FORCES for CHANGE

These seven women are forging different paths to the same goal: restoring our relationship with the Earth.

- ARTU NEPOMUCENO

JUST BEFORE SUNRISE, ANN AND BILLIE DUMALIANG LED THE WAY TO THE PEAK OF A ROCK FORMATION KNOWN AS TATAY. It is the highest point in Masungi, from where you can survey a vast landscape of karst and forest, a green corridor of some 2,700 hectares that the sisters have devoted their lives to protecting and restoring. They’ve grown up with Masungi and have always thought of the place as a sibling. “Our dad probably spent more time here than with us. So yes, it’s like our younger brother,” says Billie. “And it’s also like my dad’s mistress. But the time that was spent caring and protecting the area was just infectious to everyone on the property, so that’s how we grew to love it.”

There’s a saying that we will only conserve what we love, and we will only love what we understand. How do we begin to understand a world that is so wide? It begins with getting to know a place and its inhabitants: the tide pools at the shore, the wilderness at the edge of the city, your backyard garden. Spending time in nature, being with nature, and entering into conversation with everything around you. Seeing for yourself the intricate web of relationships between the mushrooms and the trees, the birds and the seeds, finding ourselves belonging to this web of life, and approaching creation with the reverence and enchantment that we might have had when we were children.