Before I die and before I’m gone (1/4/2026)

How would I look back at my life, my accomplishments, regrets, failures, things or places I never did? I already have written about an eulogy as I described in part over in this blog post. But is that all? I have written about other things that are going on or have occurred in my life; however, I somehow feel more contemplative during the days with the least daylight in the year. Christmas and the new year are ideal times to reflect. Most of my regular readers know that I am not a guy for New Years resolutions. I discussed that in my recent blog post for my church and in this regular post here.

Do I feel my mortality? Maybe a little, I am getting older and I feel like I am getting slower. My joints hurt, I get mysterious muscle pains, I am looking forward to my mid-day naps, and I have become more cerebral and reflective. I am no longer that interested in the advances in biology but I have changed interests to history. I am still interested in science and I consider myself a naturalist who enjoys being out in nature and I hope to continue chronicling my forays into and opinions of the natural environment.

The truly most enjoyable things I have done in my life involved nature; those events stayed with me over the years. I have been above 14,000 feet three times in my life and those are among my favorites. The top of Mount Elgon (14,177 feet or 4321 meters), Grays Peak (14,276 feet or 4351 meters), and the north slopes of the Annapurna (we estimated to approximately 16,000 feet or 4800 meters). Our visit to Gros Morne National Park was another highlight. Finally, our hike on the Isle of Sky ranks up there as well.

My failures and most troublesome experiences include my job and stay in Uganda. I have had a difficult time holding on to jobs over the years. I am sure it was caused by my sometimes-abrasive behavior and my cynicism and sarcasm. Early on I had a difficult time compromising; but then I hate hypocrisy and that is how I perceived the world (and sometimes I still do). During my job in Nepal, I walked into my supervisor’s office and saw him bent over a chair with his pants down getting screwed in the rear by the assistant supervisor. That surely did not help, both were male and married to women. I lost my job fairly soon after that.

Anything I still want to do, experience or place I still would like to visit? I am 72 years old. How many more years do I have in me; how much longer will I live? Five, ten, fifteen, twenty years? I better hurry up. They call the 80s the slow go years (obviously even slower than right now), and the 90s the no go years. My wife thinks we will be strong and independent for a long time; seventies is the new sixties she keeps reminding me. There are places I would like to return to: Curacao, Newfoundland, Scottland, Uganda, Nepal, Japan, just to name a few. I would love to visit New Zeeland, the Easter Island, Chili, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Finland, the Faro Islands, Iceland, Alaska. Things to do? Take a Rhine cruise, eat in some high-end luxury restaurants, visit the Albuquerque balloon festival, go to the Munich October fest, take a stroll on the beach of Ipanema (I guess that I am still a dirty old man), visit Rome and Florence. I am sure there are a lot more things, but I better keep it realistic.

These are some of my thoughts about going into the new year. Politically, socially, and environmentally, 2026 is going to be an interesting, albeit very stressful year. Put on your seatbelts.

A picture from our hike on the Isle of Sky in 2011

Roosters Unite (5/26/2024)

People finally moved into the house two doors down from us, and they have a rooster. While our county allows you to have chickens, roosters are not allowed. They also have ducks, which seems to be illegal as well by our county's ordinance. I do not understand the logic behind all these rules, but why question the wisdom of our county's leadership since they clearly exhibit that they have very little. They spend millions on building a new “law enforcement” building or palace, but do not seem to care one bit about education here in York County, Virginia.

I realize now that this is not what I intended to write about in this essay, but it must be said. My wife and I have been following the saga of our local school board. It seems that members were elected to the board under falls pretexts of being apolitical. However, that changed the minute they were elected, and they started to push an ultra conservative agenda which in the long run would hurt our children. One member used to be a substitute teacher in our school system but was fired for incompetence. Now she knows how to run the entire public school system (or take political revenge?).

Let's get back to the subject at hand: the rooster. It crows or cockle-doddle-does incessantly. This reminds me of the rooster we had in Uganda, we called him “Turkey” or "Turk."  I realize that the name exposes my inert cynicism or playfulness, but our rooster was something else. Being in Uganda my wife had no full-time job to do; we were in our mid-twenties and so we amassed a menagerie of animals. We eventually had two dogs, at least seven chickens, our rooster, at least three goats, and an East African crested crane. We also took care or two horses. Later in Nepal we had a load of chickens, our two dogs and a cat we had brought from Utah. The dogs and cat traveled the world with us and after returning to Europe and the U.S.A., they ended up going to Yemen with us for our next assignment. I do not remember having chickens in Yemen. I guess you could say that we scaled down with age.

But more about Turk, our rooster. Turkey ruled the roost. We relented when some locals wanted to sell us a baby crane. We really did not believe in taming local wildlife, but otherwise it might have become a crane stew or a hyena snack. So, we bought it and raised it. Turk was the boss and quickly established a pecking order with our crane who was at least five time larger than our dominant rooster. The crane and the rooster also had fun with our dogs. The crane easily jumped over our German Sheppard when he charged them, and this became a game. Turk would chase the dogs all over the yard.

The funniest thing with the rooster was his love of opera. You need to know that my wife is a huge opera fan and was, even at the ripe old age of 23. We had a stereo with us, with records and Donna would often put on an opera record. Turkey would run in the house, the minute that the music started playing, and he just stood there still, did not move and listened. When the music was over, he would shake and ruffle his feathers like any good rooster would do and walk out. We always had our home wide open and at times, the horses would come in to beg for a banana, or the kid goats would jump all over the furniture. Uganda wasn't that buggy, although we both got malaria and Donna became quite ill. But I hope you can imagine why the crowing of a rooster two houses from here would take me back to a time almost 46 years ago.

Ladies and Cranes, here is Turkey, our rooster from Uganda

One of my favorite pictures of the time, Donna and Buddha our German Shepard pup.

Stormwater, the early years (7/10/2023)

In a previous post I mentioned that I once had the ambition to write a book on stormwater and erosion and sediment control (and I may still do it). This idea was a natural outflow of the job I did pre-retirement. The following post is part of an introductory section that I wrote for the book. Ince I lifted from a chapter, I have changed it a little to make it a narrative for you all to follow and understand. I left the literature citations out, feel free to contact me, if you are interested in them. So here I go:

Very early, North American settlement history may have followed similar patterns as were encountered in Europe of the Middle Ages. The settling population in North America initially concentrated in towns and villages for mutual protection from outlaws and native Indian population. This is evident by some of the older larger urban centers on the east coast. In addition, large tracts of land were deforested very early on in settlement history for the use of timber (building materials) and the growth of cash crops, in particular tobacco. A 17th century document in the historic town of Williamsburg describes that climbers of the church spire in town (or what is now Colonial Williamsburg) were able to see the York River to the north and the James River to the south, a feat that is impossible nowadays because of the regrowth of the forest in the area. The peninsula appeared to have completely deforested, mostly for the growing of tobacco at that time.

The cartographer Lewis Evans observed the same thing when he reported in 1750 about the deforestation and conversion to agriculture land that had already greatly altered the hydrology and clarity of streams and creeks in the Piedmont of Northern Virginia:

"When the country was cover'd with Woods, and the Swamps with brush, the rain that fell was detained by these interruptions, and so had time to insinuate into the Earth, and contribute to the springs and runs. But now the country is clear'd, the rain as fast as it falls is hurried into the rivers, and washes away the earth and soil of our Naked Fields."

 

The reports by Evans were only the beginning. Human caused accelerated erosion increased steadily as is shown in a recent study by Kemp et al (2020) who conclude that European settlement of North America during the past century has resulted in the movement in as much sediment that natural processes can move in 700 to 3000 years. They estimated that geologic sediment production which had been relatively stable for the past 40,000 years increased 10-fold as a result of European settlement and the rapid expansion of agriculture and river modification seen throughout the continent.

So, what are currently the main sources of sediment the waterways in more developed nations? It was reported that while agriculture practices generate considerable amounts of sediment by way of erosion; we now estimate that areas cleared for construction are able to generate the equivalent of many decades of sediment in one year compared to agricultural uses (let me know if you are interested in the source). Research determined that construction can yield 140,000 tons of sediment per square mile per year, compared to 1000 tons from agriculture land and up to 500 tons from forested land in the Piedmont area of Maryland. In other words, construction is a major contributor producing 140 times more sediment than agriculture land per unit area (for example per acre or hectare). However, , there is so much more land being used for agriculture than actively being disturbed by construction activities.

On an interesting note, while sediment production increased at least 10-fold over historical times in North America during the last century, it was also observed that during the same period it seemed that less sediment reached the ocean. This was caused by the retention of the sediment by reservoirs that were constructed by human. Reservoirs served for the storage of drinking water and water for energy generation and irrigation. It has been estimated that a total of 1.4 ± 0.3 metric tons of sediment per year is retained by reservoirs world-wide. Siltation of these reservoirs will eventually greatly reduce the capacity, function, and usefulness of these structures. It appears that Indonesian rivers were a rare exception and that they deliver more sediment to the coastal areas than other rivers that they surveyed.

Here I’ll step away from my book chapter. I saw similar issues in Nepal where the land or better fertile soil was being carried away by runoff. The main reason was deforestation for agriculture. We often joked that a new island was being formed off the coast of Bangladesh. This island was formed from the sediment being carried by the rivers coming out of Nepal. The results in Nepal were the drying out of springs and dropping groundwater table, a phenomenon seen throughout areas that are being deforested.

I’ll end here, there are many posts where I discuss some of these items as well. Just look in the keywords for the words like stormwater, erosion, sediment, erosion and sediment control, runoff reduction and alike. If you like or enjoy what I wrote here, let me know and I’ll pull some additional material out of my writing.

Our daughter was in New Delhi, India these past few weeks and sent me this newspaper shot.  They had 6" (126 mm) of rain in the afternoon and it flooded the town.  Can you imagine all the impervious area in such a large city, it created havoc.

I am happy to be alive and happier than a clam (11/29/2022)

Strange title to this post, isn’t it? Today, during my morning walk in the woods with the dogs I was overcome by this feeling of extreme happiness and contentment. I was feeling happier than I could remember ever feeling before; even during my daughter’s wedding a few months ago, although I felt pretty damn happy then, but also full of anticipation, thinking about everything to come the rest of the day.

Come to think of it, this was probably one of the happiest moments in my life. So, what brought this on? I am not on drugs, and as I mentioned in numerous posts of mine, I am not particularly depressed or optimistic. Neither am I a pessimist or optimist. Well, thinking about it during my walk, I concluded I was happy to be alive, and even that thought did not bring me down!

Let me explain.

Bad news abounds, three mass-shootings lately, two of which were here in Virginia and one in Colorado Springs. My wife and I were talking about the shooting in Colorado Springs and how a brave guy put himself at risk and stopped the shooter. We were talking about “What would you do” in such a situation. Armchair quarterbacking is easy, but my first reaction was that I would not hesitate and try to stop the shooter. As I explained to her, I survived at least four episodes where I should have been killed by a gun in Uganda, but somehow escaped it, and once by a natural disaster in Nepal. While I am not invincible, I have been so lucky to have lived through these episodes and survived this long. Therefore, it would be ok if someone gets me, if I can save someone else’s life; I lived a full life already. The thought of that full life did it to me, it made me realize what a great life I have led, and I should be happy.

Now I was walking with my dogs today. In winter we usually we take one of two routes. One takes us behind our home through the woods and then back to the neighborhood to the front of our home. This is about a mile and a quarter long walk. The other one starts out the same way but veers off into a trail that eventually leads you to what I consider to be a piece of relatively old growth forest with huge oaks and yellow popular trees. The stand has an understory of pawpaws and maples. That route is slightly longer and is only in nature.

My plans today were to walk around to the front as we call it. However, the dogs had another idea. They wanted to take a left into the woods to the old growth, my favorite area and surely theirs as well. This time we walked a bit further than usually because it felt so good. The dogs walked calmly, and we were just enjoying ourselves. It was then that this feeling of extreme joy came over me and it has not left me. I was in a high of the woods, the sights and the thoughts.

Researchers talk about how important forest bathing is for your wellbeing. The looks, the sounds (or the lack of them), and the smells, the phytoncides are so good for your health, mind, blood pressure, and overall wellbeing. It seems that one walk in the woods can last weeks. I sometimes have two or three walks in the woods each day. I wish they were cumulative; I would have enough for the rest of my life. Let’s just hope I can capture this happy feeling for a bit longer.

This photograph of the old growth was taken a week ago.  My wife can be seen in the middle of the trail.  You can see the beauty and size of the trees.  

Natural turnover everywhere in these woods.  Mushrooms are active all over the place.  I just love looking exploring and just taking it all in.

A quick after remark.  This past evening ( the evening after publishing this post) we were walking the dogs, and I saw two falling stars in a row.  The both radiated from the direction of Mars.  The first shot right into the constellation of the Gemini, almost directly towards Castor and Pollux.  The special thing is that I am a Gemini and have an affinity to those two stars.  The second meteor shot away less than a minute about 90 degrees away from the first towards to tip of Orion.  Absolutely a great ending on an already great day.

My New Sermon (7/11/2022)

This past Sunday I gave a new sermon at our UU church.  It was almost impromptu, I was asked three weeks ago if I could do one based on rain.  Since I teach about stormwater, I though "what the heck."   I am not sure who ordered it, but it rained almost the entire weekend and we had stormwater galore.  

Without further ado, here follows the sermon.  I ad-libbed a bit, but kept to the outline (note the English, and grammar, etc. might not be the best).

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

I have a question for everybody.

Do you sing in the shower?

or,

Do you talk to yourself in the shower out loud, have conversations with yourself?

No, don’t worry, I will not ask your partner, or your pet if you actually do that and if you sing, if you can hold a tune.

There was a time in our life that when we took a shower, we had the keep our mouths closed; our lips tightly closely together, so that the shower water could not accidentally enter our mouth. We brushed our teeth with either bottled water or water that was boiled, filtered and then treated with iodine. Our vegetables were soaked for 20 minutes in water loaded with iodine and despite all that my wife Donna got amoebic dysentery twice. “One more time” she was told, “and you will be permanently sent home to the U.S.”

Where the heck was this? Where were we?

Well, it was in Nepal, 40 years ago. Because of the overall sanitary situation at the time all waterways, streams, creeks, wells, and even springs were severely contaminated with all kinds of diseases. Water was unsafe.

We always learn that beer making was an essential part of living in the Middle Ages in Europe. Water was not safe to drink back then and the process of making, what was in those days low alcohol beer, was a way of sterilizing water and making it a safe every day or all day beverage.

Looking from space we are reminded of one of my favorite UU hymens: “Our Blue Boat Home.” The earth looks like a blue marble, showing that it is covered by oceans. Actually, the blue we can is only about 5.8% of all the water available on this earth. 94% is locked up in rock and unavailable to us, while the remaining 6% is theoretically available to us. The problem is that 5.8% is salt water and essentially undrinkable because of the salinity. There is 1.5% freshwater which is locked up in the atmosphere, soil, groundwater, glaciers, wetlands, plants, animals, rivers, lakes and streams. It is estimated that a grand total of 0.0014% of the water on earth is potentially available for human consumption. Let that sink in a bit. And that is where I come in.

Currently, I work for the State of Virginia in the Stormwater Program as a trainer in adult education. I train folks to play nice with their stormwater. One of the main issues is that once rainwater becomes runoff and enters the streams and rivers, it can easily enter saltwater and in essence become useless to us land dwellers, at least to us living here in the Tidewater. Oh, I am not saying that the animals and plants that live in the tidal areas of the Chesapeake don’t benefit from some of the runoff, but what we are seeing is that the runoff often takes a lot of stuff with it. As I tell my students the runoff is usually cloudy with sediment and sediment does not travel alone. With it you get nutrients, animal and human wastes, cigarette butts, plastics, pesticides, motor oil, dirty diapers, used tires, and all kinds of other contaminants. According to the Bible, humans were given dominion over the earth, so is this what it means? Think about that. I prefer our 7th principle that tells me that I am an equal part of the interdependent web of existence. We need to take care of the earth and that is what I try to teach.

Now the problem is that the runoff from our land is increasing. For one, our storms are getting larger as a result of global warming. Secondly, we are building more homes, mini-malls, roads, parking lots, sidewalks, you name it. All these areas are impervious to rainwater and when it rains the water needs to go somewhere, it becomes runoff. Over time we have created more runoff. Finally, forests, areas with trees and shrubs, or wildflower areas are infiltration champions. On the other hand, lawns are not. They create even more runoff. In addition, people put more fertilizer and pesticides on lawns. In other words, you can guess what the result has been over the past 70 years, more runoff and more contaminated runoff, less infiltration into the soil and a lowering of the water table. Water needed for trees, shrubs, ephemeral ponds, and shallow irrigation wells.

With the exception of James City County, Williamsburg, Smithfield and Isle of White, most of us rely on water that has been pumped to or collected in reservoirs around us. The counties that I just mentioned have to pump their drinking water out of the ground. Their water comes from a very deep layer or aquifer that is difficult to replenish. Water has to flow underground all the way from Richmond area and that may take centuries. I am sure you can imagine that reducing the infiltration in that area does not help. But we have an additional problem on top of that. Our water table or aquifer is broken, busted, kaput. This was caused by a meteor many moons ago that was big enough to create the Hampton Roads, the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, but not large enough to create mass extinctions. As a result, salty sea water can flow back up the aquifer if it is not replenished upstream, and herein lies an additional problem. It is not because of all the pumping and decreased infiltration I just spoke about! All those folks that depend on groundwater in our area are in trouble.

What can be done about this? For one, the Hampton Roads Sewer District is starting to pump treated sewer water back into the ground to replenish what we pump out and thus slow down what is called saltwater intrusion. Don’t worry. They claim it is safe, the treated sewage is sterile.

As part of my job I am working with designers, builders, locality officials, and home owners in handling stormwater where it is generated, on the property. Letting in infiltrate instead of sticking it in a roadside ditch or a pipe and sending it to a creek. This means less lawns, more rain gardens, bio-retention, permeable pavement, grass swales, you name it; infiltration is the name of the game.

Once runoff hits the creek, we lack the ability to clean up the water just like we cannot turn water into wine or into beer. We are no miracle workers. We need to start at the source, where it originates. We teach folks that they have to keep pollutants out of the water, in particular mud or what we call sediment. That is why I tell folks: Sediment does not travel alone, and we require things like those orange sediment fences and other measures around building sites, state-wide. I teach that and pollution prevention on a job site. All in an effort to keep runoff clean and infiltrate as much water as possible.

So what can you do?

Let’s think and talk about it.

1. In your yard

2. With the water that falls on your roof

3. With your vehicles

4. Your dog

5. When you play

A construction site down the street from my home.  Another Dairy Queen!  These are the guys that I teach or the guys that are inspected by folks I teach.

I love this country (10/15/2020)

I really do love this country.  Otherwise I would have never changed my citizenship.  This is why that over the past four years I have been relatively vocal about our political leaders or those people that claim to be our leaders.  I have also continued raising the alarm about our environment locally, nationally, but also globally, because we simply do not live in a bubble.  I really prefer to write about my life, my travels around the state (pre-COVID), and the nature around me; however, it is important to lend a voice to this important cause.  

I much rather write about my walks in the woods and exploration than raising the alarm.  I love to describe what see, like these two gorgeous little guys.

It feels that our current so called leaders want us to live in isolation and as you know from my posts, I have not only lived in many regions in this country, but also in many countries on this blue marble floating in space.  The U.S.A. was respected world-wide in the old days.  From what I hear, that is no longer the case.  It always amazed me when I entered a hut in Uganda, in the late 1970s and saw a picture either of president Kennedy or sometimes even of president Carter on a wall, often together with the obligatory picture of Idi Amin.  If you did not have Amin on your wall, you were a dead person for sure, or at least potentially dead.  I would not be surprised if Obama showed up in the past 12 years or so.

The problem is that this term "Make America Great Again" does not hark back to the time that the U.S.A. was respected abroad, because we were respected under Obama and the last president Bush.  This MAGA slogan is isolationist and for the largest part a racist slogan.  That bothers me.  However, for example, when I try to set people straight about the black lives matter movement and tell conservative acquaintances about its deep roots, I am being made fun off by those MAGA few and told I that I miss the boat and need an education.  In fact it is they who need one, but at one point I feel like giving up and withdrawing into my peer group, my safety net.  What is the use trying to educate them and potentially alienating them.  I am not sure that I have the story completely straight and can defend myself through thick and thin without loosing my temper.

Am I hiding and avoiding confrontation?  I am afraid so; at times I do have the guts, at other times I just avoid it.  Should I always stand up for what I believe, defend it and try to work for what I believe is a more perfect country?  I am often at a loss and not sure if I make the right decision.  Should I react with my brain of my heart? 

I learned that liberal vs. conservative or democrate vs. republican is becoming almost more ideologic or religious and that the divide is becoming so sharp that they can almost be called battle lines.  This is scary, I have seen tribal wars in Africa and in Yemen.  In Yemen they ended up becoming a war between religious sects.  In Nepal, I saw what happens when a cast system (or a class system) puts its stamp on society.  A bloody civil was followed there as well.  I am in fact fearful of what will happen after the election.  

All I can say is that it is important to vote and the closer the outcome of the election is the likelier it will be that there will be trouble in this country that I chose to move to, live in and love.  I would really hate to see that happen.

"Zeeee" said the woman (9/24/2018)

“Zeeee, zeeee, zeeee” spoke the woman in a low, somewhat low husky but hushed voice to me. The owner of the restaurant asked me: “Can I buy it from you?” What the heck was going on? Well, let’s start at the beginning.

I was in Blacksburg this week; home of Virginia Tech. I was teaching two different inspector classes and as usual consulted Yelp for a place to go out for dinner. I have found Yelp to be a fairly reliable travel companion when it comes to finding good to sometimes even funky places to eat. Well, when Yelp told me there was a Tibetan restaurant nearby called Himalayan Curry Café that has four and a half stars, this former dweller of the Himalayan Mountains had to go and try it out.

As my regular readers know, my wife and I lived in Nepal for about a year and a half. My job took me up on the Tibetan Plateau of the Mustang district at regular intervals. I have written about my wonderful encounter with a Tibetan scholar/Lama and about my experience getting dehydrated in a snowstorm at 12,000 feet elevation. There are many more stories I can tell from being up there. I sometimes feel that his blog is turning out to become somewhat of my personal memoire, combined with observations of current events and some of the more natural things around us.

Getting back to the story. When I got to the restaurant, it was obvious a place for a university crowd. A cut above one of those take-out Chinese restaurants that your see in every strip mall, but less than a regular Indian restaurant. You either get takeout, or they end up serving your food on styrofoam plates and you eat it with plastic utensils. To me, the menu looked very Indian; however, in fine-print on the side were some Tibetan dishes which immediately caught my attention. I ordered momos, a dish of Tibetan steamed dumplings; lentil soup; and a samosa (yes that was Indian). While paying, I asked the proprietor if he was from Nepal. “No” he answered, “we are from Tibet.” We made a little additional small talk and that was it. 

With the lentil soup finished it was time to attack the momos.  The black sauce is a hot chili sauce which is very good.

All dishes were out-of-this-world delish (later, I rated the restaurant a five star on Yelp). The momos were filled with beef, in Mustang mine were filled with Yak meat or mutton, but boy did I recognize the taste. Tibetans are Buddhist and they will eat beef (or cows) unlike the Hindus, for whom the cows are considered holy. I remember so well being with the Buddhist population and Tibetan ethnic groups in Nepal; they are so very different than the Hindu population of the lowlands. One of the more interesting memories is that of sleeping with an entire family unit in their home during a very cold evening. I was taking a visiting scientist around the districts I was working in. Everyone on mats on the floor, of course, with their head towards a central fire. In the beginning I was somewhat distrustful, but that was completely baseless. When we woke up in the morning, the first thing that happened was the passing around of a cup of warmed up peach brandy. This brandy was distilled at an agricultural experiment station nearby. After that the lady house started making the famous butter tea, made from tea leaves, yak butter, boiling water and salt (an acquired taste for sure). Memories of a night and early morning I will always carry with me. 

The one time we visited the area we landed smack in the middle of a Buddhist ceremony.  Here monks are tooting their long horns in a procession.

Another picture of the ceremony male and female monks in the ceremony while the villagers are looking on.

But I digress again. After finishing my dinner, it was time to leave and I walked over to the trash bins to deposit my dirty plates and dinnerware. In the meantime, a Tibetan couple had come in and sat down in the far corner and the owner of the restaurant had joined them and they were talking. I waved at them and the owner asked me if I enjoyed my food. I told him I did and decided to walk over and show them the ring I bought from a Tibetan gentleman when I was in Nepal some 35 years ago and that I wear on my right hand. The instance the lady of the couple saw my ring she hissed those words to me: “Zeeee, zeeee, zeeee.” We knew the stone in the ring was a Z-stone, but her reaction was amazing, and it was the first time I had an independent confirmation. 

Here it is, the ring I wear every day with the Z-stone.

The lady continued: “That is a precious stone.” This was where the restaurant owner asked me if he could buy the ring from me. The lady’s husband chimed in telling me that a Z-stone gives the wearer power and the bigger the stone the more power it has. According to the owner, the power flows from the shoulder to the hand and goes “pow.” It seemed none of them had a Z-stone and it is very desirable in their culture, because it gives you power and fends off evil. We talked a bit more about things. It seems that I met all the Tibetans in Blacksburg that evening; a fun, interesting and delicious evening indeed. A wonderful throw back to a time 35 years ago, but still fresh in my memory.

Some of the things you can only remember when you travel.  To quote Mohammed: "Don't tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you traveled."

The Weather Gods are angry (8/21/2018)

At one point in my my life I must have angered the weather Gods. I am not sure when I did this, but from what it looks like, it must have been some time ago. They have been on my case for some time!  Of late, the weather Gods seems to try to sabotage whatever (family) plans I (or we) have. Take for instance this past weekend.

Our daughter is in town and so were friends. What better opportunity to go for a bike ride on the Capital Trail in Jamestown and end this at the Billsburg Microbrewery, followed by a dinner. Oh well, ominous clouds gathered and halfway driving to the starting point of our bike ride we were surprised by a downpour. When we arrived at the designated starting spot to meet our friends Val and Dave, thunder was cracking and rain was starting again. We decided to go to the microbrewery instead and wait out the rain. We got a little wet running in from the parking lot to the taproom, but so be it. In the microbrewery we sampled some delicious beers, experienced some great company, watched a magnificent lightning show, and a tropical downpour. From the looks on the radar, it was not going to stop so eventually we decided to go out to dinner. Suffice it to say, the weather Gods prevented us from exercise and our biking a thing we usually enjoy very much. Although we did try to make the best of it. But then, we beat the crowd to the restaurant; maybe the weather gods were actually looking out for us.

It always seems to go like this though. This summer, it seems to have rain on the weekends and and it is nice during the week. I have not been out sailing yet this year! I can blame the weather Gods for that, or maybe the (hurt) knee Gods, the college graduation Gods and all kinds of other scapegoat Gods. 

Take for instance the other evening, I was peacefully waking the dog (we do that every evening) and the clouds break open literally when we reach the furthest point removed from our home. I did not carry an umbrella or raincoat and the only thing I could do was walk home through what felt like a tropical downpour. The only thing missing was a good electrical storm; I guess I have not yet angered the Gods that much. By the time Jake the dog and I arrive home, 10 minutes later, nothing on my body was dry. We usually dry the dogs off before we let them in the house; this time I was also handed a towel to dry myself off outside, so I would not get the inside of our home wet. My wife took a rain check that evening and let me go walk alone. Her knee hurt she said. Funny how people’s joints can predict the weather. I now know what it means when people take rain checks. 

Earlier this week, I took a day off to enjoy some time with the family. Maybe some outing, beach time? Well, by two o’clock that afternoon we almost had 3 inches (7.5 cm) of rain that fell in about two to three hours time. On top of that we lost electricity. But it was a nice family bonding experience sitting in our gazebo watching the yard getting flooded.

This photo was taken during the height of the storm this past Monday.  The path in our back yard that leads to the woods behind our home was literally a flowing creek.

At points that day the water in our yard was ankle deep.  I was really wondering when the snakes were going to float by.

Weather has always played a large part in our lives. Two of my posts deal with some of the weather we experienced while living in Nepal. We went through one monsoon season and it was so bad, the one night we got almost swept away by floods. Two days later, we were crossing a stream and the wife of the same friends lost her footing and was swept away by a raging stream towards an even larger raging stream. If she would have entered that one it would have been the end of her. Somehow I was able to run after her and put my walking stick out which she was able to grab a hold of and I was able to pull her out of the stream. I really hate to think what would have happened if I (or she) would not have been able to do that. We crossed that stream all the time, it was less than 3 feet wide with stepping stones, but during the monsoon it had turned into this wild torrent of at least 30 feet wide and more than knee deep. It swept her off her feet. During that same monsoon we witnessed whole mountain sides collapsing around us and landslides everywhere. So we decided that the next monsoon we were going on vacation. But then I also wrote about getting dehydrated in a snowstorm in the mountains of Nepal. Those weather Gods are amazing!

Living in coastal Virginia for the past 18 years I have seen my share of tropical storms and other weather phenomena. I am just so concerned that with global warming or what some euphemistically call "climate change," things will get even more extreme. I think we are seeing that already; many old timers in my classes mention this, but as soon as I mention those words “Global warming”, they try to take it back and “oh no, the storms are really not getting more severe, they are just outliers.” The weather Gods are not getting angrier in their eyes; while we all know that they actually are, and that it is the result of all the stuff we do, the stuff we emit but try to deny and ignore!

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.

Agree to disagree (2/14/2018)

Our local newspaper had an article that had a saying that was attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte: “The people to fear are not those who disagree with you, but those who disagree with you and are too cowardly to let you know.” I am not really sure if Napoleon was really the first one who said it, but that quote got me thinking. 

A good healthy fight at work never hurt anyone, or did it?

The article was about workplace arguments. It made me wonder who has not been in one, or at least seen one. I've had my share, and I want to bet that when I ask anyone who reads this blog to raise their hand who has experienced a workplace disagreement, probably 80% of you will do so. But who has said afterwards: Thanks for disagreeing with me, it has made my project stronger being able to argue with you about it. As Napoleon put it, the worst is when someone goes behind your back and tries to sow doubt about your capabilities with your colleagues or superiors without your knowledge and ability to defend yourself. A long time ago I read a book written by Stephen Covey in which he wrote that one of the thing you absolutely should try to avoid is, to “confess someone else’s sins.” That phrase has stayed with me ever since I read it; doing such a thing should really lower your stature in people’s eyes.

Truthfully, I have sinned and have been sinned against. It is so difficult not to talk about others and to confess their sins. I like to argue in my mind that I have been sinned against more than I have sinned, but is that really true?  Who am I to cast the first stone? I have been guilty as well. There is a guy at work we call Lucifer. I know he deserves it, but still. Also, when an ex-supervisor of mine heard that a certain individual was coming to work with us he warned me: “this guy is going to make everybody do his work for him; he is lazy SOB, watch out!” Well, I told my colleagues and have felt guilty ever since. They ignored me, and guess what? They are now doing his work for him and our boss is finally seeing the light and slowly putting the brakes on, after 4 years. Do I feel vindicated? No, still guilty for telling on him, and every time I get together with him I feel like embarrassed. 

But some people thrive on it. They actually get ahead in the workplace and still sleep soundly at night. Oh well.

During my international development career of the late 1970s and in the first two thirds of the 1980s, I worked in three countries with totalitarian regimes. If you are a somewhat regular reader of my posts, you know I talk about Uganda, Nepal and (North) Yemen. Of all three countries, I worked in Uganda stood out as totalitarian. It had a ruthless ruler: Idi Amin, who I wrote about before. However, Nepal and Yemen were somewhat similar. In my days a king, who called himself the reincarnation of God, ruled Nepal. We did not experience him as being too bad, but there was a communist uprising and in general, the people of Nepal were miserable under the King. There was corruption and he was also funneling a lot of money into his coffers. The president of Yemen was known to be a dictator as well and we know how Yemen turned (or is turning) out. In these three countries I saw how dangerous it was to talk behind people’s back, both in the workplace but in particular in the private life of people.

The one thing that all three countries had in common and many other authoritarian countries as well was poverty; corruption; a ruling upper class that was funneling money off society for themselves and only looking out for themselves; lack of education and literacy; suppression of free press; the development of a tremendous propaganda apparatus in support of the ruler; and a buildup of the military and police. One of the scariest things I saw in these societies was how people were divided against each other. They were encouraged to spy on each other, to tell the government about it and be rewarded for it. You were potentially even afraid of your family. Even your children, brothers, sisters or relatives that were further removed could turn you into the police or local security agency for anything you said. They would get rewarded and in the worst case it cost you your head. Just a joke about the leader could cost you your life and you could end up cut up in a cardboard box in a sugarcane plantation or being fed to the crocodiles in the Nile as regularly happened in Uganda at the time. Everybody was afraid of each other.

What I will be showing you here are three photographs taken in the countries that I worked that show the opposite of arguments.   The first one here is from Uganda when we visited the home of friends in the village.

This picture was taken in Nepal of our firend Warren and me at a tea shop on the trail during one of our treks.

An nice idyllic picture of us camping with friends at the beach on the Red sea in Yemen.  The weather was always nice and the water was always warm (almost too warm).  We just hung mosquito netting between two palm trees and that's how we slept.

In these three or other totalitarian countries Napoleon’s words really ring true. It is better to argue with people about life, politics etc. and then part either as friends or agree to disagree, than to run to a higher authority or someone else and tell on them. Or maybe it is better not to talk about these issues at all. The results in some cases can be deadly. Actually it was better to shut up and keep all those thoughts to yourself and not say anything. Beware, when talking to your spouse, there may be someone sitting outside the door or window listening in (as we experienced in Nepal but that is a different story).

My past travels in Nepal, weather extremes past and present (II) (3/23/2017)

As promised and trying stepping away from my anxieties about current-day politics, a trip down memory lane today. On the 12th of January this year I was prompted to write about an extreme weather event we were experiencing here on the east coast of the U.S.A. and that made me reminisce about a snow storm that I experiences in Nepal <click here to see that post>. That episode made me think of the comic book of my youth called “Tintin in Tibet.” But I never saw the Yeti, also known as the abominable snowman.

Well the weather extremes this year did not stop from occurring with that one event. In February we had 80 degree (27 degree Celsius) days and now in March we have seen snow (actually parts of the East Coast have seen one of the worst snow storms ever) and it has been very cold.  It has been a crazy year in many aspects.

But let's step away from that and as promised talk about our stay in Nepal (1981-1983).  Yep, that was a long time ago; it was way before many of us were talking about global warming or climate change, although we Europeans were somewhat aware that it was imminent, having been alerted to the possibility by a 1972 report published by the "Club of Rome."  But again, I digress.  

It was our first monsoon season 1982 (10 years after the publication of that report) and in our naivety we decided to stay in the country through the height of the rainy season.  Hearing this, our best friends planned to visit us, not knowing what we were into.  Well, monsoon means rain, and a lot of it!  When our friends left after two weeks they had seen one fleeting glimpse of the Himalayas (probably 15 seconds long), when during our trek (or hike) the skies finally opened up and they saw the Machapuchare or the Fishtail, a sacred mountain in Nepal.  Except for the hike through the foothills they really wondered if there were really 27,000 feet (8000 meter) plus mountains back there.

This is a picture I took of the Annapurna massive, with Annapurna 1 (26545 ft., the 10th highest in the world) sticking up.  You can barely make out Machapuchare to the right, the fishtail is just sticking out of the clouds.

Another view of the Annapurnas from Pokhara.  Machapuchera is now in the foreground and is blocking the view of Annapurna 1.  To the far left is Annapurna South and far right Annapurna 2.

During that monsoon season we had seen our share of landslides already, but we decided to take our best friends (who were visiting from Holland) to the village where we lived part of the time.  For us who were used to hiking it usually took us 2 days to hike to our home (eventually we could do it in 10 hours; we were in killer shape), but with them the trek took us 3 days.

The first night out we stayed at a local hotel (hut and you sleep on the floor on a mat in a communal room, so the word hotel is a bit of a stretch).  As usual in the monsoon, it started to thunder and rain.  And it rained and rained.  We went to sleep and around midnight we were awoken by other guests by the words "Pani auncha" which can be translated as "water is coming."  We got up and stepped out of the hut and the rushing water was over our knees in the village.  So what do you do?  It is pitch black outside, rushing water down the streets and they tell you the water is coming?  It is already there, darn it! So it will probably be rising even higher and the only thing you can do is to make a run for it.  Our first instinct was to rush down stream with the water.  After a few steps, a person in the next hut tells us not to do that but to go up stream.  Easier said then done.  There are no paved roads but stone paths with steps that are now covered with knee-deep rushing water, you cannot see where you step and where the path is, it was a struggle.  Finally after some time we get to an area where the water is less high.  A good Samaritan sees us and invites us into their home and we all huddle around the fire drink hot tea and wait for the storm to subside and the water to go down.  Eventually we do sleep some there and by morning we go back to the hotel pick up our stuff and get on our way, tired but safe.

A picture of the Annapurna during the monsoon

What happened was that the village was at the mouth of a valley and this storm got stuck in the valley and dumped so much water in the watershed that evening and it all came rushing out.  Obviously, this had occurred before, because the people knew to go upstream and not downstream, where flooding would have been worse.  Our friend died a number of years ago and we saw him a few years before his death, but he still remembered those words "Pani auncha" and we reminisce about them. 

A typical monsoon day in Nepal, cloudy and heavy rains 

For us it was just a foreboding of what was to come during our trek to our home in the village, and I will write more about it in a subsequent post.

My past travels in Nepal, weather extremes past and present (I) (1/12/2017)

It has been a crazy weather week (again) this first full week of the New Year.  For us in Yorktown it was somewhere around 11 inches (28 cm), with even snow in Alabama and floods in drought stricken California.  The year has barely started and the weather extremes are raising their ugly heads already, a sign that the climate is changing.

This is what the ponds behind our home looked like during the middle of the storm that dropped 11 inches of snow in our area.  It was actually great to go out for a hike

I saw an article that a climate change skeptic posted on LinkedIn (this is my LinkedIn profile) the other day where a researcher claimed that the temperature had actually gone down 0.3 degrees in the past 1000 years.  It is like anyone can measure that with any tools or any precision, or that we had a tool 1000 years ago to measure the temperature.  However, the skeptics are using it as proof; they don’t want to see what has happened in the last 100 years.  But let’s make sure that we confirm a climate change denier (or skeptic) to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the next four years and let the environment go to hell.  Oh well, I better get of my soap box.

In their 2017 report, the World Economic Forum reports that one of the most likely risks with the most severest impacts on society will be extreme weather events (top right corner).
We know that climate change is the cause of those extreme events.
Interestingly enough those extreme events can be linked to many of the other threats on this graph.

The weather brought me thoughts back to our time in Nepal (I have written at least two more posts where I mention Nepal).  I worked there from late 1981 to late spring on 1983.  I worked in natural resources management in three districts (provinces) that ranged from the lowlands (in Myagdi) to the highlands behind the main mountain range on the Tibetan plateau (in Mustang).  The other district I worked in was Gorkha, the district that was the epicenter of the recent earthquake and the home area of the famous Gurkha soldiers.  This week’s weather brought back all the weather extremes we encountered while living there.

I was working with some yack and sheep herders in the highlands above Muktinath in the Mustang district.  Muktinath is a sacred place and an important pilgrimage site for Hindus and Buddhist alike.  The elevation of Muktinath is 12,170 feet (3710 meters), and I had been working in the pastures around 14,000 to 16,000 feet (4,200 to 4,800 meters), which was challenging in itself.  Getting back to the hotel (a hut with a common sleeping area) where I was staying that evening, I had one of the most mystical times of my life.  Three Buddhist monks were holding a meditation/prayer ceremony in the main room that I was able to watch.  They were chanting … Ohm … reciting sacred scripts in Sanskrit, spinning the praying wheels ringing bells, burning butter, it was amazing.  I was just sitting there sipping Tibetan tea and taking it all in.  It touched me deep inside.

I took a photo of this guy (obviously Tibetan stock) during one of my hikes to Muktinath.  He was sitting on the side of the trail, selling trinkets to tourists who were hiking up to the temples.  I had a wonderful talk with him.  That was the advantage of living and working there, I spoke the language and could communicate with the people in their language.

The next morning though we woke up to an unexpected snow storm.  There was at least 4 inches (10 cm) on the ground already and it was a complete whiteout.  My guide recommended that we get off the mountain and back to Jomsom (at approximately 9000 feet elevation or 2700 meters) as quickly as possible before everything became unpassable and we would be stuck up there for who knew how long.  In those days there was no vehicular travel in these areas and everything was done by foot, so here we set off in a snow storm on a 4 to 5 hour hike down the mountain in heavy snow.  I vividly remember the hike back; it was sometimes difficult to see the trail, but nothing really seriously happened during the trip, but if you have ever hiked in deep snow, into strong wind and heavy snow fall, you would know.  Once back in Jomsom; however, I was literally exhausted, I could hardly move, had a headache, and I could not understand why.  Finally, in the evening it dawned on me that I had never peed (urinated) that day; while hiking makes me thirsty, hiking in the snow storm didn’t, and I did not drink much or any water that day.  Together with hiking in heavy snow, the dehydration and elevation were playing tricks with me and I was in danger of dehydration, and that could set of altitude sickness, or maybe I already had a mild case of it.

That evening in the hotel I just swigged water like crazy and enjoyed the Bollywood movie they were showing in the hotel.  The movie was a rare treat, but me and a bunch of tourists were stuck, snowed in for a day or so until the weather lifted and I could fly out.

On an earlier trip I had met Tsampa Ngawang a Tibetan scholar sitting next to me.  Tsampa and a guy named Pasang Sherpa (who I met later) had joined the famous anthropologist/religious scholar David Snellgrove on his treks and studies through Nepal.  Tsampa and I often spoke about those trips and about Tsampa's interests.  This photo was taken when I took my wife (and dogs) to Mustang and we visited Tsampa and his wife at their home up in the highlands (a remote village in the back of the Annapurna at around 10 or 11,000 feet).  We still own prayer flags, the printing block that Tsampa carved to print them and a publication that he wrote.  Also shown in the picture is their young child and our "guard" (the project insisted we had a Gurkha guard) Bim Bahadhur.

This episode taught me a valuable lesson: you can even get dehydrated in a snow storm!  Next time I'll write about how we were impacted by the monsoon in Nepal, by flash floods and landslides.