Bibliophilia: Light at the Edge of the World: A Journey Through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures by Wade Davis

Light at the Edge of the World: A Journey Through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures – Wade Davis

Some of the text in here I recognized from some of his other work, the earlier Clouded Leopard and the later published, but previously read Massey Lecture inspired book, The Wayfinders. Given that he is as distinguished as he is, and that I love his writing style and that it fuels my interest in anthropology, I will happily overlook his copying of his own work.

A few paragraphs that end the book:

    The triumph of secular materialism is the conceit of modernity. But what are the features of this life? An anthropologist from a distant land visiting America, for example, would note many wondrous things. But he would no doubt be puzzled to learn that 20 percent of the people control 80 percent of the wealth, that the average child has by the age of eighteen spent a full two years passively watching television. Observing that over half of our marriages end in divorce and that only 6 percent of our elders live with a relative, he might question the values of a society that so readily break the bonds of marriage and abandons its aged, even as its men and women exhaust themselves in jobs that only reinforce their isolation from their families. Certainly a slang term such as 24/7 , implying as it does the willingness of an employee to be available for work at all times, seems excessive, though it would explain the fact that the average American father spends only eighteen minutes a day in direct communication with his child. And what of our propensity to compromise the very life supports of our planet? Extreme would be one word for a civilization that contaminates with is waste the air, water, and soil; that drives plants and animals to extinction; that dams the rivers, tears down the ancient forests, rips holes in the protective halo of the heavens and does little to curtail industrial processes that threatens to transform the bio-chemistry of the very atmosphere.

    Once we look through the anthropological lens and see, perhaps for the first time, that all cultures have unique attributes that reflect choices made over generations, it becomes absolutely clear that there is no universal progression in the lives and destiny of human beings. No trajectory of progress. Were societies to be ranked on the basis of technological prowess, the Western scientific experiment, radiant and brilliant, would no doubt come out on top. But if the criteria of excellence shifted, for example, to the capacity to thrive in a truly sustainable manner, with a true reverence and appreciation for the Earth, the Western paradigm would fail. If the imperatives driving the highest aspirations of our species were to be the power of faith, the reach of spiritual intuition, the philosophical generosity to recognize the varieties of religious longing, then our dogmatic conclusions would again be found wanting.

    Viewed from this broader perspective, the notion that indigenous societies are archaic, that their very presence represents some impediment, is transparently wrong. As David Maybury-Lewis has written, indigenous people do not stand in the way of progress; rather, they contribute to it if given the chance. Their cultural survival does not undermine the nation state; it serves to enrich it, if the state is willing to embrace diversity. And most important of all, these cultures do not represent failed attempts at modernity, marginal peoples who somehow missed the technological train to the future. On the contrary, these peoples, with their dreams and prayers, their myths and memories, teach us that there are indeed other ways of being, alternative visions of life, birth, death and creation itself. When asked the meaning of being human, they respond with then thousand different voices. It is within the diversity of knowledge and practice, of intuition and interpretation, of promise and hope, that we will all rediscover the enchantment of being what we are, a conscious species aware of our place on the planet and fully capable not only of doing no harm but of ensuring that all creatures in every garden find a way to flourish.

Bibliophilia: Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest by Wade Davis

Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest – Wade Davis

While I have happily tried, and will try my hand at a variety of outdoor pursuits,  climbing mountains holds no appeal for me. Just way too alien an environment. Books like Into Thin Air just reinforced the idea that it is not for me, and left me shaking my head. Dilettantes who have no business being on Everest, who pay small fortunes to have Sherpas literally carry them up the mountain. When I read how every year there is a long line of people waiting to spend a minute at the top so they can claim to be the first - the first deaf Paraguayan on Everest, the first gay Australian on Everest, the first Zambian female on Everest - you realize it’s devolved into goofy irrelevance. (The 9 next highest peaks in the Himalayas, difficult, challenging climbs, likely have no lineup whatsoever.) 

Now really being the first, that is interesting. It could be argued that Mallory never actually got to the top. But to me even attempting it, 30 years before Norgay and Hillary made it, is very note worthy.

This one took him ten years to write. The bibliography is almost a publication in itself. Reminded me a bit of Dangerous River by R.M. Patterson in the sense that the actors in both survived the unfathomable carnage endured by all the participants in the charnel fields of WW1. It serves as a stronger backdrop and explanation of what made the participants tick a little more in this book. 

(It’s not like I didn’t already know it, but the text drove home some of the unspeakable horrors of those four years. Difficult not to be profoundly moved to read how Britain lost on average 600 dead and 1700 wounded per day. Per day. Descriptions of field hospitals with literally acres of wounded men, doctors having to pick the few they could hope to save and listening to the rest moan and scream until they died, with hillocks of legs and arms behind the surgical tents. How people retained a shred of sanity after enduring all that is beyond me. And it’s difficult to not be angry when you read about men like Haig, who lived in luxury in villas far back from the front, never once visiting the places where he casually sent the cream of his societies crop to be decimated in scenes no horror writer could ever envision.) 

Most of the men who participated in the efforts to scale Everest, had miraculously, against all odds, survived the slaughter. The thing that struck me about Dangerous River when I read it, were the astonishing accounts of trekking via snow shoe and dog sled for vast distances in brutally cold conditions. As much as their accounts seemed horrific, I realized that compared to life in the trenches it must have seemed like a paradise. I think for the men in this book, clambering up a huge mountain in freezing gale force winds might not have seemed like such a hardship. After the deafening racket and overpowering stench of war, the quiet, pure air of the Himalayas or the Nahanni must have seemed heavenly.

The biographies of the participants make them seem by turn open minded, athletic poets, men of science, amazingly accomplished, and on the other hand, priggish upper class English twits, petty and back biting, disdainful of new or different concepts, very much a product of their time. To read the accounts of a pompous bureaucrat who had never actually climbed mountains or been out of England for that matter, pooh-poohing the use of oxygen as being “terribly unsporting old chap” beggar belief. Chip chip tally ho lads! On to glory for god, king and country! 

There is scorn directed by some of the myriad participants at “colonials” - an Australian (George Finch - who was the pioneer in the use of oxygen that made the whole affair possible) and a Canadian (Oliver Wheeler - whose herculean efforts to map an area that had never been explored by Westerners - no one even knew the approach to take) - had me groaning at the snobbery.

And it’s a little ironic to read of a members disgust with the Tibetan practice of sky burial (logical in a land with a dearth of fuel, and a surfeit of frozen, rocky ground), when they had witnessed the horrors of how their own dead had fared in the fields of France and Belgium. 200,000 young English men simply vanished. Blown to smithereens by a shell blast, drowned in a sea of mud, constantly churned up by artillery. To scoff at Tibetan ascetics living in small caves at the base of a mountain, while trooping past to climb to the top of said mountain, seems like a case of pot calling kettle black. Neither is really productive in any real sense, other than as a spiritual pursuit perhaps.

While it confirmed my complete disinterest in climbing mountains, I couldn’t help but be amazed at their exploits. Reading about their efforts is nothing short of astonishing. Given their gear at the time, the ropes, the boots, the clothes, their nascent efforts to use oxygen – they really were climbing into the unknown. The fact that they achieved what they did, whether they actually got to the top or not is besides the point. An amazing accomplishment for its time, and an amazing chronicle of a chapter in history.

No caribou?

Alex Jack, an elderly Gitxsan man, living in the Stikine Valley in British Columbia, tells a story of his father encountering a Catholic missionary at the turn of the century. Jack’s father was utterly confounded by the Christian notion of heaven. He could not believe that a person was expected to give up all the things that made life worth living, in order to go to a place where they did not allow animals. “No caribou?” he would say in complete astonishment. He could not conceive of a world without wild things.

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Bibliophilia: Grand Canyon: River at Risk by Wade Davis

Grand Canyon: River at Risk – Wade Davis

One of those books that is hard to bring yourself to actually read the text, as good as it is, because the spectacular photos of jaw dropping scenery overwhelm it. Makes me want to see the Imax film that is tied in with it. There isn’t a lot that makes me want to go to the US, but a rafting trip down the Colorado River would be one thing that would make me overcome my reticence.

Bibliophilia: The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World – Wade Davis

The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World – Wade Davis

I’ve read several of his other books and this was just as magnificent. Whether writing or speaking, the mans words are a pleasure to read or hear. The section on the peoples of the Pacific in particular is amazing. Early European explorers of course arrogantly assumed that they were “primitive.” Their navigational abilities, that they could spread out across a huge part of the globe via small boats, centuries, possibly even millennia before Europeans could have achieved such a feat, proves that to be a predictable mix of hubris and arrogance. I’m thrilled to learn that there are people striving to retain and teach others the knowledge to allow them to traverse a huge ocean by reading currents and the stars and signs of nature.

Sadly there are many skills, skills that took generations to acquire and hone, and that have been passed down through countless generations, that are either under threat of extinction, or have already been lost, often in a generation or two. Western civilization, and I use them term loosely, has much blame to bear for this deplorable state of affairs as it seeks to spread its mono-culture across the globe. These are skills that may well be crucial for the survival of humanity as a species in the decades and centuries to come.

Like all his other books, this one is very laudable, very readable, and very recommended. There is much about the human race that inspires despair and disgust. This book helps to remind us that we are also capable of inspiring awe and admiration.