I have written “always”, every year on the island of San Pantzart and throughout the lent, because the pastures appear blackened, they say, clean. Always, despite the fact that I have already explained the issue on these pages, I will now also repeat the sadness of the unnecessary carbonized mazas, such as the bad ones in northern Jaramendi, without mackerel but with lips and teeth – the rabid teeth, of course, because there is no more to go here.The newspapers have also cited the damage this year, which has been of such
magnitude. Representatives of the Natura 2000 Association, which is responsible for the conservation of biodiversity, invited pastors, hunters and mendants to a meeting. To note that they have conflicting interests, to take them into account and, without exception, to have consequences that do not offend anyone: when pastors burn grasslands to revive the grass, they produce fascinating landscapes, while hunters ask for more, who is it?, more berros and braces, shelters for animals; mountaineers want to walk loose and hate newly enclosed lands.

The mountain didn't care about these interests. If I could speak, I would shout that I could no longer, that I could support too many fires, teeth and manure, that I needed more trees and more versts. Some imaginative and iconoclastic creators such as Mattin Irigoien, the author of the comic Okatxu, have conveyed to us the echo of those concerns, since from the mouth of Mari-Serrama-Lur, a jewel, has told us that the pigs that were killed when they burned the old jungle will return to revolution, and then, as before, will be the pagan, the Acorns and the chestnuts.

Otherwise, our environment is usually quite “iconolatra” – often “iconoplast” – and, although the deterioration of the mountain is evident, not too many public comments are made, it may annoy the pastors. Because grazing is the essence of Vasquism, from prehistory to the present. Here, some of the principles used to teach the characteristics of the Neolithic are the poorest: they show two different schemes, one from the world and the other from the Basque Country; the world table shows that the novelties of the Neolithic era were agriculture and grazing; in the table of the Basque Country there is only grazing; and this is repeated by most of the publications. It is a subliminal message that our nature, our Basque idiosyncrasy, has always been in grazing. Although cereals were already grown in Gipuzkoa in the 4000 before Christ.

It is true that there is no shortage of reasons to love pastors, often also to admire them. And then his images have refloated us. Who do we put on the front line at the birth of Christmas, at the door of Bethlehem, a lamb in our arms? Who did not like the good shepherd – that is, who the axuria looks at the wolves because he wants to eat it? Who was the bad, Abel the pastor or Cain the farmer? Also, Joanes de Txomin...
On the other hand, in daily and traditional life, they were not only pure farmers in very mountainous villages, but also much more than pastors, who did not have a great estimation by the fireplace. But we do not have to revive the archetypal struggle between farmers and farmers, surely this is no longer a problem, at least here. The fact is, when some poison the earth and themselves, the losers, and the others, when they burn all living things, to see if there are winners.