@concretepost In Africa you encounter great migrations of wildlife, in search of water or greener grasses. Some, like wildebeest, have been making these same circular journeys for millions of years, today visible around the Serengeti. Walking on the edge of this national park, you switch gears and must think like an animal, be attuned to wildlife behavior. The trees you see ahead do not merely signal shade; they may hide Cape buffalo or rhino which can be deadly if surprised. In very tangible ways you must resort to a primitive self, and you relate to this landscape as the place where humans began to walk upright.
In Italy or New York I ponder the pentimento effect; that this street was something else (a canal) hundreds of years ago, or the lawn around the American Museum of Natural History was a pasture for sheep. In NYC I walk along streets where I used to live or dine and remember the shops or restaurants long gone. Stroll around Grand Central and celebrate that it is no longer filthy. Even Central Park was transformed during my tenure. I also explored New York from the waterfront, sailing up and down the Hudson, cruising around Manhattan. It's like flying; you get a completely different perspective.
@concretepost Sadly L.A. is not designed for pedestrians, and New York City has become downright perilous, with bikes barreling wrong way against traffic lights. Nonetheless this discussion sent me back to the great works of The New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell, who walked these streets with his ears highly attuned. http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/joseph-mitchells-ear-for-new-york
@concretepost Exciting is the right word for crossing at intersections, but in the big grid, unsympathetic pedestrian polices led to urban sprawl, symbolized by L.A., Atlanta, Nairobi. Mass transit was thwarted in early planning days. CBS reported a GM-controlled entity called National City Lines did buy a number of municipal trolley car systems, which soon closed down. GM was convicted in a post-WWII trial of conspiring to monopolize the market for transportation equipment and supplies sold to local bus companies...The story featured in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Which is a long way of saying when I walkabout, I think globally, about emissions, fossil fuels, climate change. What little steps led to our Big Problem of Global Weirding; why I am unlikely to sing in the rain in L.A.
@fugueur Per "derive" I once wrote for a magazine called "Diversion" published by Hearst, with the subtitle "For Physicians at Leisure." It's the kind of rag you found in the waiting room at your doctor's office but I loved it because I had intelligent, wealthy readers who might actually go to Papua New Guinea to see birds of paradise (one of my assignments.) At the time I was making a career out of what most professionals consider "diversions" or holiday vacations. I rarely mentioned a hotel or what we ate; my focus was on natural history, ecosystems, wildlife behavior, vanishing cultures. So I'm wondering if psychogeography applies mostly to urban streets, or if my mentors Peter Matthiessen, searching for the Snow Leopard while mourning the loss of his wife, or John McPhee, delving geology, qualify as flaneurs.
@amyggalexander As a member of The Explorer's Club who's on the Lecture Committee, I'm astonished that we have so much competition to lecture every Monday evening, and how much there is left to explore. One of the first female members of the club, for example, Dr. Sylvia Earle, had to point out to the guys at Google Earth that a huge percentage of our ocean floors were unmapped. The search for human origins continues in Africa, with lots of gaps, or missing links. A friend, Vicki Fishlock, just edited a book on the behavior of forest elephants, based on very recent studies. New species are still being found; new planets. Last week the lecture focused on the Anthropocene, a new way of looking at this era where the earth is being impacted by one species. You can follow the lectures online streaming at the Events page at www.explorers.org Just one little quibble, a real explorer would never throw the map in the trash before setting out. Meander, get lost and see things in a new way, but good to know how to get back home, where the bridges cross the river, how deep the water when sailing.
@amyggalexander Yes, the Anthropocene is a perfect example of a new way of seeing, just as Sylvia Earle's addition to Google Earth was http://google-latlong.blogspot.it/2009/02/deep-dive-into-ocean-in-google-earth.html Creating a new map is great, but the old should not be discarded or ignored. I recall running aground south of the Verrazano because the captain did not have charts. It ruined what could have been a perfect day of sailing and tested my faith in an upcoming trip on the same boat. Sure enough the cruise was a disaster. Even last week in Rome, after 5 kms trekking in sweltering heat, I couldn't afford to get lost; heat stroke was a real threat. A friend caught in the first earthquake in Nepal wrote about running in search of wider boulevards. Maps can be life-savers.
@ElaineAxten Gertrude Stein wrote that after revisiting Oakland and discovering her childhood home was gone. I find no there there in my hometown; there is no school, no grocery store, no gas station, main street is a ghost town, but for my memoirs I hope to reconstruct it. Researching the landscape has been a wonderful meander into features I did not appreciate when I was young; I've even discovered the equivalent of a local Atlantis, a city washed away by the Mississippi. No there there.
A very noisy video which raises a good question but no answers. For 22 years I lived on a houseboat, and it was a trip, like camping out. I had very few possessions, plus I dealt with the elements (ice, Nor'easters;) was very aware of the seasons, phases of the moon, tides and migrations above me and below me. That was on the edge of New York City. Now I'm a digital nomad based in Italy, but I'm not traveling for the next few months. I'm living (out of one suitcase.)
Dr. Wright is a friend whom I've introduced twice as a speaker at The Explorers Club. I was her publicist at Earthwatch. See the fabulous lemurs incredible footage IMAX Island of Lemurs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_7cVyM8Efg
I've spent the better part of my career profiling conservationists or films about them, from Richard Leakey (chairman of Kenya Wildlife Service charged with ending poaching) to Iain Douglas Hamilton of Save the Elephants, and currently Cynthia Moss of Amboseli Trust for Elephants. Like George Monbiot I find it difficult to write about; it's easy to get burned out when an average of 96 elephants a day are being killed across Africa. But every time I become disheartened I think of the rangers who give their lives, Dame Sheldrick who rescues orphans, and the look in an elephant's eye. This is a great story about the big picture, except that human over-population is a greater threat than hunters, or even poaching. Ivory carvings were always treasured in China; you can see a bed sheet of ivory slivers in the Forbidden Palace. The problem is now the number of people who can afford ivory has exploded.
@MastaBaba @amyggalexander A few apps from this weekend's New York Times Travel section; I like the notion of Live Trekker. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/travel/smartphone-apps-to-map-your-meanderings.html?emc=edit_tl_20150523&nl=travel&nlid=2393280&_r=0
It's clever and has much to like, but in none of the photos do we see the electric car or any other kind of car that towed the capsule. Last September I took a road trip in a 1963 Airstream, towed by a very large pick up, and my view of beautiful landscapes like Maine's Acadia National Park was dominated by hundreds of campers in a big parking lot; no one talked about wildlife; they talked about their Airstream. The capsule might be a cool solution for a guest room in a big back yard, or a little camps near a train stop in wilderness areas.
@eurapart You raise a good question about the sustainability of tourism, but it is impossible to replace the experience with drone images. Magnificent lodges are part of an infrastructure in place; activities include snorkeling in the Indian Ocean, hot air balloon rides, dhow cruises, camel treks, meeting African people. Not convinced flights or fossil fuels will be depleted, but Richard Branson, who owns a lodge in Kenya, is working on an alternative. My preference is a renaissance of passenger zeppelins powered by hydrogen cells. Before someone quips Hindenburg, hydrogen cells are packaged safely nowadays and already in wide use. The bottom line is government leaders failed to respond proactively with Damage Control and rapid response marketing. In the past Kenya tourism has weathered coup attempts and embassy bombings; plus the drop in Tanzania tourism could have been corrected with quick geography lesson: Ebola outbreak was in West Africa, not East Africa. Back to the question you pose: what's clearly not sustainable is poaching. It helps fund terrorists activities, and out of work waiters and hotel employees on the Indian Ocean coast are ripe for recruitment by jihadist cells.
@eurapart There's excellent remote wildlife viewing industry in place with live cams. One in Kenya I enjoy is at The Ark. I worked on several with the Audubon Society and Explore, providing HD close-ups of osprey and puffin nests on Hog Island, Maine. See explore.org
On Kenya Coast, New York Times correspondent wrote this before April Al Shabaab attack http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/world/africa/as-tourism-sags-on-kenyan-coast-terrorists-could-lure-the-unemployed.html?_r=0
Yes, Kenya's millions face huge struggles, and every environmental problem on this planet points to an encroaching human species wildly out of birth control. Even Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon face being "loved to death." But the question was Is tourism sustainable and can it help wildlife conservation? The best models come from private land conservancies, such as Lewa, and you might follow Calvin Cottar on Facebook; he has good ideas about involving local communities. That Richard Leakey has been appointed to lead Kenya Wildlife Service hopefully will transform this issue very soon; he won the war against elephant poaching before and is an excellent spokesperson for Kenya tourism. Many organizations like Big Life Foundation already engage local communities, who see the benefit of protecting wildlife. Maasai warriors that once made a ritual of spearing lions now benefit from protecting them.
This is a good initiative but not new. Earthwatch, founded in 1971, offers similar voluntourism ops, working alongside scientists around the world. In December of 2000 I joined Dr. Bruce Patterson studying man-eating lions of Tsavo National Park in Kenya. My roommate was a young banker from HSBC Shanghai; her employer paid for her trip, as they did another HSBC colleague from India who joined our Kenya volunteer team, for the same reasons described in this article. That said, I like the idea of sharing your skill set in places where it's needed (great for Baby Boomers) and it's nice to get accommodations comp, although the tented camp and food in Kenya were worth the price, and we enjoyed a side trip to Tsavo East to see great herds of elephants that become ochre-colored by dusting with the local soil.
One way to see wildlife around the world is via live cams. I worked on several with the Audubon Society and Explore, providing HD close-ups of osprey and puffin nests on Hog Island, Maine. One cam in Laikipia, Kenya, is great if only for the SFX, birdsong. At the Audubon blogs which accompany the cams, you learn about bird behavior and what's happening in their environment, or a day n the life of a volunteer. The grizzly cam captures amazing footage when salmon are running. See explore.org
Absolutely hilarious and thoughtful, too. Inspires me to write about my tour guiding days with this kind of touch. Thank you for sharing.
Wow, thanks for timely warning. Sounds like a good summer to travel off the beaten path. I'm going north of Venice next week, to prosecco country, with no desire to visit what we've begun to call "Times Square." Even in early May, I would not have been able to see Rome museums/sites without a tour guide friend who worked me into her groups. The fall of the euro is bringing hordes to most major cities.
First of all, nothing is forever. Second, let's define nomadic. Tribes lived in various places but moved according to seasons, food needs, change in weather, etc. They were not constantly on the move. Third, travel is certainly not the most selfish thing one can do. Having more kids this planet cannot support is pretty selfish. Working in an unethical job is pretty selfish. Travel is the best way to undo bigotry, broaden the mind, learn tolerance and flexibility. I'm nearing the end of a Sr Gap Year, and not at all sure I will be tempted to settle down. Some comment on FB that I'm having the trip of a lifetime. No I'm having a life rich in travel, but I've got base camps, just as nomads did.
@eurapart When you refer to carbon footprint, you're only addressing Climate Change, which is huge problem, but not the only devastating effect of an exploding human population. Hundreds of thousands of human settlements encroach forests, slash and burn trees for charcoal. Human consumption of water along the Colorado River exacerbates any drought; there's simply too many people sucking from fewer resources. The number of wild animals on Earth has halved in the past 40 years, decimated as humans kill in unsustainable numbers, while polluting or destroying their habitats, per WWF and London Zoological Society.
I first published about Climate Change in 1989, spent 3 decades building enviro awareness, lobbying against oil drilling in Arctic, pressing for BP fine per Gulf spill, etc. I suspect the "average American" you refer to has a car; I do not.refer to has a car. I do not. Below the backside of my train ticket. takitrain.
Back to the question at hand: Nomads Forever? The global carbon budget, and human population, all changed dramatically when nomadic migrations ceased in favor of agriculture. You can still see remnants of this in East Africa with nomadic Turkana, as opposed to Kikuyu who have their farms, fences, and their 1%, Mercedes Benzes. Here is a report on one of the last nomadic peoples being forcefully relocated; note the acquisition of carbon footprint items, including living beyond one's means, debt. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/world/asia/china-fences-in-its-nomads-and-an-ancient-life-withers.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
Huge help. I thank the author for shining a light on many issues I've confronted writing my own memoirs. As a journalist I would rather delve into the world around me, and did so in The Hominid Gang, Behind the Scenes in the Search for Human Origins, and The Sand Dollar & The Slide Rule, Drawing Blueprints from Nature. I watched the movie Eat, Pray, Love a couple of times and when I finally came across the book in a friend's library, was hugely disappointed to see Gilbert's focus in Italy was whether her Italian instructor would kiss her. I laughed aloud. I too fled to Italy first, but not looking for love. I was looking for knowledge, which took me back to Africa. The title of my work in progress is "My Boat in the City" which served as a base camp for adventures. This article has inspired me to keep working to balance the interior and exterior observations, and to listen even more.
Dr. Palmer has been nailed for also killing endangered rhino, and sexual harassment. But responding to violence with violence doesn't solve anything. Comedian Jimmy Kimmel produced a thoughtful report which he ended by suggesting viewers contribute to Oxford group that was studying Cecil. Andy Revkin and I shared a fact-based story by Tom Cleary on Facebook. I'm glad people are talking about this; the trick is to channel that energy in the right way. Will people go to Zimbabwe to see the remaining lions? Will US Fish & Wildlife reconsider their stance on trophy hunting? Will Dr. Palmer be back in the dentist business and booking anther kill same time next year?
Worked with Explore to promote the puffin and osprey nest cams when I was Sr Communications Manager for the National Audubon Society. Great deal of effort went into social media and keeping viewers engaged, but direct links for supporting conservation discouraged. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/style/charles-annenberg-weingarten-a-philanthropist-with-exotic-pet-causes.html?_r=0
Dr. Pimm has it right when he says "It's complicated." Hunting has been banned in Kenya for decades but that doesn't stop locals from setting thousands of snares, nearly invisible wires, to cripple elephants and smaller game. Here's another solution. http://www.atta.travel/news/5764/lions-in-kenya-threats-to-their-future-surviv
I am reminded of the rubber sandals Africans wear known as "thousand milers" because they are fashioned from retreads. My heels covered Manhattan for decades, but last year I joined Italians on their evening passeggiata, relishing the wonderful history found on Italian streets. I've also trekked around Africa's Great Rift Valley with a geologist dating ancient hominid fossil sites, trying to determine what Nabokov described as "our position with regard to the Universe." Fascinated to discover I'm a flaneur.