Everest: A Tribute to the Fallen

"Imagine a 1500 ft tidal wave of snow, rock and debris headed straight towards you. This was our reality on April 25th, 2015 at Mt. Everest basecamp when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake triggered a massive avalanche at Mt. Everest Basecamp that claimed 16 lives and critically injured 50+ men and women". A short documentary by award-winning filmaker, Elia Saikalay.  

Eight Years Ago Today

I was in the Selva Maya of Quintana Roo putting dendrometer bands around some of the timber trees to measure growth (see Selva Maya III).  There were monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi yucatanensis) jumping around in the canopy and making a lot of noise and one landed very close to me and was checking me out. I tried to get a picture, but my camera focused on the leaves in the foreground, not the monkey in the background. [NOTE: I hate it when that happens]. 

The Alchemist's Letter

Something for your Friday. Beautiful animated video by Carlos Andre Stevens. Lot of careful details and incredible illustrations here; the rendering of fire and water, in particular. Best at full screen. 

E.B. White

This from E. B. White, renown American writer and author of The Elements of Style (1959), Stuart Little (1945), and Charlotte's Web (1952) [NOTE: I love all three of these books]: 

"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority".

I would, too. 

The Importance of Looking Down (From the Archive)

I am a firm believer in the idea that if you want to understand the future of a tropical forest - look in the understory (see Regeneration Surveys). Repeated observations of marked seedlings are the crystal ball (maybe Ouija Board is a better analogy) of forest dynamics.  A species may be represented by a large number of canopy trees at the moment, but if it doesn't have any seedlings or saplings established in the understory, it's days are numbered. Want to assess the sustainability of forest use? Count seedlings. Want to make imperceptible, lasting changes to forest composition? Selectively weed the understory (see Tembawang). 

When you walk through a tropical forest, the natural tendency is to look up.  To scan the crowns for flowers and fruits (if collecting herbarium specimens) or to marvel at the size of the canopy trees (see Size Matters). Nothing wrong with this, but there may be more to be learned by looking down. [NOTE: The sapling with the orange flagging is Grias peruviana (see Grias Predated, Umberto Pacaya, and Varzea Still Life); I still have that machete].

Keep It In The Ground

First The Guardian Media Group pulled out of fossil fuels, and now they have started an initiative to encourage other organizations to move toward fossil fuel divestment. Their Keep it in the Ground campaign, done in collaboration with 350.org, makes a simple argument:

"Fossil fuel companies cannot go on prospecting for more coal, oil and gas reserves when the proven reserves already owned by governments and corporations are three to five times higher than we can safely burn without risking dangerous climate change".

Gulp. Hard to argue with this. And it is way past time. Go here to sign the petition to urge two of the world's biggest charitable funds, i.e. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and The Wellcome Trust, to move their money out of fossil fuels. And have a nice weekend. 

Berry's Drawing

Lovely sketch that Berry Brosi (now Dr. Berry Brosi) drew for a workshop that I gave in 1999 at the Instituto de Ecología in Xalapa, Veracruz, MEXICO. Shows clearly, step by step, how to make a dendrometer band (see How to Make Dendrometer Bands). Beautiful illustration (thx, Silvia, for digging this up). [NOTE: Wonder if Dr. Brosi is still drawing?] 

First Thoughts on a Nam Sabi VMA

A glimpse at Myint Myint Oo's (see Collaboration) fieldbook showing the potential layout of a Village Management Area and a basecamp outside of Nam Sabi (see Nam Sa Bi VMA, Tiger Tracks, and Stake 14). Fun to see this, because I remember the initial conversations, and the questions, and the doubts, and now the whole thing has been laid out and inventoried and has become an interesting (and hopefiully auspicious) piece of recent history for the village. [NOTE: More than you would ever want to know about the establishment of the Village Management Area at Na Sabi is contained here (CBNRM5.pdf), in the report of field activities submitted to the Myanmar Department of Forestry]. 

Wu Kang and the Katsura Trees

This, from the Prints, Drawings, and Photographs Department of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Entitled "Wu Kang on His Way to Fell the Katsura Trees on the Moon", a beautiful color woodcut by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, (1839 - 1892) from the Meiji Period in Japan. [NOTE: Just a thought, but this woodcut would make a terrific t-shirt. I mean, really, what forester wouldn't love this].   

Thoughts on Science and Nature (From the Archive)

This from C.S. Lewis in English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Oxford, 1954, pp.3-4:

What was fruitful in the thought of the new scientists was the bold use of mathematics in the construction of hypotheses, tested not by observation simply but by controlled observation of phenomena that could be precisely measured. On the practical side, it was this that delivered Nature into our hands (emphasis mine). By reducing Nature to her mathematical elements it substituted a mechanical for a genial or animistic conception of the universe. The world was emptied, first of her indwelling spirits, then of her occult sympathies and antipathies, finally of her colors, smells, and tastes. 

Man with his new powers became rich like Midas but all that he touched had gone dead and cold. This process, slowly working, ensured during the next century the loss of the old mythical imagination: the conceit, and later the personified abstraction, takes its place.

This passage rewards re-reading slowly. In spite of what I do for a living (see What I Do), there is much, very much, that I agree with here.

[NOTE: These thoughts go well with several of my recent post, e.g. A Song of the Rolling Earth, Planetary, Zen and the Art of Planetary Crisis].