Our tinkering with cycles that had stood the test of millennia has left entire populations, cultures and ecologies marooned on extinction’s floodplain, writes Damien Enright

IN ALMOST every email I’ve received from Ireland, the UK, or Scotland for the last three months, my correspondents mention somewhere that the rain is beating on the windows as they write, writes Damien Enright

A friend of my son’s here on the Canary Island of La Gomera, a bank official about 35 years old, is regularly to be seen standing tall and erect on a large surfboard, propelling himself with a long paddle, along the island’s coasts, writes Damien Enright

If Irish walkers keep coming to La Gomera in the numbers that arrived with the Bishopstown Hillwalking Club this week, they’ll wear down the paths and stone-made steps climbing the mountains out of the fecund valleys, routes laid down hundreds of years ago.

Our grey heron weathers the storms, but then he is much better equipped to do so than we are, writes Damien Enright

I DO like small communities. The population of this village on La Gomera, where I am currently escaping from the mad rush of Courtmacsherry, Co Cork (population approx. 350) is circa 60.