Leonardo Co

BY MA. ISABEL ONGPIN
Manila Times
Friday, 19 November 2010 00:00

I met him only three times. It was difficult to make an appointment, Leonard Co was always in some forest, inaccessible, incommunicado, absorbed in the study of Philippine trees and plants. He was the botanist par excellence with the passion, the erudition, the love of plants and trees. He was a nationalist with a particular inclination to protect and conserve our endemic flora.

When I first met him I knew I was in the presence of a nation builder, a botanist who knew the flora of this country beyond science to total personal involvement, intimate experience of its habitats, working to provide for its future with present effort. He was an education to his fellow workers, fellow citizens, fellow botanists. And yet meeting him face to face was to meet a storyteller describing the magic of the forest in understandable vernacular, using the native names of trees and plants, not the scientific names, that a lay person would have trouble with. He never was the forbidding erudite scientist talking down to the ignorant.

He was the expert, the experienced, an eminence. But you would see an ordinary man, someone quite unacademic on the surface. He brought along no portfolio, no notebook, almost no ballpen. To explain a location, he would reach for a paper napkin and sketch on it. To describe a tree leaf, he would draw it.

 To illustrate the colors of flowering trees his hands moved and his eyes lit up. He was summoning the magic of nature, the wonder of the great outdoors, the forest dotted with mountains and streams, birds and insects, the dark earth, the fallen leaves, silence, fertility.

We were supposed to go out there. We had a project a-borning. He was to be the essential catalyst.

Palanan forests were his highest expertise. To get there he would take a bus, fly on a small plane, sleep in some hut that had seen better days, trek for hours after an uncomfortable night, come back to make-do meals and relentless mosquitoes.

He did not complain or sigh about these circumstances. He just narrated them matter-of-factly, they were part of his work environment. Meanwhile we figured that we would have to bring mosquito nets, mosquito repellent, protective clothing, trekking boots, hats, medical supplies, food to sustain us and to enjoy in order to overcome hardship. Alas, it was not to be. The trip was postponed and postponed as he waited for the funding, an occupational hazard he knew how to bear, that would drive us to distraction. The rains came, the summer left. Still no funds. It was to be next summer for us. But Leonard eventually went. Next summer will come, the trees will bloom but Leonard Co has made his last trip.

Last Monday, he was killed in Tongo-nan, Leyte in some crossfire in the forest in circumstances that remain unclear.  He died in a forest, where he set his life. We have forests and this non-pareil forester and what have we done with them? Whence will another Leonard Co come to teach us so consummately to save our world and ourselves?

He had an idea about the pattern of the book we were trying to put together. Let it be a story for a child, he said. A tale about the forest and its wonders, showing its beneficence now and in the future, a presence that nurtures and should be nurtured back. We understand Leonard, now we will try to do it as you said. It will be harder without you but for love and memory of you, we will try.