In a previous post, here, I mentioned a project by Megan Hollingsworth that involved creating a film called “Virgin“. Megan put the project out there for crowdfunding. Now the film has been made and can be seen here.
Megan quotes the Palo Alto Medical Foundation:
“Virgin was a label of strength and independence by being used to describe the goddesses who were immune to the temptations of Dionysus, Greek god of seduction and wine. Virginity was once a term of power.”
The film is a gentle, eloquent plea. It begins with some haunting singing which has something primeval, archaic about it; I imagine forests of trees that have been standing for centuries, even millenia. They have witnessed so much time in their long lives. The film is a plea to protect them, to spare them the savage devastation that has wrecked so much of the natural world. Megan calls, sings, recites from the depths of her heart and from her past with a poignant passion. She feels keenly for forest destruction and feels the invasion into the lands of uncontacted, tribal people, as a violation of herself. Her boundaries, her body and her being were once violated; now she can say “No”.
The words are simple and beautiful, the film, a filmpoem. It takes courage to speak out and create something beautiful from a terrible experience, and send it, as a plea, into the world.
Extinction Witness supports many of the organisations that mean a lot to me: Survival International, Pachamama Alliance and others.
The Boar Hide is shrouded in trees and overlooks a glade where wild boar come to forage. We spent some evenings watching the scene silvered by the light of a waxing moon.
But we also went for walks, tended the fire – The smells of woodsmoke and yellow bloom linger in my memory – cut wood, filtered water, showered in sun-warmed water and read; heard nightingales, cicadas, frogs in the depositos and the river that never slept.
The River Lodge is a tented “cabin” perched on a platform on rocks overlooking the River Sever below. The river suffused my days and dreams. The moon embedded overhead, shone like a pearl and spilt into the waters below; vapour trails of planes became waves across the shores of the night sky. Mayflies, butterflies, frogs and snakes came by day and at dusk, crepuscular toads crept too inquisitively close to the fire. 
One day, we found the bones of an animal and wondered whether they belonged to a boar. I sent photos to the experts to find out. They’re bones of a horse apparently… I think of some poor, stray animal lost in the hills and vales without a rider…
