Somewhere along a trail in the forest, all four of us stopped at the same time for no apparent reason. We stood looking at each other amid the dark, lichen-covered trees. It was a very strange moment. So strange that I was later moved to try and capture it in poetry, which fortunately is a rare event:
In the vivid silence
Ancient timbers stir, whispering fearfully of life and death:
This is how our time will end, in mist and shadow.
Softly among the leaves a bird sings reassurance
While fragile sunlight soothes the fallen trees.
Yes, I know, stick to prose. I only resort to poetry when overwhelmed by emotion. I once wrote a love poem on a birthday card for my future wife Janine, not long after we'd first met. It almost brings me to tears now, or laughter: such a painfully young poem! Another was after a visit to the Dachau concentration camp in Bavaria which tapped the other extreme of my emotional range.
On this occasion we were taking two friends on a trip around the island, both keen photographers on their first visit here, who had already spent hours ecstatically crouching for creative perspectives of the stepped agricultural terraces or for colourful closeups of wild flowers, but we felt no visit to La Gomera was complete without at least a short stroll through the Parque Nacional de Garajonay, the island's national park with Unesco World Heritage status. Predominantly ancient laurel forest, it covers 40 square kilometres, more than 10 per cent of the island, so you're almost certain to encounter it but driving through by road is not the same as making your way on foot amid the soaring trunks, the soft sounds and the subtle scents, the feel of the earth and stones beneath your feet.
Partly it was because we'd departed from the bright sunshine and clear blue sky of San Sebastián. The lush, damp greenery of the forest was an extraordinary contrast, too fast and too dramatic, a finger-click transport to a different planet.
And forests are so much grander than we are. So solid and timeless, so humbling. So beautiful when in cheerful mood yet so threatening when sombre.
But perhaps above all it was the mist. Light, swirling mist is a frequent characteristic of the park and can be a nuisance on a car trip because it may lurk around any of the hairpins, waiting to engulf you. As you drive to the higher regions of the island (which rises to nearly 1500 metres) you may emerge above the mist, when it will present you with a sea of cotton wool that completely hides the spectacular landscapes beneath.
So yes, it can be inconvenient occasionally. On the other hand the mists are the key reason why La Gomera is rich in water deep down beneath the ground, feeding its many springs. The forest encourages the mists to form and the trees trap moisture to soak into the soil.
Which brings me to the point of this story. La Gomera is about to launch a bold new scheme in its bid for a more sustainable future. We glimpsed its early beginnings during a forest walk a few years ago when we paused to picnic at a residential camp in the heart of the Parque Nacional, near the village of El Cedro. The camp provides accommodation for groups of young people to spend a few days living amid La Naturaleza, Nature, a novel concept many of them will only have heard vague rumours about. Everyone needs to slosh through mud wearing gumboots at least once in their life, and smell fungi on rotting timbers, and watch spiders eating flies.
El Cedro camp also performs a research role in the forest and at that time (perhaps still) it was hosting a trial apparatus for extracting water from the mists. It's such a simple idea that it's hard to believe it works, but it really does. You hang up a large net vertically, place a trough beneath and leave it alone overnight. Mist will condense on the net, trickle down and fill your trough with water.
The technique is well known and has been employed for many decades in South America particularly. They've also been using it to a limited extent here in the Canary Islands where, for example, an enterprise in Tenerife markets bottled water produced from mists drifting up from the sea.
The current proposal in Gomera is to use mist collection to help supply irrigation water in drier areas of the island. The first three installations have a projected cost of around a million euros, so somebody certainly believes in it. This is part of a general effort to shift towards a more enlightened approach to agriculture and energy, with the challenges of climate change in mind, and could serve as a model for other islands of the Canary archipelago.
I feel quite proud. I think I'll add another verse to the poem.
In the vivid silence
Ancient timbers stir, whispering fearfully of life and death
While giant cobwebs seize water from the darkness
To nurture life where once was none.
Umm…
In the form of potatoes, carrots and onions
And possibly bananas and grapes and things.
Needs a little more work.
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The mist collection project was described in the online newsletter GomeraNoticias of 25 November 2021 and was due for completion towards the end of 2022. Timescales for ambitious and expensive projects tend to slip but they usually get done eventually.
The company producing bottled water from the mists is Agualternativa Ingeniería S.L. based in Santa Cruz, Tenerife. They claim to be the first company in the world to do so, marketing it as a premium product with the label Garoé Mist Water.
And incidentally, the Spanish name for this kind of mist harvesting device is captanieblas or atrapanieblas – something that captures or traps the mists. In English it's called a fog fence. Oh, the beauty of Shakespeare's mother tongue!
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