The blackberries that choke the roadsides, the bountiful figs trees, even the jaramaga weeds that formed the basis of famine potaje, are aliens. As for edible natives: A few mushrooms, the tiny fruit of the strawberry tree, and faint patches of samphire clinging to the lava. Nature in the Canary Islands is barren, at least from the stomach’s point of view.
The olive and the date palm, the sustainers of life in our two parent continents, thrive here only at the expense of their tasty bits. The wild Canarian olive yields bitter, inedible fruits. The date palm morphed over millennia into a great pineapple of a tree; beautiful maybe, but Canary palm dates are so small that only the blackbirds bother with them.
And yet human ingenuity has found a way to squeeze sustenance from absurd places. Drain the Canary palm of its sap and boil it down to a dark, sweet elixir. The brutal process is so damaging that each tree can only be hacked into once every seven years. To the often-hungry Canarian peasant in the days before deep freezes, it was a supreme irony: Pots of ambrosia in the cellar but nothing to pour it on. Guarapo!
If Canarian plants are thrifty, then the wildlife is downright mean. There are no edible native land animals unless you count the lizards. All the big ones were roasted centuries ago.
Amongst the birds pigeons are common but the wild form remains elusive, a creature of rock barrancos and remote sea cliffs. Modern hunters blast away at the feral descendants of city pigeons. Suburban birds with dulled instincts and tatty plumage. Their wild cousins are far too smart to drink and feed within shotgun range. Greasy shearwater chicks were only a delicacy because Canaries are too small to eat.
Perhaps this ingratitude born of evolution is the reason why early settlers showed so little respect for nature. What can’t be eaten is useless to a colonist! They cleared the forests for farmland and turned the trees to charcoal, roasting pigs that grew fat on endemic plants. Rabbits nibbled their way through rarities only to end up on a spit of laurel. Gran Canaria’s forests are shadows, the remnants of what once was. Only the plants too small for timber and too bitter for the goat thrived.
Even the sea is stingy: Unfishably deep within rowing distance of the shore. The pretty ones in the shallows run out fast. Fishermen became farmers, cultivating salt in giant paddy fields while waiting for the fat tuna to swim within range: Heaping piles and piles of sterile white grains on the black rock.
Sitting on the ancient shell mounds by the sea you realize that we are temporary. Even a few thousand cavemen were too much for the islands. The guanches were eating themselves out of a home long before the Spanish arrived. The giant limpets and conches that they feasted on during the calm summer months are extinct. More piles of white.
And today? Gardens and golf courses sustained by fossilized water that grows saltier every year. We drink the sea and wash in our own waste. The cost of living is the cost of oil. Europe subsidizes us so that it can spend two weeks in the winter sun. Hope comes from the sun and the wind but it is a dream. One day the resorts will bleach white in the sun as well.
Only the lizards belong. They are the true Canarians. They will be giants again!
The olive and the date palm, the sustainers of life in our two parent continents, thrive here only at the expense of their tasty bits. The wild Canarian olive yields bitter, inedible fruits. The date palm morphed over millennia into a great pineapple of a tree; beautiful maybe, but Canary palm dates are so small that only the blackbirds bother with them.
And yet human ingenuity has found a way to squeeze sustenance from absurd places. Drain the Canary palm of its sap and boil it down to a dark, sweet elixir. The brutal process is so damaging that each tree can only be hacked into once every seven years. To the often-hungry Canarian peasant in the days before deep freezes, it was a supreme irony: Pots of ambrosia in the cellar but nothing to pour it on. Guarapo!
If Canarian plants are thrifty, then the wildlife is downright mean. There are no edible native land animals unless you count the lizards. All the big ones were roasted centuries ago.
Amongst the birds pigeons are common but the wild form remains elusive, a creature of rock barrancos and remote sea cliffs. Modern hunters blast away at the feral descendants of city pigeons. Suburban birds with dulled instincts and tatty plumage. Their wild cousins are far too smart to drink and feed within shotgun range. Greasy shearwater chicks were only a delicacy because Canaries are too small to eat.
Perhaps this ingratitude born of evolution is the reason why early settlers showed so little respect for nature. What can’t be eaten is useless to a colonist! They cleared the forests for farmland and turned the trees to charcoal, roasting pigs that grew fat on endemic plants. Rabbits nibbled their way through rarities only to end up on a spit of laurel. Gran Canaria’s forests are shadows, the remnants of what once was. Only the plants too small for timber and too bitter for the goat thrived.
Even the sea is stingy: Unfishably deep within rowing distance of the shore. The pretty ones in the shallows run out fast. Fishermen became farmers, cultivating salt in giant paddy fields while waiting for the fat tuna to swim within range: Heaping piles and piles of sterile white grains on the black rock.
Sitting on the ancient shell mounds by the sea you realize that we are temporary. Even a few thousand cavemen were too much for the islands. The guanches were eating themselves out of a home long before the Spanish arrived. The giant limpets and conches that they feasted on during the calm summer months are extinct. More piles of white.
And today? Gardens and golf courses sustained by fossilized water that grows saltier every year. We drink the sea and wash in our own waste. The cost of living is the cost of oil. Europe subsidizes us so that it can spend two weeks in the winter sun. Hope comes from the sun and the wind but it is a dream. One day the resorts will bleach white in the sun as well.
Only the lizards belong. They are the true Canarians. They will be giants again!
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