Mining
Over forty millennia ago on Swaziland’s Bomvu ridge, at Ngwenya north of Mbabane, mining begins. Red soils steeped in the planet’s ferrous blood yield ochre. Faces fiercened by crimson streaks. Dirt leaps into the air on the bodies of decorated dancers. The Animate Earth. Smears on skin become symbols, paintings, art. From Lascaux to Arnhem Land caved hands dab and daub icons, animals, spirits. We mine to design, celebrate, represent.
Curious Neolithic fingers scrape flint nodules from the chalky Suffolk ground. Knapping liberates blades and arrowheads from within. Razor potential revealed inside smooth stone. Langdale Pike greenstone makes cherished axes in the Lakes. Wood chopped, skins sliced, flesh flayed, bones carved, the hunted felled. Humanity tools up. Already dangerous. Now armed.
We mine shiny. The Precious. Egyptian Pharaohs glow in gold jewellery cast from Philippine dreams. Thracian mines fill Alexander the Great’s pockets with minted coins. Montezuma hoards Aztec treasures. Roman Britannia finances a vast empire with it’s Welsh gold, Mendip silver, Cornish tin and Pennine lead. Wealth extracted as a mosquito feeds and transported like a malarial fever around the world. A diseased trade unchecked by quinine equanimity.
We mine for war. Forged iron shoes horses and supplies armouries. Man marches out in metal suit, chains jangling, plates rattling as sword and mace and lance glance blows. Second skin of protection restricts vision. Starting a race to arms from cutlass to musket to cannon to tank. Heavied by steel. Burdened by history’s metallic violence.
We mine for fuel. Choking dust blackens lungs in deep blind tunnels. Firedamp creeps in uninvited and unnoticed, announcing it’s arrival from below with the same sudden, explosive violence as a shark hits a sunbathing seal. With equally deadly effect. Black coal and oil, blue gas, we blast and dig and drill and frack to burn billions of years of our own fossilised ancestors. A questionable act of dubious respect.
We sky mine. Eternal wind and sunshine, turns mills, excites electrons and heats water. Helios’ hydrogen furnace warms the surface. Plants catch rays to build sugary bonds. Turbulent spirits stir the ether of the airy ocean overhead. Natural forces power an energy abundance our descendants will thank us for.
We mine psyche. Moving fast and breaking things. Each digital Narcissus an exploitable asset, a lump of coal on the bonfire of all our vanities. Folk sold as cheap ore. Mob mentalities mobilised. Under-bridge trolls trapping us the wrong side of the Rubicon. Truth lies casualty in a collapsed passage of dead air. Floored by an unbearable viral load.
We mine story. Prospecting nuggets of elusive honesty. Panhandling for grains of twinkling insight. Digging through sedimented layers of wisdom, for the timeless knowledge of a previous ‘we’. A remedial relearning of the repeatedly forgotten. Infinite complexity resides in elegiac simplicity. Beguiling narratives toss like superficial flotsam in fluky winds, on erratic waves, whilst abyssal tales unfold unerringly in the depths.
We mine soul. Inspiration. Breath. Life-giving vapours that blow away the stale, poisoned miasma. A gasping freshness beyond the dank suffocation. Draw deep and long on this Horn of Plenty, our courage must be spirited. Only compassion’s cool balm can soothe our blistered anger. It’s time to dig deep, deeper than we’ve perhaps ever had to do. We’ve buried treasure to unearth together.
Ed Gillespie is the author of ‘Only Planet’
