The Big Cat

This passion didn’t start with our Project. It was there long before that. Probably since my childhood, when destiny was still weaving networks of neurons, building patterns, preferences, character, passions, fears, following an infinite sequence of causes and effects that is lost in time.

I could sum it up in attraction. But I think the term does not encompass it. Perhaps better to call it love: sometimes it pleases, sometimes it hurts, but always with intensity. I’m attracted to the earth, I’m attracted to the sea, I’m attracted to the stars and the wind, I’m attracted to plants and animals. All of them. But not as knowledge, not as concepts, but as organized and tangible matter that touches all my senses and whose very closeness comforts me. Love for nature, from day one.

Many years ago, I read a story that sent a signal to me. It was about a shipwreck, in which a human and his pet were left alone in the vast sea. After much struggle, the human came to the conclusion that there was no opportunity for both of them. Either he tried alone, or they would both die. He detached himself from his friend, swam away, and watched him struggle as he sank. Tragic but simple, a trance with no other way out. However, from my guts, a hatred arose that I did not feel capable of, not against the sea or the wind or the boat. It was not pity for the human. It was a deep hatred against him. I would have preferred the animal had survive. I knew right away that something was not right inside me. And half a century later, it’s still wrong.

Love of nature is a vague expression. But before diving deep into it, I would like to emphasize that at the time of the above anecdotal discovery, I had never heard of population explosion, climate change, the sixth planetary extinction, or the microplastics in the salt we eat. I learned all this much later. That is to say, back in the past, my hatred could only be intuitive and visceral.

Homo sapiens as a biological entity does not bother me. From that perspective, we are also nature. I could also love it (although a little less). But when Homo sapiens acts, sometimes (very often) it becomes a plague. We are the great plague of the planet. So, I don’t want to say “I love nature” as a vague expression. Because it is very simple, I love everything that has nothing to do with our human plague. What about a hurricane, an earthquake, a volcano? I love them. And the herd of lionesses devouring the still living zebra? I love them. And the activist who risks his life to save a gorilla from those other homos who want to sell it in ashtrays? I like that guy!

Enough of that ramble though. I initially started writing because of a particularly happy day. Indeed. It’s because after many, many twists and turns in this life, I am once again devoted to what I love: nature. I work a little piece of land, hidden among mountains and clouds, helping rewild as much as I can.

Here, the ecological pyramid of the Costa Rican rainforest has at its apex the jaguar (Panthera onca) and the puma (Puma concolor), the third and fourth largest felines in the world. But we know that pyramids fall down as soon as one of their levels breaks. In fact, today the vast majority of ecological pyramids have already fallen. So, from the first day we arrived at Babylon, we said to ourselves: “we want to contribute to a healthy pyramid”. And, when is it complete? When it includes its apex…

On December 2nd, 2024, a trap camera arrived to Babylon Gardens for the first time. A camera which, placed in the forest, shoots photos and short films when it detects movement. On December 6th we placed it randomly, in a spot in our beloved forest, and a week later, on December 13th, we recovered it and we all sat down full of curiosity, but without great expectations, to see what it could have captured. All installed, someone presses the PLAY key, and there appears, in the very first image of our story, the BIG CAT.