Category: Recollections
Stories about events that happened well before the time I wrote the story. Mainly recollections of earlier travels before I started posting on Facebook.
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THE NANCE VENDOR
To most viewers, this image in Masaya would just be a simple snapshot of a typical Nicaraguan street scene. But I see a whole capsule of Nicaraguan history and culture. The vendor is selling nancite (or nance) fruit. This is a small, sweet and yellow fruit found in tropical America. This photo was taken in September during nancite season when the nancite were abundant. The Nicaraguans would just eat them as is or make a sweet dessert with them. They didn’t thrill me. I’d eat them if offered but I never…
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AWAITING IN MASAYA
The indigenous city of Masaya, 30 kilometres south of Managua, saw many skirmishes between the FSLN and Somoza’s National Guard during the civil war. When I visited five years later, the signs of the battles were widespread as walls were still pockmarked with bullet and mortar holes. I worked at nearby Masaya Volcano National Park so I visited Masaya often on my way to work or on weekends. I went on one weekend for a festival and was walking the back streets of the town. I was looking at a side…
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AN EAGLE SCOUT
Day 7 of 7: Challenge on Nature Photography. Eagles, Amery, Wisconsin – 1973 For the past six days I have shared my appreciation of nature with you. For my final day in this nature photography challenge I’m going to share a personal story about how I developed that appreciation and my concerns that today’s generation doesn’t share that love of nature. I’ll bend the rules of the challenge a bit. I said at the beginning that I was more interested in writing stories than showing my pics. So I’m not going…
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RESERVES OF STRENGTH
‘Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.’ Rachel Carson, Silent Spring In the summer of 1978, I worked as a naturalist at Interstate State Park in northern Wisconsin. I loved plants and figured I knew every plant in the park by both its common and Latin names by the end of the summer. I was…
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PASQUE FLOWERS FOR THE MINORITIES
‘For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech.’ Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac When I was a student at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point I took a nature literature class and read A Sand County Almanac. The book was written in 1949 by University of Wisconsin professor Aldo Leopold and became a pivot piece of literature in the environmental movement and helped pave the way so that I would…
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ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS
‘Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.’ Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire In the summer of 1980, I had the best job ever. I was a park ranger at North Cascades National Park in Washington. Part of my job was ‘trail patrol’ and for one day a week…
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ISIS THUGS IN PALMYRA
The ancient desert oasis settlement of Palmyra in the central steppe of Syria has had a special place in my heart. But today, IS thugs are knocking on its doorsteps and if they are true to form, they will destroy the UNESCO World Heritage site. I first travelled to Syria in 1990 for an interview with the International Center of Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA). After a three-day interview I was offered the job. But I left without signing a contract. I just wasn’t sure about living in Syria.…
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DANCING ‘SHROOMS
We’ve had a wet autumn, and mushrooms are popping up all over the yard. It reminds me of the times when I’d see wild mushrooms and salivate and go out and collect them. And it reminds me of the time when I almost wrote my obituary after eating mushrooms. During the summer of 1979, I was the park naturalist at Interstate State Park in St Croix Falls, Wisconsin. I had spent three summers as the naturalist, and I knew the Latin name of every tree, flower, fern and moss in the…
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BOOM BOOM IN PURACE
Puracé National Park, Colombia – 1994 Scanned from Kodak TMax negative film (the last roll of B/W film I ever shot) Colombia was hardly the safest place in the world when Padma and I lived near Cali between 1993-94. On one hand you had the ‘narcotraficantes’ – the drug lords. The Medellin and Cali Cartels were in their heyday. However, the drug lords pretty much just killed each other so as long as you stayed out of the cross fire you’d be safe. A bit more concerning was the FARC, which…
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