Fox in the Jungle by Will Franks

I’m on a rickety rumbling bus, hitching my way through southern Mexico. I don’t have a plan except to go up into the mountains, seeking magic, music and further unfolding of my initiatory journey into freely self-authoring adulthood. Lightning flashes in the storm clouds ahead, announcing to me that it is time to write what I am going through.

I’m on my own. I mean, the bus is packed with warm and friendly locals, but I’m in a different space. They’re here, on the bus, chatting and napping. I’m elsewhere. With a friend. In the past.

There’s many people I’d love to share this ride with. This evening, one of them stands out. Raphael Coleman. Also known as Iggy Fox. My friend, brother and comrade in radical, illegal, and love-fuelled mischief.

We met in 2019 and together gave everything we could to fuel the initial take-off of the explosive, controversial and highly creative eco-activism movement called Extinction Rebellion, or XR.

It’s Raph’s birthday today, 30 September. Only, he died 3 years ago. From heart failure, on an anti-poaching training in South Africa. He was 25.

Here on the bus, I’m reading the latest book of Liz Jensen, Raphael’s mother. (A proof copy – it’s not out yet.)

Your Wild and Precious Life, it’s called.

It’s her account of the unthinkable loss of her youngest son, her journey to come to terms with it and live a fulfilling life again. In tandem, it is a wrestling and coming to terms with unfolding global climate and ecological breakdown. As mother of an ecological warrior like Raph, the two come together. So it’s also a hymn to Raph’s gloriously unique life, spirit and vision.

It is a deeply beautiful, masterfully woven, and at times devastatingly poignant read. I haven’t before read something that interlaces personal and global perspectives so naturally, through powerfully raw and honest autobiography. As such, I recommend it highly! It’s out soon – stay posted here.

I, too, am still processing Raph’s unexpected death. I never lost a friend my age before. It’s utterly surreal. And terrifying. And heartbreaking.

I’m still learning from his life. I know that I’m still connected to him, soul to soul, being to being, as are all of us who loved and cherished him. Despite this, I simply wish that he was here, in the seat next to me, handing me his earphones to share some of London’s deepest and darkest electronic dub, to tell me something about the teeming and delicate biodiversity of the jungle we are hurtling through, or to scheme together yet another plan for shaking national governments into rapid and radical environmental action.

What to say about this incredible young man?

He had the strongest, firmest hugs I’ve ever known. Like hugging a bear. Who really really loves you and wants you to know it. I always felt so calmed after those hugs. They dissolved all sense of being alone. And I would squeeze back, real firm. A warrior’s embrace. Brother to brother. Man to man. Home.

And it still grieves me, that I did not have the pleasure – and honour – of seeing this young man become a fully fledged chieftian in the global village, for there is no doubt he was growing into such a role. But it was not destined that he develop so, at least not in this life. I have little doubt that he has led rebellions and championed the preservation and celebration of The Wild for many lifetimes. And hopefully, many more to come. Maybe he’s already back here, hard at work, loving life the way he uniquely – and contagiously – did. With devotion like that, I know that he’s right in there, in here, wherever he needs to be to support and participate in Gaia’s evolution: protecting all that is vulnerable and boldly stepping into the vast unknowns of our unrealised potentials.

He taught me so much, it’s hard to summarise.

One thing was the power and value and necessity of holy rage. Rage at the destruction of the Wild. Of natural indigenous cultures. Of our own safety and sanity. As a conservationist working abroad in multiple tropical locations, he knew this destruction all too intimately, and this pain fuelled his activism.

I handed him paint as he climbed onto the Brazilian embassy in London, making a very beautiful (and expensive) mess to protest against President Bolsonaro’s desecration of indigineous peoples – and their lands – in the Amazon rainforest.

Raph showed me that conscious anger, intentionally channeled into a bold and embodied NO, changes the course of history. It is the warrior’s power that protects the tribe, the forest, the truth. We need this vital force if we are to stand, together, against the tides of unconscious exploitation and destruction.

I watched him stop a farmer’s tractor from mowing a country meadow full of wildflowers in France – by sprinting after it, standing in front it (it was still moving!) and staring the farmer HARD in the eyes until he realised that this young man was not going to give an inch to allow such mindless destruction.

After, when we asked him how he did it, and he simply said “shitloads of embodiment yoga”. I still wish I asked him what he meant by that. This guy had superpowers!

I watched him string his hammock eight feet high across a road between two streetlamps – no doubt one of the same hammocks he had slept in during his time doing conservation work in the rainforest. And now here it was, in the heart of Babylon, engine room of the Great Global Capitalist Destruction Machine. He clambered in and sat tight, helping to block the road at a climate protest in central London.

I believe the technical term for this is badass.

I think he knew this, too.

Clutching his megaphone, he shared terrifying climate science, heartbreaking personal tales of ecological decimation, and downright common sense on the global systems crisis – all from his airborne pulpit while protestors, public and police officers looked on. For a taste of his powerful activist sentiment, watch this video.

We danced all night on a reality-bending dose of LSD in the Spanish desert, popping and locking ecstatically beneath the shimmering white river of the Milky Way. “Unlocking moves” he called it. He had some crazy tricks. Watch some of them here.

During this particular trip I could not stop laughing at the ridiculous glory of the cosmic joke for almost 8 hours, and this dear hombre took very good care of me. We danced until sunrise before collapsing in the burning heat, having sweated, pounded and celebrated out the struggles of months of hardcore activism. My whole face hurt from hours of intense joy and appreciation of life.

At the same festival (Nowhere, the largest of Europe’s Burning Man events) I remember going swimming together in a nearby river and watching as Raph burst through the water’s surface into the air, flicking his long burnt orange hair back and standing like a warrior, a sunbathing lizard, a wild man. There was something alien about him, at times. An otherworldly power and wisdom. And his big beaming bug eyes! At the same time, he was disarmingly honest, human and down to earth. This moment is when I learnt to appreciate the breathtaking beauty of naked humans in natural places. In the forest, in the rivers, on the rocks. Where we belong. How it was. How it’s supposed to be.

Raph knew this: that we belong here. That we are home, here on earth. And that earth is paradise. And that we are responsible for keeping it paradise and resisting the twisted seductions of the shadow psyche. He lived that responsibility, more and more each day I knew him. He was called by Gaia, and he answered. I have little doubt that the devotion and energy he brought to his activism largely came from his time immersed in the Wild. It was Gaian energy, raw and naked and unreasonable. It’s an energy that we all saw – and received – in buckets. And still do, whenever we remember him, watch one of his videos, browse his breathtaking wildlife photos, or open our hearts for a chat with him. He’s always there, waiting, ready, so full of love and creativity. He’s in the forests, chatting to strange insects, frolicking with the monkeys and possums, snoozing in his hammock.

These days, I especially love running with him. He had this curious and incredible way of bounding, leaping, that just exuded joy. Joy to be alive, to have a body, and to MOVE.

How he loved his body! He inhabited it in such a passionate, creative way. He knew fully well that he was an animal AND a human, and he demonstrated a glorious celebration, balance and integration of the two. Civilised and uncivilised. Reasonable and unreasonable. And it just was so much fun to inhabit these two sides of life with him. It still is, to be honest.

He took me into deep, pitch black caves in the South of France where he had spent time at a second home since childhood. Down inside the earth, we found a seam of wet clay and thrust our fingers in deep. It was orgasmic. Laughing and groaning with pleasure, we painted wild tribal wall paintings that must still exist, somewhere down in the anonymous and untraceable dark. We danced to pounding techno. We meditated in the darkness. It was so alive we could almost reach out into the void and touch it. Something electric. Intelligent. Responsive. Listening. We hugged. Shed tears, too. “Difficult realisations” he said. I don’t know what it was exactly he was going through, but it didn’t matter. We held each other tight, brothers on the path of life. Sitting in the dark. Figuring out who we are, and where we are going.

I’ll never forget that first chink of light, glimpsed after literally hours in the darkness, and the minuscule window of blazing green forest and white-gold sunlight, way off in the distance. It was like a window onto heaven.

We walked towards it and emerged into a hidden grove filled with wild strawberries and piercingly fresh-scented mint plants… Fox standing tall and rapping in Spanish to some truly epic South American music… embodying that sensual and sexy zest for life, dancing like a shaman and enjoying himself to the max. O yes, that’s the Fox I know and love. I watched, amazed and enchanted. After he died I wrote a poem about this adventure. Here in Mexico, I’m damn grateful to be following in his jungle-exploring footsteps.

This was the last summer before he died. We hitch-hiked from south France to London. We had big plans, probably like all revolutionaries.

On one train journey, he gave me a PowerPoint presentation I’ll never forget: “The Master Plan”, he called it. His personal blueprint for a Revolution, revolving around his conservation, volunteering and media foundation The Wildwork. I laugh to remember the air of gravity and seriousness he brought to this (one of his favourite security practices was turning all phones off to prevent government surveillance).

I respect the seriousness of his activism to this day, but he could also bring this comical mastermind aura, like we are sitting in the batcave plotting the planet’s redemption. I squirmed a little, wondering if he had disappeared into his own fantasies – probably because I know that this happens to me too, when I get hooked into an especially exciting vision or plan for change.

In the end, though I simply cannot fault him for trying and doing his absolute utmost to make a big fat ripple of good in the world. I’m pleased to say that he did. It’s still rippling today – I can feel it as I write. The Wildwork, still running, has now networked 20,000 conservationists worldwide. Incredible, no?

In any case, which revolutionary doesn’t wrestle with finding the appropriate balance ego and soul? He was on this path and living this enquiry and I bow to his vision, his devotion and his ambition. Yes, he aspired to power and influence, and he was learning every day how to direct that power in ever deeper and clearer service of love, beauty, life. Don’t we need that? It was and still is an honour to join him on that journey. He’s still teaching me, as I say.

This evening I’m feeling sad that we aren’t still at it, growing into men together. At least, not side-by-side in these precious little bodies. Zooming out, though, I know that we are side-by-side souls on an eternal evolutionary journey, and I am just filled with gratitude to have crossed paths, to have walked and danced and sung and plotted and shut down London with this extraordinary creature, cosmic fellow, normal kid from London, and big-hearted child of the earth.

He was there on the first night I walked into a squat (a freshly-opened long-abandoned Jewish Girls’ Grammar School in Golders Green, North London), and quit my life as a philosophising scientist, jumping ship to join a rebel band of urban pirates, cracking empty buildings and transforming them into vibrant hubs of artmaking, culture-shifting and community-tending. By night we lived together as a big extended family of misfits who had found each other. By day we spent hours glued to laptops (and sometimes roads), organising volunteer teams in the glorious chaos of the XR Euston office. It was an intense and magical time.

On one midnight mission, it was Fox’s sheer bravado – slicing through a metal bar placed over a window with a tiny hacksaw, with a sheet held over us to protect from onlooking CCTV – that got us into a now legendary building: the Majestic Hotel, Finsbury Park, London.

We piled in and set ourselves up in this huge empty space: two old Victorian houses joined together, complete with industrial kitchen, dining room, and chandeliers. We painted walls, collected furniture from the streets, and wrote a manifesto. Luxury squatting, we called it.

We often ran workshops in the mornings. I still practice the 4–6–7 (in, out, pause) breathing rhythm that Fox taught us one morning, a method he had learned during scuba dive training to slow down the heart rate and activate the parasympathetic nervous system. I think he knew it was necessary for a group of coffee-guzzling, adrenaline-hooked, round-the-clock protest organisers, himself included!

At one point during the 2019 rebellion we had the 40-room hotel up and running as a functional accommodation for protesting rebels to come and crash, wash, eat and sleep. They were wild, sleepless, ecstatic days – full of grief, and rage and desperately devoted direct action.

He worked hard as any of us. Little rest. More work. Because Gaia needs us. And we need her. Now more than ever.

He knew full well that we are in the midst of an incomprehensible mass extinction. That we are heading irreversibly into a whole new earth: a hothouse, a cyclone, a bloodbath, a desert. A question mark. We knew this, and now we were learning to feel it and to act on these feelings. The anger, the sadness, the fear. And Fox did not hide.

Despite the pain, the despair and the intensity, Raphaël looked within and saw LOVE. He looked outside at the blossoming earth and saw LOVE. And he lived FULL OUT in embodying that love, in the impressively diverse ways he had of showing up in the world. He drew so much joy from the beauty of natural world that he couldn’t contain it, and was an endless source of facts and stories and questions about our non-human siblings.

Fox, with his ginger dreadlocks and coconut heavy, seriously oily vegan flapjacks, was one the characters who instantly arrested me, stepping into that squat – and really into a whole new world of people who cared deeply about the world and were doing something about it, even if it flied in the face of their friends’ family’s expectations.

We bonded over that: being misunderstood. Profiled. Outcast, even. Because no matter what people thought about us: we had a job to do.

This was my first initiation to responsible eco-minded adulthood. And Fox was a key protagonist.

Orator, organiser, visionary. Identity-shifter, revolutionary, and deeply caring friend.

There in the squat on my first evening, he spoke about the rainforest in the most incredible way: about how he experienced it on aesthetic, ecological, zoological, biological, chemical, spiritual, and intellectual levels simultaneously.

I was enthralled. Cross-disciplinary, science-laced, nature-worship poetry. My kind of guy!

I can now see that his passion gave me permission to bring mine – not only into activist spaces, but really into my life as a whole.

If it served the Revolution (or Gaia, or the Wild) he was in.

And now I’m scared to stop writing, because the memories keep coming and there are apparently endless stories in the life of this amazing human.

I’m scared because I’m on a bus on a midnight road to nowhere through the Mexican jungle and I cannot speak Spanish and I don’t know where I’m sleeping tonight and it’s pouring with rain. Thunderclaps are exploding all around us like the bombs of an overhead air-raid. The fierce lashing of sky-borne water is so heavy now that we can barely see five metres in front of the bus. The accordion-laden Mexican ballads wail imperturbably from the bus’ speakers, and we continue to hurl headlong into the Unknown.

Fox would have loved this, I think to myself.

By this point, I have learnt that being scared is not a bad thing. In fact, I need my fear to go on adventures. To navigate new and unfamiliar situations, including the global crisis.

Fear is my friend. And so is Iggy Fox.

Icarus.

(That’s what Iggy was short for. I didn’t know until reading Liz’s book.)

So I’m not alone, not really. That’s just a story. I’m putting it aside and writing a new one. With Fox. With Liz Jensen, his mother. With the rebels and fighters and artists of the world. With my beloved friends and family and with you, dear reader, wherever and whoever and however you are.

I’m glad that you came to hear the story of Raphaël Coleman – though there are as many versions of it as those who knew him. Long may it continue!

Happy Birthday, hombre.

See you in the jungle.

Love,

Raccoon