible projects together and of what excites them and gives them hope.  Multidisciplinary approaches get all our hearts beating fuller and with more joy, the secret that somehow we didn’t realize a few decades back is that it is in the collaboration of all, all beings and all ways of knowing that we might sustain one another and perhaps this beloved planet.  One wonderful development is their  new program of offering a Masters in wildlife management.  We visit their veterinary hospital and the donated birds they use for teaching. 

 

It’s been a full day for us investigating the world of nonhuman animals, and it’s been a full day for the world of humans too in Guatemala.  In the capital city, there were attacks on several buses in the capital city placing the city in a panic, for several people died, including a 2 month old baby caught in the fire as the robbers killed the bus driver.  Retired General Rios, son of Ex-president Rios Montt who was responsible for much of terror during the years of genocide, was arrested for corruption.  The wife of an attorney for the Procuraduria de los Derechos Humanos (PDH), a Human Rights Commission) was kidnapped and tortured, only 11 hours after the commission published a report on how the National Police committed atrocities during the armed conflict of the previous two decades.  Other members of this Commission have received death threats.  The  mayor of El Asintal was assassinated.  

I go to bed thinking of the rose colored glasses that Colum mentioned, and if it’s a lie to seek joy, and work as if it mattered in the midst of so much tragedy and suffering.  For me the way through is with love. I do not know if love is enough, but it is all that there is when it comes to burning fields, screeching parrots, and crying parents of murdered babies.  A song rises up over the din, and I fall asleep thinking of how love is like a flower, and we are its only seeds