He could not sleep and wished they would return, all of them, and talk about the immortality of the soul, how the body died but the soul went on its way—to where? The straw smelled of spring and sun and the blanket of the thick steam of horses. The street lamp shone faintly through the window, glazing the room silver. He thought of the woman whom he had waited for and was glad she had not come. She had not made him happy and would never make him happy. He had never before been happy.
He closed his eyes and felt himself happy. And he soon slid into sleep. He was on a snow-tipped mountain in a glade surrounded by snow. The sun warmed the glade but left the mountain frozen in snow and ice. Horses grazed and drank from a pure stream. Some had wings. Some spoke nervously about the world below the mountain and of the dangers waiting there. But others said they never intended to leave the glen and did not care for the world below and for those foolish enough to have gone there. The young ones pranced and splashed in the stream and nipped at each other in amorous play but no one minded and let them be. Some horses came to speak to him. They wanted to know—as he had lived below and had visited among them—his thoughts of the world. Was the visible world the terminal end or the edge of another, invisible world? they asked. He did not know, he said. They laughed in a friendly way. And then asked: Was his body the edge of his world or just a perishable form of an invisible self that had no boundaries in time and space, that had no beginning and no end? He said he did not know, but added that he was indifferent to the answer, happy as he now was among them in the glade. He was wise, they said. He was not sure if they were just being polite. A great golden horse with golden wings circled them, saying nothing. But then he came close, and, bending low for Louie to mount, he said, “Come, join me, if you will.”
“Yes,” he said, “I gladly will.” They rose above the glen and flew high above the world until it shrank into a speck among specks and then they sped away toward the sun.
Louie woke to the clatter of life and voices in the bar and quickly dressed; his clothes were dry. All the horses of the previous evening surrounded a table heaped with buckets of grain and bowls of water. They had set aside a place for him with a plate of cooked oatmeal and a napkin and wooden spoon.
He nodded; they did the same. Then, silently, they all began to eat as the first true light of day came through the window.
—For David Salle
Four Poems
Rebecca Bridge
(SOME LUCKY)
—For Paul Hoover
Skip to the howls and the cows
will come home, hear the beating
of the tacks into the walls?
Nailed in like multiplication tables,
drilled into these tiny mahogany-headed
pupils dropping leaves to fall through minds,
drift across the autumns and,
thick-skulled, there go those dogs again
howling and squeaking (like some lucky beds),
or brand-new shoes on linoleum spit shined
(like some lucky lips), or lips reading
when the signs don’t flash language
and the records spin music in treetops,
scratched over and over scratched
(like some lucky backs), with thighs wrapped
around them, decorative as tutus, and
the active volcanoes are dressed for a fight,
throwing the towels in the hampers and
the cows sleep at night.
WHAT WONDER
The dark had descended, nighttime was
a velvety hat, sat well upon all the heads
of field mice. Where? Well, they were
hidden underneath the davenport of course.
The world was in childish verses, deafened and sick
from the wonderful night animals, oh, be-
witched world! The world was under me whispering
nasty and soft, saying: You seem taller lately.
IN THE EVENING, EVEN DEEPENING IS PRETTY
Somewhere deep in the cheese fields of the
Great Midwest, upon the bough of an old
cheese tree, we sat and sat and we told stories.
It was a pleasant time, with fruits ripening
and other things ripening and the sun shining
just so how it shines in the Midwest and other
things shining. It was past quitting time for the
migrants and so they had gone and migrated
home. It is a beautiful day for most people
either he said or I said and then one of us agreed
with the other. It is always nice to be agreed with and
we both felt so. We both felt deeply and we told
stories about other times when we had also felt
deeply. One of us lied but I do not know which.
The sun was drunk on its shining and so drunk drunk
that it made a fool of itself. We pretended not to notice.
It went to bed. Most things went to bed. We too
were tired but we did not go to bed. We were the
owls watching over the night critters. We
would not sleep and how could we? There were
so many, many stories still scuttling and about.
BECAUSE THE WORLD CAN’T CONTINUE IF THE BEES DIE
My heart was alone and having
what might have been a tender moment.
I could not tell. It seemed so still
and I asked, “Are you all right?”
but it did not answer me. It does this now
and often. I say, “So the weather’s nice.”
I say, “Haven’t heard much from you lately.”
I say, “Would you like a coffee?” I have grown
used to the silence although I cannot
say that it has grown used to me. I can
only guess at my heart’s moods
by the tiny clues it leaves. They are like
boot prints left out in a dust storm.
Before this quiet started, my heart
treated me differently. I was a friend to it,
a best friend to it, and it would tell me all about
all everything. It would just be an afternoon and
my heart would burst out with “I am a pogo stick!”
And then we might laugh until our bellies ached
because I would sigh something like,
“I am a tub of chocolate pudding.”
The whole wide world seemed
just like a whole wide world of afternoons.
Everything was pleasing to me and
I had not known that I was required to answer then.
Then when my heart had so quietly whispered,
“Rebecca, sometimes I am so scared that
I’ll suddenly forget what to do with this air.”
Today would feel so different if we were still speaking,
saying, “We are swarms of bees!”
Becoming Human
Janis E. Rodgers
SAVANNA CHIMPANZEES AT DAWN
WE TREKKED INTO THE BLACKENED bush under a blurred crescent moon. The scent of smoke and ash lingered in the air and the simple mud-hut compound Dr. Jill Pruetz calls home in Senegal disappeared as if it never had existed, as if I never had gone to sleep fitfully under my mosquito net, but had been walking all night by the light of stars.
Down a barely distinguishable path, we made our way toward the plateau where Jill knew the group of thirty-two chimpanzees she studies have built nests and spent the night. I tried to imagine them at dusk, a blood-orange sun sinking below the red-rock plateau as they climbed up trees to build nests where they would sleep, safe from prowling hyenas. Headlamps on the trail, there was utter silence—partly out of exhaustion, but for me, it felt like a reverence for the forest, for the species of nonhuman primate I would shortly encounter for the first time. I was filled with both awe and fear as charred branches rubbed up against my legs, leaving streaked imprints on my quick-dry fiel
d pants, like the forest’s fingers, examining me.
At 4:45 a.m., Jill had anxiously waited at the opening of the fenced compound of her base camp, Fongoli, while I groggily laced up my boots. She wore a baggy, ripped T-shirt (beige—chimps don’t like bright colors), and well-worn boots stained orange by Senegal’s phosphaterich earth. Her brown hair was tied in a ponytail, and her backpack contained the day’s supplies—water, binoculars, a waterproof notebook and pen, cookies, a bag of peanuts, and a couple of hard-boiled eggs from a boutique in Kédougou, the nearest town. The boutiques and hotels had just cropped up in the last couple of years due to the influx of gold and iron mining. When Jill first started working in Senegal over ten years ago, there wasn’t even electricity in Kédougou. Now, Le Bedik hotel offers not only a stunning dining-room balcony overlooking the Gambia River, but a swimming pool and Wi-Fi.
The region of Kédougou in southeastern Senegal, a place home to both chimpanzees and gold, shimmers like a green gem in an arid country dominated by sand and flat, orange earth. Parc National du Niokolo-Koba is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and some of the only forests and mountains in Senegal are located here. Most of the country is only slightly above sea level, but in the southeast, the foothills of Guinea’s Fouta Djallon Mountains reach elevations of 1,640 feet. Kédougou is also one of the poorest regions in the country, and the place where savanna chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) use tools to hunt.
Jill (or Le Patron, as she is called by many here in Senegal), an intrepid primatologist from Texas, started her field site to study the unique behaviors of these western chimpanzees who eke out an existence in a parched mosaic of savanna and woodlands with limited water sources. A PhD student of Jill’s, Kelly Boyer, focuses more on the conservation end of primatology, as the reality of threats to great ape habitat, like mining and human encroachment, become more exigent. “Based on birth and death rates at my site, the group of chimps there will be extinct in sixty years, and that’s an optimistic estimate,” Jill said.
As corporate gold-and iron-mining companies bombard Senegal’s lush forests with bulldozers and gaping pits in the earth, chimpanzee habitat disappears. Truck corridors and mining concessions raze mountaintop forests where chimps once spent the night in nests built of tree branches. The largest company, ArcelorMittal, known for its global steel-production initiatives, now mines for iron ore in the mountains of Bofeto, an area where Kelly has documented the presence of chimps. Kelly attempts to measure the effect of iron-ore mining on chimp habitat through line transects and nest-count surveys. With this information she estimates population densities in areas destined to become large-scale iron-ore mines. Her goal at this early stage of research is to assess chimpanzee populations and their habitat, as well as existing human disturbances, prior to the construction of mines.
Despite the challenges she faces, Kelly appears undaunted by her task of working toward conserving an endangered species. Strong and blonde, her face wrinkled by the West African sun, her energy levels and optimism are extraordinary. She has salsa danced in Houston, worked at a chimp sanctuary in Guinea, and now, in her early thirties, she is pursuing her PhD at Iowa State University. We met in a conservation biology class and quickly became friends and yoga buddies. At a workshop in Iowa City, we listened to a well-respected yogi, Desirée Rumbaugh, discuss nonattachment and regaining joy after loss. Vairagya, or nonattachment, is a key component of yoga. Everything changes and everything will eventually end, Desirée chanted, as we inverted our bodies into headstands, testing ourselves to see how long we could hold the pose.
While still in Iowa, we had sat on the floor of Kelly’s office with a huge US Geological Survey map of Kédougou spread out like a treasure scroll. It was only a field copy, meaning it could get dirty or marked up, but it was the most beautiful map I’d ever seen. The glossy région de Kédougou boasted deep purple gallery forests and sweeping green mountains I could journey through with the trace of my finger. I marveled over the cartographer’s skill and precision, the satellite imagery laid out beneath our fingertips. This little jewel at the bottom of Senegal’s great sandy expanse represented a last sanctuary for a dwindling population of savanna chimpanzees. The minimal swath of green I could cover with my palm was about to be swallowed by bridges, mines, and paved roads. Silver elephants on Kelly’s ring seemed to dance off into veins of galerie forestière. She ran her finger across the base of mountains between her two study sites—Kharakhena and Bofeto—places she had found evidence: nests and scat and pant-hoots. Her finger stopped, pressed into the top of the Fouta Djallon.
“If ArcelorMittal has its way, these mountains will be destroyed.”
The abrupt sound of a pant-hoot flew into my heart like bats fleeing light—the breathy, low-pitched “hoots” became quicker and quicker until they climaxed in higher-pitched “pants”—hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo … ah ah ah ah ah! A sudden stillness pervaded our party. I looked at the back of Jill’s head, expectant of her next move.
“It got light fifteen minutes earlier than yesterday,” she noted. “They’re already down from their nests.”
With that we quickened our pace. I turned off my headlamp as the palest of lights crept onto the plateau. The chimpanzees’ presence in the forest, in the world, in this tiny nook of a West African country nearly buckled my knees as I struggled to follow Jill’s footsteps even more closely now. My entire being became sublimely concentrated on hearing the next call, seeing my first glimpse of wild chimpanzee. It wasn’t long before a flash of fur-covered blackness darted through the trees before us. I saw the wrinkled, brown face and steady, mahogany eyes of a savanna chimpanzee—a mother with a pink-eared infant clutched to her chest, tiny fingers just visible through the fur on the sides of her stomach.
“That’s Natasha; she’s a little nervous with her newborn,” Jill said, as Natasha walked swiftly away from us, cupping a hand over her baby’s fuzzy head.
Natasha was quite gray for a female of twenty. The average life span of chimps in the wild is forty-five, but they can live into their sixties in captivity. Jill described Natasha as one of the shyest females among humans, but with other females in the group, she was tough.
“The first time I saw Natasha she was fighting with another adult female, Lingua. It was a throw down up on the plateau, and they both had babies! She’s pretty scrappy,” Jill said, “but she’s very protective of her daughters.”
Jill named Natasha, and Natasha’s first daughter, Sonya, after the characters in War and Peace.
“Natasha may have a droopy lower lip, and not be the prettiest of chimps, but she’s full of life,” Jill said.
Natasha held her baby protectively, a gesture I imagine any human mother could empathize with. Chimpanzees form long-term bonds with family members that may persist throughout a lifetime. Having the opportunity to observe these bonds and interactions in their natural habitat was not a privilege I took lightly. Even as I write these words it still astounds me that after only seven hours in a plane from New York City, and a day’s long drive across Senegal, I was here, dans la brousse, amid wild chimpanzees.
When I told Kelly I wanted to document the work of primatologists in the field as they attempt to study and conserve a dwindling great ape population, she was my most ardent supporter. “That’s fabulous!” she said, and found some grant money to get me a ticket to Senegal, to witness the struggles and joys of a primatologist in the bush. Instead of studying wild primates systematically, like I’d done in the past in Kenya, I planned to write about them. I wanted to document not only the existence of both chimpanzees and field researchers in Africa, but to try to better understand what it means to be human. I wanted to write poetry about these stunning creatures who have inspired fear, repulsion, awe, and love in humanity.
Two summers ago, in the coastal province of Kenya, I had worked as a research assistant watching mangabey monkeys glide through colossal palm fronds. Their small, furry bodies made monumental echoes through the open forest as they clutched ha
rd, red fruit under their chins like miniature football players and leaped strategically from palm to palm. The Tana River mangabeys (Cercocebus galeritus) are not only an endangered species, endemic to the highly fragmented Tana riverine forests of the coastal province, they are an extraordinarily elegant monkey—with dark, stoic faces, heavy eyelids, graceful tufts of gray-white fur—but scientific journals don’t want to hear about things like that. Those journals want methodologies and procedures, figures, tables, results, and peer reviews. Hard data is important for quantifying behaviors, but what can it tell us about beauty, empathy, love, and mortality? Does poetry have a place beside science, or will it continue to be relegated to the humanities, to the Unnecessary and Unimportant? I cannot begin to understand or appreciate the complexities of science without love’s betrayal of it, and the poetry that allows me to see it this way. Poet and scientist Katherine Larson addresses science directly on this issue: “Science— / beyond pheromones, hormones, aesthetics of bone, / every time I make love for love’s sake alone, / I betray you.”
One of the many things that makes chimpanzees at Fongoli special is that early hominids are thought to have inhabited a similar type of savanna environment, and the selective pressures associated with such a harsh, arid habitat may be comparable. This means that hominids evolving in the early Plio-Pleistocene, 2.5 to 1.5 million years ago, may have lived similarly to the way these chimps do now—perhaps they had similar home ranges, diets, and maybe, like chimps, our early ancestors cooled off in caves during extremely hot weather.
The vision of what chimpanzees could tell us about human evolution propelled Louis Leakey to send a young Jane Goodall to Tanzania to conduct the first long-term study of chimpanzees in the wild. In 1960, Goodall was the first field primatologist to introduce the public to how incredibly human-like chimpanzees can be. The same year she arrived in Gombe, Goodall observed a chimp named David Greybeard pick up a twig, pull off the leaves, and stick it in a termite mound. He then proceeded to slowly pull out the twig covered in termites, and pluck them off with his lips. Protein. David Greybeard caused our notion of “man the toolmaker” to be forever vanquished.
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