Why does Tapuio matter? There are no uncontacted tribes wandering about its mountains, no jaguars prowling its spotty fringe of trees. So far, nobody has seen any as yet unseen orchids. So economically and politically, it isn’t important. At all. I mean, it doesn’t even have a permanent population of voters. Ant eaters don’t vote.
Economically and politically, it would be much more important if somebody would just simply go in and cut down the remaining trees, plow everything up, and bring in the cows. Or build a bunch of tacky little shacks, weekend homes for hordes of visitors to come, crank up the music, fire up the grill, and blast the night away oblivious to the beauty now dead beneath their feet, calling beautiful the dead still lifeless rock around them.
I have found if there is one thing humans love better than a prison, it’s a corpse. Human, animal, the very land itself. Kill it and humans love it.
Why is Tapuio important? It isn’t. You can get great views anywhere. The Earth is full of great vantage points from which to look out at the world. And in areas where humans don’t have great vantage points, we build them, buildings so tall they are in different climate zones.
And it isn’t like Tapuio is part of some massive forest under attack by corporate greed, something that rallies young idealistic college students in a rebellious rage like nothing else. Monsanto isn’t rubbing its greedy little corporate palms over the prospect of planting genetically modified corn seeds here. They have much bigger, much better markets.
Even Monsanto doesn’t care about Tapuio.
It doesn’t matter that Tapuio is a remnant, a fringe barely registering as a smudge of Atlantic Forest, that once massive forest stretching the entire length of coastal Brazil from the Northeast to the South, home to tapirs and monkeys and alligators and toucans and even the mighty jaguar, a forest reduced to just 8% of its former range (statistics vary), Espírito Santo holding on to just perhaps 2% of its original share. Where did this massive, incredible, dense, diverse forest go? Bit by bit, it fell to the saws of man. It went into your coffee cups and onto your barbecue grills. The orchids were ripped from the trees and sold off to collectors, the toucans and parrots caged and sent abroad, the monkeys shot or caged, and the jaguars, the most beautiful jaguars, were hunted for sport or starved (mankind hates competition, but loves a corpse).
They aren’t economically or politically important.
And neither is Tapuio.
Like most of nature, nobody is coming in and cutting it down overnight. Like most of the forested areas of the world, it is dying bit by bit, leaf by leaf, frog by frog. If you stand on the highway and look up at the mountain, all you will see is green and you will say, “Uê, David’s crazy! Tapuio is green.” And I will tell you it’s a lie, the green is a lie. It is the green of grass, of corn, of manioc, the green of money, not the green of trees and nature. Every weekend another spot of Tapuio falls. Every weekend another cluster of orchids is “harvested,” brought down from the mountains and sold or given as gifts to people who do not know and don’t care where they lived, don’t care that the orchids were bathed on rainy days in clouds drifting in from the ocean.
Leaf by leaf, frog by frog, Tapuio is dying, disappearing, just like most of the world’s forests. And in this sense, Tapuio is important. That large corporate farms are clear cutting huge tracts of forest around the world, this is definitely true. But many more of the smaller spots are disappearing exactly the same way as Tapuio, tree by tree. Tapuio represents how basic everyday common-man greed is destroying even the last remnants of nature, turning even the smallest spots of this planet into spots of short term profit, turning nature into cars and cell phones and bigger bolder better televisions. Unbridled nature isn’t allowed to exist. Man has to make it profitable somehow, or at the very least, manage it so that it “understands” he is the boss.
About four years ago, I saw a kid “breaking” a horse. Completely ridiculous concept, absurd. There are no wild horses roaming the plains of Brazil. But there he was, mounted high on its back, forcing the horse to run full speed and then stop, pulling on the reins so hard the horse’s mouth bled as he kicked and punched the horse. “I don’t like doing this, hate doing this,” he said, smiling. “But the horse has got to understand who’s boss.”
That is man’s response to everything. Dominate, and what can’t be dominated must be destroyed. People even tell me that’s life, that’s nature, that’s the way it is. Friends tell me to get over it, give it up, move on, move away. I am radical, infantile, intolerant, idealistic. And that’s just what my friends tell me!
Love isn’t radical, and it isn’t limiting.
And that is why Tapuio is important. It shows that love isn’t radical. Tapuio gives us an opportunity to love endlessly, limitlessly. I don’t believe in a god created in man’s image. I don’t believe in higher powers recognizing man and revolving the universe around his intent and perception.
But I do believe in the holy. The holy as something greater than but inclusive of mankind. The Earth is holy. Every tree, every leaf, every snake and frog and bug is holy.
Only man creates a structure inside a structure, a universe inside a universe, and calls that inner universe holy. We separate and divide and build monuments to our genius out of the bones of what is greater, out of the whole, out of the holy, and call our monuments holy, the rest profane.
Tapuio is holy, and it is dying.
So I ask two things:
Come to Tapuio not to climb up onto a rock in the middle of a plowed field full of cows to look out at the ocean two thousand feet below, but to walk under the trees, to breathe their breath, to lean against them, to hold them. Come to Tapuio to watch the rain, to stand in the middle of the road in the rain next to frogs singing at the joy of seeing the world turned to rain. Come to Tapuio.
Before the last tree falls, before the last frog sings, before the last ant eater wanders off to die, help me save Tapuio.
Come to Tapuio.