I need to learn to navigate because I am part-of, one-with, using-all-of the world. Connection will carry me, not to things of my making, but to life that I can thrive in but do not control. Doing so I can mimic the more skilled navigation of birds that fly miles above, whales that navigate leagues below, or elephants that remember across generations. I can join the greater wild of life that does not seek to control. Each in its place is the constant surprise, journeys into the new wild of the new age.
13.4 Kazi Using Mist Nets to Collect Birds
Source: David Ide
My growing understanding is that dimensions go beyond space and time—as even an airplane flight lasts in its residue in the air and also in its repositioning of people, long after the airplane lands. The living lived continues on for years after death—not only in our children and children’s children, but in what they made of and with their lives, ripples of being in the space of the evolving socio-econo-info-biosphere with consequences that affect the whole and reshape the world.
THE REALITY OF THE EMBODIMENT OF IDEAS. As unlikely as Yetis for which exist footprints, more relentlessly embodied across the ages is the proposition for angels. Belief in angels endures, not as carriers of the wild but as carriers of Divine. There are obvious differences, but also exist similarities. Are angels actual beings who flutter to our world, or idea shards from ancient belief? Either way, they still speak connecting to the world outside human control. But outside the airplane window I see dawn breaking.
Understanding comes to our souls. After the understanding comes, subsequent facts confirm. Was the understanding truly from another being? The sceptic may scoff that such is possible—for we have not seen it, measured it. But a message came, and subsequent facts confirmed. So like footprints it is there. Like the Yeti that speaks of people from the wild, so do angels from whatever this existence is beyond human control and knowing. Messengers come from that which we cannot see and measure. Dismissal is harsh, for ask that sceptic about the reality carried with falling in love, of giving that empties oneself for another. Or, ask that person about their mother. An angel can indeed come, though it cannot be objectively confirmed.
The imprints of this are so real they can (and have) turned human actions. Across generations, in the transformation that follows is the reality; reality is not in the messenger but in the result. Some ‘thing’ was conveyed. Because earlier generations described the messenger as with body does not require we accept that part of the understanding. We can accept just the understanding that was conveyed, through eyes or ears for some, for others through witness.
What resulted was moving whole cultures towards grace or disgrace. Deep knowings told how to walk life trails. The results have endured. They carried aborigine songlines across centuries, allowed people to live in conditions where Modern Man could not. Conveyed by them are knowings that opened understanding of the impossible in a world where senses do not transfer. It is not Science, but it is real. It is real because, from such knowing, results can also be repeated and objectively verified.
Names are offered—Jehovah, Allah, Gaia, Great Medicine—expressions of a being whole and alive. What matters in such greatness is the enduring message rather than the name. A transcendent was made alive, gathering the whole into changed parts. Such embodiment is also shown in geniuses (even the hyper rational accept this ability). A message comes out of the not-previously-thought-of. An arabesque of association linked domains previously unconnected. A message transferred.
This meta phenomenon now dabbles with other explanations also, seeking deep understanding of the ‘uni’ in universe connecting to the bond that makes our self ourself. While the force that does this may confuse, the result is clear. The bond creates group, and from that individual identities transform among people. (This also happen with whales, or ants, even blades of grass.) Living directs to living with the whole. We accept this among people, also in a pod of whales, or even ants in their trails, if not yet willing to accept in adjacent grasses growing.
This search has been explored across many ages. Recently helping understand those lines, we have String Theory. Vibrating strings of energy, it is alleged, reside at the core of all matter, flexing and reshaping, the most basic of all embodiments, a matrix linking material definition. Their peculiar vibrations create all that matters, presenting too in dark energy behind the reality we know. Might those vibrations connect to other universes—creating not one universe we live in but more accurately a multiverse? In the distant cosmos energy pinpoints speak in such verse. Instruments can measure those points. Does the soul go inward to another nested set not measured? Might our inner senses also be monitoring to that through our strings to Life?
Ancient songlines are in such searches. From them arise portraits of the present, identities more vibrant than portraits shared in electronic digits. After we no longer relegated to religion alone connection of soul to the great beyond, authenticity of the scientist’s voice ascended. Ordering allowed verification one investigator by another, going beyond postulate to proof. Greeks as well as Chinese were early explorers of the scientific method, but a good year to begin systematic life ordering is 1753; the name is Linnaeus. From a Babel of folk names, all Life was positioned: kingdom, phylum, order, family, genus, species. From an alignment where strings of DNA reported to others in presumed sequence, then followed a search that sailed the world to order of Life.
Name and position gave partial understanding. The extent of its partiality shown in an insect colony in a rotting tree: life through death becoming life. Brain cannot explain how animals without reasoning can create such. But complexity theory does. Explanation comes in parallel understandings through the recursive mirrors of folk knowledge, poetry, art, and religion—life looking into itself and seeing back the wonder of it all. Seen is each mite, giant panda, tropical fig tree, dependent on another—understood not as a tree of life, factoids, but as wholes, more than part summations when all together.
Eighteenth century biology was an organizing of species. Nineteenth century biology gave new understanding when Darwin and Wallace formulated natural selection as the speciation mechanism. By the mid-twentieth century relationships were recognized; ecology was nets holding Life, and lexicon added a new hierarchy: organs, organisms, families, communities, ecosystems, and landscapes. No species was alone, no system independent, mite, panda, or fig. Two taxonomies intersect: genetics and of relationships. And despite embracing parts as well as relationships between the parts, neither defined the ability to respond to change.
For our response can unfold in so many ways, bringing me back to bioresilience: predation, nutrient changes (especially food and water) and habitat fluctuation (temperature, precipitation, and habitat loss). Response comes through defence—protection (adding a barrier or insulation, or creating a storage mechanism); adjustment/mutation—changing to accommodate the change (reducing consumption, changing metabolism, tool use, or altering reproduction); or migration—moving from the change (temporarily or permanently). The challenge I must solve is how to move among all these.
As the warming planet unleashes unreliability, zones that have not experienced freezing for 12,000 years will have vascular systems ruptured, their wonderfully intricate life-carrying pipes broken. Other places will be scorched. A wild is coming augmented by human action now beyond its creator’s control. In this new world, consider the magnitude of humanity’s extension. If the mass has their weight combined of all mammals that people possess (cattle, horses, camels, dogs, pigs, chickens), this would constitute 65 per cent of all animal life. Weighing all people will constitute 30 per cent. The remainder, the weight of all wild mammals, will comprise 5 per cent. The extensions of humans and their animal dominions comprise 95 per cent of mammalian life.5 One animal has nearly annihilated the wild. Vaclav Smil who made these calculations suggests we approach an ecology designed and managed by human intelligence, a noosphere.
As we try to frame this noosphere, we need to exp
and the concepts. Bioresilience helps, a way to understand and measure accommodation to change. It allows, for example, us to understand biology’s ability one moment to promote rapid photosynthesis as sugars and moisture surge in vascular systems, then reposition almost instantly as sun departs and freezing blasts in. Or, it allows to understand the needed ability of life to harbour nutrients in roots and rhizomes so to bridge food deficiencies when rains do not come as we risk annihilation of life.
For in addition to measuring the diversity of genetics, we need to track species’ abilities to reposition. Mountains are one such waiting place where biome stacks on biome, networks poised to move up, down, or outward as change dictates. Another set of places so waiting with bioresilience is the typical town park, places in our midst that endure collective trauma of pollution, precipitation, and human populations, dynamics that devastate the pristine. Town park species may not be as beautiful—geraniums are not as compelling as orchids and many warbler species are needed to encompass the food range of the crow—but town parks are seed beds of resilience as national parks struggle to preserve the exotic.
This is the Anthropocene where we redefine the wild as well as the world. In fundamental ways we approach reconfiguring the modalities of evolution. In it, the most resilient of species will—whether intentionally chosen, or, in absence of choice, evolve the result—build biological bridges. We shape the processes by which we go forward, men, seeing to avoid the abominable, but creating the new wild. When the massive extinctions came at the end of the dinosaur era, another species having great appetite, had no bridges to carry them to the new changed world. But humans have the ability.
fourteen
Entrapping the Yeti
14.1 Side-by-Side Positioning of the Hind Foot (Left) and the Front Foot (Right) with the Foot Size of Ursus thibetanus Shown by the 52 mm Black Lens Cap
Source: Author
25 October 1985. Ten months ago, leaders in Nepal were excited that their country might be introducing a new animal to the world. What defines a ‘new animal’? An animal new to science is the usual assumption. But the excitement a year ago was pride that Nepal’s people had made the identification; it was a validation of local knowledge. What was found, then, was more important than an animal—it was the Barun Valley itself—that the country had an unknown treasure. The discovery had come (as described in Chapter Twelve) as Tirtha and I had sat that afternoon on the Barun ridge looking out, and he had realized then described what his country still had: ‘The Barun shows the wet Himalaya before people changed the land. Indeed, it shows the wet jungle of Asia … A view of what would be 5,000 miles on the flat can be traveled with a turn of the head … showing Asia’s habitats between tropics and arctic before people came to this land.’
In this identification by Nepal’s leading botanist what was discovered was a heritage, a legacy larger than one species. A breadth of wildness was revealed—and it was Nepalis (not just Tirtha, but Kazi, and others, not the least of which was His Majesty who had known the Barun was ‘the most wild’); it was a community of Nepalis who had discovered this. For years what had excited me was a Yeti explanation; to answer that the Craigheads had joined my search. But the big discovery our team had made was Nepal’s still intact wildness. So now I walk with my friends through the hallways of the government to introduce a new way of thinking about protection based in people, conservation through the engagement of people. Two weeks from now, international participants will arrive for a symposium worthy of their busy schedules, to outline the structure of a new national park that will continue this partnership, an initiative that grew from questions about a bear, and now our idea is to ground this park in management with local communities.
Tirtha, Bishou, and I sit over afternoon tea to further evolve that idea. ‘I promised the international visitors a chance to see the centre of the world’s highest mountains. Can we move our planning meetings to include Nepali leaders with the international experts? Can we take the ministers and officials to go sit with local leaders and do the planning in bamboo huts?’
‘We’ve never had a conference like that—one in the heart of the Himalaya in partnership with the people!’ Tirtha is enthusiastic. ‘Our leaders are mostly bored in offices. Everything depends on how the invitation is issued’.
Bishou lights up, ‘Tonight is the Queen’s birthday party. Before that, let’s invite His Majesty’s uncle General Sushil, Chancellor Bangdel of the Royal Nepal Academy, and Vice-Chairman Sainju of the National Planning Commission. If news is out this group is going, at the birthday party tonight others will want to join. We then control who comes using the limited seats on the helicopters, and in controlling who comes we shape the agenda to trusting local people’.
The following morning we gather again at Bishou’s house. As he serves spiced quail eggs, Bishou is excited. After the party he met with Prince Gyanendra, ‘H.R.H. called me to his palace before leaving for Thailand. He knows World Wildlife Fund has trouble because it did not involve villagers in the Annapurna project. He wants to push a people-based approach. At his command, already this morning I telexed the Chief District Officer in Khandbari to tell him we were going to have a people-based meeting. I also called the Royal Flight Wing to reserve a third sixteen-passenger helicopter’.
Tirtha is worried. ‘Last night some people wanted to know from which districts land will be taken for this park. Others wanted details of people-based management. A few hinted that involving people might weaken the monarchy’.
Bishou breaks in, ‘Keep ideas simple: A new park. The objective is a people’s park in Nepal’s finest jungle—don’t say how’.
Tirtha is still worried, ‘The international voice may be a problem. We do not want another example of foreigners telling us what to do. The people’s voice needs to be authentic’.
Bishou is not listening, ‘Okay, we agree about the park. We must not let this meeting raise questions. Present an idea that has no problems’.
Tirtha turns to me, ‘Dan’l, how much money do you have? Right now, we’re talking forty people in the jungle for several days. Helicopters will be expensive. After that there will be big money’.
‘I have USD 15,000’, I answer meekly. ‘Last night I figured fieldwork for just the boundary survey will cost USD 25,000. Now add in all these helicopters, and a lot of time in the field setting up meetings’.
‘You have months to raise the boundary survey money’, Tirtha answers.
‘I have the USD 15,000’, I answer meekly. ‘There was a nice man in Aspen Colorado’.
‘You need a lot more’, Bishou admonishes. ‘His Majesty said you could be trusted. You must stand behind what I have promised’.
Gently Tirtha pushes, ‘Dan’l, you’re asking my government to make a perpetual commitment. Then you started talking about changing how this government views ownership. When you talk such ideas with important people, you need to do your part’.
I lower my teacup. An image flashes of two sceptical trustees at the Mountain Institute’s next board meeting. They’re going to have questions and want money locked-in. But I cannot stop this building-while-doing. If I did, I would have to leave this country today—and never return. As the organization’s president, I can call on a credit line at the bank; that will pay the chopper and jungle bill. After our meeting, I will have a plan as well as government support. On these I can raise money. I look at Tirtha, ‘I was telling you about money I brought—I’ll wire for more’.
Bishou jumps in, ‘I told His Royal Highness last night that his brother said you can be trusted. Here is the new problem. We must have meetings in Kathmandu to get people involved who we cannot be taken into the jungle. I decided we will rent a hotel, get the news media. What do you think, Tirthaji, will two days satisfy everyone? We must serve food and strong drinks—tea and biscuits will not make the project look serious’.
Tirtha nods. ‘Two evenings should be enough. People do not like all-day meetings. When including people they�
�ll want to meet dignitaries. No need to announce that the King is behind it; they all know that. We must be open so people feel that each can join in’.
My head spins: egos of Kathmandu intelligentsia … tea and biscuits not enough … a hotel ballroom for two nights … newspaper, radio, television. A minute ago, I thought I was approving helicopters and jungle staff. I’m seeing now the difference between chutzpah and maybe going out of business.
Bishou follows, ‘We need another meeting afterwards. First two nights to launch the idea. Then another meeting at the end with the public endorsing the jungle meeting. Everyone will feel they have a part but understand that there’s not enough room on the helicopters. Yes, another meeting when the jungle group returns’.
14.2 The Delegation Arriving by Helicopter for the Makalu–Barun National Park Planning Meetings at the Saldima Meadows
Source: Author
My mental cash register keeps ringing up costs: helicopters for twenty Nepalis, nine foreigners, tents, camp staff, a third grander reception in Kathmandu. I could look for the Yeti with a backpack. But starting a national park demands a strong stomach.
Bishou again jumps in. ‘That final night should be at the Royal Cottage in the King’s Forest, what do you think? It’s only twenty minutes from the city. People will find it interesting and that will bring more to the meeting. The cottage is under my control’.
Yeti- The Ecology of a Mystery Page 27