conservation

Plaza Mayor, León. 21.03.

Tomorrow marks the end of one Camino and the beginning of another. And not a moment too soon. I fear my social battery is at maximum capacity. I got the jitters after showing up late to the dinner the others had arranged at the Royal Tandoori, to find a crowd of fourteen.

Maybe it was the sudden shift from the intimate setting of my haircut the hour before to a busy table of English and Americans holding court over an Indian meal; or maybe it was the location of my Siege Perilous as the final invitee, squashed into the corner; or the fact that they’d started without me.

Whatever it was, I know now that my decision to leave the Camino Francés is a wise one. It’s a little shameful to admit, but I could use a break. I’m not proud of the fact that these social settings continue to throw me every so often, but I am getting better at hitting the escape button before it escalates.

On the walk into León this morning, Talia asked me a question that has genuinely had me thinking all day. I think it was something like this:

When did you decide not to pursue a career in biology?

At first it seemed a pretty straightforward question. My grades in Biology were never all that great, the competition at my school was just too much and it never occurred to me even once to study Biology (or Natural Sciences) at university.

But with a little context, I can see why she asked me that out of the blue – and I’m frankly amazed how much I’ve suppressed what is nothing less than a core memory that might once have changed the course of my life.

Audrey was using an app to identify some of the birds we’d seen since leaving Mansilla de las Mulas – I think it was Seek. I pointed out a few things I could hear: serins in the branches of a nearby tree, a booted eagle circling in a field, the bee-eaters we’d heard the day before.

I guess it was that quickfire succession of names that prompted Talia’s question. My answer was fairly improvised, but I think it checks out.

When did I decide not to pursue a career in biology? When I realised that it was never going to be about zoology – not under the British education system, anyway. That, and my mathematical ability was (and is), quite frankly, dismal.

I have various interests. I’m a musician. A linguist. A writer, an occasional poet and a Hispanist. A mimic. A Catholic. But before all of these things, I am a naturalist. Before I found my fluency in Spanish and French, I could already understand the calls of every bird in the British Isles and could tell you what most of them meant: warning, alarm, hunger and mating calls. It was, I suppose, the first language I ever learned.

I was just as obsessive with my childhood interest in dinosaurs: I had to know them all. Where they were found, why they were called what they were called. It wasn’t enough to know the famous ones, like the T-Rex and velociraptors – I had to dig deeper. One such precocious example that comes to mind was my decision to bring along a Eustreptospondylus drawing to Show and Tell at primary school. Doubtless an elephant would have sufficed, but why would I ever have settled for something as basic as that?

I still have discarded exercise books that my parents gave me where I logged all the species mentioned in wildlife documentaries. I always put down the title and locations covered, and I sometimes wrote the date, too. Others I used as scrapbooks, taping in feathers and sketching footprints and writing about when and where I found them.

You’d have thought that these might have been the early indicators of a scientist. Certainly, I wanted nothing more than to be a palaeontologist when I was a kid (which can be gently excused by the fact that the BBC’s peerless Walking with Dinosaurs documentary series came out just in time to capitalise on my five-year-old dinosaur obsession.

When I was a little older, I genuinely considered a career in conservation. I entertained the idea of a degree in Ornithology, or something similar, to allow me to put my fiendishly good memory for birds and their calls to use.

And then, suddenly, that dream died.

It was probably the maths that killed it. All the natural science degrees I explored required a basic level of mathematical competence and at the time I was struggling to scrape even a passing grade at GCSE. Chemistry, too – a lot of Zoology degrees suggested chemistry as an A Level, and chemistry was far too mathematical for me. Without maths, my conservation aspirations were dead in the water. That was that.

But there was another factor that pushed an old dream out of the nest: the slow decay of a child’s interest as the subject closest to his heart never even materialised in the subject that should have concerned it most intimately.

My memories of Biology center on two things: plant cells and sourdough bread. I was so excited when food chains and food webs came up, until I realised that, within the British curriculum, that was the one and only time that animals would be mentioned. Everything else was so cold, so clinical. Palisade walls and mytochondria. Genomes and inheritance, though usually in plants. The fact that I knew the names of every animal and bird in the British Isles (and most of Europe, for that matter) gave me no advantage whatsoever.

My school was a specialist science school. Our Biology department was doing really exciting things with MS research, and it was one of my Biology teachers who was instrumental in sending me out to Uganda on my first ever teaching post. But somewhere along the way, my aspirations as a conservationist were slowly choked by the strangling vines of the British science curriculum. Zoology, palaeontology, anthropology, ornithology and even primatology were all areas I was desperate to explore, but as the years went by and Biology concerned itself less and less with the natural world and more and more with the minutiae of bacteria and cell structure, the less I cared for it.

It must have been around then that I first entertained the idea of becoming a teacher – once I realised I would never be good enough at two of my weakest subjects to survive to the point when Biology became Zoology. Fifteen years old and already carrying the shards of a shattered dream.

One way or another, I think I realised early on that there was little that a Zoology degree could teach me that I truly desired. I didn’t need to pursue a career in science to justify my greatest love. Knowing the names of every animal and bird gave me a sort of spiritual connection with each and every one of them – no scientific research could work a greater magic than that. Still, it’s interesting to think where my life could have gone if I’d really committed to that path.

Instead, here I am, gone thirty, walking the Camino with a head that twists so quickly when I see the silhouette of a kite or vulture that it’s a miracle I haven’t twisted my neck yet.

It’s hard to say what my experience would be like if I walked all the way to the end of the road with these wonderful people. I will never know, because I have made my choice. And I know it is the right choice. It will take me up into the mountains and back into the natural world, where I am and have always been at my happiest.

Here’s to that – to good health and happiness, and a significantly harder road ahead! BB x

Parque de San Marcos, Icod de los Vinos. 12.37.

The bells of San Marcos are ringing for midday, a mournful two-tone chime that feels out of step with the rest of the world: the buzz of the artesanal market stalls, the constant roll of tyres over cobblestones, the cooing of collared doves and the merry twitter of Canarian chiffchaffs in the trees overhead. The guitarist sitting in the pagoda that looks out across the Atlantic has stopped his playing and looks on in contemplative silence. Three very trendy French tourists walk by, one wielding an iPhone, the other dragging on a vape. ‘Ouais, t’as raison, hein, on est en Afrique.’ A man walks by with his dog. Around its neck is a metal collar not dissimilar to the kind Cortés’ war dogs used to wear. And still the bells chime.

It’s an hour’s wait until my connecting bus to Erjos, so I’ve come here to sit in the shade and write. I’ve bought some supplies from the nearby Mercadona just in case they’re hard to come by – for the first (and only) time in this trip, there are no shops near my lodgings for the night. The Canarian bananas are riper than the kind we get back home – understandably, as they were grown all of fifty metres from the store itself – and the slice of tortilla I’ve obtained should do nicely for dinner this evening.

The guitarist has started up again: it’s Guantanamera this time. A German boy in dungarees and a white baseball cap and his mother watch as he plays an upbeat Latin tune. The boy was shy at first, but he seems captivated by the rhythm and is swaying along with a big smile. Judging by his mother’s reaction, he appears to have just learned how to clap. Thanks to the guitarist, he also just learned how to strum a chord and blow a kiss to the audience.

To the east of the park is the famous dragon tree, a bizarre and ancient tree endemic to the Atlantic islands that has supposedly stood in this spot for nearly a thousand years. Its leaves stick out at the ends of its myriad branches like frozen fireworks. The palm tree at its side, usually exotic in its own right, looks almost humdrum next to the dragon tree, which is as rare as it is odd-looking: you’d have to travel all the way to the island of Socotra off the coast of Yemen – the other side of Africa entirely – to find a similar kind of tree.

In the shadow of the park is Icod de los Vinos’ mariposario, a butterfly conservation centre. I’m not the biggest fan of zoos, but these sorts of places (where the butterflies are free to roam) are usually geared towards the captive breeding of endangered species, and with butterflies the world over starting to disappear, I fancied learning what I could about those native to the island.

Icod’s mariposario hosts a number of ‘celebrity’ butterflies: the electric-blue morpho, the wandering monarch, and the gigantic Atlas moth. They’re a lot better at drawing in tourists than the endangered Canarian large white, I guess, a species which this local enterprise is working to protect. They’re a long way from home, usually haunting the dense rainforests of the Amazon basin, but they seemed more at home here than they would in a similar butterfly park in the UK.

It was the prospect of seeing the morphos which drew me in, I think, but I stayed for the monarchs. These impressive creatures, with wings the colour of an Atlantic sunset, are a cultural symbol of Central America. If I’d gone to Mexico – my original plan for the Easter holidays – I’d have gone looking for them over there. Not that I’d have had any guarantees of seeing one, of course – but it would have been fun to try.

Higher up the mountainside stands another dragon tree, el Drago de San Antonio. Younger than the drago milenario (but only by a few hundred years), this one is chained in place like a wild beast. It’s also guarded: two security guards in green overalls sat in the shade nearby, smoking a cigarette and watching me as I wandered over to have a look. There’s a motive for their caution: the tree had been ‘attacked’ twice in the last fifty years, first by an ambitious landowner who wanted it cut down and more recently by vandals. To ensure its safety, cameras have been installed in the neighbouring walls and a guard posted during daylight hours – not to mention the chains. I can only imagine these last have been affixed to keep the tree in place should the dormant dragon within decide to take flight someday.

Well, I’ve made it to my digs for the night in Caserio los Partidos, high up in the hills above Erjos. The restaurant is open, but the lady who sorts the lodging isn’t here. I guess she’ll be back at some point this afternoon. I hope she comes soon – I can never truly relax until I’ve got rid of my rucksack. There’s no signal this high up the mountain, but that’s exactly why I came all the way up here – to really get away. I need it after the last two days in touristic Tenerife. It’s a beautiful place, once you get away from the coast and the cities, but this will probably be my only visit. It might be a Spanish territory, and the natives might be Spanish speakers, but it’s not Spain. I’m already nostalgic for the mainland.

Still no sign of the dueña. At least it’s given me time to catch up on my writing and stay out of the worst of the midday sun. See you on the other side. BB x