Reflections from the Bush: Part 2

Halliday Bay, Queensland, Australia
0845 local time
Wynne Hedlesky

After our two-day trek along the bottom of Carnarvon Gorge, Kristian and I headed east. Our next stop on the way back to the ocean was Blackdown Tablelands National Park. This landscape was again different from the others we had seen, and, as usual, inspired new reflections about nature and human beings’ interaction with it. The delicate, arid ecosystem of Blackdown Tablelands got me thinking about what resources are necessary for living organisms to survive—and what happens when there aren’t enough.

As the name suggests, the park covers 47,950 hectares of mesa-like sandstone highlands in central Queensland. Like Carnarvon Gorge, these highlands were formed from the erosion of soft sandstone, creating dramatic gorges and leaving sandstone mountains that rise suddenly out of the flat, arid countryside. Elevation is another form of isolation. Just as the blue crayfish of Lamington exist only in remote valleys, several unique species have evolved in Blackdown, isolated on the cooler, slightly moister highlands.

            The eucalyptus woodlands of the Blackdown Tablelands were the home to Aboriginal peoples for thousands of years. Their art is still visible. Signs throughout the park described how they used various plants for food and medicine. Sacred to them was a stream that flows through the park, and, at Rainbow Falls, gracefully descends a gorge from sandstone ledge to sandstone ledge. Though it is no Mississippi River, this water was essential for their life.

            Later human inhabitants in the region were less successful at eking out their livelihood. Cattleman William Yaldwin arrived in 1869. Though he named the area after Blackdown House, his family home in England, these hills were not to be his permanent home. Hidden beneath the thick grasses he observed when he arrived was a soil so poor in essential nutrients that cattle grazed there developed rickets, a disease in which bones become weak, soft, and brittle, and had to be moved to other pastures after just a few months. Not even kangaroos, which are also herbivores, live in large numbers in those hills due to the extremely nutrient-poor soil.

            Infertile soil is one of the many problems that plague Australian agriculture. As I discussed in Part 1, the harsh, erratic climate is another. I was aware of some of these issues before I even arrived in Australia from reading Collapse, an informative and well-researched book by Jared Diamond on the relationship between the success or failure of various societies, and the way in which those societies use or misuse their natural resources. In one chapter, he uses modern Australia as an example of a society that wrestles with serious resource shortages. To some extent, these shortages predated the arrival of Europeans on the continent; they are a result of Australia’s geological and climatic history.

Australia’s poor soils are due to the fact that there have been none of the usual geological processes that refresh the nutrient content of soils in the continent’s recent geological history—little volcanic activity, little glacial activity, little crustal uplifting. But there has been plenty of time for nutrients to slowly erode out of the soil. Also contributing to Australia’s soil infertility is a massive problem with soil salinization, often exacerbated by human activities such as over-irrigation and land clearing, both of which allow water to seep further than normal into the ground, dissolving deep-lying salts and allowing them to leech into topsoil and groundwater supplies. But Australian agriculture could not exist without irrigation. Australia is the world’s driest continent. Rains are infrequent, and, just as significant for agriculture, unpredictable, being highly dependent upon the fluctuating El Niñno Southern Oscillation. 

Yet many organisms have adapted to survive in these unfavorable conditions. In fact, when the first Europeans arrived, thick grasslands, forests of enormous blue gum trees, dense rain forests, and rivers and oceans full of fish convinced them that this must be a fertile land indeed. Diamond says the first Australian settlers also happened to land in a relatively wet period, and so did not realize the full extent of the continent’s problems with drought. Europeans proceeded to harvest what Diamond calls Australia’s “standing crop” of organic resources, grazing, fishing, and chopping down trees as fast as they could. They planted crops, expecting the soils to yield the kind of harvests they were used to back home.

Little did they realize that most of Australia’s vital nutrients were locked in these standing crops themselves. Once they were harvested and removed, there was very little left for the next generation. Regrowth was slow, and, in some cases, impossible. Many of Australia’s fisheries have collapsed; the blue gum, once Australia’s most valuable tree, is now grown more profitably overseas. Diamond even compares the “wheat belt” of southwestern Australia, one of the country’s most productive agricultural areas, to a “gigantic flowerpot.” Agriculture there is now impossible without the constant application of fertilizers to the nutrient-drained soil.

Diamond compares this activity of over-exploiting organic resources to mining. Once a mineral is removed from the ground, it never returns. Australians were extracting, and in many cases continue to extract, organic resources from Australia at such a rate that these resources become, practically speaking, non-renewable.

Added to this over-exploitation were several policies that, to someone aware of the delicacy of Australia’s environment, seem tailor-made to exacerbate already existing problems. For a long time, Australia had a policy of mandatory land clearance. Farmers and settlers stripped the land of the native vegetation adapted to the arid climate, leading to desertification and loss of topsoil. There were also minimum—not maximum—stocking requirements for sheep and cattle. Ranchers had to stock animals at levels that lead to vegetation loss and soil erosion, or risk losing their government land leases. These measures were aimed at rapidly increasing Australia’s agricultural productivity, but, in the long run, have had quite the opposite effect.

Settlers also introduced many foreign species of plants and animals that ended up being extremely destructive to Australian ecosystems. Many of the most costly introductions were actually deliberate, such as rabbits, foxes, cane toads, and prickly pear. Now Australians spend billions of dollars a year trying to rid the continent of these pests.

Of course, the country suffers from chronic water shortages. Man-made irrigation systems were hailed as the salvation of many arid, inland towns. But so much water is removed from the largest Australian river system, the Murray-Darling, that, in some years, there is no water left to flow into the sea. On the news I have often seen coverage of the heated debate between farmers, who naturally feel they have a right to the water necessary to irrigate their crops, and conservationists who are desperately pushing for limitations on up-stream water usage for the sake of the health of river ecosystems—and hoping it’s not already too late.

This is a rough overview of what I have learned of Australia’s daunting environmental problems, from Diamond’s book and from several months of being in the country—absorbing information provided by the national park system, watching the news, talking to Australians, and even spending some time on a commercial fruit plantation. As I walked through Blackdown Tablelands National Park, and saw echoes of the different people that lived there—the ruins of cattle ranchers’ camps, and evidence of an Aboriginal presence in sandstone caves—I wondered how one group managed to thrive in this arid, infertile land, while the other couldn’t; how one group seemed to understand how to manage Australia’s resources delicately, while the other stubbornly clung (and still clings) to the expectation that they could can extract what they wanted, as quickly as and in whatever quantities they liked, and the land would yield profit indefinitely.

In an area with limited resources of nutrients and water, it seems obvious that this cannot work. As I sat by Rainbow Falls, I began thinking about this issue in terms of a net quantity of the “stuff of life” within an ecosystem—a certain limited amount of water, a certain limited amount of nutrients. As I rather more poetically than scientifically described my new insight while sitting by the falls, “one could say that these plants hold the future of life in this region. They are they nourishment for future generations. Likewise, they are more than mere descendents, but rather a direct continuation of the life that came before. The same life-stuff that made up those earlier generations now constitutes the current population.

“Life supports life. It is all one continuous process, without beginning or end. The life process of each individual organism is part of this larger happening in which all organisms nourish each other, into the past and the future. As long as organisms are born and die within this happening and are not prevented from being part of the cycle, from nourishing future generations, life can continue for a very long time even in a place where time and erosion have left the soil itself devoid of nutrients.”

It turns out that my poetical musings actually share some of the same vocabulary as the scientific terminology for these processes. Ecologists actually talk about “nutrient cycling” within ecosystems. There are natural processes that put nutrients into an ecosystem, and natural processes that remove them, such as the geological activities I mentioned earlier. The harvesting of organic material (plant or animal) is one such process. Harvesting prevents nutrients from cycling, and, along with other processes that remove nutrients from an ecosystem, can contribute to a net loss of nutrients. 

But to answer the question I posed earlier: What had the Aborigines, who made their home on one of the world’s driest, most infertile continents for forty thousand years, done differently from the European settlers? Not being an ecologist or an anthropologist, I didn’t have much in the way of tools to help me answer that question. It does seem like the Aborigines managed to harvest organic material from their environment for their sustenance without tipping the balance toward a net loss of nutrients.  Perhaps their ability to do this has something to do with two vastly different attitudes toward the natural world and the sources of their sustenance. In short, the European settlers considered themselves to exist outside of the “cycle of life” I described above, while the Aborigines must have found a way, over thousands of years, to live sustainably within that cycle.

The early Australian settlers, as well as many people in the world today, saw nature as something they merely use, not as something they are also a part of. They saw in the world around them a wealth of natural resources that they could take as they please, not just for their own personal sustenance, but in order to export them to other places and amass wealth. By doing this, they broke the cycle of life; they prevented organisms from nourishing later generations.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, three-quarters of Australia’s population of about thirty million lives in urban areas. Much of their food and other organic products come from Australia’s agricultural land. This results in a flow of nutrients out of the areas of production and into the cities. If all of these city dwellers were appropriately distributed over Australia’s productive land, would the land be able to support them? Probably not. Yet there are elements in the Australian government who are pushing hard for policies that would encourage further population growth, believing for some reason that, without twenty million more people, they won’t have the influence or economic clout to be a player on the world political stage.

We must not forget how much of Australia’s agricultural products—livestock, timber, food—are exported overseas, adding to the net loss of nutrients in Australia’s agricultural land. Simplified (and perhaps oversimplified) in this way, it seems clear that Australia’s infertile soil and delicate ecosystems cannot provide the nourishment required to sustain such a large population of organisms that are not themselves part of that ecosystem, that are not part of that regional cycle of life. Hence the constant necessity of man-made fertilizers, and the plight of Australia’s fresh water supply.

Yet this attitude that man is separate from nature, that we have a right to exploit it however we choose even while living in cities and distancing ourselves from it for our own convenience, is shared by countless millions of Westerners (I use this word more for the convenience of choosing a term than because I think it is a truly accurate appellation). In fact, this attitude is so common, that it comes as a surprise to many people that there could be any other type of relationship with the natural world. We’ve done such a good job at distancing ourselves from it that many people feel uncomfortable in nature—it’s full of bugs, dirt, germs; there’s nowhere to sit, no entertainment, nothing to buy. Even though I love being in natural settings, I would be lying if I said I’m not susceptible to similar feelings from time to time. When I’m soaking wet, smelly, my feet are covered in blisters and my ankles are covered in leaches, I occasionally long for the sterility of a dry, air-conditioned hotel room and food that comes pre-prepared in a neat little box.

But I experiment in suppressing these feelings of disgust. I am, at least intellectually, aware that peoples like the Australian Aborigines had a different attitude toward the natural world, and I try to understand what that would be like. Unfortunately, I fear this is basically impossible. How can I know what it would have been like to see myself as completely integrated into the natural processes taking place around me, rather than as a visitor from outside? How would it have felt to travel not just to places I thought were pretty, and not when I have the money and time off work, but when certain plants were producing fruit, or in order to follow the animals I ate for food? How would it have felt to have the ability to scan the eucalyptus woodlands of Blackdown Tablelands in search of food the way I scan the price tags at the supermarket? What would it have been like if Rainbow Falls was not just a pleasant place to sit and write in my journal, but as indispensable for my life as money is today?

However difficult it may be to bridge the gap between these different perspectives, I think that at least diminishing that distance will be necessary if human beings want to continue to survive on this planet. The Aborigines survived in the harsh environment of Australia for forty thousand years, while Westerners have managed to significantly reduce the continent’s resources in just a few hundred. What did the Aborigines do right? They lived as part of the place that provided their sustenance, in smaller populations, and they did not overexploit nature’s resources. That’s not to say they had no effect on the natural world at all. They commonly used bushfires as a way of coaxing the woodlands into producing the types of plant foods they preferred. Although I know little of their history, I can only assume that at some point their practices had a detrimental effect on certain species. However, over the course of their long inhabitance in Australia, they developed a way of living in balance within their ecosystems.

The first step for Western society to find such a balance is to actually admit we live within an ecosystem. We must realize this not just on an intellectual level; this perspective must not be limited merely to ecologists. Everyone—miners, doctors, farmers, bankers, the guy who works at McDonalds—must realize he does not exist outside the natural world, but within it. He must realize that, though our society has trained us to think that food comes from grocery stores and water comes from the tap, the sources of our sustenance really lie in the icky, buggy, dirty, germy nature we’ve learned to fear, and desire merely to control and exploit. Perhaps an awareness of the necessity of “getting back to nature” will compel him to find a way to get over its dirtiness and lack of refinement; or perhaps, just going outside and seeing how nice it is will make him think twice about tossing that chip bag out the car window.

 The first step to saving the world might just be to go have a picnic in the park.

Reflections from the Bush: Part 1

21 December, 2011
0811 Local Time
Halliday Bay, Queensland, Australia
Wynne Hedlesky

My experience on the islands of French Polynesia and New Caledonia was so eye-opening and affected me in such profound ways, I naturally figured that it would be difficult to top. I have been pleasantly surprised by Australia. Luckily, this is not a competition, and I need not directly compare the experiences, or the countries, or the peoples, since they have affected me in such different ways. 

            I sum up the differences between my experience in Polynesia and my experience here in Australia in a useful, if a bit oversimplified, way: In French Polynesia and New Caledonia, it was all about the people; here in Australia, it’s been all about nature. That isn’t to say that Polynesia was lacking in natural beauty, or that I haven’t enjoyed spending time with Australians. But in French Polynesia, Kristian and I were struggling with a language and culture more foreign than anything we had so far encountered. Here, what stand out are the diverse, exotic, and incredibly delicate ecosystems that exist in Australia, and, in many cases, nowhere else on earth. I am deeply indebted to Australia’s national park system. Through reflecting on the information I read in the brochures and informative signs throughout a dozen national parks, and by seeing the wonders that are preserved in them, my attitude toward the natural world has profoundly changed.

            Rather than post one extremely long description of the insights the Australian bush inspired, I have decided to write a little series, with each piece describing a different natural marvel, or a new development in my thinking, as Kristian and I explored different parks on our Queensland campervan adventure, spanning everything from riotous green rainforests, to dramatic coastlines, to arid eucalyptus woodlands.

            Part 1: Lamington National Park and Carnarvon Gorge National Park

            Let’s go north…No, south… Kristian and I picked up our camper van in Brisbane with not much of a plan, except that we had three weeks to get to Cairns, about 1,600 kilometers to the north. After driving north for an afternoon, we decided we’d made a mistake by heading away from Lamington National Park, an alleged must-see about 100 kilometers south of Brisbane. We turned around and headed for Binna Burra, one of two main access points for the 16,000 hectare park.

            We spent two days exploring the parks rainforests and eucalyptus woodlands, going on two moderately strenuous day-long hikes and camping (perhaps not exactly legally) in a parking lot high on the fog-shrouded crater rim of a gigantic ancient volcano. It was our first exposure to Australian wilderness, and our senses were overwhelmed. Everything was new and fascinating. Some of the plants, animals, and environments we saw there became more familiar as we traveled in other parts of Australia, and others are unique to that park.

            For those who love observing nature, this first encounter with the plants and animals of a completely new continent is like being a kid tossed into the proverbial candy store. Kristian and I marveled at the green-tangled rainforest riotous with the calls of unfamiliar birds, the wallabies darting through the undergrowth, and the indecipherable moth-trails on the scribbly gums. We watched huge, sky-bluecrayfish, endemic to the wet valleys of that particular region, as they scooted along the beds of pristine mountain streams. We gaped at the old growth trees whose trunks half a dozen outstretched adult human wingspans could hardly encompass. We even caught our first glimpse of one of Australia’s many poisonous snakes, a red-bellied black snake.

            Our wonder and curiosity was not only about particular plants and animals, but about certain novelties of Australian climate and ecosystems on a larger scale. On the first day, in the very same hike, we passed from under deafeningly green-tangled rainforest canopies to dry, crisp-smelling eucalyptus woodland. At the time, the starkness of this contrast surprised me, but later I realized that the juxtaposition of these two types of forest is quite typical in many parts of Australia.

Australia is a land of climatic extremes. On the roadside, signs informing the driver that the bushfire risk today is “very high” are often seen a few meters from signs warning the driver that this area is a floodway, and that, in the case of a flash flood, the depth of the water can be seen by looking at the giant, upright meter stick planted firmly in the arid ground for that purpose. Many of these depth measuring sticks go up to two meters. Droughts, floods, cyclones, bushfires, violent thunder storms—name an extreme meteorological event, and Australia has it. Frequently.

The climate in Australia varies drastically not just over time, but geographically as well. Within a few square kilometers there may be many microclimates, each one with its own distinctive plant and animal communities. On the dry, upwind side of a ridge, arid eucalyptus forest may dominate, with evidence of frequent bushfires in the form of scorched bark on the lower three or four meters of many trees. Up and over the other side of the ridge, in a valley protected from wind and sun, is a damp tangle of lawyer cane, palm, and other moisture-loving plants.

In the second park we visited, Carnarvon Gorge National Park, we saw such a striking example of the role of microclimates that it brought tears to my eyes. Carnarvon Gorge is located in an arid region of Queensland called the “sandstone belt.” Ancient creeks have eroded through several distinct layers of rock—volcanic basalt, and several types of sandstone up to 200 million years old—to expose the dramatic white cliffs of the 200 meter deep gorge. The geology of the place is fascinating, and of great importance for life forms in the region, both ancient and modern.

The porous sandstone in this area acts like a giant sponge, absorbing and storing much of the rainwater that falls in this arid region. As described in an informational pamphlet on the geology of the gorge provided by the national park, “This formation is one of the chief water bearing sandstones for the great Artesian Basin (Australia’s largest body of underground water)…some of Australia’s major river systems have their headwaters here.” Of great importance to the plants, animals, and human beings that live in and around the gorge, Carnarvon Creek, also feeds by “countless springs throughout the gorge system,” provides a year-round water source.

This fact has made the gorge a refuge for life in an otherwise arid countryside. The ten kilometer hike along Carnarvon Creek is ideally designed to showcase the interaction between geology and living organisms, plant, animal, and human. Hiking through the gorge is like visiting a gigantic outdoor museum. Every couple kilometers, there is a short side trail which leads to a sort of natural exhibit—a “moss garden,” where delicate liverworts and mosses cover sandstone slowly oozing moisture; “the amphitheatre,” an enormous cylindrical pit fifteen meters across and sixty meters deep that was formed by the erosion of a column of soft sandstone over millions of years, and is accessible only through a narrow fissure in the sandstone cliff; an overhanging cliff wall covered in the ochre hand prints of the human residents of the gorge hundreds of years ago. Every “exhibit” had me scraping my jaw off the ground. But one more than all the others.

Ward’s Canyon, one of the many small side gorges whose creeks flow into Carnarvon Creek, was once the occasional shelter of a pair of possum-hunting Australian brothers whose name it now bears. For thousands of years before that, its protective overhanging walls and source of permanent water attracted aboriginal people, whose presence is still evident in grooves on the canyon’s boulders used for grinding plant material. Long before that, and, miraculously, even in the present day, Ward’s Canyon was home to the majestic Angiopteris evecta, or king fern.

Millions of years ago, much of Australia was covered in rainforest. As the climate changed and the continent became hotter and drier and fires became more frequent, other species of plants and animals gradually came to dominate the continent, some of them even evolved to take advantage of the bushfires. Rainforest ecosystems now exist only in patches on the east coast of the continent, such as Lamington National Park. But a faint echo of these vast, wet forests remains even in Carnarvon Gorge.

As we entered Ward’s Canyon, the dry, crisp smell of eucalyptus was overcome by the cool smell of water and vegetation. A tiny, crystal stream bubbled along between a steep, orange cliff on the left, and a sheltering overhang of the same orange sandstone on the right. As we continued, the floor of the canyon became narrower and narrower, and greener and greener, and there, at the very back, was something you don’t expect to see in central Queensland—giant, water-loving king ferns, with fronds five meters long stretching almost all the way across the canyon floor.

Thanks to the porous, sponge-like sandstone of Carnarvon Gorge and the protection from the sun provided by this tiny side canyon, this community of a dozen or so king ferns has survived in an unbroken lineage for millions of years, making spores, slowly growing and maturing, spreading their massive fronds over their tiny kingdom. All around them, Australia has become semi-desert, but they continue on, indifferent to the fact that their nearest kin are now several hundred kilometers away in the coastal rainforests.  

Standing in Ward’s Canyon, I was baffled thinking about what twists of climatic and geological fortune permitted this beautiful anomaly, and moved by the simultaneous power and delicacy of the life in front of me. In the millions of years of their residence there, how many close calls they must have had, how many prolonged droughts, how many potentially destructive human and animal visitors, how many fires must have raged just over their heads on the arid tablelands. Yet, serenely and majestically as befits their name, they continued to carry out their duty, which is the natural activity of all life—to create more life. The miraculous continuity of this process is now a path that we can take back millions of years in order to get a glimpse of a vastly different Australia.

I felt fortunate that I was able to see them, to admire them. How much longer will they be able to persist? How much longer will the sandstone’s trapped moisture be enough to keep up a favorable climate in that tiny gorge? This was not the last time that the diversity and seemingly improbable tenacity of life on this fickle continent would leave me at a loss for words. It soon occurred to me that, in a country such as this, with violent, destructive forces such as flood, drought, fire, and storms ever-present, life clings to the land creatively, tenaciously, but delicately—and human beings must become aware of how easily we can upset that delicate relationship.

"Snailing" Aboard Escargot de Mer

Wynne Hedlesky
Nov. 24 2011
1338 local time 
Mackay, Queensland, Australia

            Kristian and I have been ashore for about a month, and we have yet to blog about our longest sea voyage yet. Not only have we been very busy here in Australia, we have also not been particularly eager to drag up recollections that would put a damper on our enjoyment of our time here. But you learn from everything that doesn’t kill you, I guess, and anyway, some of the events are actually pretty entertaining, retrospectively.

Our voyage from Raiatea, in French Polynesia, to Noumea, the capital of New Caledonia, would try the patience of a very saintly person. With the trade winds becoming weak and irregular in the South Pacific as cyclone season approached, what was supposed to be a two-week trip became more than twice as long. We were twenty-seven days at sea between landfalls, and the entire voyage took thirty-one days. Even if we’d been having a blast aboard Escargot de Mer (“Snail of the Sea,” in French), as we not-particularly-fondly called the under-maintained catamaran our captain was delivering from Raiatea to Australia, this would have been too much of a good thing. It turned out to be way too much of a bad thing.

I sometimes remember with amazement my jubilation on the day that Joe, the captain who was hired to deliver Escargot from Raiatea to Australia, asked us if we wanted to come on board as crew. Perhaps the challenges of merely getting underway should have foreshadowed our later problems. Our departure from Raiatea had only come after about a month of frustrating delays. The boat was scheduled to get hauled out to repair the starboard sail drive (which, it turns out, is a rather important part of the engine), and a crack in the aluminum mast (which, it turns out, is a rather important part of the rig), but the date for the haul out was rescheduled several times. In the mean time, there were numerous other minor issues.

I noticed during the month that we spent on board waiting to finish our repairs, that our captain had a rather extreme way of reacting to crises. It didn’t matter if the crisis was as minor as a glitch raising the main or as major as a fire on board, he responded by stringing together expletives. No explanation to his crew of what was going on, no instructions. Just a veritable Korean War of F-bombs. These were directed at everything—the f*&king engine, the f*&king ocean, this f*&king piece of s*&t boat, the f*&king idiot owner, or the f*&king screwdriver that’s gone missing. If you had anything to do with the crisis at hand, even if your participation was as minor as simply being in the vicinity, he would sometimes inquire, “What the f*&k do you think you’re doing?” The best you could do was to stand by ready to assist in solving the problem, and hope that the river of expletives would just flow around you, leaving you relatively unscathed, like a strong tree during a flood. Be a strong tree. Be a strong tree.

Kristian and I also noticed that he had become gradually less friendly toward us. As the maintenance dragged on and on, he practically stopped talking to us. Even when we tried to be polite, to say good morning, to offer him dinner, all we got were glares. Kristian, optimistic as usual, hypothesized that he was just frustrated about being stuck there for so long. That it wasn’t anything personal toward us. I hoped that was the case, but it eventually proved to be false.

Our departure was a culmination of Joe’s general frustration, and the gradual buildup of his negativity towards me and Kristian. On the day of our departure, we couldn’t get the port engine (the one we thought had been working correctly), the dinghy outboard, or the anchor windlass to work. This caused yet a few more hours of delay. Joe was cranky, to say the least. Our crewmate, who had never before crewed on a yacht and spoke primarily French, “nearly cut off the captain’s f*&king hand” while performing a task that Joe had ordered him to do, but whose execution and function he had never explained. Despite all this, Joe eventually fixed the engine and the windlass, decided to say “screw it” to the outboard, and we got underway.

As we were leaving the lagoon, we started trying to raise the mainsail. With a new crew, it usually doesn’t happen perfectly the first time. Things weren’t going particularly badly. We had plenty of space, the winds weren’t high, and there was no real hurry. We were all trying to get coordinated, learning where the lines were, figuring out what needs to happen when. We had set the genoa first, and though there weren’t high winds, it was flogging obnoxiously in the face of the person at the main halyard winch (who happened to me be). As we raised the sail, the batons kept getting stuck in the lazy jacks. No big deal. Usually, someone (oh, for example, the captain, who’s at the helm and doesn’t have the genoa obnoxiously flogging in his face) keeps an eye out for it, and lets the person on the winch know to slow down while someone unfouls them. Our captain, on the other hand, must have figured, as usual, that “f*&k” was the only real instruction we needed, and that any further communication, if there were any, was certainly aided by the addition of that word.

After we all managed to bungle through the setting of the main, Joe threw a fit worthy of reality television. With his little monkey face looking like it was going to boil off his skull, he shouted that Kristian and I were arrogant idiots, that all we’d done since we got on the f*&king boat was brag about what great sailors we were, and that we couldn’t even raise a f*&king mainsail. He’d sure learned his lesson about taking on crew. This was going to be a great f*&king trip, all right. I managed to agree with him on that point.

This was only the first of many such instances of horrendously poor communication, extreme overreaction, and hatred directed towards us. Except when he’d really screwed up, our other crewmate usually got off relatively un-cussed-at. Kristian and I, on the other hand, suffered through the “you arrogant, ungrateful assholes” rant several more times. Since I don’t really think of myself as an arrogant person, this insult stung the first time I heard it. We had, in fact, told him that though we had experience on tall ships, we were relatively new to yachts, and happy to learn from him. Perhaps sharing stories of our experiences on tall ships counted as bragging, in his mind. In that case, he was as guilty as us. We’d heard all of his sea stories twice or three times.

For the first couple weeks, we tried very hard, through our actions and willingness to help, to change Joe’s opinion of us. But eventually we realized there was no pleasing him. He was able to interpret even our efforts to help as arrogance. Any sign of competence or knowledge, such as how to tie basic knots, was a form of bragging. He himself couldn’t even tie a bowline properly. I suspect that insecurity about his poor seamanship made him constantly suspicious that we were criticizing his decisions and trying to suggest that we knew better, when we had no such intention whatsoever.

As a captain and a leader, Joe was an utter failure. He did not clearly state his expectations of crewmembers, or provide adequate instruction on how he wanted things done. It was impossible even to infer his wishes from his reactions to our attempts to help, because his standards simply weren’t consistent. One day, he’d cuss us out for not going ahead and shaking the reef in the main when the wind died (even though doing so would have lead to serious technical difficulties because he had earlier solved a chafing problem in the reefline by wrapping it in several layers of duct tape. A highly professional solution.) The message we got from this cussing was, be aware of what’s going on, and be more proactive. One night a few days later, when Kristian and I decided to be proactive and furl the genoa by ourselves so that the captain could keep sleeping, he came out on deck in a rage, took over the relatively simple operation from us, claimed we were doing it entirely wrong, and said, “I know how you arrogant kids think. Think you can do everything yourself.”

Joe’s lack of communication and leadership skills, combined with his dodgy seamanship, on one occasion actually had the potential to put his crew in considerable danger. During our twenty-seven straight days at sea, when Escargot wasn’t completely becalmed or damn near, she was dodging or not-quite-dodging thunderstorms. We hit a couple of relatively serious storms, with winds up to forty knots. During one of these, while Kristian and I were sleeping off-watch, we woke up to the sound of Joe stomping around in the salon, shouting, “What the f*&k! What the f*&k!” This sounded more serious than his usual mumble-cussing to himself. We jumped out of our berth and ran up to the salon to find smoke pouring up out of the starboard hull. There was a fire on board the vessel.

A fire, during a storm—wow, I thought, could this possibly get any less awesome? I did not want it to. As crew on tall ships, I had done many drills for such an emergency, and was surprised to find myself relatively calm and able to think through what to do next. I located the nearest fire extinguisher—which I immediately dropped. Luckily, it didn’t go off.  Kristian picked it up. Apparently my calm was not perfect. Around this time, our third crewmate woke up and came into the salon to see what all the commotion was about. After realizing there was a fire, Joe had never even gone into the port hull to wake up his crew or issue instructions. Unlike us, our other crewmate had not drilled for emergencies such as this, and I suppose some calmly-delivered instructions and an explanation of what was happening would have eased his mind, especially since he didn’t speak great English and probably had no clue what was going on. But, as usual, Joe just handled the crisis by stomping around and cussing.

Joe was shouting for someone to go see if they could find the source of the smoke. All three of us headed for the starboard hull. I suggested that at least one of us should stay up in the salon, in case the person down in the smoke lost consciousness or needed help. I went down into the hull to try to locate the source of the smoke, trying to breathe in as little as possible. I did not yet open any windows, in case that would increase airflow to the fire.

There was not as much smoke in the hull as I had thought. The fire was clearly not actually in the living area; the smoke must be leaking in from somewhere else. Under the aft berth, the bulkhead that separated that storage compartment from the engine bay was quite warm. Joe had apparently guessed where the fire was, and had gone out on deck to the engine bay hatch and thrown it wide open. If I were a fire in that engine bay, I would have been like, “Sweet! Thanks for all that air, man! I’m totally gonna burn down your boat now!” As a fire, when I saw that he didn’t even have a fire extinguisher with him, I would have even tried to give him a high-five.

Luckily, the fire was all sound and fury. Though it filled the starboard hull with acrid, burnt-plastic smoke, it was only a small electrical fire, and had already put itself out by the time Joe thoughtlessly threw open the engine bay hatch. The little box that regulated the electricity flow from the solar panels was now a melted glob of plastic. A bummer, sure, but an ignited sailboat would have been a slightly bigger bummer.

The significance of Joe’s behavior during this crisis took a while to sink in. At the time, I didn’t realize how irresponsible his actions were. As Kristian and I later discussed the events of that night, we realized that Joe’s lack of communication and improper response to the emergency could have put our lives in danger. This probably sounds pretty scary to my parents. However, it has taught us that before we get on another boat, it is essential to discuss with the captain exactly what his protocol is in the case of shipboard emergencies, and make sure he has onboard, and knows how to use, essential safety equipment.

Joe’s behavior towards us continued to be erratic, at best. Some days, he was relatively pleasant. When he was in a talking mood, we had the occasional privilege of hearing his views on politics and other issues, which were generally self-contradictory and not very well thought-out. His racism was so shocking that your jaw hit the floor and you had to get your friend to come scrape it up. His time in Australia had taught him that the Aborigines were all kleptomaniac drunks who didn’t really have language or culture before Europeans showed up. He was also the only person I’ve ever actually encountered who believed that the world would be a better place if Hitler had just finished what he’d started with the Jews.

On other days, he was in a bad mood, or perhaps we did something to piss him off—the way we chewed our food, our efforts at being proactive and trying to handle sail by ourselves, questions about what people wanted for lunch. On these days, he basically ignored us. Any question we asked him, whether about meal preferences, sail trim, ship’s systems, whatever, was answered rudely at best, or, just as often, was completely ignored. Eventually, I gave up trying to be polite. I no longer thanked him when he cooked a meal. I no longer said good morning or good night. I tried to stay out of his way, and hoped the wind would pick up so we would get there already.

We eventually realized that, in addition to our arrogance, our lack of gratitude was the other quality about us that annoyed him most. This was linked to food. His “you arrogant, ungrateful kids” rant started including references to how he’d fed us for two months, even while we were on shore, and all we did was complain and screw things up. This was a clue to another possible source of his dislike for us.

When he had asked if we wanted to be his crew, he’d said we could come on board and stay during the maintenance period. He was generously willing to pay for our food during the voyage, and we said we would provide for our own food while we were still in Raiatea waiting for the haul out. We made what I now see as a serious mistake by using some of his spices and condiments. Apparently, in his mind, this amounted to “feeding us” for the month that we were with him on Raiatea. Someone with reasonably developed communication skills would simply have asked us to stop using his condiments. We would have said sorry, and changed our ways. Or, if he found us so difficult to live with, he should have asked us not to come on the trip with him. Instead, he formed a powerful grudge against us, refused to engage us in any productive discussions about how we could get along together, and got in the habit of interpreting all of our behavior, even our attempts to help, in a way that further fortified his negative opinion of us. By the end of the trip, he had stopped even letting us help. He would literally take lines out of our hands. He would rather do a job himself, or call our other crewmate out of the salon, than ask or even permit us to help.

As our long, dull voyage dragged on, we ended up a couple hundred miles north of our original course, and Joe decided we would make landfall at Lifou, a smaller island in the country of New Caledonia. Hopefully we could go through immigration there, re-provision, and head directly to Australia. A couple days out from Lifou, Kristian and I decided we couldn’t take any more of Escargot de Mer. We would get off at Lifou, despite our original commitment to continue on to Australia. We even suspected that our captain would be happy to be rid of us. The day before we made landfall, we broke the news. He was visibly flustered, but remained relatively calm.

My mood had improved greatly when we decided to get off the boat. My bubble of good humor deflated somewhat when we arrived at Lifou. We discovered that we could not complete immigration procedures there, but had to go all the way to Noumea, a couple hundred miles away on a different island, in order to legally enter the country. Someone could either take the ferry to Noumea with all of our passports, do the paperwork, and come back, or we could all just sail there. We decided to sail. But knowing our luck, what was supposed to be a two-day voyage from Lifou to Noumea would surely take longer. Since Kristian and I were eager to get off the boat, and we wanted to make sure we wouldn’t be stuck on it for another week, Kristian asked Joe if we could motor if we found ourselves becalmed, and Joe suggested we could.

We got underway, and, of course, after about twelve hours the wind died. We bobbed around for another day. On day three, Kristian brought up the possibility of motoring. Kristian had even used the charts on our computer to plot the shortest route to Noumea. Although Joe had seemed willing to at least consider motoring before, when Kristian approached him about it he threw another epic fit, declaring he had never f*&king motored before, and he wasn’t going to now. He’d been generous enough to pay for our food for two f*&king months, and all we do now is bitch about how slow we’re going. If we’re in such a f*&king hurry to get there, we can pay for the fuel ourselves. So Kristian offered to pay for the fuel.

This did not calm him. He raged some more and eventually declared there was no f*&king way we were motoring. End of discussion. The next morning, I woke up to the sound of the engine starting. He also eventually decided to use the channel inside the reef, as Kristian had suggested, rather than taking the long way around outside. We were in the bay just outside the city at five in the morning.

The next ten hours were very long. Joe didn’t know where to take the boat, and spent an hour on the VHF butchering the vessel’s French name, trying to get someone at the port to give him instructions. We started heading for the port, and although someone did try to tell us where to go, the directions were unclear. On top of this, the one day we didn’t need any wind, it was blowing twenty knots, which didn’t help in our attempt to anchor. We dropped the hook successfully in one location, but the harbor police came and told us we couldn’t anchor there. But fifth time’s a charm, right? After a last-minute anchor swap, we finally got it to hold in a legal anchorage. Now we just had to get to shore.

You may remember the day of our departure in Raiatea, and the several technical issues we experienced as we tried to get underway. That non-functional dinghy outboard I mentioned continued to be non-functional on the day of our arrival in Noumea. Joe declared there was no f*&king way we were going to row to shore in this wind, and spent about an hour trying to fix it, with the wind kicking up seas even in the harbor, sending water into the engine and slamming the dinghy against the boat. We stood by to hand him tools and help out if we could. Eventually he gave up, and went into the salon. I had no idea what the plan was now, since he had said that we couldn’t row in this. We’d been in the region of Noumea for seven hours, and still hadn’t managed to get ashore. I dug deep and pulled up the last dregs of my stoicism. I resigned myself to waiting, and leaned back against our gear, which was on deck and ready to go whenever we figured out how. Joe came out of the salon, saw me kicked back against my backpack, and said, “So are you going to get the oars out, or what?”

“Are we rowing?” I responded, getting up.

“How the f*&k did you think we were getting to shore?”

Since he had earlier said quite forcefully that there was no f*&king way we were rowing in this, I honestly wasn’t sure how he planned to get to shore. Hence my position of resignation. The last and most impressive of all his tantrums then ensued. His face turned red, and his eyes burned like he wanted to smash something. He screamed that we were lazy, arrogant complainers; that I was “pissing on thirty,” and Kristian was “pissing on forty,” and we still behaved like f*&king fifteen-year-olds, arrogant and full of ourselves, going around moping and whining about how long the trip was taking. I didn’t point out that he was really the only one verbally complaining, daily cussing at the weather. He didn’t forget to add, as usual, that we were  rude, ungrateful a*&holes. At this point, I finally couldn’t help myself, and tried to interrupt in order to point out that the word “rude” must certainly also apply to the person who cussed out his crew fifty times, while they stood silently and took it, and even continued to say “thank you,” “good morning,” and “what would you like for lunch?” Of course, Joe shouted right over me before I could manage to squeak more than, “You’re calling us rude?”

Though I wouldn’t have been too upset if a freak giant squid burst forth out of the harbor, tentacled his face, and dragged him overboard, I kept my cool and got out the oars. We loaded all of our stuff into the dinghy, which, in addition to having no functional outboard, was half-deflated and handled in the water about like a soggy plastic grocery bag. Joe wouldn’t let me and Kristian help row. We made it to shore, and, after a long, sweaty wander about town with all our gear during which we managed to get separated from Joe and our other crewmate, Kristian and I arrived at immigration when it opened after lunch. Eating on Escargot had become so awkward that Kristian and I had not eaten since the night before, and very little the previous day. We sat and stood in various offices for a couple hours. I had no idea what exactly was happening; people kept taking my passport, giving it back; I just stood around, hoping no other unfortunate delays would pop up.

Someone handed me back my passport. We all left an office. Joe said, with a nasty, sarcastic note in his voice, “Good luck,” and walked away, not looking either of us in the eyes. We’re done already? I thought. The first moment of freedom. As a very large smile was growing in my heart, Joe turned back to us from across the street and asked, “Umm, do you guys want to get a beer or something?” Kristian and I were more than a little surprised. I figured that our other crew member had suggested that he ask, since Joe didn’t sound very excited about the idea himself. “No, that’s all right,” I replied. “But thanks for asking.” Apparently Kristian couldn’t keep up the politeness in this last exchange, and simply grimaced in disbelief.

            And so unceremoniously ended our time aboard Escargot de Mer. It is sometimes tempting to see the two months spent aboard that vessel as an unpleasant waste of time. We could have been lounging on a beach somewhere; we could have been sailing with someone who wasn’t a racist, bipolar basket case. But a journey around the world should be about learning, and there that experience was certainly educational.

            Kristian and I have thought a lot about how we will choose a boat in the future. We will always make sure to get to know the captain and crew before getting underway. If, in that “getting to know you” period, we see any signs that we won’t be able to get along with each other, we will not travel with them, no matter how inconvenient it may be to give up a ride once we’ve found it. It’s far more inconvenient to be stuck in the middle of an ocean with someone who hates your guts for over a month. We will also make sure our future captains are up to our standards in terms of seamanship. We will explicitly discuss emergency situations and protocol before we get under way.

            In addition to teaching us about how to be safer, happier hitchboaters, being on Escargot also made me a better sailor. To some extent, being on the ocean for that long in a sailboat is bound to teach me something new about sailing. But, in a roundabout way, our captain’s lack of leadership skills actually forced me to improve my seamanship faster than I perhaps would have otherwise. Having to predict the thoughts and decisions of a guy with a short fuse and the communication skills of a piece of roadkill forced me to think independently about how a sailboat interacts with wind and sea, and what I would do in different situations, rather than relying on the captain to just tell me.

Surprisingly, the trip also strengthened my love of the sea. As always, we saw wonders. I was awoken from a nap by the song of a humpback whale; I was involved in the capture of my first large pelagic fish, and experienced the strangeness of its death; I saw the green flash for the first time. I can think of so many moments where I thought to myself that if only I were on my own boat, the sights, the sounds, the joy of interacting with the sea through the sail boat would have been exhilarating, calming, or meditative, depending upon the ocean’s face that day. I would make this decision, that decision; everything would be all right, and I’d never cuss. I’m quite convinced that I could find happiness on my own boat, free from trying to please someone else, making decisions based on the mood of the sea and not that of another person.

But boat ownership is still a long way off. Even the next volunteer gig is a few months away. For now, Kristian and I live on land, waiting out the cyclone season. But I’m proud to have accomplished a goal that I’ve held for years—to sail across an ocean. Perhaps I haven’t enjoyed every second, but it has been pretty much as life-changing as I expected it to be, so in that respect I’m not disappointed. And there are still a couple more oceans to go. Come April or May, hopefully we’ll find a sturdy boat and a sane captain and set off across the Indian Ocean. I can’t wait.

Murder on Nuku Hiva: Lessons for Travelers

Written 10/23/11

Wynne Hedlesky

In this blog entry, I would like to express my option on two matters: the prejudice, ignorance and sensationalism that continually does its part to make this world a place full of hatred and fear, and the dilemma of a traveler—to be open to the people of the world, while remaining a diligent protector of one’s own safety and security.

A recent event on the island of Nuku Hiva has given me ample material for thought on these matters. There are many articles online about this unfortunate event that are mere tabloid sensationalism elevated to the status of news. Even the respectable articles which followed the initial release of the story are largely aimed at countering the outrageous claims of the first wave of so-called press.

In short: on October 9, a local Nuku Hivan man, Henri Haiti, lured a German cruiser, Stefan Ramin, into a remote part of the island on the pretense that they were going on an expedition to hunt goats. Haiti then allegedly murdered Ramin, and burned his remains in a campfire. After that, he returned, presumably to Taioha’e, and lured Ramin’s girlfriend, Heike Dorsch, into the wilderness by saying that Ramin was injured and needed her help. Here I get confused, and the reports are unclear. At some point, Haiti made sexual advances upon Dorsch, which were rejected. He tied her to a tree and sexually assaulted her. For some reason, he left, and she escaped and alerted the authorities. He fled into the wilderness and remains unapprehened. Since the event, dental and DNA comparisons have proven that it was indeed Ramin’s remains in the campfire. For a recent and more or less unsensational account of events, see this article at Internatinoal Business Times: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/232715/20111017/german-tourist-cannibal-death-french-polynesia.htm.

Early coverage of the event claimed that Ramin was killed and eaten by a Nuku Hivan islander. Many articles refer to Herman Melville’s novel Typee, published in 1846, in which Melville expresses his fear of the island’s inhabitants due to stories of their ferocity and cannibalism. These stories were exaggerated rumors; most Europeans, including Melville, did not know at the time that the islanders practiced cannibalism only against members of enemy tribes captured in battle. Cannibalism was never practiced against random strangers without provocation. During the months that he lived with them, Melville himself received generous hospitality from the inhabitants of the island. Even these limited cannibalistic practices ceased generations ago, but due to the ignorant and prejudiced coverage of this event, the current inhabitants of Nuku Hiva are now being burdened once more with this gruesome and uneducated misconception.

The reality is that French Polynesia has an extremely low rate of violent crime, as Internet sources as well as my own experience while in the country, and especially on Nuku Hiva, has shown me. Kristian and I talked to many residents, and they all said that one of the great joys of life on Nuku Hiva was its freedom from the fear of crime, including, for the most part, petty crime, such as theft. During our month-long stay on the island, we ourselves came to trust its residents. We felt no danger accepting rides from locals, accepting gifts of food or drink, staying with them in their homes, and even leaving our tent unattended on a public beach. We experienced generosity and goodwill the like of which we had never seen in our home countries. It is ludicrous to the point of being unworthy of counterargument that the residents of this island practice cannibalism, or are even generally prone to violent behavior. Until this story broke (and even now, afterward) most people probably didn’t even know that Nuku Hiva existed, let alone where it was located. It angers me that, due to certain news agencies’ sensational coverage of this event, Nuku Hiva breaks into the world’s awareness only to gain a reputation for brutality, violence, and deception. Though the murder of one man on a tiny South Pacific rock may seem minor, the coverage this event has received is evidence of, and contributes to, racism and prejudice around the world.

However, the facts cannot be denied; a foreigner was indeed murdered on the island of Nuku Hiva, by a local in whom he had placed his trust. Though allegations of ritualistic cannibalism are absurd, and this crime says nothing about the character of most of the island’s inhabitants, I must unfortunately admit that this crime, though shocking, is not entirely inconceivable to me. The likely sexual motivation for Haiti’s behavior reminded me of certain disturbing encounters Kristian and I had while in French Polynesia. On two occasions we were the target of unwanted sexual advances by locals. For the complete accounts of these experiences, see our Kristian's entries, "Marquesans and other people," and "Dialogues with a pervert--a true story." Kristian and I speculate (though this is pure speculation, and not supported by research), that Haiti was blinded by sexual dissatisfaction into perpetrating the violent crimes of murder and sexual assault.

In the wake of our own experiences, we tried to come up with an explanation for what seemed like the beginning of a disturbing pattern of unwanted sexual attention toward foreigners. In a small community such as the island of Nuku Hiva, with fewer than 3000 inhabitants, there could come a point where single individuals run out of possible romantic partners. Everyone in a certain age group is either taken, undesirable, or unwilling. One can only imagine the sexual frustration that must come from facing a lifetime with no real hope of satisfaction. To someone single and desperate in a small community such as this, foreigners might seem like the perfect target. New and unknown, you could project all of your desired sexual characteristics onto them. In addition, with a stranger who will be leaving in a few days or, at most, a few weeks, what do you have to lose? If they reject you, there are no repercussions within your community. Successful or unsuccessful, what happens between you can stay a secret, if you want, playing no role in your community life. I could imagine the sexual appeal of foreigners, people outside your limited community, being so powerful that it would lead people to behave irrationally (as Kristian and I experienced), or even violently (as we fortunately did not experience).

As I said, I have not read anywhere that Haiti’s motivations were primarily sexual, or that he was such a sexually frustrated individual as I have described above. But it is not inconceivable, and even seems, to me, likely. Even in a culture as overwhelmingly hospitable and open as that which exists on Nuku Hiva, there can be a few stray violent individuals, or individuals with less than noble intentions. This may even be the island’s own special breed of crazy. However, violent, disturbed individuals exist all over the world. In some places, there are many more. Rather than merely becoming paranoid, avoiding contact with other people, or traveling only in the safe, sterilized comfort of all-inclusive travel packages and guided tours, Kristian and I take time to discuss and clarify our safety practices both for ourselves and our belongings.

Here are some of the guidelines we have decided upon:

• Stay together. Neither of us ever spends more than a few hours away from the other, and we never spend time alone with someone else. Of course, this is difficult if you’re traveling alone. In that case, you might want to stick to relatively public areas or be extra certain that someone—a hotel manager, a friend, etc.—knows where you are planning to be and when.
• Keep your valuables with you at all times. Though someone could, hypothetically, mug you, your passports, computer, credit card, etc. are better off in your personal care than in a hotel room or left with a caretaker. The exception is, of course, if you have a locker or storage box that only you can access. Keep extra copies of important documents, credit card information, etc. in a secure location, in digital form somewhere secure online, or with your family back home.
• Whenever you leave somewhere, do a mental check for all your belongings. Do I have my wallet? Passport? Computer? and so on. Absent mindedness is more likely to separate you from your possessions than theft.
• Don’t accept favors from someone, volunteer unnecessary information about yourself, or invite people to spend time with you without getting to know them first. “Getting to know” someone is difficult to define. Be sensitive to your own internal warnings, looking out for behaviors that make you uncomfortable, or tendencies that could annoy or endanger you or your belongings. Don’t accept favors from or spend time with someone who seems impaired, or behaves erratically.
• Change your location if you feel uncomfortable, harassed, or stalked by someone around you. Do not allow the fact that you finally found the most beautiful and remote campsite, or the most perfect hostel, deter you from relocating.
• Before accepting a favor from someone—a ride, a meal, a place to stay, a tour—make sure you understand exactly what the plan is, where you are going, what you are doing, how you are getting there, and when you will be coming back. This can be hard if you are not communicating in your native language, but don’t feel bad asking questions over and over again to be sure you understand the plan.
• If possible, and especially if you will be with someone for a while, inform others of who you are with and your intended whereabouts. That way, if anything should happen, people will come looking for you, or alert the authorities.
• Always have a plan for what to do in an emergency situation or any threat to your safety, especially if you are staying in remote areas. For example, if camping, know the nearest telephone you can use, the numbers of the local authorities, etc.

In my opinion, traveling is all about experiencing new things. If you go on a trip and nothing you see surprises you, if you stick strictly to the familiar and merely seek the comforts of home, but with palm trees in the background—a nice bed, a hot shower, familiar food, coffee the way you like it in the morning, and the company of other people who speak your language—then you’re not doing it right. However, exposing yourself to new experiences doesn’t have to mean exposing yourself to danger. I believe that if a traveler remains aware of his surroundings and has safety-oriented habits, he can maximize personal safety even while exploring fantastic environments and interacting with people whose ways are very different from his own.

Such a voyage to Nuku Hiva has taught me that its inhabitants are not violent, but are welcoming and generous. I wish that the perception propagated through bad journalism could be eradicated. One sure antidote to the poison of ignorant, viral misinformation is to travel and see a place for yourself, to make living contact with other people, and let yourself be enlightened rather than clinging to prejudice and misunderstanding. I believe that this strategy rarely disappoints.

Journey to the Clouds

Wynne Hedlesky
Ra'iatea, Society Islands, French Polynesia
2004 local time, 0704 GMT

I hope that in retrospect, I will be able to say that on August 14, 2011, I became a mountain climber. I grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and spent plenty of time romping about on forest trails. Despite this, or perhaps because of it—maybe due to some alpine misadventure of my youth which is now lodged deep in my subconscious—I have for many years had a mild phobia of steep slopes. Not heights; I don’t mind being on the edge of a cliff looking into deep gorges, or climbing up the shrouds of a hundred-foot mast. But I’ve had nightmares about scrambling up crumbling, impossibly huge mountains of gravelly earth, or trying to force my sputtering vehicle up a mountain road that magically increases in steepness until the car hangs still, pedal to the floor; up is impossible, and down is certain death.

            In Mo’orea, Kristian and I met a Frenchman, Philippe, who was willing to take us to a nearby island, Ra’iatea. He wasn’t leaving for a few days, and before we left he proposed that we all go for a hike. In addition to being an experienced sailor, he had also been a mountain guide in his younger days. He’d not only sailed around the world a couple times, but had climbed the highest mountains in the Andes. So we knew that for him, a “hike” wasn’t a stroll along a well-cleared path designed for pudgy, panting tourists. Considering his history, I suspected he wouldn’t be interested in a trail unless it at least got his heart rate up for a few hours. We would be climbing Mt. Rotui, a mere 899 meters compared to the 7000 thousand meter Andean giants Philippe had conquered in his youth. Kristian hadn’t hiked up a mountain in quite a few years, but it was a pastime he’d enjoyed often in his childhood on vacations with his parents in the Alps, and he was excited for a challenging hike. As Philippe and Kristian shared mountaineering stories, I stared up at the north face of Mt. Rotui, which loomed over the beach where we were camped. The near-vertical slope blotted out a third of the sky. As I studied the mountain, whose ferns and small trees defiantly took advantage of what little horizontality they could find, I foresaw trouble. But I didn’t want to be a wussy girl, so I gave the plan my enthusiastic consent.

             On the appointed morning of the hike, we bought a baguette for lunch, and set out to find the trailhead. Starting in someone’s front yard, we hiked up behind their small house to a trail that ran along a dry ridgeline populated by scrawny saplings. As we wound through this forest of tiny trees, I thought, hey, this isn’t so bad. I mean, it’s exercise, but not impossible.

            Soon enough we were scrambling up our first rocky slope. I carefully sought sturdy holds for my hands and feet, places where the crumbly, red earth lodged between the rocks wouldn’t betray me. I dared wonder what it would be like if it got more difficult, and suppressed the thought, telling myself that my body would find a way. It simply had to be so.

            We passed a spot where our ascent was made possible entirely by the tangled roots of wind-deformed pine trees. Climbing through the patch of pines was exactly like ascending an irregular, maze-like ladder. After that, the path continued along the narrow ridgeline, and it was like walking along the edge of an enormous serrated knife. The trail ascended steeply, requiring one to climb near-vertically for several meters, often relying on the roots and branches of flimsy vegetation for hand holds. Even Philippe said the hike would be difficult or impossible without the help of the vegetation. The periods of steep ascent would alternate with level, nearly level, or even occasionally dropping stretches of trail. I use the word “trail” rather generously to refer, at best, to six inches of cleared ground nearly hidden beneath ferns and small trees. The ground at times became spongy underfoot, and you knew that all that was keeping you from a dizzying and, if not fatal, then at least rather unpleasant descent down the near-vertical slopes on either side of the ridge were the roots of the mountain ferns.

            When we came to a resting place, I would allow myself to look around. It was hard to understand that I was really seeing the world from the mountain’s perspective. I could see clearly the underwater geography of the island—the midnight blue of the deep bay, the glowing turquoise of the shallows, and the inlets through the reef that let in the sailboats, which freckled the postcard-perfect lagoon. It was beautiful and familiar. Oceans, sailboats, beaches; that was my habitat. Down there was home.

When I looked at the mountain, above, below, and to each side of me, I became disoriented and afraid. How had I gotten here? The trail was invisible under the foliage even a few meters ahead or behind us. The knife-edge ridge by which I’d reached this spot seemed such an improbable place for human footsteps. Although, up to this point, my body had indeed found a way to proceed, I’d had to constantly repeat to myself the clichéd advice that characters in the movies always give to those afraid of heights—“don’t look down.” In fact, I didn’t let myself look left or right, either, but paid attention only to which rock was the next home for my right foot, and which clump of ferns I would hang onto with my left hand. I was afraid if I looked around, I’d experience vertigo, forget which way was up, and tumble right off the mountain.

Our destination was not the mountain’s true summit, but a peak a few meters shy of the mountain’s full elevation of 899 meters. As we approached, we entered the cloud that almost always rubs its belly on the jagged peaks of Pacific islands. I’d often been drawn by a desire to enter that cloud, like a child wants to enter a forbidden room, without really knowing what I thought I would find there. The power of this urge made me understand why the ancient Greeks placed the home of their gods atop Mt. Olympus, and what might have inspired Hemingway’s “Snows of Kilimanjaro.” Inside the cloud is anything you want, whatever is precious to you, too precious to wander among mortals in the lower altitudes.

            We were hoping to enjoy a god’s-eye view of Mo’orea and nearby Tahiti from the peak of the mountain, but instead, when we finally reached our destination, we found ourselves isolated in a place beyond time or physical location, inside the secret. It was a lot like being in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It was an impossible place, built up in my mind to contain something profound and life-changing. In reality, standing there as a human being, it was simultaneously overwhelming, and boring. Whereas perhaps the Olympian deities had marvelous palaces and storerooms of nectar and ambrosia hidden in Olympus’ clouds, and the opacity provided privacy where they could carry out their divine dramas more or less unmolested by the presence of mortals, there was nothing on this peak to interest a human being, just a few square meters of rocky red earth, rimmed by scrubby vegetation dripping with the cloud’s drizzly moisture.

            Inside the cloud, I also had to confront the fear I’d been struggling against for the entire three hour climb. Beside the exertion of the ascent and my fear that my body would suddenly fail me and I would go tumbling to my death, I was terrified at the thought of having to do it all again, in the other direction. Just thinking of the descent almost ruined my ability to enjoy the views we had of the lagoon, and the sense of accomplishment I had when I finally reached the summit. In fact, hesitant to add even twenty minutes to the descent back down the mountain, I had almost decided to stay behind at our last resting place, but, unwilling to admit defeat even in front of my boyfriend and our gentle and supportive guide, I pushed myself up a few more vertical scrambles. At the top, we all congratulated each other on our day’s accomplishment. Philippe said that I had climbed well, even if I was a bit cautious at times, and asked if I would like to do it again some time. Thinking back to the points where I was nearly in tears, and the prospect of a grueling descent, I’m sure I was a little more hesitant than Philippe would have hoped with my, “Yeah…probably.”

            To my delight and relief, I found the way down to be far less mentally and physically exhausting than the way up. I basically scooted down the mountain on my bum, and only my filthy shorts and my somewhat cramped toes had any reason to complain about the much-feared descent. Just as it had on the way up, the trail, invisible at a distance, appeared in front of my feet. This time, its tricks were familiar. I knew to expect the patches of spongy, fern-rooty fake earth and the rocky, near-vertical scrambles which were defeated like plastic soldiers before my invincible strategy of bum-scooting. By the time we reached the ladder of pine roots, I’d begun to confidently descend even the steep parts of the trail with the dignified upright posture appropriate to a human being, and by the bottom I’d decided I wanted to be a bona fide mountain climber.

            Standing, proud but afraid, awe-struck yet bored, at the peak of Mt. Rotui, it occurred to me that perhaps climbing mountains is very much like crossing oceans. Drawn as I am to crossing oceans, I feel almost obligated to become a mountain climber as well. I love being on the ocean. I love it for its unfathomable ability to be simultaneously fascinating and painfully dull, to show infinite variation and yet be the definition of eternal sameness. And I even appreciate it for its occasional fits of temper. Unlike Kristian, I’d never say, “I like it gnarly.” Such hubristic statements seem, to me, to warrant a swift triple knock on the nearest wooden object. But I feel boldly alive by having a relationship with something I know could take my life with no provocation, and without the slightest emotion passing over its eternal face. On a boat, days away from land, you are living in an element normally fatal to human beings. All that is between you and certain death is a little piece of buoyant fiberglass or metal or wood—the boat, offspring of the ingenuity and recklessness of human beings.

            Clinging like a bug to the side of a mountain, your relationship to your surroundings is quite similar. Your body tells you, “I don’t belong here,” and you ignore it. Compared to the Andes, the Alps, or the Himalayas, Mt. Rotui is a gentle green giant, sleeping in the tropical warmth, nestled in a blue lagoon, lower slopes blanketed with pineapples and bananas. But even this gentle mountain’s peak is still just an uninviting patch of rocks surrounded by deadly, or at least very, very painful, drops. But just as people willingly send themselves into the middle of the watery desert, people want to climb these mountains, want to put themselves in a place where humans cannot normally survive, and surround themselves with the constant threat of death. They may as well want to visit the Mariana Trench, or the moon. And, in fact, people try to do these things as well.

Whether you’re a sailor, a mountaineer, a diver, or an astronaut, your situation is the same. It is through courage, strength, and human technology that you bring your relationship to nature into a new dimension, overcoming the limitations of the body, as well as fears rooted in our instinctive desire for security and comfort. As a reward for your exertions, you get to see the parts of the world normally off-limits to human beings. In these remote places, you experience nature’s near-complete power over each individual human, a power that is easy to forget when we huddle in environments specially designed to isolate us from the effects of storms and seas and wild beasts. But you also learn that human beings have secret reserves of strength and ingenuity that are rarely called upon because we rarely allow ourselves to confront a worthy adversary.

I’m not saying that I, personally, have survived hurricanes at sea or nearly frozen to death on airless mountains. It’ll be a while before I’m ready for the Andes, or Cape Horn. But how can I suppress the urge to go up into the cloud?

Frogs and assholes

Kristian Isringhaus
Mooring off the north west coast of Ra’iatea
Local time: 08252011, 1620/GMT: 08262011, 0320

We sailed from Nuku Hiva to Tahiti on a 47 foot sloop being the only ones aboard except the captain, a 62-year-old Australian. He needed some help with a few projects and proposed to give us board, in addition to taking us to Tahiti, if we would hang out a while there to help him.

When we got to the marina close to Pape’ete on the north coast of Tahiti, they didn’t have a slip available for us so they had us tie up on the VIP dock between the super yachts of the even superer rich. Next to us was a beautiful 50-year-old German schooner, 110 feet, all wood and varnish. On the other side were two sloops that would probably have measured in at about the same length as the schooner, with the height of their single masts significantly exceeding the two master’s main.

The super rich tend to employ decent sized crews that rarely do anything more exciting than clean the boat all day long and get drunk all night long. When the owner is not around—which is the case most of the time—they live a fairly mellow life.

Now, those two super sloops on our port side were one boat away. In between them and us was a vessel that was pretty big, maybe 70 feet, but far away from being a super yacht. A bunch of French people were on it fixing it up. We couldn’t really figure out what their deal was, how many of them there were, or what their plans were, because they stuck to themselves and every attempt on our side to start a conversation was ended rather quickly and awkwardly on their side. But they never did anything wrong and were pleasant and quiet neighbors.

One afternoon, the crew of the super yacht neighboring the French boat started getting drunk rather early and by 9 PM they were trashed. This is when the fun started.

The dude that we had decided was the captain or at least a boss-like figure on the French boat politely asked the captain of the super yacht if it were possible to turn the music down a little. That was too much to ask, apparently, because the other captain started yelling at him instantly. I was on deck blatantly watching the scene. This was better than Hollywood and I was not gonna miss a bit.

The arguments the drunken captain had lined up were undeniable, well thought through, and of great persuasive power. First, he complained about the French people smoking on their boat all day long, forcing his crew to inhale second hand smoke. Obviously a loud-music related argument. Next he went off about the French people sticking to themselves, never trying to socialize with his crew, and not responding to invitations for barbeques, making him, the captain, look like an asshole. An argument that would have made Cato the Elder look like a debating novice had the two been contemporaries. He also didn’t forget to compare the two boats—a super yacht vs. a ‘piece of shit’—which I thought was probably the strongest of his arguments. And finally, he mentioned that one of the French people had once urinated off the bow at night while the owner of the German schooner was present. His concern for other boats’ owners filled my heart with happiness.

The boss-like figure on the French boat responded that they had sick people on board who needed rest and asked if it were possible to maybe turn the music down a little. What a weak come back. I was thoroughly disappointed in him. This show down was not going to last long if he couldn’t come up with anything stronger. This feeble attempt, however, just got the American captain even more agitated, and he kept repeating over and over again his few but strong arguments for why the music was not to be turned down—an ingenious strategy if you ask me—, diligently interrupting any attempt of the Frenchman to explain his request.

Obviously, the exhalation of smoke 20 feet away in an outdoors environment is a horrible deed that must be punished with noise. So the drunken captain had a good point there. More interesting, though, is the fact that he complained about the French people not coming to his barbeque, not eating his food, drinking his drinks. He said that made him look like an asshole. I kind of understood the asshole part as I was listening to him go. He at least seemed to have a pretty accurate self-conception. And finally, someone urinating in front of the owner of another boat was considered a mortal sin as well. Apparently boat owners, especially rich ones, are saints and not to be molested in any way. Except with loud music, maybe, which seems to be acceptable.

At this point the French maybe-captain-boss-dude didn’t even push his request for quiet any longer but just tried to understand the ranting captain’s arguments and calm him down. Soon enough more people showed up on the decks of both boats involved, and other boats nearby. At one point, our captain, came on deck and yelled at the French that he’d had enough of them ‘frogs’ not talking to anyone, and just doing their own thing. How dare they? He was pretty quickly quieted down by a French girl, though, who yelled back that they didn’t appreciate his drunken noisiness in the middle of the night, either, shouting at the top of his lungs.

Our captain blushed and asked me quietly if that was true. I nodded. What did I yell, he asked? Weird imitations of bird cries, I replied. Oh—that thing, he muttered. Must be a regular thing for him, I suppose, even though I didn’t hear him do it the night he was so drunk he forgot the transparent box with his weed on the dock where I found it in the morning in bright sun shine.

Anyhow, it took but a minute for one of the super yacht’s crew members to come by to give our captain the thumbs-up for his support. Apparently they didn’t mind his bird cries as much as the French, even though the night he made them the owner of the German schooner was on board his ship. As opposed to the French, our captain had been out with the drunken crew before, buying them drinks all night, and I guess that’s more important than matters concerning the peace of other boat owners.

The debate between the two boats was soon relocated to the dock, where the drunken captain kept yelling his complaints. At this point the urination issue and the second hand smoke were forgotten—it was all about the barbeque and the French making him look like an asshole for not responding to the invitation. In other words, it was all about vanity.

Another American who had lived in Tahiti for some 20 years and joined the party on the super yacht chimed in, claiming that people like those French ‘destroyed places like this marina’. Everyone would be peaceful and happy if it weren’t for people like them, quietly minding their own business. He asked the French boss-type to ‘have a go’, but they didn’t. Other people intervened, which sucked. I would have liked to see it—partly because I had my money on the American asshole getting a second hole kicked in his ass.

Anyways. The mellower crew members of the super yacht turned off the music and dragged the aggressive ones to a bar. Our captain went with them.

The interesting thing is that I actually want to say the drunken American captain had a little bit of a point. Of course, all his arguments were entirely unrelated to the music and to French crew members being sick. But the way the French were isolating themselves from any social contact with other crews was weird and awkward. Wynne and I knew people on all the nearby boats and had had some superficial but friendly conversation with most everyone we ever saw. Had it been us who felt molested by loud music, we could have talked to people we already knew, addressed them by their names, and asked for some courtesy. It indeed is impolite to simply ignore an invitation without at least excusing oneself and giving a made-up reason.

Apparently the French crew realized that, too, that night, because they were much nicer and more open to us ever after. We found out that they had chartered the boat and were getting it ready to sail it all the way to Chile. The day we left our boat to continue our travels, they saw us at the bus stop with our big backpacks, as they were going by in a rental car, and picked us up to give us a ride.

So, on the one side, there were people who just wanted to stick to themselves in an environment where a tiny bit of openness is required, and on the other hand there were drunken assholes with offended vanity. Maybe it was more of a coincidence that heated debates had not risen before.

Now, what does that tell me about world peace? I don’t know and I decided to not think too much of it. I’ll just take it for what it really was. Good entertainment. Better and cheaper than any Hollywood movie, anyways.