The Cutting Edge

For the vigil-keepers in Co. Wicklow s Glen of the Downs, the morning of Wednesday the 14th of January should have begun as normal. Get up, get the fires lit, put the porridge on, collect the water, begin the usual tasks of daily survival in the middle of a winter campaign.
But on this particular morning, the sound of chainsaws wakened the glen-dwellers instead of the usual drone of traffic interspersed by the song of birds. Rubbing their eyes, they were stunned to realise that they were really being being greeted by the sight of county council workers and gardam, up to 50 or more, stopping the traffic and striding purposefully down the main Dublin Wexford road in their luminous yellow uniforms. Quickly it dawned on the vigil-keepers that the dreaded moment had come: the trees that they had been protecting or at least some of them in one of the last and most magnificent deciduous forests in our beautiful wild land was suddenly getting the chop.
It was early morning and the occupiers of the glen were conspicuously taken by surprise. Many literally hadn t got down from their tree-houses yet, and the folk in the ground camp across the road were only just lighting the fire. Dispersed shouts and alarm calls broke the cold air; people dropped what they had been doing and ran out of the woods towards where the gardam and council workers had positioned themselves on the road. As the traffic backed up, glimmers of what they were witnessing the start of a showdown flickered across drivers faces, and it was an extraordinary sight, as a small group of environmentalists, vastly outnumbered by the yellowcoats, ran urgently to the trees defence.
In the vigil-keepers camp, word went out by mobile phone that it was time to mobilise. As the message was passed along, journalists began to turn up at the site. Representatives from the Pat Kenny and Gerry Ryan shows also arrived, transmitting live appeals from the protesters for support and witnesses. Locals who d already got the news made their way through the council workers and gardam, who, in a military-style manoeuvre, had spread themselves right through the Glen of the Downs, positioning police at either end of the valley.
Arriving on the scene, Michael Martin immediately went into natural overdrive. Acting in a support role, he flew up and down the road on his bicycle, taking sandwiches and water to Liam and Colyn, two indisputedly brave souls who by 10am had been standing in trees at the southern end of the glen for over an hour. Already council workers had wreaked devastation on the area around them; when I saw Liam, a local man, and Colyn, a young American woman, they were marooned in their trees by a sea of cut wood and men with chainsaws.
H H H H H
There was an air of chaotic urgency throughout the Glen as the environmentalists spread out, preventing as much as they could of the council s three-pronged attack on the trees along the sides of the kilometre-stretch of road.
Trees were being cut at the northern and southern ends of the valley, but more and more people who wanted to stop the destruction of the forest kept turning up: the resistance was spontaneous as the growing crowd of protesters assessed the situation; many instinctively placed themselves in the way of the choppers. Strategic cohesion gradually began to replace the initial mood of disarray and confusion, as the tree defenders and witnesses to the scene shouted information down the road, alerting each other to where the chainsaws were going next.
One protester, a sound engineer, became a runner, speeding up and down the kilometre-long road on a bike, gathering information as to where tree defenders were most badly needed. Everyone was discovering inner resources, courage and even organisational abilities that they never knew they had, and the collective adrenaline buzz kept everyone going, despite the intimidatory presence of uniforms and the sound of chainsaws, cars beeping, people shouting, and the crash of falling trees.
This is a desecration! exclaimed Jeff Colhoun, a long-standing Glen vigil-keeper originally from Derry, as he ran along the edge of the woodland getting in the way of chainsaws and filming council workers who were busy filming him. We ask you to stop destroying land that has been sacred for thousands of years!
Are you proud of what you re doing? shouted other campaigners. Do you think that it s right, in your hearts and souls? You re doing your bosses dirty work for them!
I had been with the vigil-keepers from the start, watching the tree houses being constructed, staying in the camp, and participating in every level of the campaign. Now I was screaming with the best of them. Word reached us from down the road that an ancient stand of sessile oaks, many 300 years old, were under attack. Sessile oak is one of the rarest tree species in Ireland, and may, in our lifetimes, face potential extinction. It was here that Jeff and Damhnait De Brun, a young woman from Clare, carefully chose to build their beautifully-made tree homes six months ago. Now, Damhnait sat in her house playing the flute as council workers, intermingled with the press and the public, scrambled around on the steeply sloping ground below.
Her stand worked. The situation was defused, and the ancient oaks successfully defended, but simultaneously, several hundred metres north along the road, another stand-off was building up. Police looked on, and video cameras filmed away as vigil-keepers ran among the trees, standing right in the path of where they would fall if the chainsaw operators dared go ahead and cut.
We are pacifists! called the campaigners. This is a non-violent direct action! Witnesses video cameras recorded campaigners liaising with the superintendent in charge of the garda operation, ensuring that he clearly understood the non-violent nature of the environmentalists resistance, and that he was aware of their sincere belief that they were doing their duty to the environment by directly opposing the levelling of the trees.
It was a surreal scene, but there was comfort in knowing that it was all going down on tape.
H H H H H
In the afternoon the tension reached a crescendo. Concerned members of the public kept turning up and joining in, journalists cameras clicked and passing motorists got out of their cars. Despite the growing numbers of people who stood in the street shouting their support for the vigil-keepers including TDs John Gormley and Joe Higgins swathes of ash and hazel were mown down until the tree-protectors moved in and climbed the largest of the trees, successfully preventing the destruction of some of these at least. Sadly, not all of the mature trees were saved, despite later statements by the National Roads Authority that none of them were cut on the day. Stark evidence to the contrary lay shattered on the ground right beside the entrance to the nature reserve.
The day had been mentally and physically demanding. Campaigners, their numbers now swelled considerably by many new additions, remained prepared for the next assault on the trees until the council workers and gardam began getting into their vans and dispersing, unable to continue their work. The tree-defenders and their supporters straggled back to camp to re-group, console themselves over the loss of so many trees, talk to the print, radio and TV media, eat the food (including basins of hot soup) that had streamed into the camp throughout the morning, rest their bodies and resuscitate their spirits. Nearly two hundred deciduous trees lay hacked to pieces on the northern and southern ends of the steep wooded valley. Many of the vigil-keepers and their supporters were in tears, and many more were in a state of wired shock.
By the time vigil-keeper Chris McQuillan made it to the scene, much of the devastation had already been wreaked. She was heartbroken at the sight. To me it s just like rape, it really is, she insisted. Mother Nature is there lying open, completely vulnerable, completely trusting, and then someone comes in with a chainsaw it s so violent and senseless.
It seemed to me that the whole area knew what was happening, she continues. The whole thing was consoling herself, that s how it felt. There was definitely fear I d say these trees are absolutely petrified. Loads of people say they can hear them screaming. They re their own little beings, just like ourselves, and there s nothing they can do. They can t run, they can just keep living until it happens.
Tension surfaced again when council trucks arrived in the late afternoon to take away the wood from some of the large trees that had been chopped down, but no more cutting took place that day. The battle had by now moved to the courts, and as darkness fell upon the Glen of the Downs, and the vigil-keepers settled down for another night, news came through that Wicklow County Council had undertaken in the High Court to suspend tree-felling; they has also been granted a injunction which forbids the environmentalists trespassing on the land.
The case is due again before the High Court as this magazine goes to press.
H H H H H
I lived in the Glen of the Downs for most of the two weeks leading up to the Wicklow County Council s assault. A tribute to human inventiveness, the ground camp consists of three benders (strong shelters made by bending and entwining hazel branches to make a frame, which is then covered by thick tarpaulin). A welcoming fire always sparks in the first three-sided bender, while the next holds a kitchen of sorts, fully kitted out with dressers, a large table, food shelves, a gas-ring oven and a big crate for storing work tools, all made from the hundreds of ever-versatile wooden pallets which supporters have been donating to the Glen Vigil for months.
The third bender is a triumph of construction: a huge, well-enforced circular structure, complete with emergency exit, which sleeps up to 40 people inside. A pot-bellied stove, ingeniously made by welding a gas cylinder, glows warmly in the corner.
Most of the tree-dwellers live across the road on the other side of the valley, upon whose steep sides the gracious oaks and majestic beeches have been growing for centuries.
The tree-houses here are a sight to behold: all with their own unique construction and style, they remained hidden from view during the summer and autumn, surrounded first by lush greens and then fiery reds, until the first storms of winter blew the leaves off the trees. Some of the houses are 80 feet off the ground, while others have features like skylights, balconies and stoves.
Insulated thickly with straw, like giant nests, the Glen of the Downs tree houses are surprisingly warm and dry. For the past month darkness has engulfed everyone for 15 hours a day, making comfortable beds a necessity. Work is concentrated into the brief hours of light, and many glenners, especially the tree-dwellers, use quite a lot of the remaining time for sleep.
Inevitably there are practical difficulties. Going to the toilet in the middle of the night gets a little complicated, and the din of rush hour traffic is a burden on the senses you can feel vibrations from the juggernauts travelling right up the boughs but apart from these minor irritants, tree-sleeping in the Glen of the Downs is one of life s simplest pleasures.
Not everyone at the Glen can handle climbing the trees. The first time I did it, I only just kept my cool: looking down from 50 feet can fill your head with vertigo, despite the fact that you re always safely roped on by a harness. Some glenners, however, are real naturals, though; to watch them fly up the branches and abseil swiftly down, you d think they d been living in trees all their lives.
The Glen vigil-keepers are a widely varied group of people, artists and poets, computer operators and peace-workers, scientists, farmers and furniture-makers. Supporters come and go, stay for a while, make improvements to the main camp (there is never a shortage of work) and bring their instruments along for a session by the fire, where an old battered teapot is usually bubbling. In the absence of TV and instant access to the outside world, the camp is a living culture that constantly creates its own folklore, an ever-changing place kept skillfully afloat, even through the raging storms of winter.
Its inhabitants include actor Tone Curran, originally from Armagh, who many will have seen in the witch-burning episode of Monty Python s Holy Grail. Five decades ago, his father proposed to his mother at the Octogon, an 18th century gothic folly at the very top of the mountain (the Octogon or the marriage proposal? Ed.) and it was at the Glen of the Downs too that Tone (named after Wolfe) climbed his first tree when he was three years old.
There s also English Mike, the foxiest man on site, who s been recording the whole episode on camera; Conchita, loved greatly by the canine glen-dwellers; Keith, one of the best climbers in the camp, highly knowledgeable about the ecology of the nature reserve; excellent chefs Gary and Liam, who can cook amazing meals for up to 30 people on two gas rings and an open fire; Eoghan and Bob, who are among the few people here to have experienced similar environmental campaigns in other countries; and Gavin, whose Trojan work and building skills have thrown up bridges, tree houses and lock-ons , concrete shields with which the glenners can attach themselves to trees, necessitating the breaking of their own arms if council workers or police try to forcefully remove them.
Many, many more people have been involved in this long campaign, including local tree surgeon Jim Fitzpatrick, whose seasoned knowledge and ecological expertise have made him an elder to the tribe. Hundreds of others have done our laundry, taken away our bins, supplied us with money, food, ovens, lamps, ropes, climbing lessons, free legal help, encouragement, music, banners and blessings.
The campaign hasn t always been an easy ride: the lack of privacy, the unrelenting rain, the mud, the traffic s incessant noise, damp cold feet, police surveillance, and the disparagement, stereotyping and bigotry we ve sometimes experienced all take their toll, even though they re counterbalanced by the beauty of the surroundings.
Ironically, the camp-dwellers were unaffected by the great Christmas black-out of 97. The storms which were exhilarating uprooted some giant trees, and Keith and Tone experienced their tree houses twisting round by 180 degrees! But their houses were built of stern stuff and they survived an onslaught that brought life elsewhere to a virtual standstill. During the autumn we collected as many acorns as we could, passing them on to tree planters in order to preserve the sessile oak s genetic stock should the potential environmental disaster of their destruction go ahead.
It has been beautiful to watch the seasons come and go, but life as a protester in the Glen of the Downs is not entirely natural: there is always the underlying stress, the knowledge that we are here to try to prevent a badly thought-out road widening plan from inflicting gross, irremedial damage to an important national nature reserve.
Thus, we knew we were living at a frontier, and that we had to keep constant watch against the destructive impulse which would tear away the trees that give us our air, replacing them with great slabs of dead concrete. In these conditions inter-personal angst can be heightened, though ultimately, the bond that grew up between us is unbreakable.
Or this is how it feels anyway, in the eye of the storm.
H H H H H
As I write, vigil-keepers in the Glen of the Downs are under constant surveillance. Council vans with zoom-lens cameras film us from opposite our camp, speeding away when we approach to ask what it is that they think they re achieving.
Two days after the chainsaw attack, glenners were served notice of the injunction against them: reams and reams of impenetrable legalese were pinned up on boards, thrown down on the ground and bellowed up the trees through megaphones, a comical sight indeed. But at the Glen of the Downs vigil people s resolve is stronger than ever; there is swelling public and media support for what we re doing, and there is a constant influx of visitors to the camp (including Nell McCafferty, who I met recently as she ran round the place helping to get the dinner ready).
What will happen at the Glen of the Downs? Will there be another showdown? Ultimately, in the view of the protesters, this vigil symbolises the clash between (a) creative forward-thinking, and (b) the kind of unsustainable, short-term planning which reinforces the degradation of our community structures, public health and environment, and will potentially eventually lead to the demise of our species if we allow it to go unchecked.
With a court decision pending, and the risk of more heavy-handed treatment from the Wicklow County Council and their allies, only the next few weeks will tell how the story must end. n