Reaching a hand across time and space, the giant and ancient power of these hills is to offer the ultimate perspective on our own fallibility. To show what is most important to value and protect. To make man-made fabrications – the worship of capital, the exploitation and descruction of nature, and fuelling all, our suicidal egocentrism – pale in the light of it. I wonder, if our laws were made in such a place, would stubborn minds finally be made to find their enlightenment - to set us on a different course.

The woods do not exist for humans to pass judgement upon their beauty. They are not desolate until the moment we enter them nor abandoned on our departure. When there, we are with all of that non-human life. The woods taught me about the opposite of loneliness and I am now accepting the fact that I will never be able to, nor need I, force how that feels or what that means into words alone.  

I hope you can sense the enchantment that I felt, and continue to feel, with the Earth and the intricacies and rhythmic changes we can observe each day. Even in a bustling city, you can catch these moments by simply looking up to the sky, and the clouds, colours and creatures held there. Despite all humans have done, the Earth continues to dance and to flourish wherever possible. We must all be eternally grateful for that.

Pollution and environmental damage is not a bi-product of business or something to be compensated for by massive profits but a violation of the rights of all that lives. Our legal systems are not built with eyes that see these crimes with clear vision. It is built to excuse and facilitate them. Individuals from across the world spoke via zoom. They gave evidence and told stories which described a planet on which morals and basic human values have, in heartbreakingly many cases, decomposed.