Walking Commentary

Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023

travel

An Eternal Journey

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‘Days and months are itinerants on an eternal journey; the years that pass by are also travellers’. – Matuso Bashō (1644-94)

I noted this quotation a few years ago; a dozen in fact. Reading it last night triggered thoughts that spawned a few more. I wish you good luck on this eternal journey.

It’s amazing to me that so many people on different continents came to live in caves carved from volcanic tuff. The Puebloans or Anasazi in New Mexico, Etruscans in Italy, and the Cappadocians in Turkey spring to mind. Each realised, independently, that tuff was relatively easy to carve into negative moulds for habitation. Conversely, the Rapa Nui on Easter Islander chose to cut positive shapes from similar material.Presumably their moai have religious purpose. While time may travel, coeval independent solutions seem to occur quite frequently.

Architects check sun-dial pocket-watch time at Hardwick Hall
(Photo by John L Robinson ARHA 1888 held in RSAI)
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Sours & Jobs

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The Midori Sours with beer chasers appeared to go down well. Rounded up to £20 with a healthy tip, the barman was encouraged to keep a close eye on the celebrity drinking. His attentiveness barely interrupted his telling of how he lost his last hotel job by crashing and writing off a brand new sports car.

‘I mean written off’ he said ‘not even ten miles on the clock’.

From Almaty to N’guigmi.
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Argan Oil

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Funny how even the size of a word on a bottle of shampoo can float memories back to the surface. ‘Hair Shampoo with Argan Oil’ was written on a bottle on the shelf in front of me while I shaved. Glasses off, ‘Argan’ is unclear yet unambiguous. My subliminal messaging retrieval kicks in and I’m back in a restaurant pouring an Argan oil dressing on my salad. I was there with five other colleagues. It had been a long day towards the end of a complicated three month geophysical project. We had been recording two dimensional profiles in a hunt for commercial hydrocarbons.

Morocco 2012: 15 sappers check a 15 m path for landmines.
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Alamo

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Once upon a time I felt like a surrealist sitting in front of The Alamo. The grackles were coming to roost in the live oaks, squawking and whistling and chirping. The crepuscular light also brought hordes of bats who appeared from the west and I wondered why no one worried about a rain of droppings.

I missed the photo of a lifetime. A woman walked past in a full black hijab over an iridescent blue burka. She crossed the street in front of an illuminated Cinderella-themed wedding carriage drawn by two white horses driven by a mock lonesome cowboy.

A Twighlight Blurry Storm Coming Cinderella Lonesome Cowboy snap on my phone
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Bolivia III

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The lake has gone. And with it, an oral culture that lasted thousands of years has evaporated too. Lake Poopó is no more. 3680 metres above sea level, 1000 sq km of water has become a story of evaporation, desiccation and devastation.

A lasting memory is the shimmering pink line at the furthest edges of my sight. The heat haze rising from the salar distorted the lines of flamingoes diligently feeding on crustaceans whose pigmented carotenoids tinted their feathers pink. An earthly aurora andinus is gone. So too is the oral culture of honking birds that pre-dated the arrival of the humans that silenced them.

Lago Poopó near Untavi 1994
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Beaks and Travel

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I was sitting alone in a cold, damp bed-and-breakfast type bedroom in November 1995. It was a dreich Scottish night in Aberdeen and I started to read The Beak of the Finch (1995). It remains a stand-out science read and one of the most influential books I’ve enjoyed. The room was cold enough that I felt the need to wrap myself in blankets pulled off the bed, wishing I was like the Tierra del Fuegans who needed no clothes. Darwin was a great diversion when I was undecided; besides being cold, I couldn’t be sure if I was humiliated or amused.

‘The mind is our beak, and the human mind is ever more variable than the brain’ wrote Jonathan Weiner in The Beak of the Finch.

Reasons to need offshore survival training. Tierra del Fuego 1995.
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