Luch's Legacy - Theatre for the Planet

Luch’s Legacy explores the very real world of environmental damage through the lens of a small, mystical frog, Luch. They tell us how their world was shifted when mining affected their home and lifestyle.

Whoever is out there, I want you to know that I’ve cast a protection spell around my stump. It’s been a long time since somebody’s had the balls to come around here... I’ll admit, I’m impressed that you made the treacherous journey. So I suppose you wanna hear my story huh? You heard of the great Luch, frog of the bog, and you had to come see for yourself.

No? You don’t know who I am? Well, that’s fine, not all important stories are known. Perhaps you have come to hear one of the other mystical stories by this bog and I am merely the first one you’ve found. Regardless, now that you are here you shall listen to my tale.

I’ll get to it then, it looks like our time is short.

I am the guardian of this bog, and I have lived here for as long as I can remember. I don’t know how or when I got here, only that it is all I have ever known. I’ve always felt connected, tied to it. For many years it was only me, the bog, and its other various beings living in harmony, but as the world evolved so did the creatures upon it. One day, a small group of people saw the beauty of the bog and decided to live alongside it. I welcomed them with open arms and enjoyed the laughter and creativity they brought to my hidden home. They made a small village at the edge of the bog, and I began to grow fond of one of the villagers, Elizabeth. Now I had my own little froggy friends, but I had never met a human quite like her. I still remember the first time I saw Elizabeth. She stood tall and felt unburdened by the forever changing world. I watched her explore the landscape for months. Observing her thoughtful and peaceful nature, I felt a draw towards her and I had to speak my truth. I hopped to her one day and spoke a loud “Hello”. She looked toward me, her eyes wide with curiousity and a little bit of fright. I guess she had never heard a frog speak before.

“Hello little friend, are you Luch?” she asked curiously, “I heard there was a guardian of the bog, but I thought it was a myth.” Well, I thought, at least she had heard of me. We grew close over the years and became dear friends. We would go on walks around the bog everyday, experiencing the heartbeat of the earth. Elizabeth and I shared in this theory, we believe that Mother Earth is so busy creating that she doesn’t have the time to experience it for herself. That is why we are here, to experience it for her.

One day on a stroll we watched as Elizabeth’s husband found something within the stream. He noticed a glistening in the dirt, a glimmer of gold. He took it up in one hand and ran, his joy and excitement pulling him towards the riches. He came back with many more men and they began wading in the water, sifting through the sands with their strange little pans. One after the other, they screamed in excitement as they found nugget after nugget of gold. The land was rich with it.

For a while, everything still seemed fine. Life had changed but it had not ended. I figured they would take their gold and leave and we could return to the supple life we had once known, but I was naive. I watched in the blink of an eye as the once small village grew into a bustling town filled with men longing for the wealth of the land. Elizabeth’s husband had spread the word of the gold like an infection. They no longer saw the beauty in the trees but only what was shining beneath them.

The villagers who had originally come through here were pushed out of their homes so that the man of the new age could gain his footing. We lived in a different world.

Elizabeth told her husband that he could not let this get out of hand. They came to an agreement that he could sift through the dirt for any nuggets that may lay beneath it, but that they could not mine within the bog.

One day, as Elizabeth and I were patrolling through the bog we stumbled into a desolate zone. It smelled of death and decay. The ground was orange and the plants were brittle, and I had never seen anything like it... I loved it. I called it Mars Land. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Luch, how do you know what Mars is, you’re just a frog?” And to that I will say, you do not know the lives I have lived.

So I started venturing off to Mars Land quite often, I would roll around in the murky orange goo, rubbing it all over my pores. I made mazes in the mud out of stones, I felt like a tadpole again, adventuring in a new pond.

But, I began to weaken. And I realized that the weaker I felt, the larger Mars Land grew. This bog, once full of life, began to fade, and the very earth beneath me had grown sick.

So Elizabeth and I followed the trail through the desolation until we reached the base of a mountain, where I saw men pouring their waste into the ground and waters of the bog. You see, to extract the precious gold from its ore they mixed it with cyanide, mercury, arsenic, and lead. Their toxins leached into the home I loved. I begged them to stop, but to them I was just a frog croaking on the ground. I could feel the life draining from the land, being replaced by the hum of the mine.

Elizabeth spoke to the miners and reminded them of the deal they made, but they had technically stayed true. After all, the agreement has only said that they couldn’t mine the bog, not that they couldn’t dispose of their waste there. She begged them to stop but they told her they had no control, it was her husband who ordered them to dump their poisons. Elizabeth left with a sureness in her step, she had to speak to him. She told her husband how the land was dying because of their abuse. She told him that if they did not change, the bog would die, and with it, they too would wither. But her words fell on deaf ears. He would not listen to her warning. He had lured so many people here with the promise of gold, people with families to take care of, bills to pay. He could not leave them empty handed, nor could he have them growing ill.

After that, it only got worse. The miners were sick with power and did not want to change their ways. To them the bog was nothing more than a swamp, a place to dispose of their waste and gather more materials. I noticed that all my froggy friends were beginning to leave, or worse. You see, I’ve been told that that biologists call us frogs an indicator species. We breathe through our skin and cannot survive in a habitat that is dying, or poisoned. But I could not leave, I could not abandon the only home I had ever known.

So I stayed and watched as they began coming to the bog, axes in hand, and set about tearing down the trees and draining the waters. The trees trembled as the miners chopped them down, their roots exposed and gasping for air. I hid in the shadows as the horrors befell my precious bog. I am ashamed to say, I was not brave enough to stop them. I croaked in sorrow, but no one heard me, not even Elizabeth. I began flickering in and out of consciousness, alive only to watch the men stop in their tracks as they saw that the life of the bog had vanished before their eyes. A wasteland was now all that stood before them. I could see that they were hurting, but they still refused to accept the part they played. They did not want to acknowledge that their greed and abuse had brought this destruction, so they packed up their things and left. Even they could not survive here. They ran away from their guilt to find a new land to plunder.

The bog lay still, silent, and drained of life.

It was like a piece of me had been ripped away. This bog was all I knew, and now it was nothing.

The air grew heavy. The trees lay like hollow shells of what they once were. I croaked, but my voice felt hollow, swallowed up by the death of something so old and vibrant. I tried to hold on, but I was not strong enough for this battle. Everything went dark. I, Luch, the legendary protector of the bog, was gone.

Now this next part of the tale I didn’t see because I was dead. However, I came to know it later on, as you will too.

Elizabeth ran to where my lifeless frog body lay in the fetid muck of the dead bog. Her eyes were hollow with grief as she gently carried me to an old stump.

She whispered to me, to the bog, pleading for us to wake up, but there was no answer. We had already slipped away. Desperately, she waded into the foul orange water, choking for air and burning her skin in its filth. She walked deeper and deeper into the murky water until she was completely submerged. She did not cry out as the waters fed on her skin, her sinew, her bones, and at last her heart. With agonizing slowness, her body dissolved into the very essence of the bog she had loved so dearly.

Just as her essence disappeared, the water where she had disappeared began to clear. The clarity rippled through the water, and on touching the edges of the pond the land sprang into a verdant green. Life shuddered through the reeds and grasses that were left in the bog until the shoots of young trees sprang up, unfurling their leaves and reaching desperately towards the thin sunlight, decades of growth happening in the time it takes to draw breath.

Elizabeth’s sacrifice bound her soul to the land forever, her essence woven to the roots of the trees, into the flow of the water, into the very breath of the earth. Life had returned, but the cost was too dear.

With a sudden gasp I arose once again. I felt my heartbeat return, I could breathe again. I watched as the barren landscape reignited with life and heard as my froggy friends returned to their home. It was weak and needed tending, but it was there. I looked around for Elizabeth, croaking to get her attention, but she never came. I felt a sharp pain in my mind and all of Elizabeth’s memories flooded my consciousness. Now she flows through me and I her, the two of us intertwined with the waters, sky, and birds. The trees grow stronger and the reeds renew their whispers. It takes all my energy to sustain what is left . Though the magic is quieter, it is no less important and now has a determination that it never had before.

They keep coming back, the men. They long to return to the gold they left behind. I feel them trying to break through my protection spell and I fear that I am not strong enough to hold them off forever.

But still I am here, on my stump, watching the world change. Waiting to tell this tale to anyone willing to listen. To tell it to you.