Mountains: Stones of Silence

Remote and inaccessible, mountains tower above the valleys and plateaus where most of humanity seeks shelter, their rocky peaks emerging out of the mist like islands floating above the clouds. For early travellers, mountains’ brooding and daunting profile made them places to be avoided rather than embraced, the setting for harsh winters, violent winds and lashing rainfall, home to avalanches, floods and rockfalls. Yet there is a benevolent aspect to these most imposing of natural monuments that symbolises eternity, evoking the stillness and solitude that religious practitioners have always sought, witnessed by the temples and places of worship erected along their stark facades, somewhere pilgrims trek to pay their respects, the site of revelations and miracles, staircase to the gods.

Life giving Waters

Mountains may look lifeless and immovable, but they are the water towers of the world, providing fresh water to half of the planet’s population. They are a major influence on regional and global climates, support irrigation, industry, domestic use and hydropower, and are home to 50 per cent of all global biodiversity hotspots. The widespread retreat of glaciers that has been observed from polar to tropical regions in recent decades makes mountains highly sensitive barometers of climate change. 

Mountain High: Bhutan, Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon

Angie and I had always dreamed of making a pilgrimage to Bhutan: the legendary Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon with its towering mountains and sparkling rivers, dense stands of oak and pine trees; an ancient land with a Buddhist culture and a tantalising hint of mystery. Flying there from India on a clear day, you might glimpse the snow-capped peak of Mount Everest situated on the crest of the Great Himalayas, on the border between Nepal and Tibet. It rises like a white obelisk, just one of many breathtaking peaks erupting into the sky. This is a view whose effects are beyond words, a transcendent moment of pure elation painted in earth-brown and white.

Challenging Ourselves

Mountains remind us of our natural inclination to challenge ourselves. Edmund Hillary, who on 29 May 1953 with Norbert Tenzing became the first to climb Mount Everest, the tallest mountain in the world, said, ‘It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves’, while the Italian Reinhold Messner, widely considered the greatest climber of all time, captured the beguiling nature of mountaineering perfectly when he said, ‘I am sure that the real key for understanding climbing is the coming back. It means if you are really in difficult places...and you come back, you feel that you got again a chance for life. You are reborn. And only in this moment, you understand deeply that life is the biggest gift we have.’ 

Creating a Clean and Green Future

Just 320 kilometres in length and barely 160 kilometres in breadth, with a population of less than one million, Bhutan may be small, but what other nation measures the wealth of its people in happiness rather than Gross Domestic Product? The Bhutanese government also lays great emphasis on protecting the environment in a country with more than 75 per cent forest cover. As Karma Tshering, organiser of a world-record tree-planting event in 2015, said, ‘Bhutan’s young generation wants a clean and green future. We will never compromise on that.’ 

The Power of Myth

We had timed our visit to coincide with the Paro festival that takes place in March/April each year at the Paro (Rinpung) Dzong, an ancient temple fortress that provides the focal point for the colourful ceremony celebrating the life and work of Lord Buddha. Bhutanese dances reflect the people’s deepest fears and most fundamental joy: the power of myth expressed forcefully through a universal language, transcending the written and spoken word. The previous evening we had dined with a senior monk or lama whom I now saw praying, his eyes tightly closed in concentration and reverence, facing the Thangka, a wall-sized tapestry depicting the Buddha Guru Rinpoche who introduced Buddhism to Bhutan in the eighth century. He greeted me warmly, then counselled me to be mindful of the sacred nature of what I was so excitedly photographing: 

 “The festival is not meant as entertainment. This is not ‘show time’. It is a celebration enacted through the power of song and dance to speak to us of the fears and joys each of us experience in life. If you do not take time to sit and be present to what is happening here, to tame the mind, then you will have lost all sense of meaning inherent in the moment. Your photographs may please the eye, but they won’t nourish your inner being. Go sit with Angie. She understands.”

 Here in Bhutan there is still a sense of being part of something more substantial than the individual. People’s belief systems are still intact, helping them to appreciate and revere all of life. As Angie and I travelled across the country, we felt a heightened sense of respect for our surroundings, inspiring us to try to achieve a more balanced and considered way of being, to absorb the ethos of Buddhism that believes in stoicism in the face of the vagaries of existence and that all life is sacred. 

Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda

Bwindi Impenetrable Forest s one of the most primeval and biologically diverse areas on Earth, a sacred space of broad-leaved trees, towering buttress-rooted figs and ankle-snagging creepers, teeming with flora and fauna. Sparkling crystal-clear streams ripple and gurgle across rock-strewn channels, creating pathways of light among the forest. By retaining moisture, the forest remains humid and warm, making it the perfect home for the transboundary Bwindi and Sarambwe (DRC) exosystem’s population of 459 mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei), approximately half the world’s 1,063 mountain gorillas according to a 2018 survey. Bwindi is to trees what the savanna is to wildebeest, reminding you that plants make up 83 per cent of the Earth’s biomass, while humans are just 0.01 per cent of it. Without plants to capture the energy of sunlight and feed the world, there would be no life. 

Bush meat and Illegal Wildlife Trade

Gorillas were slaughtered by hunters and explorers as recently as 1951 as we clung to the myth of a tyrannical monster-ape – the King Kong of cinema. Gorillas are still prized for their skulls and hands, their flesh consumed as exotic fare at dining tables in Nigeria, New York and London, despite new data confirming that humans and gorillas are about 98 per cent identical on a genetic level. In recent months levels of poaching have increased as tourism to Bwindi and Virunga dwindled in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic – fewer tourists, less park revenue, less ability to patrol and monitor the gorillas and keep poachers at bay. 

Conserving Protected Areas

Worryingly, about one third of the world’s protected areas face intense pressure from human activities – buildings, agriculture, roads and night-time lighting. Even national parks are not immune to demands from industry and governments to exploit – rather than protect – their natural resources. Virunga in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the oldest and most diverse park in Africa and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was at the centre of a bitter controversy in 2012 when it was discovered that the government had given SOCO, a British oil company (now Pharos Energy), permission to conduct seismic testing. Opposition from high-profile international figures and the British government, along with legal mediation, eventually prevailed. Worryingly, the DRC government has since said that one solution would be to de-gazette that part of the park where oil is believed to be economically viable for exploitation. This underlines the desire of many governments to partner with international companies with almost unlimited finances to exploit natural resources, even when they are within protected areas – despite the potential long-term damage to conservation imperatives and to the wellbeing of local communities, reminding us that there are no victories in conservation, only the need to remain forever vigilant on behalf of the natural world. Be sure to watch the Oscar-winning Netflix movie Virunga documenting this story: Virungamovie.com

How you can help

People often ask us “how can we help?” It is easy to believe that as individuals our voices will never be heard; that we are powerless to make a difference, that we must wait for someone else to make the changes we believe are needed, that the government can and will fix it. But reconnecting people to nature and protecting our natural environment is an urgent mission of global proportions that needs a global response. That is why we created the SNI, to amplify our message of “inspire and educate if we are to conserve.” And it starts with you. Each of us must choose to be better informed about the environment. Knowledge gives us power. Only by knowing and understanding the issues and challenges we now face can we hope to conserve the things that are important. And what could be more important than a healthy natural environment for all? It starts at home by changing our way of doing things, Step by Step the Sacred Nature Way.

Donations

Many people tell us they would like to donate to an organisation that reflects their interests and has the ability to effect change. One of the key functions of the SNI is to inform you about what we believe is working in the field of conservation and what isn’t. It might be a particular species that interests you - lions, elephants, tiger, gorillas, pangolins or penguins. Or you may want to support an organisation that focuses on a particular ecosystem that you have visited such as the Mara-Serengeti or one that you feel mirrors your concerns. For each ecosystem highlighted in our Sacred Nature books and on the SNI Website we have identified organisations that we believe are making a difference and reflect the SNI ethos of Inspire-Educate-Conserve. And of course the SNI cannot fulfil its mission without both the emotional and financial support of sponsors and donors. If you would like to support our work please reach out to us at:

hello@sacrednatureinitiative.com

Additional resources: Mountains

We have included here additional resources such as books, articles, videos, podcasts and websites of organisations making a significant contribution to Reconnecting People to Our Planet and pioneering change.

Mountain Ecosystems: Studies in Treeline Ecology: Gabriele Broll (Editor), Beate Keplin (Editor): Springer, 2005

Mountains of the Mind: Robert Macfarlane: Granta Books, 2003
Mountaineering is among the more unusual pastimes - fraught with risk. Robert Macfarlane seeks to answer the enduring question: why are we so obsessed with mountains? Once we thought monsters lived there. In the Enlightenment we scaled them to commune with the sublime. Soon, we were racing to conquer their summits in the name of national pride. MacFarlane, tries to discover why so many have an emotional attachment to the world's highest peaks, from explorers and climbers to poets and scientists, each driven by a blend of curiosity, compulsion and an ability to tolerate hostile, difficult conditions. Along the way, Macfarlane takes us up into an incredible cast of mountains: to experience their shattering beauty, the fear and risk of adventure, and to explore the strange impulses that have for centuries lead us to the world's highest places. The result is a modern classic.

The Living Mountain: Nan Shepherd: Canongate Books, 1977 (reprinted 2008)
Nan Shepherd spent a lifetime in search of the 'essential nature' of the Cairngorms in Scotland; her quest led her to write this classic meditation on the magnificence of mountains, and on our imaginative relationship with the wild world around us. It is a work deeply rooted in Nan Shepherd's knowledge of the natural world.

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