Explorers (7/24/2018)

I have always been a fan of (the lone) explorers.  As a teenager, I read a book about the Scandinavian (Swedish) explorer Sven Hedin.  As an adult, I have been and are still fascinated by the likes of Sir Richard Burton, Charles Darwin, John Wesley Powell, Everett Ruess, and John Muir.  Actually, when working in Yemen I became interested in Peter Forsskal, one of those explorers that not many people have heard of, but more about him in a little bit.

All explorers I mentioned here were cartographers and/or naturalists in one way or another.   They were all ahead of their time and maybe with the exception of Ruess somewhat prophetic; although Ruess disappeared and presumably died at a very young age.  Forsskal died very young as well.

At the time that I liked Hedin and his accounts of travel through the desert of Inner Mongolia, his discovery of a solution for the existence of the lake known as Lop Nor and his travels to Tibet, there was no Internet and Wikipedia,  otherwise I would have learned that in his later years Hedin was a huge fan of Hitler and the Third Reich. Hedin would have been an unwelcome visitor on our bookshelves if we had known that since one of my uncles died in a concentration camp and our father spent time in one.  However, I loved Hedin’s account of his travels and writing about it and now, I wonder if this is where I got my interest and love of the desert; I was fascinated by his tales of the Gobi desert and how in his mind a whole civilization disappeared because a river and lake dried up.  It seems that Hedin was initially motivated by the lust for fame and secondly by curiosity.

If there is any person I admire a lot, it is Sir Richard Burton.  A true renaissance man, he traveled India, Afghanistan, and was one of the few Europeans to enter Mecca. He spoke a multitude of languages (29); he was the ultimate spy for the English empire.  I want to be like him when I grow up!

I will not say much about Darwin except that we named our sailboat “the Beagle.”  I will leave it to you to guess why, but as a hint, I will tell you that Darwin traveled the world on a ship named “the Beagle.”  It was on this ship that parts of his theory of evolution were developed.

Powell explored the west, and one of my favorite books is an account of his exploration of the Colorado River.  He starts in the Green River and trouble starts almost instantly in the Flaming Gorge.  Powell had a great career as a geologist and predicted amongst others the water shortage experienced during the dust bowl, 50 years later.

Muir has occurred in many of my writings and I will leave it at that.  Just look through the labels.  What amazes me is that he not only traveled the Sierra, but he first actually walked from Kentucky to the Florida Keys.  

Which brings me to the two enigmas: Forsskal and Ruess.  

Peter Forsskal was a Swedish/Finnish botanist philosopher.  He was a student of the famous Linnaeus; however, he also studied oriental languages and philosophy.  Interestingly, in 1759, he published a pamphlet entitled (loosely translated): “Thoughts on civil liberty.“  In this pamphlet he pushed for the freedom of print (freedom of expression?), which did not endear him with the powers of the time.  In other words, he was also way ahead of his time, freedom of the expression showed up in the U.S. Constitution that was first proposed 30 years later (I think) around 1789.  I read the pamphlet and it is darn revolutionary.  However, what initially interested me in Forsskal was the fact that he died in Yemen, approximately 20 miles from where we lived.  In Yemen, I ran into a plant that was named for him by Linnaeus (Forsskaolea tenacissima) and I started wondering who the heck this guy was and what he was doing in Yemen in the mid 1700s.  Linnaeus recruited a number of his students to swarm out over the world and collect biological specimens for him.  This was a big thing at the time; it seems that your status in the world went up with the number of species in your collection.  Linnaeus was one of the most ambitious of them all.  Moreover, he was the inventor of a completely new classification system of life; a system that we still use today.  Linnaeus sent Forsskal to the Middle East, first Egypt and then Yemen to collect plants.  It seems he contracted malaria and died in Yemen at the age of 31.  There was a time I was hoping to write an article about Forsskal, if not a book.  Maybe one day, but there is very little information on Peter, at least in English.

Finally Ruess; he was somewhat of an enigma.  He was a poet, artist and can be considered an explorer in his own right.  Since he was only 20 years old when he died in in 1934, we can never really say much about what he achieved either metaphysically, philosophically or scientifically.  However, I think he played on a lot of people’s fascination.  In 1931, at the age of 17, right after high school graduation, Ruess left home and started traveling alone through California and later on through the Four Corners Region on a horse and borough.  He made linoleum and wood blocks, did drawings and wrote home to his parents or brother Waldo on almost a daily basis.  These letters form a daily diary of his travels.  Ruess disappeared in 1934 and is thought to have been killed by two Ute Indians who stole his animals.  The mystery of his disappearance is still a subject to speculations.  In his writings home Ruess appears much wiser and knowledgeable than hi young age would give him credit for.  He even interacted with Edward Weston, Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange, three famous photographers.

So what fascinates me about these explorers, what is the common thread?  The fact that they roughed it, survived rough conditions to a point, discovered things: new cultures, new plants, animals, not only for themselves but also for society.  Ruess appears to have been murdered; I hope it was swift and as painless as possible.  Forsskal most likely suffered.  It somehow reminds me a bit of some of the situations we endured in Uganda, from being held at gunpoint a few times to having very little food to eat and two matches per night during the civil war when Idi Amin was being removed from power.  It also reminds me of the hikes through Nepal and our stays in villages in areas where few had ever seen white folks; or where we were in danger of being flooded (see this post); my stay at a home where they had a funeral for an important Buddhist lama; or that one time we slept in a home at an elevation above 12,000 feet.  It reminds me of sitting between these two heavily armed Yemenis driving through the Empty Quarter up and down sand dunes looking for a Land Rover mechanic.  In a way, I miss it. 

Reaching back to the past.  While working in Nepal I had to hike into the back country and get into villages where some of the folks (especially kids) had never seen Europeans.

One of my favorite pictures and I suspect I showed this one before, but when traveling on the Tibetan plateau, we ran into this guy and had a great talk with him.

My sermon: Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world (7/18/2018)

It has been a while since I posted something in my blog. For my regular readers, I gave a sermon at the church I attend regularly the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Peninsula in Newport News or UUFP. That took a bit of my time. For some of my friends there and friends in Holland, I promised I would post my sermon on my blog. I will start out with the sermon, followed by the quote from E.O. Wilson’s book “Biodiversity” that I read as a preamble, and the closing words. Regular readers will recognize a common thread in my sermon; for new comers I have an extensive list of labels where you can hunt for more.  It is not great literature but a way for me to express myself.  But without further ado, here it is:

Sermon:

Hello everyone, most of you know me, I am Jan. I’ve been a member of the UUFP since the year 2000. I am a biologist, a naturalist.

My funny accent might give it away, but as a lot of you know, I am not originally from here. I grew up on the island of Curaçao in the Caribbean. As a child and teenager, I spent a lot of time in what was called the knoekoe (the local name for the bush) on the island, taking it all in; just moseying and looking around. One of my favorite things was looking for ball cacti, pulling out their little pink fruit out off the white pads, and eating them. I would also just fantasize about what I saw, about making trails so people could enjoy and appreciate nature more.

This carried on in my adult life, I first worked in international development, and then afterwards I had a 20-year stint as a field biologist. I loved being out in the field, experiencing nature in its fullest. I still do, you can try to take me out of nature, but I do not think you can take nature out of me; it draws me in like a magnet. Whenever I can I will be out there, find a tree I can hug and even kiss and be one with for a few seconds, feel grounded.

Of course, you can take photographs of nature (as I do) or look in photo books, but as Annie Dillard wrote in her essay “Total Eclipse”: “Lenses enlarge the sight, omit its context, and make of it a pretty and sensible picture, like something on a Christmas card.” Being emerged in nature, living and breathing it, is so important. At least, it is to me, and I hope to convince you that it should also be for all of us. Only outside can you touch and feel the trees and the soil; breath in the smells and fragrance and feast on the views. As you can imagine, I really hated to go back to the office to write reports about my fieldwork, especially since it usually meant that my fieldwork would turn it into some subdivision and destroy some of nature's beauty.

Earlier on as a graduate student there was nothing better to take pre-dawn measurements of plants in the desert of New Mexico and then hearing the coyotes howling around me at sunrise the minute the sun hit the area. It was magical; you knew they probably had been watching you all along and you never noticed them.

Later on, as a wetland scientist working in the woods I could not just do my job. Especially when working alone, I just loved to take time out at a beautiful spot and just sit on a log or lean against a tree and observe nature around me for 10 or so minutes.

Field work was not without its dangers. I will never forget the day I was struck by a water moccasin also known as a cottonmouth in Virginia Beach. The snake shot out of the high grass and hit me in the legs. I let out a very loud high-pitched scream. Thank goodness it did not break skin but just got stuck in my pants. But that night, 12 hours later my heart was still racing. The very next day, I did come eye to eye with a timber rattlesnake in the same area. I noticed a beautiful skeleton of a possum and bent down to look at it when I heard the rattle. The rattler just stood there and warned me to back off, as to say “this is my carcass,” so I slowly backed off, turned around and walk a different way.

Did I kill the moccasin that bit me the previous day? Absolutely not! As our 7th principle mentions, we have RESPECT FOR THE INTERDEPENDENT WEB OF ALL EXISTENCE OF WHICH WE ARE A PART; or in other words, I believe that we all have our place on this little blue marble that floats in space and we need to respect it and take care of it and of each other. The snake defended its territory and I stepped in it. I did not get hurt and I know my heart was good, at the time. On the next day, the rattler just warned me to stay away. Not all snakes are bad, not even moccasins. A number of years ago I ran into two that were mating (and they were not aggressive), they were not at all interested in me.

You have to take precautions, during the times I've spent outside, have been bitten by so many ticks and have gotten rocky mountain spotted fever, one of the tick-borne diseases. And let's not talk about all those mosquitoes.

Did all this deter me from ever going out into the woods or nature again? Absolutely not. This was in 2003, and I still go into the woods for work and I still do it almost daily for pleasure. Am I more careful? Naturally, I am getting older you know. But I just love to explore, bushwhack and take it all in.

I think that I suffer from an extreme form of Nature Deficit Disorder. Nature Deficit Disorder is a term first defined by Richard Louv, it indicates the need of people to reconnect with nature at times to regain balance in their lives. Louv contents that a lot of personal inner problems, social problems and inner-city problems can be brought back to the disconnection from the natural environment.

The way I deal with my Nature Deficit Disorder has always been to go out in nature. I guess in the old days when I grew up on that tropical island you could have called me a loner. Being out in nature was my solace, and actually it still does. You could say that I could be considered an introvert. Later on, I learned by way of some psychological tests that I am truly an introvert among other things. However, as an adult I have forced myself out of my shell when I am in public.

Being an introvert does not mean that you do not like to talk to people or that we are anti-social. Every person needs human interaction and so do introverts. However, we introverts also need a lot of recovery time or me-time. For me it is so comforting to retreat into my own world and in particular in the natural world where I can be alone. That is my way of expressing and dealing with this curse of being an introvert.

So, when I am done teaching or interacting with people, my alone time is best spent outside hiking in the woods, on my sailboat on the water or in my kayak. Doing this alone would be great, but with my loved ones is great too, as long as they do not expect me to talk too much. I often just like to be in my own thoughts. However, when I am sailing I am just concentrating on staying on course and not running aground, but even that clears my mind.

I am not sure if he was an introvert, but the famous John Muir who hiked up and down the Sierra Nevada around the 1900s is credited as the person who initiated the Sierra Club, and was the impetus of the National Park Service wrote “the deeper the solitude the less the sense of loneliness, and the nearer our friends”. Muir also wrote: “In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.” I think he was onto something here.

Earlier this decade Japanese researchers introduced the term Shinrin-yoku loosely translated as forest bathing. No, it has nothing to do with an outdoor shower, although I am still trying to convince my wife that we need one of those too. The Japanese researchers showed that the volatile compounds or phytoncides emitted by the vegetation in a forest, in particular the conifers, lowered the blood pressure and slowed the heart rate of their subjects, and one exposure to these chemicals (or to the woods) could last as long as two weeks.

John Muir also wrote: “Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.” As our friends from Japan found, of all the trees in nature, pines are the highest emitters of phytoncides, those chemicals that are good for you.

Maybe this is why pines have a rich history in mythology. Of course, we use them in our Christmas celebrations and with good reason. Many cemeteries plant pine trees and other conifers as symbols of eternal life, they stay green throughout the winter. Druids in England lid bonfires in Scotch pine forests during winter solstice celebrations. The Romans worshiped pines during the spring equinox festival of Cybele and Attis, while in ancient Greece worshippers of Dionysus often carried a pine-cone-tipped wand as a fertility symbol. Even in Siberia and Mongolia, people there enter a pine forest in silence and with reverence.

Native American people see the pine tree as a symbol of wisdom and longevity. Its needles and sap are medicine that protects people from illnesses, witchcraft, and more.

In the Orient the pines are also associated with longevity, virtue, youth, masculinity and power. The Japanese word for pine is Matsu which also stands for “waiting for the soul of God to descend from heaven.” In ancient Shinto beliefs, gods were said to have ascended to Heaven on a pine tree, where they now reside on a beautiful volcanic mountain in giant or old trees. Pine trees are associated with the New Year in Japan. So much so that many Japanese hang a bundle of pine twigs and bamboo trunks known as a Kado matsu ("Gate pine") on their doors to receive a blessing from the gods.

This almost reminds us of Muir’s quote: “Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world,” doesn’t it?

While I love that quote, and conifers such as pines rule, I would love to expand Muir’s quote to: “Between every two trees in a forest is a doorway to a new world.” I strongly believe there is power in nature as a whole, and not only in pine trees.

For me, it does not matter how familiar or unfamiliar the woods are, every time I step outside into the woods the worries of the world fall off my shoulders; I can retreat into my own world and relax. Early on in my life, in Holland, Uganda, Nepal, Yemen, and New Mexico I was in my happy place when I was alone just strolling around in nature, looking around and sometimes studying the things I saw around me.

What do I look for when I retreat into the natural world? For one, I grow bonsai trees at home and it is great to study the canopy of mature trees in the forest for examples to style my little trees. In my reading by E.O. Wilson you heard me tell you that he considers that there is more order in a handful of soil than in on the surface of all planets combined.

To me nature is full of order; full of hidden patterns, and that is another thing I am always on the lookout for. It is survival of the fittest, parsimony, and full of those patterns waiting to be discovered and understood. That is what I do in the woods.

Think about it, every spring the leaves come back, the dogwoods and the redbuds flower and we have to deal with pine pollen. Let me tell you, I had the worst allergy season this year. In summer months, nature does its thing, I enjoy watching the adult birds raise their young, watch the skinks (or lizards) in our backyard, and just see everything grow. In fall nature is preparing for winter. In winter, you notice things you hardly see other times in the year, like when looking up in the canopy you see that not many tree canopies touch each other. Also, that there is a rhythm on the way the trees branch and the way side branches come off.

In her book: “The Solace of Open Space” Gretel Ehrlich wrote: “Autumn teaches us that fruition is also death; that ripeness is a form of decay. The willows, having stood for so long near water, begin to rust. Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.” Yes, nature to me is very predictable and it helps me to sort my thoughts. So yes, a new door opens every time I enter nature, I discover something new.

Those snakes, ticks, mosquitoes and other varmints are not going to stop me from going out there. I take precautions, use bug spray, watch out where I step. I need to get out and be one with nature. The tall trees are my cathedral, my spiritual home. That is why all those parallel tree trunks in the forest are so important to me; they are my doorway to a different, a new world. As I said those forests are something we all need, not only for clean air and clean water, but also as a spiritual experience, for our sanity, our health and overall wellbeing. Once I enter the woods I need to become one with it and feel grounded, to touch the bark, feel the tree, like when I was young when I needed to eat those little red fruit in in those cacti. But most of all, I need to get out there and I urge you to go too.

----------------

Reading:

Organisms are all the more remarkable in combination. Pull out the flower from its crannied retreat, shake the soil from the roots into the cupped hand, magnify it for close examination. The black earth is alive with a riot of algae, fungi, nematodes, mites, spring-tails, enchytraeid worms, thousands of species of bacteria. The handful may be only a tiny fragment of one ecosystem, but because of the genetic code of its residents, it holds more order than can be found on the surfaces of all the planets combined. It is a sample of the living force that runs the earth – and will continue to do so with or without us.

Edward O. Wilson
The Diversity of Life

------------------------

Closing (Benediction):

Let us go out now into the sunlight filtered by the pine trees and oak trees. May the subtle fragrances of the woods bathe your body and your lungs. May this all bring you blessings and enhance your enjoyment of life for days to come, until the next time you can return to nature and experience it all over again.

Bless it be.