Stranger in the Forest: Thoughts

The story of Eric Hansen's journey through the jungles of Borneo initially sounded a lot more incredible than it actually turned out to be. In my opinion, Hansen was not an explorer or an adventurer. He was not an anthropologist or a naturalist. He was just some guy who thought he would make a name for himself by going on a difficult journey, and get famous writing a book about it.

That being said, there were some redeeming elements to his story. The people of Borneo, especially the Penan people that he traveled with, were amazing in their physical capabilities and in their sense of community and sharing. I was very impressed with Hansen's descriptions of the peselai (the long journey) that the jungle men, and sometimes women, would undertake. They would leave their homes, often for months or years at a time, and would travel through the jungle on foot. Often they went seeking work on the other side of the island and would sacrifice years of their lives to bring back wealth and honor for their families. Hansen met one group of travelers just as they were returning from their peselai, when they were 4 days away from home after being away for over two years. One man, Pa Lampung, was carrying an old-fashioned Singer sewing machine, mounted on a cast-iron base inside a hardwood cabinet. He had hiked over 80 miles through the jungle with that heavy contraption on his back... a gift for his wife as he returned home from his long journey.

I was disappointed that Hansen seemed so underwhelmed with all of the natural wonders around him. The back cover of the book described the amazing life found in the jungle such as jumping snakes, pigs that climb trees, and mushrooms that glow in the dark at night. Sadly, the back cover of the book said just as much about these amazing things as the actual text. Hansen seemed much less interested in the wonders of the jungle than he was in all things relating to sexual pleasure, such as jungle people's methods of contraception. It was actually kind of pathetic.

The one part of the book that kept my attention was the episode when Hansen was traveling alone through the jungle and the people mistook him for bali saleng, the evil spirit that traveled alone through the jungle collecting people's blood for offerings. Several times he was surrounded by groups of men that threatened his life because they thought he was this evil spirit. The thing that blew my mind was the arrogance and stupidity of Hansen. He was repeatedly warned by the people not to travel by himself through the jungle and he never listened to them. Even wise elders from the villages he visited, men that he greatly respected, told him not to travel alone, and he thought their fears were just ridiculous superstition. These chapters just served to illustrate even more that Hansen was just out there trying to prove something.

What could have been an amazing adventure story turned out to be just one disappointment after another. I think it's time for National Geographic to find replacement on their list for this one.

My rating: 4 out of 10

June's Book: Stranger in the Forest

Eric Hansen was the first westerner ever to walk across the island of Borneo. Completely cut off from the outside world for seven months, he traveled nearly 1,500 miles with the small bands of nomadic hunters known as Penan. Beneath the rain forest canopy, they trekked through a hauntingly beautiful jungle where snakes and frogs fly, pigs climb trees, giant carnivorous plants eat mice, and mushrooms glow at night.

At once a modern classic of travel literature and a gripping adventure story, Stranger in the Forest provides a rare and intimate look at the vanishing way of life of one of the last surviving groups of rain forest dwellers. Hansen's absorbing, and often chilling, account of his exploits is tempered with the humor and humanity that prompted the Penan to take him in to their world and to share their secrets.

(Summary from Goodreads.com)

The Silent World: Thoughts

It is a pity I could not have read this book when it was first published in 1953. Back when it came out, Cousteau and his mates were practically the equivalent of modern day astronauts, venturing into a world mankind had only been able to admire from a distance. You get a sense of this by reading the types of things they would talk about after their first few dives.

“We reveled in plans for the aqualung. Tailliez penciled the tablecloth and announced that each yard of depth we claimed in the sea would open to mankind three hundred thousand cubic kilometers of living space.”

They honestly believed at first that they were opening up a new age of mankind. They looked forward to the day when growing populations would move to the sea as their home, forsaking the land entirely. They even speculated on future man developing into a new hybrid species, half man, half fish. This seems a bit humorous to us over half a century later, but to these men, the future held as many possibilities as fish in the sea. And they were all waiting to be discovered.

 They took to the water with the wonder of little children. Every dive was an adventure. They examined sunken ships, searching for lost treasures. They explored underwater caves and once found an underwater tunnel going through the heart of an island and coming out on the other side. They also “discovered” a species of seal that had been thought extinct for at least sixty years. Rather than relating one adventure or a series of adventures in his book, Cousteau took on the monumental task of writing about a lifetime’s worth of adventures.

But it wasn’t all fun and games. Cousteau and his mates had to make a living as well. Fortunately for them, the Navy was eager to make use of their newfound underwater abilities. Unfortunately for them, this often put them in the way of danger, not unlike swimming guinea pigs. Consider for example, when the Navy had them test the ability of a human to endure underwater explosions.

“We went underwater in pairs while one-pound TNT charges were exploded at progressively nearer distances. When a burst caused too much discomfort, we stopped… The astonishing thing was how close we could get and bear it. Sometimes, when two of us were hanging in our stations waiting for the explosion, we would look at each other and wince at the lunatic idea.”

Perhaps my favorite experience described in Cousteau’s book was the time they were attempting to film a submarine laying mines underwater. They were having difficulty coordinating the location of the drop with the sub (they had no underwater radios at the time). Then Dumas had a wild idea, “I’ll ride the sub down and give the order to drop them at the right place." He wanted to ride down on the outside of the submarine. They decided to let him try and the submarine captain watched through the periscope as this crazy diver held on to the rail as he was pummeled with an avalanche of water. Dumas rode the sub down through the waves until he was fully submerged and then at the moment he passed his friends with the camera, he pounded on the sub with a hammer and they dropped the mine. How incredible is that? And this was their job!

It is important to remember while reading this book that no one had ever done these things before. For example, Cousteau invented the shark cage. Before his time no one had ever needed one! The sea was a world unknown before they ventured into it. Mankind’s concept of the ocean had up to this time been formed by the world of science fiction. It is because of these preconceived notions from literature that these men built a poisonous harpoon gun to take down with them, just in case they came across a giant squid or other sea monster. Thanks to them, we have come to truly know the sea, and millions of people have been able to follow their bubbles down into the deep. They were truly explorers and mankind owes them a debt of gratitude for the marvels they uncovered and for the silent world they brought to the surface.

My rating: 7 out of 10

May's Book: The Silent World

A new era of undersea exploration began in 1943 when the young French naval officers J.Y. Cousteau and Philippe Tailliez, and the great civilian diver Frédéric Dumas, plunged into the Mediterranean with the first aqualung, co-invented by Cousteau.

In this fascinating report, Cousteau and Dumas tell what it is like to be 'menfish' swimming in the deep twilight zone with sharks, mantas, morays, whales, and octopi. They tell of exploring sunken ships and of the treasures they brought up. They describe ventures into an inland water cave that all but claimed their lives, and their crazy human-guinea-pig experiment with underwater explosions. Cousteau writes brilliantly of his audacious 50-fathom dive into the zone of rapture, where divers become like drunken gods; and of the 396-foot dive that took a brave companion's life.

Cousteau, Dumas, and their courageous teams of divers have used their new techniques of exploration to make important discoveries in almost every branch of science. In The Silent World they share with us the greatest undersea experience men have ever had.

Description on the back of the book

Alone: Thoughts

“This much should be understood from the beginning: that above everything else… I really wanted to go for the experience’s sake… to be by [myself] for a while and to taste peace and quiet and solitude long enough to find out how good they really are.”

I had no difficulty at all relating to Richard Byrd’s desires for solitude, being somewhat of a solitary man myself. What intrigued me, however, was his desire to seek his solitude in one of the most dangerous places on earth, the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. I came to know this incredible corner of the world while reading “The Worst Journey in the World” which we will get to later in the Man’s Book Club (seriously one of the most amazing books I’ve ever read). I was eager to go back with Admiral Byrd. It was fascinating to read about his little hut that they buried in the snow, how they filled his supply tunnels with food and fuel, and then how they turned around and drove away, leaving him to face the arctic winter alone. He shares his thoughts from his first night:

“About 1 o’clock in the morning, just before turning in, I went topside for a look around. The night was spacious and fine. Numberless stars crowded the sky. I had never seen so many. You had only to reach up and fill your hands with the bright pebbles… And all this was mine: the stars, the constellations, even the earth as it turned on its axis. If great inward peace and exhilaration can exist together, then this, I decided my first night alone, was what should possess the senses.”

Little did he know the trials that awaited him.

For me, the most intense part of the story was when Byrd accidentally locked himself outside at night during a blizzard. Actually, more than just being locked out, his door was frozen shut and nothing he could do would open it. 

“Panic took me then, I must confess. Reason fled. I clawed at the three-foot square of timber like a madman. I beat on it with my fists, trying to shake the snow loose; and, when that did no good, I lay flat on my belly and pulled until my hands went weak from cold and weariness. Then I crooked my elbow, put my face down, and said over and over again, You damn fool, you damn fool. Here for weeks I had been defending myself against the danger of being penned inside the shack; instead, I was now locked out; and nothing could be worse, especially since I had only a wool parka and pants under my windproofs. Just two feet below was sanctuary—warmth, food, tools, all the means of survival. All these things were an arm’s length away, but I was powerless to reach them.”

Byrd would surely have died within 30 minutes, with temperatures at 65 degrees below zero and the storm pounding down on him. He only managed to survive by stumbling onto a shovel that had been left outside earlier that day. With this he was able to pry open his door and escape to the protection of his hut (where it was a much balmier negative 20 degrees).

A month or so after this incident Byrd would come even closer to losing his life. The accident that crippled him, and which brought him within an inch of death, occurred during a routine radio contact with his companions at Little America. He had failed to clear the exhaust pipes for his generator and was knocked out by carbon monoxide poisoning. For the next two months he hovered between this life and the next, unable to help himself and unwilling to ask his team for help, lest they risk a rescue attempt in the black of winter. In the end, Byrd was able to pull through, though it would be two more months after his friends came to his aide before he would be able to make the journey back himself.

From this period of utter isolation Byrd shares several gems of wisdom that he was able to work out while facing his own mortality.

“If I had never seen a watch and should see one for the first time, I should be sure its hands were moving according to some plan and not at random. Nor does it seem any more reasonable for me to conceive that the precision and order of the universe is the product of blind chance. This whole concept is summed up in the word harmony. For those who seek it, there is inexhaustible evidence of an all-pervading intelligence.”

“The universe was a cosmos, not a chaos; man was as rightfully a part of that cosmos as were the day and night.”

“A man’s moments of serenity are few, but a few will sustain him a lifetime. I found my measure of inward peace then; the stately echoes lasted a long time.”

And this last one that I love.

“Few men during their lifetime come anywhere near exhausting the resources dwelling within them. There are deep wells of strength that are never used.”

Though Byrd’s adventure turned out far different than he had originally planned, he certainly found the solitude that he went searching for. Though for him it turned out to be more like solitary confinement. He was lucky to escape with his life. I know that if I ever plan to spend a winter at the bottom of the world, I’m taking someone with me!

My rating: 7 out of 10

April's Book: Alone

When Admiral Richard E. Byrd set out on his second Antarctic expedition in 1933, he was already an international hero for having made the first flights over the North and South poles. But this undertaking was to be different: six months alone near the bottom of the world, gathering weather data and indulging his desire "to taste peace and quiet long enough to know how good they really are." Little did he know that he would experience less tranquility than he had anticipated. Isolated in the pervasive polar night with no hope of release until spring, Byrd began suffering inexplicable symptoms of mental and physical illness. By the time he discovered that carbon monoxide from a defective stove pipe was poisoning him, Byrd was already engaged in a monumental struggle to save his life and preserve his sanity.

(Summary from Goodreads.com)

Arabian Sands: Thoughts

“Only in the desert…could a man find freedom.”

This feeling of freedom is what drove Wilfred Thesiger again and again to one of the most inhospitable places on earth. In "Arabian Sands", Thesiger describes his love affair with the desert, developed through years of wandering through the Empty Quarter of Arabia. He traveled by camel and by foot, with a handful of loyal Bedu for his companions. He suffered starvation, exhaustion, and bitter resentment on account of his Christian faith. Yet he could never get enough of it. 

“In the desert I had found a freedom unattainable in civilization; a life unhampered by possessions, since everything that was not a necessity was an encumbrance. I had found, too, a comradeship inherent in the circumstances, and the belief that tranquility was to be found there. I had learnt the satisfaction which comes from hardship and the pleasure which springs from abstinence: the contentment of a fully belly; the richness of meat; the taste of clean water; the ecstasy of surrender when the craving for sleep becomes a torment; the warmth of a fire in the chill of dawn.”

The most incredible part of this book for me was the Bedu themselves; men like Thesiger's companions Bin Kabina and Bin Ghabaisha. These men had spent their entire lives living in the desert, never owning more than a camel and what they could carry on their backs. With a rifle and a dagger, these men were prepared to roam for months at a time, traveling until exhausted and then stretching out on the sand to sleep, often without even a blanket to cover them. The desert was their home and they lived in it by choice. 

Their lives in the desert had taught them many skills that are so foreign to me, they seem almost supernatural. One of the most remarkable of these was their ability to track. Thesiger describes several instances when one of his companions could read tracks in the sand and discern intimate details from them. On one occasion a man read some camel tracks they had come across and told the party, "They were Awamir. There are six of them. They have raided the Junuba on the southern coast and taken three of their camels. They have come here from Sahma and watered at Mughshin. They passed here ten days ago." They had not seen anyone for seventeen days, and did not see anyone for another twenty-seven days. After their journey, they exchanged news in the village and found that everything the man had read in those tracks had occurred exactly as he had described it. 

With companions such as these, is it any wonder that Thesiger felt drawn to the desert? He longed for the dunes of Arabia with such a passion that when he left the peninsula for the last time to return to England he said, "I knew what it felt like to go into exile."

“To others my journey would have little importance. It would produce nothing except a rather inaccurate map which no one was ever likely to use. It was a personal experience, and the reward had been a drink of clean, nearly tasteless water. I was content with that.”

My rating: 7 out of 10