Protest

THOUSANDS GATHER TO PROTEST GLOBAL WARMING

I recently received this clever photo in my inbox.  Now I wonder if each of us spent as much time on making some small changes in our life that would alleviate global warming as we do on sending jokes making fun of it perhaps we could find a way to slow it down.

I guess there are still some who do not believe that there is a crisis. Those would be the people who also don't believe that keeping things out of land fill by trying to recycle where possible and composting food wastes will help the cause.

And they would rather allow a tap to drip for years wasting tons (yes tons)* of water instead of going out and buying a 20 cent washer to install.  Or using a clothes dryer rather than hanging their clothes in the fresh air and sunshine. Leaving lights and appliances such as TV's, computers, printers, radios on in rooms where there are no human inhabitants. I don't know but I guess these would be the same people who protest about the high cost of their hydro bills.

They might even be the same ones who still water their lawns. That would be to soak in the weed killing poisons they just applied.  The sooner to reach all our water supplies.

But ask the people in Bolivia who have seen a mountain top glacier shrink from miles wide and  hundreds of feet deep to a small patch of slush in only a few decades.  Boo hoo where will the tourists ski now?  In addition to causing the loss of tourist dollars this inconsiderate glacier is now threatening the water supply of many villages below.

My aunt used to say, "Nothing lasts forever"  and I guess that is what is happening here. We thought we would always have plenty of fresh water and whales and elephants and rhubarb without any thought as to our role as stewards.

Creationists believe we were given dominion over the animals. I won't get into a debate here about who or what may have been responsible for this gross error in judgment  but rather say, for those who believe that man is superior to the beasts of the field then with superiority comes responsibility for their welfare. 

Like spoiled children who are handed everything without having to lift a finger we have used it all up and looked for more. But what if one day the larder was bare?

Evolutionists could say that it is the natural order of things just ticking along.

I am not going to argue with either one. Because no matter who is right we have been far too casual about our natural resources for far too long. If we expected that someone else would come along and fix the mess we "stewards" made that someone must be busy because they have not appeared.

Now when the resources are almost gone we are still denying there is a problem.

If you care about this sort of thing check out this link for all kinds of information http://www.treehugger.com/

Wake up people!

Author's Note:

A reader has commented (see full text in comments below) that he does not believe that MAN (his emphasis) created this crisis. He seems to believe it to be a natural phenomenon.  Whoa! Is he blaming it on a WOMAN; Mother Nature perhaps? 

Unlike him arguing with mine, I will not argue with his position since being a woman I am naturally biased.

I do however stand firmly by my assertions that we are shirking our responsibility to use our resources with care.

Like Pete Seeger said:

One man's hands can't tear a prison down,

Two men's hands can't tear a prison down,

But if one and two and fifty make a million,

We'll see that day come round,

We'll see that day come round.


This "many hands" theory can apply to anything so take some action no matter how small or insignificant it may seem.  You may not save the world from global warming but you will save some resources and save yourself a few bucks in the bargain on those hydro bills.

*Let's take one tap that drips at a rate of 1 liter in 1 hour, that's 24 liters a day, 720 liters a month, and 8,760 liters a year, almost 9 tons of water.  And that is just ONE tap.

Poems and Stories from another life - Part V - Pase del Nino

CHRISTMAS BELOW THE EQUATOR
By E. J. Brunton

In Cuenca, Ecuador, on December 24th we always celebrated with an afternoon parade of the “Nino Viajero”, or, literally, the traveling Christ child. Children are adorned in expensive, hand-embroidered, faux pearl and jewel-encrusted costumes. For several hours the streets overflow with these mini-Madonnas and Christ child replicas.

Horses, mules and burros are decked out with silver and leather bridles, strings of cookies, candies, fruits, vegetables, bottles of sugar cane liquor, and packs of cigarettes. Often the patient animals are ridden by whole roasted pigs or turkeys with paper money stuffed in their mouths. More often the rider is a local roasted delicacy known in Quichua as “cuye”. We Canadians know it as that cuddly household pet, the guinea pig, Recent entries to the scene are imported canned or bottled goods which are also strung on the
animals as a sign of significant wealth.

Each year a family will elect to decorate their horse for the event. The following year an uncle or cousin will take on the challenge and must always try to double or outdo what his predecessor has done. I imagine that explains why 16 wheeler trucks are beginning to replace the noble horse in recent years. Horses would stagger under the burden of such wealth.

Indigenous children in native costume perform a dance not unlike the English maypole dance. Each dancer, holding a colorful ribbon, weaves his way through intricate steps while winding and then unwinding the ribbons as he retraces his steps. Accompanying the dancers are groups playing the “rondador” (pan flute) cow hide drums, strings of shells, “bocina” (a several yards long instrument made partially from cow horn), and tiny ukulele-like instruments formed from entire armadillo hides called “charangos”.

Village bands from outlying areas playing tubas, drums and trumpets consume quantities of contraband cane liquor as they compete with ghetto blasters clutched by the little Christ Child and Virgin Mary look-a-likes. Ironically the song was often Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.” No one seems to mind the cacophony.

Thirsty watchers quaff from a smeary communal glass, some dubious home-made liquids, carried in grimy pails by the vendors. The lone glass is carefully swished out after each use in the one bucket of murky water which will have to last throughout the entire parade.

Snow cones are made by shaving a huge block of ice with hand operated contraptions painted in gaudy hues. This device, accompanied by the ice and the bottles of sugary, brightly colored syrup flavorings, ambulates atop a three-wheeled bicycle. Others hawk tempting slices of pineapple, papaya, mango, sticks of sugar cane or refreshing coconut water served right in the shell.

The mingled aromas of shish-ka-bob like “chusos”, fried “llapingachos”(potato cakes), deep-fried, thinly sliced “chifles” of plantain and mouth watering slices from a whole roasted pig with its eyes, ears, hooves and tail intact, mingle to tickle your palate. You can have these on a take out basis, wrapped up in an environmentally friendly leaf, or you can eat at the stand from another communal dish. May I recommend the leaf?

At the end of the parade rides the long anticipated guest of honor; the tiny wooden Christ child. He is dressed in a silken robe encrusted with jewels. Accompanying him is a marching military band and some cavalry. This little statue was taken to Italy over 60 years ago to be blessed by the Pope, thus gaining Him the name of the traveling Christ Child.

Making your way home you catch sight of some of the participants straggling away from the parade followed by bands of  laughing children who try to steal the candies and cookies which
adorn the exhausted horses. I hear that the food is handed out to the needy after the parade.

After all Christmas is for sharing in any part of the world.

Poems and Stories from another life - Part V - The Bridge

The Bridge
by E. J. Brunton originally published in the Napanee Guide and Helium


On Christmas Eve 1999 I sought some solace in the blue- domed Cathedral on the main square in Cuenca. Monsignor Luna Tobar was in fine form. His voice echoed off the gold-encrusted walls and sorrowful plaster saints. This would be the last mass I would attend here as I knew I must leave Ecuador.

Outside, the poor and the disenfranchised crowded the darkened square. A cold wind wrapped itself around the portals of the ancient Cathedral. During mass shabby old women and barefoot youngsters plucked at our sleeves for a handout. Many of the well-dressed pious shooed them away with looks of disgust. I was incensed. Then and there I vowed I would do something to help them.

Next morning I hauled out Grandma’s big kettle and threw in lots of vegetables and meat for a hearty soup. While this bubbled away I made a pile of sandwiches and then struck off with the fragrant feast in the trunk of my car.

I headed for the bridge where a friend who worked with street kids told me I would find plenty of homeless people to feed. She warned me that they sniffed glue and might get a bit rowdy.

As I drove slowly up I saw a few kids on the grass near the Tomebamba River. With a little apprehension, I hailed them and opened the trunk. The rich aroma of the hot soup drew about a dozen ragged dirty boys. They had battle scars that they had sewn up with needle and thread as they couldn’t afford a doctor.

“Feliz Navidad! Who’s hungry?” I asked unnecessarily.

The boys crowded round, looking at me with curiosity, as I began to ladle the soup into plastic cups and hand out sandwiches. They wolfed this down and politely asked,

“Please Senora. May I have another sandwich? More soup Please?”

After their small brown puppy was fed, the leader of the boys asked if he could invite some nearby street cleaners and a family of 5 who were begging up at the corner.

“Of course!” I said, as I laded out more of the thick rich soup.

Another car drew up and the boys ran over. The window was rolled down just enough for the driver to thrust out a round loaf of the traditional fruity Christmas bread before the car sped off.

We sat on the curb for awhile talking about their life under the bridge. They slept in cardboard boxes with more flattened boxes and newspapers as a cover. They slept close together for comfort and warmth. They sniffed glue to forget the cold and hunger, and the pain of being alone on the streets.
When we parted, one by one the ragged boys hugged me. One said, “Senora. I asked myself today who will ever think of us on Christmas? Then you came along. How can we ever repay you?”

“Dios se lo pague,” said another; God will pay you.

Crossing the bridge to reach those boys had made my problems seem so insignificant. Their grateful smiles as they waved goodbye were all the payment I would ever need.

Poems and Stories from another life - Part V Loaves and Fishes

LOAVES AND FISHES

by E. J Brunton, originally published in the Napanee Guide



“Do you think you could take more than two little girls?” Sister Maria Jose asked hopefully.

I looked at Julio and he shrugged, “I don’t see why not."

“Wonderful!” cried the nun and she flew out of the cold drafty room of the Orphanage before we could change our minds.


That was Christmas Eve, 1992 in Cuenca, Ecuador. But the story began a month earlier when I was seized by an urge to make sock dolls. After I had about thirty done I wondered what to do with them. I called my sister-in-law and asked her advice.

“Why don’t you give them to an orphanage?” was her practical reply.

So that was how it started. I called the Orphanage and offered the dolls. The nun said they would be greatly appreciated but could I bring them a few days before Christmas as most of the little girls were going home for the holidays?

“They go home for the holidays? I thought they were orphans,” I exclaimed.

The Sister continued by way of explanation, “Yes, their families are poor and so they give them to us to feed and clothe and educate until they are 12. Of course there are some that don’t have families and they will be staying here. You couldn’t take a couple of them for Christmas could you?”

I was staggered at the rapidity of what was happening here. How had a few innocent sock dolls suddenly morphed into real little dolls coming to spend the holidays with us?

At the agreed upon time we went to the orphanage to leave the dolls and to meet the little girls who would come home with us on Christmas Eve.

All of these Spanish Colonial buildings began to blur into one after awhile. They sullenly sat at the very edge of the narrow sidewalks, bordering the marble-cobbled streets.

Hermano Miguel, as the orphanage was called, was typical of these fortress like structures. Its four foot thick adobe walls had stood the test of tempests and earthquakes. The large wooden doors were studded with brass nails and deeply carved. A hole cut into the door at eye level was covered in a sturdy mesh screen so that you could communicate with the concierge. The whole was locked up with an ancient wrought iron lock accessible only with a 3 pound key.

The concierge let us in and showed us to a drafty room overlooking the pleasant courtyard. There were roses and trees and benches. Nestled carelessly amongst the flowers were ancient pre Colombian pots.

We sat for a few minutes as a cool breeze blew stiffly in the open windows chilling us to the bone. The room was dimly lit with a single naked bulb suspended from the 18 foot ceiling.

Soon Sister Maria Jose arrived. She was starched and sharply defined but she had a mischievous look that I liked immediately. She greeted us briskly and then rushed off to gather the children.

After meeting the children we went shopping in the open air markets for warm sweaters, underpants, socks, candy and toys. My generous neighbours and my sister-in-law donated their children’s outgrown clothes for the rest of the kids at the orphanage.

On Christmas Eve afternoon we returned to the orphanage to pick up our two little charges. I had been thinking how strange it was that no forms had been filled out and the nun had not even asked our names, where we lived, what we did, or come to inspect where the little girls would be staying.

How different it was from our paranoid, bubble-wrapped society and how dangerous it could have been. Never were we asked any of these questions in the months that ensued. It is easy to see why Latin America is one of the favorite spots to pick up street children for use and abuse in various horrible enterprises such as snuff films, in the organ trade, or smuggling drugs in their lifeless bodies.

Sister Maria Jose asked apologetically, “Do you think you could take more than two little girls?”

Before we had time to ask how many, she was gone and back in a flash with 6 little girls ranging in age from 4 years to 12 years old. They were freshly scrubbed and ready to go. Well, it would be crowded in our two guest beds but how could you choose which ones were to stay at the orphanage?

We took the girls out to the house that we were building in the country on a 5 acre lot that ran down to the river. The children gamboled about, climbing trees, picking avocados, oranges, lemons and capuli and teasing the dogs while we settled up the business of the Christmas baskets for the workers.

We had about six full-time men building the house and two ladies who were clearing the fields with hoes and old-fashioned sickles with cow-horn handles. The custom was to prepare a basket with cooking oil, sugar, rice, a live chicken, salt, a can or two of tuna, some dry noodles, a bottle of cane liquor and whatever else you could fit in.

Once the baskets were handed out, a drink shared and Christmas wishes exchanged. We prepared to leave. One of the ladies who had been clearing the field came rushing up. “No basket for us Don Julio? Not even a fruit bread? Since the ladies had only been working there for a couple of days we had forgotten about them.

We felt terrible so Julio said,” Jump on. I’ll give you Christmas dinner.” One of the ladies protested that she couldn’t go so Julio gave her some money. The other lady, Luisa, begged us to wait a moment while she ran home to clean up.

After about 15 minutes she returned. Following behind her were 6 small children ranging in age from a few months to 15 years old. The turkey we were having roasted at one of the local bakeries seemed to shrink in my mind. Could we possibly feed all these people? I should have asked Sister Maria Jose about how you did the loaves and fishes thing.

Julio was his usual calm self while I tried to squelch my mounting hysteria. Once home he picked up the phone to call our friend, the resourceful Manuel. Manuel loved a challenge and readily agreed to get some more food somewhere and I set about to prepare the vegetables that would go along with the turkey which Julio had gone to retrieve. My kitchen was thronged with excited children and Luisa was peeling potatoes in quantity.

I retired to a quiet corner with my own personal recipe for hysteria - a tumbler of neat rum . I counted our guests as I wondered how in the world we could come up with gifts not only for the orphans but also for the unexpected multitude. There would now be 16 people at the table or perched on the sofas and chairs. Suddenly I thought of the used clothing in my office. I wrapped up some of it for the unexpected orphans and gave the rest of it to Luisa.

Pandemonium was in full swing when Julio and Manuel arrived. Julio’s natural leadership skills got everyone organized with various tasks. The kids would set the table, Manuel would carve the turkey, I would just continue to drink. “Relax, you don’t have to do a thing,” he said refilling my glass.

Somehow dinner was served and everyone had their fill. It wasn’t loaves and fishes but it filled the bill.

What used to be called cheap
by E J Brunton originally published in the Napanee Guide 



Sometimes I do things that make my more lavish friends smirk and shake their heads. For instance, I really have to think twice to throw away a nice clean bag, be it paper or plastic.

I keep all those plastic margarine and cottage cheese tubs; save string and aluminum foil, cardboard, twist-ties and elastic bands. Christmas cards and envelopes become my note paper; unusual bottles hold flowers; tin cans with the juicy tomato picture still on them keep my pencils handy. Mesh onion bags stuffed with too small bits of wool and string can be hung in a tree as a handy dispenser for birds to choose their nesting materials.

Where did I get these strange habits? Well, long before recycling became the vogue my mother was the subject of much derision amongst her friends. She kept everything; neat piles of butcher paper, huge balls of string and jars of elastic bands. Little bits of soap were saved in a curious metal basket and swished around in the dishwater. Wrapping paper was ironed and reused till it became quite a valuable antique. Tea bags were dried (on previously enjoyed aluminum pie plates) for fertilizing what she jokingly called her “tea roses”. She even saved waxed cardboard milk cartons for freezing the trout that my father brought home. No drawing paper for me when there were plenty of nice clean cardboard pieces from inside the shirts my father sent to the drycleaner.

When her friends would smirk and ask her why she was saving all that old garbage my mother would say, “Well, maybe it’s my Scottish blood or maybe it’s because I lived through war and depression. Those days left an impression on me and I just can’t waste. Why throw out perfectly useable items that you get free everyday and then go and buy those same items?

You send me pies in aluminum tins and I send mine back to you in the same tins. And that bacon grease and bread crusts in old tin cans in the freezer? I remove the tin and put that mixture into an onion bag that I hang out for the birds in winter. My husband is glad to get the kitchen waste for his compost pile and Lord knows he has a wonderful garden that I’ve heard you admire.”

Mother passed away in 1988 but the habits she instilled in me have lived on. What used to be considered cheap is now considered not only chic but indispensable with shrinking space into which to put our garbage.

I can still remember her telling me that those friends who laughed at her saving ways would sometimes ask her for a loan. I hope she didn’t rub it in, when they came with hat in hand. “I’m just like Liberace,” she would say. “I’m laughing all the way to the bank!”

Note : After posting this article I found this blog from Gaiam with some interesting green gift wrap ideas at this link

http://life.gaiam.com/gaiam/p/Top-10-Green-Gift-Wrap-Ideas.html

Mother's on the tightrope again

I compiled the following from several news reports  (CBC, BBC) on the subject.

Chinese meteorolgists have been messing about with the weather in an attempt to even out the precipitation levels. The country’s north is prone to droughts, while the south is often flooded.

In an attempt to alleviate this the government is building a huge network of tunnels and waterways that will funnel water from the south to the north, but the project is still five years from completion.

Meanwhile according to Beijing Evening News, the Weather Modification Office seeded rain clouds by spraying them 186 times with silver iodide to ease a drought that was threatening the wheat crop.

The unexpected arrival of a cold front caused the heaviest snowfall in at least 54 years. In Beijing tens of thousands of people were stranded on highways linking the city with Shanxi, Hebei, Liaoning and Inner Mongolia. Tragically, the snow also caused a primary school cafeteria's roof to collapse in Hebei, killing three children and injuring 28 others.

One report indicates that the use of salt on the roads has resulted in the death of about ten thousand trees.

When are we going to understand that when we twang the tightrope Mother loses her balance? 

Unashamed Hippy II

FREE LOVE AND HAIGHT

By E. J. Brunton

At eighteen, hoping to kill two birds with one stone, I left the bosom of my family and struck out for California. I would spend the next year at California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland.

Art Colleges didn’t indulge in the hazing and frosh antics that Queen’s University did, so I could kill off that distasteful bird. The second bird was my burning desire to be an artist.

A year at the college was enough to kill that one too. I saw early on that while I loved to create I just didn’t have the dedication the other students possessed and creating what someone else told you to wasn’t - well, very creative.
It was 1961 and the Flower Child Movement was in full swing. Golden Gate Park overflowed with dreamy, long-haired hippies in their colorful garb.

Smooth-pated, saffron-robed Hari Krishnas chanted in time to their chiming bells.

Timothy Leary extolled the virtues of lysergic acid diethyl amide, commonly known as acid or LSD.



Ubiquitous coffee houses sprouted overnight in North Beach and “happenings” were staged nightly.

The City Lights Book Store had telephones on every table. Each table was numbered so you could make a discreet call to another client that caught your fancy. Ginsberg was there; and Kerouac too.

Barefoot Baez would make appearances from time to time at some local hotspot, usually shadowed by Dylan. My room-mate gained notoriety once it was learned that she had gone to high school with Bob in Brooklyn.

In the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco Free Stores abounded. You could get your dinner, a couch with no cushions, and a nearly-new pair of shoes with one quick stop.

Free love spawned lots of little Flower Children. Free Clinics looked after the venereal diseases and drug addictions that it spawned too.

Employment agencies were set up especially for these undesirable hippies, some of whom strangely wanted to work. The prospective employers would most likely be bohemians themselves who used the barter system in payment or bleeding-heart liberals who secretly admired the free and easy life style, but lived it only vicariously.

We art students made pilgrimages to this Mecca every chance we got. North Beach and Chinatown were our favorite haunts. We would buy five cents worth of bologna; then we would scavenge left-over rolls from the outdoor patio at Finnochio’s. Lunch was taken cross-legged on the grass in the park.

Thinking the fifty-cent greeting cards outrageously expensive, we copied down the verses and made our own.

And we could nurse a cup of coffee for hours listening to some of the best musicians that the jazz and folk scene had to offer.

Concha Laine, the daughter of Frankie Laine, famed for his rendition of “Ghost Riders”, was our classmate and he often visited the school.

I was in awe of my drawing teacher, Ralph Borges, who was featured in Time Magazine, the year I left.

Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, lame and blind, came to give a free concert at the school.

I learned to make silver jewelry and Found Sculpture from discarded objects, to paint with a stick instead of a brush and greatly improved my drawing skills. I learned that, unfairly, only female models took ALL their clothes off in the Life Drawing Class.

I had never had a room-mate and was not prepared for Laurie, from Brooklyn. She was short and brown with shiny-black hair and bright- blue eyes. She shaved off her eye brows and never cleaned her side of the room. Her sheets fell to tatters when the dorm mother forced her to wash them - for the first time - at the end of the year. There just wasn’t time to attend to these mundane tasks when there were poetry and songs just waiting to be written, guitars to be played and music to compose.

We dorm kids would talk for hours as we listened to Ravi Shankar, Theodore Bikel, or my favorites, The Carter Family. Folk Music was “de rigueur” and everyone had a guitar.

One night I was supposed to go to the movies with Becky and Ann, two girls from the dorm, but I begged off at the last minute.

Just down at the corner they were hailed by a man in a car and offered a ride. Anne got in but Becky wouldn’t. Before Anne could get out again the man drove off with her as Becky stood helplessly by. Anne was raped at gun point and held hostage for several hours.

Becky was able to draw a picture of the perpetrator which was broadcast nation wide and he was caught. By then Ann had escaped and next day her parents took her out of school.

It was an exciting era for a small-town girl and I have never quite recovered from it. I’m just an aging hippy and there seemed to be no cure; at least not until tonight.

Over 40 years have passed and I am looking at a television program about Haight-Ashbury in the sixties. How silly it all seems now! The make-shift weddings in the park; the wedding feast laid out on a blanket consists of a loaf of Wonder Bread in its blue and yellow plastic bag. The squalor of the drugged-out kids sitting listlessly on the street bundled in filthy quilts doesn’t look so appealing, now. The long, flowing hair looks greasy, the colorful garb, shabby.

The musical, Hair, which I watched a few days later, is Hollywood’s cleaned up eulogy to those times.
The much-touted peace and love that would save the world never came to pass. The visions of a time when everything would be free are gone forever, replaced by more sinister things like crack and cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and date-rape drugs.

It really was more innocent then in the time of Love and Haight.

Unashamed Hippy I

Did you catch the rerun episode of Six Feet Under last night? The one where Claire goes to visit her aunt Sarah. Aunt Sarah has invited some of her old friends for a nostalgic weekend.  One of the songs they were playing as they danced around the fire half-naked was Woodstock by Joni Mitchell.

Now I did not have the fortune to attend Woodstock and I might not even have liked being surrounded by so many people. But the song has a haunting eery quality that appeals to me.  My favorite part is the chorus " We are stardust. We are golden and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden."

We are - and we do.

Here are the lyrics. Hope it brings back some memories for you too.

Woodstock
by Joni Mitchell

I came upon a child of God

He was walking along the road

And I asked him where are you going

And this he told me

I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm *

I'm going to join in a rock 'n' roll band

I'm going to camp out on the land

I'm going to try an' get my soul free


We are stardust

We are golden

And we've got to get ourselves

Back to the garden



Then can I walk beside you

I have come here to lose the smog

And I feel to be a cog in something turning

Well maybe it is just the time of year

Or maybe it's the time of man

I don't know who I am

But you know life is for learning



We are stardust

We are golden

And we've got to get ourselves

Back to the garden



By the time we got to Woodstock

We were half a million strong

And everywhere there was song and celebration

And I dreamed I saw the bombers

Riding shotgun in the sky

And they were turning into butterflies

Above our nation



We are stardust

Billion year old carbon

We are golden

Caught in the devil's bargain

And we've got to get ourselves

back to the garden

That is the lot of a bargain hunter

Okay. So I couldn't resist it. I mean tulips bulbs at half price?  I admit it. I lost my head. Any day now 126 tulip bulbs will arrive and have to be planted toute de suite.

I have the room but now I need the fortitude to go out there and dig in what I hope will still be unfrozen ground to plant them.  Today would not be a day conducive to this. Rain and bits of snow are falling steadily.

But even worse if the ground is frozen when they arrive my purchase will turn quickly from bargain to bad decision.

Stay tuned....

Everything is grist for my mill

A friend provided me with this lovely piece attributed to the Apache (see her comments on the Cree Prophesy post). Thanks S. I am going to be lazy today and include it.

May the Sun
bring you new energy by day.

May the Moon
softly restore you by night.

May the Rain
wash away your worries.

May the Breeze
blow new strength into your being.

May you Walk
gently through the world and know
its beauty all the days of your life.

Jim Conrad, Naturalist

Some time ago I signed up for Jim Conrad's weekly Naturalist Newsletter. Jim is one of those lucky individuals who have the courage of their conviction. He spends every waking moment doing something he loves. He attained this freedom when he realized that some things are more important than money.

I often marvel at how Jim's views and mine are so closely aligned although my convictions seem to waver. I still heavily favor my creature comforts!  But he seems to take the thoughts right out of my head and express them much more eloquently than I ever could.

This is just an excerpt from his Nov 1, 2009 edition. To see more of Jim's free newsletters go to his web site

www.backyardnature.net/n/index.htm


THE DA VINCI CODE, GLOBAL WARMING, TRUTH
by Jim Conrad, from his Newsletter


For years I've heard about Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code so when I stumbled upon a website offering it as a free text download I grabbed it. Finally I know why everyone wants to take a new look at Da Vinci's "The Last Supper." The novel has spawned a whole new generation of conspiracy theories, plus there's a spate of new books and websites either debunking The Da Vince Code's most provocative assertions, or embellishing them. It looks like most people just don't know who or what to believe.

At the same time I was reading The Da Vince Code, poll results came out reporting that despite an avalanche of scientific data documenting the effects of global warming, people believing that there is solid evidence that Earth's average temperature has increased over the past few decades has dropped from 71% last year to only 57% today.

Moreover, in the current public debate on healthcare issues, one side says one thing as the other says the opposite, and opinion seems to track with the side spending most on TV ads. Also I hear on National Public Radio that about half of North Americans believe in ghosts.

It seems that this may be yet another of those yin/yang situations: The more information we have, the less capable we are of processing it. As the information explosion continues, maybe average people will lose their ability to deal with information so completely that they'll become as superstitious, functionally ignorant and vulnerable to manipulation by truth-bearing "illuminati" as our ancient ancestors.

That doesn't have to be the case, however, for Nature offers us all the truths we really need. Moreover, if anything on Earth is trustworthy, surely it is Nature, for Nature is the Creator's most profound and immediate Creation. Nature's structure, the evolutionary trends She manifests, and the spiritual insights She inspires within each of us spontaneously, reveal truths enough to guide us through meaningful, enriched and enlightened lives.

Nature's structure reveals sacred patterns, the most obvious being those of recycling, the sanctity of diversity, and the recognition of mutual interdependency among all components of the biosphere.

Nature's Earthly evolutionary history reveals to us aspects of the "Creator's plan." Maybe the most transfixing feature of this history is the fact that throughout Earth's biological evolution species have arisen with ever more intense awareness of their own context, and with ever greater capacities for feeling creative inspiration. This trend amounts to a spiritual imperative for each of us personally: To harmonize our own lives with the flow of Earthly evolution by always struggling to know more, to understand more, to feel more...

Surely spiritual insights gained by reflecting on Nature's nature inevitably vary from person to person, because we are all programmed to interpret the input of our senses differently. Among my own most useful spiritual insights are those based on The Six Miracles of Nature, which I outline and annotate at http://www.backyardnature.net/j/6/.

Those Six Miracles, to me, reveal a Universe more mysterious, more generous and more beautiful than my little brain can grasp. Meditation on them has bestowed me with a satisfying spiritual rootedness, and a profound reverence for The Creative Impulse. And when I find myself wondering about "the meaning of it all," sometimes I glance that Meaning by imagining what form the Seventh Miracle may someday take.

*****

Poems and Stories from another life - Part IV

Following are a number of prose poems or word paintings written while travelling in the Andes Mountains between Puyo and Alausi, Ecuador in 1998. Usually I travelled by bus; an experience at once humbling, intimate and uplifting.  I love buses.

THE CONDOR’S BACK
by E.J.Brunton

Clouds bloom at our feet, the condors back glistens in the misted light below. We glide, he and I, through the steaming cauldron, oblivious to the cotton batten-wrapped villages far below us.

Beneath me slides his disappearing majesty. Sad, solitary one; his mate’s the victim of sacrifice. His children found in zoos. Hated enemy of the poor, whose scrawny sheep he carries off; the enveloping mists encase him like a shroud.

What an experience to actually be looking at this majestic bird from above him!  It is not uncommon  to be driving through or over the clouds in the Ecuadorian Andes Mountains.

Out of Alausi
An exceprt from the longer poem by E. J. Brunton

Oh Mountain! You’ve a froth of cloud pinned to your voluminous green lap like a snow-white hanky pinned to a lady’s skirt

The mountains are rounded like a giants cast off hats; here banded by straw huts; there adorned with cows.

Just out of Alausi, Indians in red ponchos are jammed into truck beds like strawberries in a crate.

The lion-mountains are clothed in yellow velvet, panting in the drought. The road is walled at places by dried mud cliffs.

Smoky Indians descend the bus at remote spots. No sign of trail nor hut, just endless crags, roiling cauldrons of trapped clouds, gorges and scrub.

Where are they going?

A ragged boy with twice-too-long sleeves flaps by like a fledgling condor.


UNION
E.J.Brunton

The man ploughs his field and sows his abundant seed into the furrow’s depth

From this union of man and earth are born their edible children

The man gives the mother nothing but dung and water

Somehow she survives and rouses her exhausted womb again and again to bring forth fruit

She feeds at times on the rotting bodies of her progeny and is satisfied

She waits

The man is old and stooped now. Soon he will die. There will be other men to plant their seed in her warm belly but all will become hers in time.

Totally and forever.


MOUNTAIN BUS
An excerpt from the longer poem by E.J. Brunton

We roll on swift rubber feet just inches from a 150 foot drop. Puertos al Cielo or Heaven’s Gate they’ve named the waterfall that splashes over the road eroding the silent curve.

From the Sangay bus we crane our necks ever upward. The mountains, like headless green lions, stretch out their paws to play with tiny huts. Waterfalls are gushing white wounds on the lions’ flanks. Manta de la Novia (Bridal Veil), Cascada San Jorge. A solitary swallow swoops by.

                                                      Where are the condors?

Mother Knows Best
article and drawing by E. J. Brunton
Mother was tough but she was fair. She gave me the guidelines for living a successful life: honesty, the Do Unto Others rule; the hard work ethic, punctuality, and keeping promises were just a few. She was not lavish with praise. You had the guidelines and you were expected to follow them – or else.

Father - when he was home - was in the garden from early thaw to late freeze. He reinforced the hard work ethic as I assisted him. Lugging 50 pound bags of fertilizer and five gallon watering cans gave me muscles that no 10 year old girl ought to have.

But it was my other Mother that comforted me. No. I wasn’t adopted; unless you could call Mother Earth’s acceptance of me an adoption. When life got too much for me I would go out into the garden and lie down under a bleeding heart bush and shed my tears into her comforting bosom. It is a wonder that poor bleeding heart didn’t die from all the salt.

When my family found out, they teased me for this by singing a popular song of the day,

“Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I think I’ll go and eat worms!” Sometimes now when I am tending to my red wiggler worm ranch I think of those words and I can smile. I haven’t been tempted to taste one of the little fellows yet though.

There were lots of rules as to what I could and could not do in the garden. I could do the weeding and dig the holes for planting. I could water. I could spray poisons on things. I could mow the lawn with the push mower. I could rake it. I could cut the hedge with the manual clippers.

What I couldn’t do I found out the hard way. Once at school we were given a packet of mixed seeds. I was so excited. Seeds of my very own! Home I rushed thinking of just the spot for them. Right at the front of the garden, near the bleeding heart was a space that would be perfect. I prepared the tiny patch and checked the seed packet for directions. I used all the lessons father taught me and was proud of my neat little patch. I put in a little stake and put the seed packet on it so I would remember what I had planted.

Father came home, changed his clothes and went directly to the garden. In a minute he was back red-faced and shouting. How dare I destroy the symmetry of his perfect garden? “Get that stuff out of there right now,” he yelled. I was devastated as I tried my best to pluck out and save the tiny seeds I had planted.

Crying under the bleeding heart was not an option today since Father was out there. Instead I went to a friend’s house. My little heart was bursting with shame and rejection. When my friend’s mother asked me what was wrong it unleashed a torrent of emotion that was discouraged at home. No one had ever asked me in such a kind tone before. Right away she told me to bring my seeds up to her garden and plant them there.

She must have called my Mother too, who in turn, ripped my Dad a new one. I came home to a resentful Father who grudgingly told me that I could have a patch of earth to myself and plant my seeds there. I guess it had never occurred to him that I might want something of my own in the garden.

Gardening has not always comforted me, or lifted me up, or filled me with joy. I seldom ever had a real garden to my self. Most of my life I made-do by turning my apartments into Amazon jungles. Hanging plants provided curtains. Tall ones were room dividers and corner fillers. Small ones nestled on the windowsill and in my shower stall.

Gardening at my first home was made difficult because of the poor soil and my own work commitments. But still I managed to grow celery, eggplant, tomatoes and a few flowers in the cement-like soil.

It took me 60 years to get my very own garden. But it was worth the wait. The soil is the best I could hope for: rich, crumbly and virgin. There is plenty of room for rain barrels, compost piles, vegetables, trees and flowers. And best of all I am free to make all the decisions.

When I came here there was one small garden by the side of the house. Hollyhocks fought a life and death battle with sow thistle taller than me. The first year I didn’t do much but clear the weeds and plant my favorite flowers, peonies and of course a bleeding heart.

Five years later the garden has over taken the lawn and my life. And in my garden and my life I practice all the lessons my Mother and Father taught me but most of all the ones, my other Mother, continues to teach me.

Mother Earth has shown me the other side, the pleasures and the joys of gardening. Hard work yes, but not something I ever begrudge. My bleeding heart gets watered regularly but not by tears.

These words written by Canadian author and artist, Emily Carr are inscribed on her tombstone. They eloquently express how I feel about the great big garden that belongs to all of us.

Dear Mother Earth!

I think I have always specially belonged to you. I have loved from babyhood to roll upon you, to lie with my face pressed right down on to you in my sorrows. I love the look of you and the smell of you and the feel of you. When I die, I should like to be in you uncoffined, unshrouded, the petals of flowers against my flesh, and you covering me up.

Today's post is about recycling - I think.

Now folks my real friends know that I seldom buy anything new.

Unless it is on sale.

So it was with great sacrifice that I shelled out the money for this shirt today.  I did it for two reasons. The shirt was 20 % off its already deeply discounted price. And it seems to be speaking about a subject near and dear to my heart - recycling - I think.

Oh well, if it is not about recycling it is still about a subject that is near and dear to my heart. Engrish as she is spoke!

But you tell me

The back says

Making Oneself

Stating over with the used stuffs!

Customer

The front says

 Stating over

Customer

with the Used Stuffs!

Cree Prophesy

This has been attributed to the Cree:.

Only after the last tree has been cut down

Only after the last river has been poisoned

Only after the last fish has been caught

Only then will you find that money can't be eaten

Poems and Stories from another life - Part III - The Refuge

REFUGE

article by E.J. Brunton

In 1994 I volunteered at a wild animal refuge in Mazan, Ecuador, just on the outskirts of the Cajas nature reserve about twenty minutes from Cuenca.

The road to Mazan wound up and up the mountainside through groves of shaggy eucalyptus and spiny penco cactus. Tiny white adobe houses with red tile roofs replaced the cinder-block citified houses. Early morning smoke from a twig fire curled out from under their eaves. I pictured the farmers eating their first meal of the day, probably rice and sweet black coffee. The marvelously adaptable cows that dotted the hillsides didn’t seem to mind that it was over 3,000 meters high.

The rutted dirt path to the refuge angled sharply from the highway and tilted steeply down to a stream bed. My Nissan was squeezed between the lush vegetation that tickled its roof and the rocks that scraped its poor bottom. It forded the shallow stream, only slipping a bit on the glacier-rounded rocks.

The road turned to sand and climbed higher once more. At the top was the rambling old hacienda that Steve, the man in charge, had described. Two large dogs came bounding out and launched themselves at the car, peering at me menacingly.

Alerted by their barking, Steve lumbered out with shouts and reassurances. He was a gentle giant of an Englishman with a ready smile and, I was soon to find out, some great stories. Dodging the effervescent dogs I followed him into the dark, cool of the hacienda. Its three-foot thick walls and small windows kept it well insulated from extremes of heat or cold.

As we sat at the rough plank table in the kitchen, enjoying a cup of tea from “over home”, he told me about his employers, a couple who produced BBC documentaries on endangered species. They lugged their young children all over the world with them. Right now Ecuador was their home base and Steve was their general dog’s body. He could do anything from fixing vehicles, building cages, chauffeuring, repairing leaky roofs as well as caring for the animals.

Many and varied jobs had given him this vast experience: London bus driver, zoo keeper for a Saudi Arabian prince, Carnival worker in the US and insect expert at the London zoo. Through this job he had been asked to handle the insects in the first Indiana Jones film, “The Temple of Doom”.  He actually had to place all those cockroaches and stick insects on Harrison in one of the scenes.

"We're funded by various wildlife agencies but it’s never enough so I can't pay you but I can give you lunch," Steve apologized. I agreed to show up tomorrow to learn my duties.

I was so excited that I could hardly sleep.  Morning found me once more outside the hacienda. Steve was already getting the food ready for the animals. He negotiated with the vendors in huge open air markets such as Arenal in Cuenca to sell him fruit and vegetables cheaply at the end of the day.

He showed me around the large property with its capacious cages complete with trees and other vegetation. The first one housed garishly colored parrots which had been given to the refuge when their owners tired of them. “Usually they come in bald or tailless. Parrots are social animals and when they get bored they pull all their feathers out,” he told me pointing to a large naked macaw.

The pair of kinkajou, being nocturnal animals, didn’t appreciate being woken at this absurd hour. Their black button eyes blinked out at me from their wooden house, as they whined peevishly.  Other animals like song birds, parrots, wooly monkeys, tiny jungle squirrels and coatimundis (long-nosed cousin to our raccoons) were confiscated from street vendors. They had been ripped from their natural habitats and were paraded heartlessly about the city to be bought by people who didn't know what they were getting into. They ended up shivering, possibly starving or at the least being fed an improper diet of rice or bread as prisoners on the end of chains in a forgotten corner of the garden. "They bite, they stink, they are dirty,"  the people would say in defence of treating them like this.

A young falcon, whose wing had been damaged by a bullet, was making some tentative flapping motions unsure about how far the healing wing would take him. He settled back to tear at the mouse Steve proffered. At least mice were plentiful and free in this part of the world.

Most curious was a cage with a long glass aquarium sunk into the hilly ground. One side was exposed and the tank was lavishly planted with fresh-water greenery. An aerator kept the water rushing for the glittering trout.


Steve explained, “We filmed an episode about Ecuador’s fishing mouse. It was too difficult to do on location so a few of the mice and their favorite diet, trout, were brought from Cajas and put into the cage and aquarium. The mice dove in and caught the trout and we caught them on film." (Note: When looking for a picture for this article I found that they exists only in three locations in Cajas and are endangered. For more information see the link at the end of this post.)

They had succeeded in making the cages as close to the natural setting as they could. The wild guinea pig’s enclosure was planted with shrubs and various grasses to emulate the pampas - the setting for another film. Wild guinea pigs were rare now  Guinea pigs are usually encountered scurrying around the walls of some farmer’s hut. Guinea pig is a delicacy in this area of Ecuador and is quite delicious when roasted whole over hot coals. We had a flock of about 200 guinea pigs for sale and personal use on our own farm when I lived there.

But my reverie was interrupted as we came upon the stars of the show, the spectacled bears. The two largest bears Jubal and Palmira had, until the flood in 1992, lived in a cement-floored cage at a tourist resort. I had often seen them there and my heart had gone out to them. They paced ceaselessly to the end of their short cage, and threw their heads back in a repetitious and abnormal pattern before taking the few short paces back again. Their coats were sparse and dull largely because of an unimaginative and inappropriate diet of rice and leftovers from the restaurant.

The spectacled bear gets its name from the white or cream colored ring of fur around its eyes. They are seriously endangered now due to the loss of habitat and relentless hunting. It was a passion of the owners at Mazan Wildlife Refuge to rescue and rehabilitate these creatures for eventual release into the wild again. Tours of the refuge were discouraged. They just didn’t want the animals to get any more used to human beings than was absolutely necessary.

Just prior to the flood Steve’s boss had borrowed the bears for a film shoot. He built a large enclosure on a mountain top where he released Jubal and Palmira. They must have rejoiced in their new found semi-freedom. “You see, this way we could get shots of them behaving as they would in their world without traipsing all over looking for the few remaining wild ones,” said Steve.

Luckily for Jubal and Palmira the tourist resort suffered a lot of flood damage so they remained at the refuge. “We used the wire and poles from the mountain top enclosure to build the large cages on the property,” he told me. The bear enclosure was complete with cement swimming pool and water fall. The fresh running water quenched their thirst and they had all the leaves, fruit and berries they could eat.

A second cage held two very undernourished bears that were abandoned by a traveling circus. The third inhabitant was Boogie who had been a pet until he got too strong and unruly. He still had a collar on which was constricting his throat as he grew. He would have to be anaesthetized in order to get it off.

“Here’s your state of the art equipment,” said Steve handing me the broom, dustpan and bucket. He gave me instructions on how to clean out the bear dung. I was never to enter the cage with Jubal and Palmira unless I lured them first into a smaller enclosure. They were just too big and dangerous after being teased by humans for years.

I could enter the other cage directly, keeping a watchful eye on the playful Boogie who loved to take a playful swipe at my bare leg. A loud “Hey you!” and a wave of the broom usually did the trick but I must admit I was nervous as he retreated and circled me. The dung smelled of oranges and fruit so it wasn’t too unpleasant.

When it came time for the big bears mischievous Jubal scooped up a nice little patty of mud and pee and threw it right in my face as I tried to lure him into the smaller interior enclosure. But we soon got used to one another.

I made friends with other volunteers during my several month’s tenure at Mazan and got a glimpse of how nature films are made. I hiked the nearby hills with Steve and marveled at the tiny mountain parrots and toucans so unexpected in this colder climate. I saw Jubal and Palmira become proud parents of two bouncing black cubs. I lamented with Steve over the difficulty of finding a release spot for the smaller bears and rejoiced at the falcon’s first flight and his final release.

This refuge for wild animals had become my refuge as well.

Note: I had forgotten the name of the refuge and the film makers but today I discovered this link:

http://www.travelalive.com/volunteer/animal_rescue_cuenca.asp

And for a learned dissertation on the fishing mouse link here:
http://www.rebeccashapley.com/akodon/reprint_pdfs/97ChibchanomysNaturalHistory.pdf

Uh oh!

Sorry folks. You can dress me up but you can't take me anywhere.  What a debut!

I very carefully published the Moi story in numerical order of its parts from one to four, only to find out that the last got published first.

Kind of biblical actually!  I am sure you will figure it out.

Poems and stories from another life - Part II - Moi

Moi
Part 4 of  4
story and photos by E.J. Brunton

All too soon it was time to leave. Our last night was spent lying on the plank floor of the school house in the village. But our adventure wasn’t over yet. We wanted to get an early start in the morning for the 9 hour trip by dugout canoe. Two of the men would pole us and our bulky loads downriver to a spot known only as "La Puente," - the bridge.

The morning was almost chilly as we made our way through the dripping vegetation down to the mist-shrouded Shiripuno. When the dugouts were loaded we were tucked in amongst our indispensables. My indispensables now included the shaman’s blowgun, poison darts and Moi’s spear. I couldn’t wait to get them home.

I sat quite rigidly at first, expecting to tip over at any moment. After a stiff jolt or two of the cane liquor our paddlers provided I got quite relaxed. I didn’t even mind the fact that the old milk jug they had it in looked a bit black and slimy inside. It went quite well with the turtle eggs that they dug up along the river bank at our lunch stop.

At the waters edge a crazy quilt of brilliant butterflies sucked up the moisture from the damp sand with their spring like proboscises. Cayman slid into the water as we passed and a huge anaconda dangled lazily from a tree branch. I settled back and let my fingers dabble until I remembered the piranha.

We spotted a bright-red tree, the Jesus tree. Huaoarani legend (with a liberal sprinkling of Missionary lore) says it was the first tree in the jungle from which all life had sprung.

Moi had shown us a special tree on one of our walks. He said that inside the bark was a cottony lining. A big flood came and all the animals got into a boat made out of this tree and were saved.

I found it sad that their own beliefs had become entangled with the Christian beliefs. I was angry at the arrogance of the missionaries who brought disease and shame to this Garden of Eden where there had been no word for evil.

I whiled away the hours alternately reading, glancing at the river bank vegetation or admiring the muscles of the men who unceasingly poled the dugout. We reached the bridge in the late afternoon and made our farewells. Declining our offer of a cool drink, after a 10 minute rest, the men started right back upriver. Their endurance was remarkable.

Once out on the road the coolness of the canopied river was replaced by a scorching sun. It soaked into the tarmac and waves of it reflected back to us. The smell of crude oil wrinkled our noses.

Across the road and for as far as I could see in either direction was a huge rusty pipe. Someone had stretched their laundry on it. ( The next photo is from the net and shows multiple oil pipes. There was only one large one that I sat on..briefly!)

 Not wanting to stand in the hot sun I went across to take a seat on it. I lowered my well-sat-upon buttocks slowly but rebounded immediately. It was scorching hot! Crude oil direct from the bowels of the earth was being pumped through it.

Not too many trucks were passing but finally we snagged one. Even with the tailgate lowered my nine foot spear and blowgun still hung over the edge. Once our gear was all in place I looked at my fellow passengers. There were several oil workers black and shiny from the field, Fridays pay in their pockets, all liquored up and itching to get to the whore houses dotted along the road. They dropped off one by one at their favorite spots. We two were the only women on the truck and were glad we had the boys (the guide and chauffeur from the Quito tour company) accompanying us. At least they would be on our side - we hoped.

At the next stop a man got on with a chicken. He set it on the floor and the poor thing dodged feet and was  thrown from one side of the truck to the other as the truck unsuccessfully swerved to avoid potholes. I picked it up and put it on my lap where it gratefully fell asleep.

It was no different in Coca. The town had an oily black sheen to it. Rainbow slicks formed on the puddles from a recent rain. We were lucky. We would only eat and catch a bus. How could anything survive here?

Moi said in his letter to Bill Clinton, then president of the United States, “The whole world must come and see how the Huaorani live well. We live with the spirit of the jaguar. We do not want to be civilized by your missionaries or killed by your oil companies. Must the jaguar die so that you can have more contamination and television?”

The end

Poems and stories from another life - Part II - Moi

Moi
Part 3 of 4
story and photos by E.J. Brunton

Soon we were at the clearing where we would stay for the duration of our trip. The handsome palm frond huts stood up on stilts. Even the floors were woven palm. They were airy and surprisingly cool. There was a fresh latrine out back.

We laid out our sleeping bags and stripped for a dip in the river. Moi warned us to make lots of noise and splash to scare away the piranha and cayman. That went against everything that I had ever heard but, “When in Rome” I thought. The water was warm but still refreshing and no sign of piranha.

When we got back, there was a fire going and the smell of singed hair assaulted my nostrils. A whole small deer, complete with fur and hoofs was draped over the coals. Only the intestines had been removed.

We weren’t supposed to partake of their food. Already there was a dilemma. Well, we reasoned, we could share some of our food with them. It was just too tempting to taste what to us were delicacies, perhaps never to be savored again.

During that week we were treated to monkey, capybara (the world’s largest rodent) and turtle eggs as the Huaorani smacked their lips over our tinned sardines and ham, cereal with cartons of milk, cookies and granola bars.

Moi took us two girls out cayman hunting by the light of the full moon in a dugout. We didn’t see any caymans but it was a wonderful evening. We beached the canoe on the silky-white sand, leaned up against a log and just soaked in the awesome jungle night. Frogs boomed and night birds called. I was exhilarated and as we talked I found myself impressed by the intelligence of this young man.

Moi is a radical. An activist who was well known to the oil companies for his vigorous campaigns against them. He wore a tee shirt that said “Get the $hell out of Ecuador” and sported the familiar scallop shell emblem of Shell oil. Through his contact with Joe Kane and the auspices of the Sierra Club he had even managed to go to Washington D.C. in 1993.

In his book “Savages” Joe Kane quotes Moi as he stared in awe at the Washington traffic “There are so many cars,” he said. “How long have they been here? A million years?”

“Much less.”

"A thousand years?”
“No. Eighty perhaps.”
He was silent then, and after a while he asked, “What will you do in ten more years? In ten years, your world will be pure metal. Did your god do this?”

When Moi took a shower in the hotel bathroom Joe says, “I heard the water go on and off several times. Finally he emerged wearing only his shorts, his skin red as a boiled lobster.

“Tomorrow I would like a new hotel room,” Moi said.
“Why?”

“I would like a room that also has cold water.”

He dressed himself completely and had me tie his tie. Then, fully clothed he got into bed. Like many Huaorani he drew no hard distinction between day and night."

Next day we went for a 5 hour hike up hill under the steamy canopy. Moi walked barefoot, encumbered only by his gleaming machete. We guinea pigs were laden down with all the trappings of civilization that we couldn’t be separated from: rubber boots, back packs filled with water bottles, toilet paper, cellophane- wrapped snacks, movie and still cameras.

I looked and felt ridiculous. I also looked apoplectic. My face purple, my shirt soaked, I stumbled over roots, vines slapped me in the face, my rubber boots, sucked off in mud holes, deserted me.

We crawled under logs, skipped dizzily across fat fallen trees that forded streams and thankfully plunged up to our armpits in cool jungle rivers holding our burdens over our heads. I loved it!

Finally we were back at the Shiripuno River. A tribesman was putting the finishing touches on a balsa wood raft. He had hacked down the small trees and lashed them with vines to form our craft. We climbed aboard, or rather astraddle. They were only 2 logs wide and our legs hung down into the water on either side. My rubber boots were now full of water and my shorts soaked as the raft rode low in the water with our weight. Thus we made the ½ hour trip down river to our settlement. I had been damp for so long that diaper rash was imminent.

Our days were filled with hikes where Moi identified the flora and fauna and told us fascinating stories. He pointed out toucans and monkeys and undergrowth-rustling jaguars but our city eyes could rarely see what he was pointing at. He politely never mentioned our exceeding stupidity.

We came upon a naked hunter. He carried a 10 foot blow gun made of “chonta”, and a bamboo case of poisoned darts. Moi negotiated rapidly with him for some meat which he had cached in the undergrowth when he heard us coming. There was a large black bird called a “paucar” about the size of a small child. There was also a spaniel-sized deer.

Moi told us that the Huaorani language only has numbers up to 5. He gave me a book in Huaorani that some Missionaries had printed up for the school children. He taught me some Huaorani words and constantly asked me how to say and write things in English. He already spoke Spanish and Quichua (the Quechua are the largest jungle tribe and most other tribes speak their language) and was learning French. He had a voracious curiosity and rapier intelligence. In addition Moi gave me lessons in blowgun wizardry.

Back home at the hut one of the women was making a basket out of palm leaves. It was done in a flash and was handy for carrying any fruits or grubs you might find as you traveled. My friends looked on from their double wide hammocks.

In the afternoon he took me by canoe over to his father’s compound on the other side of the river. I expected to see his father the shaman on some sort of throne but he was squatting over two lengths of chonta gouging out a trough in the middle of each. These two halves would be lashed together and glued with tree resin to form the blow gun. His long pierced ear lobes dangled flaccidly without the aid of the wooden plugs worn for dress up occasions.

Moi dug out a bag full of colorful feathers that he used to make ceremonial head dresses. He gave me some as we enjoyed more chicha, made this time from fermented bananas. Pet monkeys and parrots performed acrobatics on the ceiling beams.

Continued in part 4 of 4