Yeti- The Ecology of a Mystery

by Daniel C Taylor

  We may talk of objectivity, but all beings always view the world from inside out—though perhaps trying otherwise. And to enable that extension what we have created is language. And as we do so, we are losing the old. The Yeti (and other creations of the glass screen) has brought to humans a new life from the wild.

  If we understand languages this way, expressions of life to life are therefore everywhere. In a naturally wild world life is ‘talking’ to each other, growing a conversation of living—being matured is a civilization not of human making but made of Life’s multiple selves. Outside the glass screens, life is communicating in multi-majestic ways. This is visible, for example, in what a blossom tells us about the earth’s position as the flower changes its form with the passing day. The sun communicating to the flower is similar to an actor communicating to a film-goer. Messaging happens on multiple levels, many of which are overlooked, as the blossom is communicating to insects called by the flower to feed, and then allowing the flower to communicate across generations of life itself to new generations through heredity. That flower which is crossing life generations also is communicating by turning people’s behaviours, causing, for example, people to be affectionate, procreate, and generate new generations of humans … who may, then, consume life in order to live their lives.

  When the wild is the context, all life forms are communicating. This is a feature of being alive. And if a hominoid Yeti does not exist, then its non-real existence is evidence of an astounding further life feature: non-living animation communicating with the living. In following the footprints, I discovered that what created the Yeti was something more than those footprints. Language was working in many ways. Emerging from a desire for a wild hominoid, a creature went out from those footprints across the peopled planet, indeed binding people together and also binding them to a wild being lost. Language allowed the non-real to become real.

  twelve

  Back in the Barun

  12.1 In Everest’s Glaciers Are the Footprints

  Source: Carl E. Taylor

  It is 18 November 1984. After nearly two years I’ve returned to Makalu Jungli Hot’l. Those who accompany me seek to unravel the enigma of the tree bear. But for me the objective of the search is changing—the question to be answered goes beyond a bear or a valley, turning to questions about how to preserve the wildness in our lives. From this pristine valley sheltered by the highest of mountains can flow a lesson of high importance.

  Near the campfire scar, rusted tin lids peek through from under leaves. Around our former garbage hole is junk once thought buried, dug up by smell-curious jungle denizens. A slivered plastic circle that earlier wrapped pepperoni gilds a bamboo shoot—items cast aside thinking that the wild would consume them, detritus from our ways of living. Like an animal, I prowl checking corner-post markings. We came looking for a wild man, and to make that easier brought the non-wild with us. In leaving, we could have returned production’s debris to ‘civilization’ to leave the wild ‘pure’. Would that have made this place ‘wild’ again? In contrast to our single visit, shepherds who have camped here several times left a flocked-trimmed meadow that made the wildness welcoming.

  The air, 4 miles above this camp, grows increasingly populated. More than 4,000 climbers have topped Everest; hundreds of thousands visit her base which itself is 2 miles above, and has half the atmospheric pressure of this wild jungle pocket. Such intense inhabitation of the once-wild is just that which is on Everest where dozens of dead also now permanently dwell. Flying daily beside this emblem of human conquest of the wild are jets carrying hundreds of people, each thickening the air. But in this secreted valley pocket is natural balance. In this saved remnant I have an opportunity.

  Some go to the wild to conquer; others to escape. But whatever the purpose, human impact on the once-wild is clear. Imprints now are no longer of wild animals—where ‘Nature Mama Rules’—now Nature responds. We may not like the response—jackals and bears enter our cities from the wild where Nature Mama once ruled—but Nature now responds to us.

  My opportunity is to make an impact. One person’s role may seem insignificant, as throwing away a sliver of plastic may seem not to make much difference. It may seem the sliver would be layered under the leaves. But a bamboo shoot has come up inside it, lifting that one thin wisp of plastic high as a flag. Nature responds to our every single action. On returning to Makalu Jungli Hot’l, I cannot go back to the old wild—it might seem this place is at the end of the earth—but here too our actions of change can be lifted high.

  Life grows forward, always. This understanding is pivotal. From the present, a new future is being created. Nature is like time, going in one direction, forward, never returning to what it has been. This means that Nature is always losing its prior balances with a new always coming, and an impossibility always with us to regain the old. On this understanding, a fallacy in the old thinking is revealed. A protected pocket may be re-established around a natural remnant, but that is not Nature’s; it is human manipulation. National parks have been created to ensure that such pockets remain. But what they try to encapsulate has been lost, life balances now only preserved in these time capsules of the past.

  But I’ve not returned to create another protected pocket. I have come to embrace participation with the wild, recognizing the power of people in the global ecosystem. There is a dynamic to be used in the fact that Nature is responding to us. What is envisioned in our coming here is more than the Makalu–Barun National Park (although that has been emphatically agreed upon). What is intended is more than the well-being of Nepal (though the king wants that). We shall start here an idea that will grow. Moving from the concept of protected pockets, or when that is even lost and Nature becomes specimens on sliding trays in museums or rare animals barred apart in zoos, this new vision seeks to embrace Nature with people-participating protection.

  My quest is to prevent wildness from being fenced-in—where instead of looking through the fence, or flipping through glass screen channels, or pulling out skulls of the dead, people learn to live with the wild, a continually learning engagement with life. The first part of this approach is to release the compulsion of Man’s dominion over Nature, which is the out-of-date view. (Even when control is possible inside protected areas, threats more significant lurk outside.) Partnerships will be engaged in this new approach, from the community to the national and the international; in people must be the preservation of the wild, if, as is the modern evidence, they are the danger.

  The study of Sanskrit gives a metaphor of where the process must go. In its origin, the word ‘jungle’, which usually prompts thought of tigers and bears (that many seek to protect), was used to describe domesticated fields that returned to brambles. This earlier word use meant a once-peopled place going wild—not the wild place now threatened by people. We have lost that meaning (the domesticated returning to the wild). Can we flip today’s meaning of protection back to the original Sanskrit? To do so requires relinquishing the premise of control, a premise deeply ingrained in the modern way of life.

  Sanskrit gives another metaphor. Growing a new jungle comes iteratively; in iteratively is the insight into ‘the how’. Iteration comes from itara or ‘other’ in Sanskrit—the method involves ‘turning to the other’, not randomly but by experimenting with alternatives. In a present age that lacks knowledge of the end point, we have the process to get there. We shall learn the way. Accordingly, we have come here now with a group of scientists to understand from the Barun. This trip is the beginning of experimenting with ideas; it will take us forward in many years of iterative growth.

  To do so, another flop within a flip is needed, a change in perspective. Ecosystems were once defined as systems of Nature, such as ridges that defined watersheds. Protection meant ‘managing’ ecosystems. That is a narrow perspective. Biology is no longer (if it ever was) just flora and fauna. For example, economics must be engaged (and much more than markets for bear gall). The growing populations of end
lessly aspiring peoples must be dealt with. Nepali and world politics must be recognized. And the world is awash with information—seemingly, all knowledge is available and it is not clear what is true. These dynamics are of human making. Their collective is now what defines the ecosystem (expanded from the natural sciences) that will protect or destroy Nature.

  So answers must grow from encompassing scientists, governments, and people around the world. A shocking change follows then: instead of viewing protection in a natural ecosystem perspective, the new definition moves to ‘operating systems’, shifting from Nature’s coding to human. Even genes are not just coded but also adjusted—with this comes great danger. While it happens, we risk slipping into the conceit of playing God. What causes operating systems to work is not engineering the answer (prescience or omniscience) but setting up more rapid participation, that is, iterative processes leading to answers driven by response—driven by using principles. Operating systems are effective because they allow us to mimic change of continual response, evolving answers that fit. The answer is not known beforehand. The answer grows through experiments.

  12.2 Rhododendrons and Trees in the Barun Valley Dressed with Usnea Moss

  Source: Author

  Reality is not being created by this process. We shall never master the universe where we live, move, and have our being. Trying to do so attempts creation out of proud thoughts and vain desires. But to position our place, going beyond the blindness of our hearts is what will help develop a refuge. Otherwise we slide into the curse of Ezekiel: ‘Is it not enough for you to drink the clean water? Must you also churn up the mud with your feet?’ 1 Or as Jeremiah said, ‘I brought you into a fruitful land … but you defiled it and made the home I gave you loathsome.’ 2 In returning now, I have returned on a new quest. From this jungle where a full earth still soars to heaven, we have come to open an opportunity.

  I START SETTING UP OUR HOMES OF ALUMINIUM and nylon while Lendoop leads John, Derek, Bob, Tirtha, and Kazi into the jungle. Then, three hours still left before supper, I push through the stinging nettle on the edge of the camp. After an hour I catch up with the group. A palace hunter carries one of His Majesty’s glistening. 30-06s (royal bear protection). As the team climbs, John and Derek Craighead are picking up plants, constantly commenting. Bob and Kazi walk apart discussing the birds they hear. Lendoop glances right and left as his kukri swings. As I trailed this party I noticed that Lendoop’s been following precisely the trail of twenty-one months ago that led to the ridge with our footprints in the snow. How does Lendoop see the old signs? The earlier trail was nothing special; a climb straight uphill. But Lendoop, I suspect, plays a woodsman’s game, retracing the old trail for the challenge of doing so.

  The warm temperate zone we’ve climbed out of is a place of rapid decay. My earlier measurements were confirmed on the trek this time as we came in; the 1-foot deep loam on these slopes is the deepest recorded for the Himalaya. As Nepal’s population grows, people will start cutting back the jungle. Until now, without people removing the litter and bushes for fire and fodder, slopes grow the decay of life, and that is holding water for the dry season in the valleys below—and with that water, a wildness without people nourishes the growing of food for people who live valleys away.

  Bob and John are exploring under an oak, looking at bear scratches on bark and broken acorns. As they do that, Lendoop points up the slope, and he and I walk towards the tree. Out of the fork of a sapling, he pulls out a square-shaped faded candy-bar wrapper that Nick and I had placed as a trail indicator. The paper is stained almost like the colour of the tree bark, but Lendoop spotted it because its shape was different from that of a tree-bark flake.

  Climbing higher, Bob hears the white-gorgeted flycatcher. Three quick notes, and he recognizes a voice he’s heard but four times. There are 835 recorded bird species in Nepal, more than those in the United States and Canada. Bob has seen virtually all of them—he wrote the book Birds of Nepal—but modesty prevents him from telling me the precise number. He knows thousands of birdcalls worldwide; again his modesty means we’ll never know exactly how many. One of those calls is the three quick trills we just heard. Earlier, as we passed through the lower jungle, he stopped mid-conversation on hearing the spotted wren-babbler. It called once. Three years ago, he had heard this call once in Sikkim. Now he’s off with the white-gorgeted flycatcher, with Kazi on his heels. Working through the undergrowth from two sides, helped by another call, they find their bird, the 836th species for Nepal.

  The Craigheads are seeing a cross section of this jungle, so different from the American West and Alaska where they’ve become leading authorities on the grizzly bear. It was good Barry Bishop pushed me. John and his brother Frank pioneered the tranquilizing of bears in the 1960s, then the use of radio collars for tracking wild animals, which is now a common zoological practice. In the 1970s, John developed methods for using satellites to map wildlife habitat, and now John and Derek are demonstrating how to describe ecosystem parameters using satellite remote sensing coupled with meticulous ground-based fieldwork.

  Reaching an altitude of 10,000 feet, we stop; a good afternoon. Soon dinner will await us in the camp. As the group heads down, I remain under a birch that towers up through the canopy reaching higher than any other tree. After a while the birds change their singing. Other sounds become more regular. Sometimes, it seems, we know a lot, for in Latin names what we see becomes organized. At other times it feels as if we’re losing what we once knew. The Latin organization is based in ancient genetic histories, and while biology may be about the study of life, life is about being alive. In singing their songs birds are not ignorant of relationships; some songs protect their places while others call potential mates to these places.

  Thoreau’s claim: ‘In Wildness is the Preservation of the World’ points to preservation coming from going forward. Had Thoreau said, ‘In wilderness is the preservation of the world,’ it would point to the past, the world as it functioned before people changed everything. As all now respond to human actions, a new world is created. Nonetheless, ‘Nature Mama’ still rules as her human child changes the rules with the new world evolving as with a mother raising a child towards new-fitting creation.

  On this expedition I am a planner at work among scientists. Success in planning happens when the planner focuses on the process. That I am also a white man in a land of browns is a parallel starting point. Because I lack citizenship and do not pay taxes to this land, what I bring are ideas. To the emerging process, my role revolves around participation in this jungle place and national space. Those who have authority own the place, and those who are scientists can guide the emerging direction. I have the opportunity to bring all—the king, villagers, government servants, and international experts—into a partnership, thus driving the process forward.

  Albert Schweitzer, the white doctor who left the concert halls where he played J.S. Bach to go to the jungles of Africa, opened intricacies in the Sorbonne differentiating between the historical and eschatological Jesus; this polymath focused on balance. Civilization is an ethic, he argued. Seeing the gathering of people as an ethic is an insight that was different from the definition of civilization being made of cities and material production; it went beyond defining civilization as language or labour. An ethic of civilization defined people in a world shaped by their learning, discovering patterns through life lived like lines of music dancing in discipline, defining not by notes but how the parts interlace.

  Schweitzer had the courage to play his dance with both music and Jesus, a dance of passion and compassion. His life instrument became the practice of medical healing, attempting to bring into concord both mythos and logos. In his going to this dance he took an organ piano encased in zinc. And when he arrived in the new-for-him world with his instrument from the other world, he found the wild already dancing with a civilization that had been growing for thousands of years. He had to let go of control. But as I press on towards my goal of sustainab
le dancing with the natural world, my mission is not to bring help—certainly not technology, whether encased in zinc or economic development. I intend to encourage ownership by people of what they already have—a process for people to own their futures.

  A twig snaps behind me. I turn slowly. Has a curious mountain chamois approached? No, it is Lendoop, squatting amid the bamboo. I did not know that he had stayed. It’s been maybe twenty minutes. Did he snap that twig as a gentle reminder, perhaps eager to descend to Pasang’s cooking? For a village hunter, coming to the jungle with scientists offers sylvan opulence.

  But this is the first time on this trip that we are together alone. From my backpack I pull out the snapshot of his family, taken on the porch of his home at the time of my skull-hunting race-in. On his hand-hewn porch squats his pretty daughter. The photos Bob and I brought are the first colour photographs of themselves that the Shyakshila villagers have ever seen. Lendoop quietly studies the picture of his daughter and home. Then, just as quietly, his massive shoulders start to heave. He is weeping. I wait, letting a tincture of time mend his pain. After some time, he tells the story.

  ‘Three months ago, after your short visit, my daughter went with three other girls to graze goats above the Barun River. One girl, being thirsty, scrambled across the rocks to the river. My daughter accompanied her, for the river is fast there. As the first girl leaned from the rock and scooped water, my daughter held her dress.