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Real people share real stories of their dialogue with Nature. Hear how it feels to talk with animals, birds and landscape. Share the magic of cross species communication.
Created by award winning Nature writer and poet Estelle Phillips.
Instagram @estelle_writer44
TikTok @EstellePhillips
Monica Feria Tinta is internationally known as the barrister for the earth. Monica is globally recognized for her groundbreaking work for the environment. She is a leading global expert on climate change litigation and made news in 2019 as acting counsel in the first world climate change litigation case brought by people from low lying islands, the Torres Strait Islanders. She was successful. Monica has more awards than I can mention.
Estelle Phillips:She is fantastic. It was a pinch me moment when I sat down with Monica after she finished her book signings with Fold Bookshop at Shaftesbury's Reading, the land festival. As you will hear, her story of personal connection with nature goes back to a wonderful experience in her childhood. It is impossible not to be moved and delighted by what Monica says.
Monica Feria Tinta:I am a barrister, practicing at the bar of England and Wales, so that's my everyday job, and I'm the author of, A Barrister for the Earth. What is the main thrust of your present work? Well, an important area of my practice is environmental law and protection of the natural world. And I have been involved in a number of cases that have been very illuminating to understand a new relationship that we can have with the natural world. So these stories are in the book I have published last year.
Estelle Phillips:You've just been speaking, so you must have your head absolutely full. I was wanting to talk to you about if you could remember when you first felt some personal connection with anything in the natural world.
Monica Feria Tinta:Yes, I want to refer to a very dear memory. I adopted when I was at university doing my first degree law, I adopted a baby deer. My father had been in the Andes, in the Colca Canyon, and he came back from a trip. And in a very surprising way, he arrived in the evening, and he was bringing a little baby deer that had not yet learned to walk, to be honest. I was just so fragile to see him in the dark and then because, you know, we had to look after him, it was me who became really the mother of the deer for three years.
Monica Feria Tinta:And that that beginning to actually have to nurture him. So, you know, he used to come at 4AM, I think. I don't know how he realized that my window was there, but he used to come and and actually make noises so that I could come and give him milk in in in the bottle. So he used to say, pee pee, and then I used to come immediately to give him his breakfast. And and he was very naughty.
Monica Feria Tinta:He got very, very quickly used to get indoors, and he likes sometimes to eat the wrong things. He used to like baguettes, which was terrible. The yeast was very bad for him, and so sometimes I had to go and find some kind of doctor that could address that. And I had to go all the way to the zoo really because there were no vets that could actually treat a taruca. This is the kind of deer which is an endangered species in Peru.
Monica Feria Tinta:It's a it's a deer from the Andes. But I would consider that, he was my son. That's it. I've got a lot
Estelle Phillips:of questions about this deer. You say your dad brought him. You obviously had a connection, right? How did that your first meeting with the deer?
Monica Feria Tinta:Yeah. Well, the deer must have been very scared because they had to travel for very long. To come from the Andes there is seven hours to the main city and then about eighteen hours from Arequipa to Lima. So it's a very long time. And they arrived late at night.
Monica Feria Tinta:And so when I saw the deer, it was still unable to stand. It was, you know, sleeping, and it was very, very little. So don't think at that point I felt confident to disturb him. So our approach was really little by little, but also there was this need to feed him. I had no experience, and so I just don't know how this relationship developed in that context because I didn't have any experience with tears.
Monica Feria Tinta:I And it had to be just common sense and solidarity. I mean, there was a need to to give to ensure that he was okay. So but it became really my responsibility, and I I think he is the closest that I have had to a to a child of my own because, I mean, he got he was naughty, as I told you. He used to steal things, and and I had to be concerned whether it was the right thing he was eating or not. Otherwise, he loved roses.
Monica Feria Tinta:I used to have a friend who was a little piglet They used to run together, and and the pig of he was very graceful. You know, he used to jump the the deer. He used to jump very lovely here, here, here. And the piglet was trying to do the same.
Monica Feria Tinta:He couldn't. It was a small tiny pig. And the pig didn't know how he looked, and the pig was completely I think it was a female pig thought that it looked like a deer. It was not a deer. It was a pig.
Monica Feria Tinta:But they were best friends, and they used to kind of hang around in the garden. So it was lovely to see. Oh, I don't know. It was a kind of paradise. So, yeah, I get emotional.
Estelle Phillips:I can I I can really
Monica Feria Tinta:understand that?
Estelle Phillips:Yeah. Obviously, you were communicating. What was the dear's name? How do you say that?
Monica Feria Tinta:S for sugar, e r I o j o. How did you communicate? I think it is almost instinctive, the communication. You know? Because trust, for example, how how do you build trust Yeah.
Monica Feria Tinta:With the creature? You know? Because there has to be trust to let you approach him. And and I think this cohabitation in a way, you know, this you know, obviously, animals sense beyond the kind of way we sense. I mean, I I am sure that they identify danger.
Monica Feria Tinta:They identify whether they can trust someone, whether that person brings anger or etcetera. So there's there's ways of apprehending reality that, you know, it's not our way. So obviously, I had all the intention that was positive towards him. But there is this issue of trust, I think, and it can be established without the need of words. But sometimes, you know, even voices, you know, without knowing the meaning, can be clearly interpreted by birds and also, you know, the sounds that Serioja may may also make.
Monica Feria Tinta:I think I can also, to a certain extent, realize whether something is annoying or whether something is is is pleasant. He wants more. Mhmm. Can he have more? And and that kind of thing.
Monica Feria Tinta:And and I think I used to speak to him in Spanish, obviously. And I don't know to what extent he could perceive my moods, but but but he I mean, he had a relation with everything. I mean, including, you know, this best friend. He made this friend. So yeah.
Monica Feria Tinta:So we were a little family there.
Estelle Phillips:How did he meet the piglet, did you say?
Monica Feria Tinta:The piglet was because we received this piglet as a gift. A a family doctor, so a doctor was a friend of us, had received the piglet as payment for something, and he didn't he lived in the in the city, and he couldn't have the piglet. So he gave that to us, because we had more space. And and that's how the piglet became part of the, of my world. But I I I I remember my childhood.
Monica Feria Tinta:I was responsible for lots of different little animals. But Serioja, obviously, is is quite central. This is not a domestic species, you know. Usually, it would be up in the mountains at over three meters above sea level, and yet it was there. And so when I moved to to where I am now, which is the countryside after thirty years of living in London Wow.
Monica Feria Tinta:One morning, my partner told me, Monica, I saw a deer today together with a baby at the back of of of the garden. And, you know, the deers around that area just jump any kind of wall or, you know, they go around looking for food. Of course, they like the roses. And my neighbor was very annoyed that all the his recent planted roses were exterminated by the deers. And, you know, he was putting all kind of fences and you know, to avoid the deers to come to spoil the garden.
Monica Feria Tinta:But in our case, I was kind of welcoming. The idea that there will be a deer with a baby sleeping just in my garden. It was just so beautiful. And to me, it felt like the spirit of my was some somewhere around. That's why I love to see them.
Monica Feria Tinta:Whenever I am in the train, sometimes when I'm coming towards the South Of England where where I live, I I I see them. And one day, I was going to work, and I go I walked to the station and through the woodlands that I passed by. It was very early. It was about 6AM in the morning, and I remember there was this group of Dears, a family, basically, that was going to have breakfast. I think they were going together.
Monica Feria Tinta:There were about four of them, father, mother, and two little and they were all together. That was so sweet to see. It really made my and it was there was mist around, and and they were a little bit like see, the the the second one realized I was there, but I I kept my distance so that they wouldn't be disturbed. But the actual, you know, facing them, actual seeing them in the wild was just so beautiful. So I really, really love where I live.
Monica Feria Tinta:And, yeah, that's the experience.
Estelle Phillips:Thank you very, very much for that fantastic story. Yes. Thank you. Subscribe to Nature Talks With Humans for more true stories of people communicating with animals, birds, and landscape. Follow me on Instagram at Estelle underscore writer forty four and TikTok at Estelle Phillips.
Estelle Phillips:Bye.