The forest man

This guest post tells the moving and inspiring story of Jadav Payeng, the “Forest Man”. Brian Draper  – my good friend and author on spiritual intelligence – wrote this post, which forms part of his current Lent 40 reflective email series. Enjoy!

Forest man

Life can seem so overwhelming – as if there’s so much to do, or to change – that we end up doing nothing. So here’s a wonderful source of inspiration from a man called Jadav Payeng, who’s also known as ‘the forest man of India’.

He lives in Majuli, the world’s largest river island, which is home to over 150,000 people. During the monsoons, the river floods and erodes the soil, and since 1917 the island has lost more than half its land mass. In fact, the rate of erosion is now accelerating so fast that scientists fear most of the island could be gone in 20 years.

Jadav Payeng decided he wanted to do something about it. But what can one person do? He went to his village elders and asked for assistance, perhaps to plant some trees where soil had been washed away; they laughed at him, but gave him 20 bamboo shoots, anyway. So he built a fence, cultivated the bamboo, and began collecting seeds from other trees, too, which he planted, one at a time, day by day, in an area of completely barren land.

*     *     *

He started in 1979, and now, 37 years later, through thousands of small, faithful acts of planting, he has grown a forest which covers more than 550 hectares. Stunningly, it has also become home to a vivid array of wildlife, including 115 elephants which live there for three months of the year. The ecosystem also supports rhino, deer and five Bengal tigers, as well as vultures, which have returned to the area after many years.

And all of this, because one man planted one tree at a time, single-handedly.

You can watch a moving, short film about him here. (There’s a briefer one, too, if you’re pressed for time.) I hope you’re as encouraged as me by Jadav Payeng, the forest man of India. All we really need do is plant one ‘tree’, today, whatever that may represent.

And tomorrow, we can plant the next.

Try this! 

Do watch the film, if you can. And why not try to get into a forest this weekend? If you can’t do that, find a tree, at least, and stay with it a short while, and reflect on one thing that can sometimes seem too big for you to change in your life. If you could do one thing, today, to begin planting a forest, what would that be?