"'I am Woompoo Pigeon. I lived in the last pockets of rainforests. I call my song through the giant trees and the cool green light. But I no longer get a reply. Where are my kind? Where have they gone? I hear only the echo of my own call.'
"'I am Mountain. I am ancient, strong, and solid, built to endure. But now I am being dynamited and mined, my forest skin is ripped off me, my topsoil washed away, my streams and rivers choked.'
"One upstart species was at the root of all this trouble—its representatives had better come and hear this council. So we took turns, a few at a time, putting down our masks and moving to the center of the circle, as humans. There we sat facing outwards, forced to listen only. No chance to divert ourselves with explanations or excuses or analyses of economic necessities.
"When I sat for a spell in the center, a human in the presence of other life-forms, I felt stripped. I wanted to protest. 'I'm different from the loggers and miners, the multinational CEOs and the consumers they fatten on,' I wanted to say. 'I am a sensitive, caring human; I meditate and lead workshops and recycle.'
"But because I was not permitted to speak and defend myself, the words I would have filled the air with began to evaporate in my mind. I saw them for what they were—essentially irrelevant. The deep ecology that had so lured me with its affirmation of my interconnectedness with other species now forced me to acknowledge my embeddednesss in my own. If I was linked to the wild goose and the mycorrhyzae, I was far more linked to the investment speculators and compulsive shoppers. Shared accountability sank in, leaching away any sense of moral immunity."
