Happy World Rainforest Day – June 22
Posted on 20. Jun, 2025 by Paul Sochaczewski in Environment EarthLove
Happy World Rainforest Day – June 22
Rema and Olivia were like pit bulls that refused to let go of the prey in their mouths. Few things are as hard to dislodge as a belief that you have repeated to yourself over and over. The psychologists call this embedment. When we invest energy in a belief, and when others endorse our concept, the idea increases in value and becomes harder to eliminate. The belief becomes who we are.
* * *
The women, who by day ran a world-famous orangutan and hornbill sanctuary in the Kingdom of Mahamaya on the island of Borneo, once again reviewed their logic. Rainforests were being destroyed, primarily by corrupt and greedy business conglomerates that cut the forest, sold the timber, and planted huge oil palm plantations on the desecrated land. Ergo, destroy the oil palm operations and the forest will be saved. Clear as a sunny day.
“Seriously,” Olivia Borin, daughter of famed ethnobotanist Kristin Borin and co-director of the Mahamaya Hornbill and Orangutan Sanctuary, said, after a few slugs of Jim Beam and a few tokes. “What could we do if weren’t restricted by laws or the ethics of being good citizens?”
“No more Miz Nice Girls,” Princess Rema added. No more protest marches. No more scientific studies. No more legal court cases. No more letters to the editors. No more energy going into supporting multi-lateral treaties. No more of everything that hadn’t stopped the plague of destruction.
“We’ve got friends in high places…”
“Here’s to friends in high places,” Rema said, pouring herself some more bourbon. “Actually, we are in high places.”
* * *
And so they evolved.
By day they were well-intentioned conservationists, smart women playing by the rules and fighting the good environmental fight, along with millions of other concerned people worldwide.
By night they morphed into brave and enigmatic Lone Rangers and Robin Hoods, fighting for social and natural justice. Some people called them Voldemort’s Angels, but that’s wrong. Rema and Olivia fought not for their own glory or benefit but for a higher purpose in which the ends justified the means.
Rema and Olivia considered themselves modern avengers, fighters for justice, Amazons defending their kingdom. Some people called them terrorists. “Terrorists are just people with ideals who haven’t won the battle yet,” Olivia had replied. “Winners write the history.”
They studied the masters of disruption. Machiavelli, Sun Tzu and Ho Chi Minh, certainly, even Goebbels and Genghis Khan. George Washington and Edward Abbey.
They consulted mediums in an attempt to speak with the spirits of Che Guevara and Leon Trotsky.
* * *
Rema and Olivia searched mythology for righteous female warriors who might be suitable spirit guides. They sometimes joked that they were incarnations of Kali, the fearsome female goddess who wreaked death and destruction on demons. They made up a song that they were the Kali Sisters on the road.
And they studied some of the thousands of women who have terrorized oppressive patriarchal regimes. There was Claire Lacombe, the 18th-century French actress whose cri de guerre was “Perish the despots at all costs.” Margarita Neri, termed the “Rebel Queen of Morelos” was a young, wealthy convent girl who was incensed over outrageous taxes and raised an army against the Mexican government. Red-headed Neri was brutal and fiery, and her troops were infamous for their violence — looting, burning, and pillaging whole towns. Fearless early-20th-century revolutionary Qiu Jin, who morphed from a wealthy Chinese bourgeois wife into a fearless revolutionary leader, famous for her swordplay, cross-dressing, and bomb-making skills in efforts to overthrow a corrupt government.
* * *
“I’ve got plenty of ideas. Let’s take a walk over to the big camp,” Olivia said, referring to the neighboring military base.
“In the morning, dear, in the morning. Let’s see how this looks in the light of day.”
* * *
In the morning it all still seemed like the only way to stop the oil palm juggernaut. They had reviewed all their above-board efforts. They had put their hearts and souls into conservation. They even would have offered their bodies had anyone asked. Nothing was working.
The only solution, they reckoned, was to go off-piste. And so they created a black-ops network of undercover, illegal activities previously unthought of in the genteel world of nature conservation.
“But we need a code word,” Olivia suggested. “Let’s call our secret plan El Hitam. The Black One.
The two friends agreed that sounded about right.
But after a while Rema had another idea, one that stuck. “El Hitam is too cute, too Spanish, too macho. Ever hear of the goddess Nemesis?”
And Nemesis became the operative term. Ominous. Mythological. And oh-so feminine — Nemesis is the goddess who enacts retribution against those mortals who exhibit shameful arrogance in the presence of the gods. She is a Greek Batwoman, fighting those people who try to act like gods. She is an unstoppable dark-faced Daughter of Justice, a winged avenger to ensure the forces of evil are defeated.
* * *
Rema and Olivia first went off-piste with a Nemesis operation they dubbed Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
They felt justified to take aggressive action, because in spite of public commitments, in spite of economic boycotts, in spite of almost-daily leaks about corruption on a vast scale, in spite of earnest tribal blockades, in spite of heart-rending news footage of orangutans scrambling from the scorched earth, the leaders of neighboring Sarimantan had refused to stop the destruction of their tropical forests on their adjacent two-thirds of Borneo.
“We were curious whether we could train orangutans to ‘own the fight,’” Rema told me some time later. Instead of arming the people of the rainforest, they decided to arm the animals. “But of course you can’t teach an orangutan to use a parang or a shotgun.”
“But they’re amazingly strong creatures,” Oliva said, always ready to complete Rema’s thoughts.
“And they’re smart and territorial,” Rema said. “So, voilà.”
“What choice did we have?” Olivia added.
This scene is excerpted from:
EarthLove
Chronicles of the Rainforest War
ISBN: 978-2-940573-35-6
