I close my eyes and picture the emerald of the sea
From the fishing boats at Dingle to the shores of Dunardee
I miss the river Shannon and the folks at Skibbereen
The moorlands and the midlands with their forty shades of green
(Johnny Cash)
It all started in a typically Irish soft summer of 1993 when a young woman in flared bell bottoms, a jacket that would have fitted in fine to Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat and a funny floppy hat emblazoned with a ring of flowers, stood hitch hiking on the Mountmellick Road in Portlaoise, opposite the old post office.
Not since Skid Row or the Horslips had played the Mental in the mid-70s had anyone in the town been seen in such garb. Over the coming days and weeks a pattern emerged.
First a trickle and then a steady stream of carefree, tanned types with a patchwork of equally eccentric vehicles – VW vans, ambulances and even army trucks that had seen better days and now decked out in peace, love and ban-the-bomb insignia. They were the talk of the Town. Somethings going on.
The Leinster Express dispatched their top newshound to investigate.
Turns out the hippies were invading Rosenallis or at least that’s how it looked at first sight. Upon further investigation the European Rainbow Travellers Gathering had descended on Laois and taken up camp in a secluded corner of the Slieve Blooms in Ballyhuppahaun.
Over five thousand eco-warriors escaping the travails of modern life and mod-cons for a few weeks rest, recreation, creation, Mother Earth and the good life snuggled away nicely in a part of the Slieve Blooms accessible only on foot.
When they departed it was as if they had never been there in the first place. It wasn’t just that the assortment of tents and tee pees which had been home to the hippy horde from over 30 nationalities and all walks of life and all shades of colour and opinion had disappeared, but any trace of them had vanished also.
They had left no mark on the landscape. All that remained were the memories, the great memories and the magical moments as they plotted their next summer sojourn in the fledgling Slovenia as the Balkan wars blazed in nearby Zagreb.
Wary of a cynical and prying media the Rainbow Travellers put down a simple challenge. If you want to know us, come stay with us. And I did for a while in the Ballyhuppahaun and later on in Slovenia.
Turns out the Rainbow Travellers were before their time. Before I had ever heard of reduce, reuse, recycle they were all over it. Before climate change, global warming and carbon footprint were cause celebre the Rainbow Travellers had it nailed and practiced what they preached. Not the chosen few they said, but the few who have chosen.
These days it is trendy and we like to think of ourselves as friends of the earth, but are we?
We see ourselves as the Emerald Isle, all pristine and green. We take it all for granted. The envy of Europe.
But no country in Europe wastes and disrespects the valuable resource of water on such a scale as us; no country in Europe allows people to wash their cars and water their gardens with expensively treated drinking water, free of charge.
We are still churning out mountains of waste. We also tip the scales heavily in terms of food waste, millions of tonnes, millions of Euro of food wasted and down the drain.
This week the myth of clean drinking water was exploded as it transpires that much of the private supplies serving rural schools, hotels, homes and hospitals is of a poor quality and very often contaminated by E.coli. Surprise, surprise in a country that still has almost half a million septic tanks.
That’s before we even get to talk about the lead pipes bringing water to schools and homes.
When it comes to the environment, climate change and the landscape we talk a good game. How we are merely custodians and want to hand it on safely to the next generations.
But a lot of it is lip service, posturing, conscience assuaging stuff. We like to talk the talk, but not so much walk the walk in terms of air quality, pollution, littering and fly-tipping, habitat protection, peatland conservation, energy policy…
We prefer forty shades of grey, than forty shakes of green. Am I giving you a headache?
Yes there have been significant improvements since the hippies hit on Rosenallis almost 25 years ago. I am in awe of the amazing work being done by countless volunteers in the tidy towns’ movement and the environmental projects all across the country.
The Green Schools is a super initiative and in many ways the next generation are leading the way. Also credit must be given to Fianna Fail Minister Noel Dempsey for the plastic bag levy he introduced in 2002. It has helped encourage us to clean up our act, and raised €200m for environmental benefit to boot.
Such kudos cannot be afforded to the Minister for Heritage, Heather Humphreys, and her efforts under the great misnomer of a Heritage Bill to escalate and extend the hedge cutting and upland burning season by two months.
If approved the measures entailed would devastate the landscape and land a lethal blow on conservation and habitat protection; desecrating the countrywide in the interest of greedy vested interests.
All this while paying lip service once more to the plight of the critically endangered and iconic native species of corncrake, curlew and hen harrier, that are in grave danger of extinction and these measures would most definitely be a further nail in their coffin.
The Rainbow Travellers were most certainly before their time when they rocked up to Rosenallis in that summer of 1993.
We still have a fair bit we could learn from them. For when it comes to the environment we still prefer grey areas than green.
Recommended reading
Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard
READ ALSO – Wired with Whelan: There is no such thing as free travel
