Spring 2014

MIDDLEBURY

GEOGR APHIC

Fall 2013

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Cover: Lion with Cataracts, Cori West Inside: Farmer in Thailand, Anthea von Viragh 1

MIDDLEBURY

GEOGR APHIC Fall 2013

Caleb Cunningham 5 The Best of Friends Argentina

Meagan Neal 11 Accra Accra, Ghana

Jackie Voluz 16 Lines and Shadows Moscow

Anthony Stepney 19

In Search of Ginsberg New York, NY and San Francisco, CA

Anthea von Viragh 25 Monks, Maidens and Magic Myanmar

Jenny Johnston 33

Story of the Rana Ecuador

Buzzards Bay

Nicholas Dragone

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Ali Lewis 43 We Keep Moving Forward France

Amanda Wiggins 47 Animal Planet Emily Selch Alix Bickson Margaret Lindon

Emma Cameron 53 Our Own Backyard Vermont

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EDITORS’ NOTE: Middlebury Geographic, as the name implies, is a rip-off. We are trying to emulate a magazine first published in 1888, containing some of the best photography and narratives in print. And while we’re not quite there yet, we are continuously shocked by the caliber of the work submitted each semester by students in our own small community. This issue features some fascinating material including portraits from Thailand, beat poetry in the US, and a train journey across Russia.

Middlebury Geographic’s goal is capture what makes the students of this institution so great: a will to explore, learn, and impart change.

We are a small staff of students from many majors drawn to stories and adventures, people and places. We are absolutely thrilled by this edition and want to thank everyone for their contributions. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed putting it together.

Onwards, The Middlebury Geographic Staff

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Farafra, Egypt (Hannah Peters) across: Madelaine Hack 4

THE BEST OF FRIENDS

T

BY

CALEB CUNNINGHAM

he greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In November of 2012, I found myself more alone than I’d ever been before. Here I was, more than 6,000 miles away from mom’s cooking, deep in the Patagonian wilderness wearing a hand-me-down backpack and worn tennis shoes, having forgotten my hiking boots in the States. 17 miles of rugged mountain hiking lay in front of me, and there wasn’t a soul in sight. I couldn’t have been more excited.

So I hiked. For six days I hiked, through valleys and across mountainsides, from hut to hut and meal to meal, mostly accompanied by nothing but my thoughts, my harmonica, and a neverending swarm of biting horseflies.

The flies would come alone like gladiators, each arriving one after the next to replace his dead comrade, buzzing and circling around my body, landing to bite me without pattern or provocation. Eventually, a welltimed swipe would knock the horsefly down to earth where I could gleefully stomp on it.

Buzzing with momentary happiness myself, I would cheer and do my best Dr. Evil maniacal laugh, pinkie finger and all before continuing onward. Each time, though, I couldn’t go far before being besieged by the next horsefly, condemning himself to die by my hand.

Morituri, te salutant.

Unable to sate my irrational anger at the horseflies just by killing them, I did what any liberal arts student would do: I angrily scribbled a poem about them in my journal.

I picked out a hike in the Argentine mountains trekking from hut to hut, known as refugios, spending a night each at of the

five different refugios, and traveling between them during the days hunting for adrenaline, or views, or both. Each morning, I rose with the sun to eat an apple and a bite of cheese and set off, ready to catch a slightly bigger glimpse of the world and see how it reflected back to me.

You see, I had just wrapped up a semester studying abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and had yet to have that “Aha!” moment that one expects from study abroad. So alone in Patagonia, I hoped to spend some time looking inward, just me and my thoughts, and see what I came away with. A wise man once said that knowledge comes by taking things apart, and wisdom by putting things together.

An International Politics & Economics major back at Middlebury, I had had my fair share of breaking things down: policy memos, CIA World Factbook reports, International Relations theory tomes – I was ready to take the pieces I had broken down, and see if I could put some things together.

The first day’s trek was the hardest. Before setting off, I dropped by the Club Andino Piltriquitron – the mountain club – in the town of El Bolsón where I was staying, and they helped me pick out my route. The first day, they informed me, would only be about a five or six hour hike to refugio número uno, Refugio Hielo Azul. 15 kilometers from the trailhead to the hut, and about 4,000 feet of vertical ascent total. But they neglected to mention that from El Bolsón to the trailhead, another 14 kilometers awaited. So what I thought would be a 15-km day turned into

Grace Truman

a 29-km day, equivalent to about 17 long, painful miles.

I walked through El Bolsón and then down a dirt road for a few kilometers, having a grand old time basking in the sunshine. Of all the deep and worldly thoughts that could have popped into my head at the outset of my journey, the one that came to mind was from Dr. Seuss: “You’ve got brains in your head, you’ve got feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.” It made me grin. The phonetics were too perfect. A few km in, I hit the Rio Azul, and had to cross a rickety old wire bridge. The bridge’s planks were old, rotting, creaking – strips of wood nailed together and connected by strips of wire. I noted a number of empty spaces where planks had clearly fallen through, imagining the unlucky sop who had entrusted his weight to them. “Boy, what have you gotten yourself into,” I thought as I stepped forward.

After the river, the trail weaved through a mile or two of Amazon-like jungle and brush, surrounded by verdant bushes taller than men and saturated with pinks, purples, and yellows flowers, and deep green leaves,

“When you think you can’t go on,” she always says, “eat some chocolate. all on the banks of the aptly named Rio Azul – the Blue River. Immediately, the degree of difficulty intensified. The trail, which was barely marked, became steep and my soft, weak city-boy muscles were screaming in pain.

I passed a gorgeous little corral on a shoulder of the mountain where cows grazed idyllically in the clearing nearby, and proceeded to take the wrong path for 20 minutes until, between panting breaths, I was forced to turn around and look for trail markers. City life had made me soft! I imagined my brothers, laughing at me as I gasped pathetically for air, stopping every few steps to gather the courage to go on, all the while trying futilely to convince myself, “Come on, you’re better than this. 6 You can handle this. This is fun!”

Maddy Lawler

Maddy Lawler Soon after the cows, my nerve began to fail me. So, taking a page out of my mom’s book, I sat down and treated myself to a bit of chocolate. My family and I have been hiking in Colorado my whole life, and my mom has three rules: bring chocolate, bring salt, and bring Gatorade. “When you think you can’t go on,” she always says, “eat some chocolate.

Then, go on.” How right she was. I pigged out on M&M’s, and the fire in the belly returned immediately.

Eventually, I found the trail and continued on. I entered the valley of the first refugio around twilight. Refugio Hielo Azul, or Blue Ice Hut, is nestled at the feet of a huge rocky mountain that towers over the valley, the peak so massive that even in the heat of summer it was still snow-covered. As I entered the valley, I could see through the trees that the golden rays of the day’s last sunlight lit the side of the surrounding mountains, glinting off the snow and trees and giving everything a timeless feel. I was greeted with a mate – a piping-hot herbal tea, pronounced ‘maw-tay,’ drunk religiously throughout Argentina – and a smile by the hutmaster.

After setting up my sleeping bag and the

rest of my equipaje, I went outside to read a little and look at the stars. Before travelling to Patagonia from Buenos Aires, I had left a few pages empty in my journal for a very special man, Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson. I had always loved Emerson, and I thought there was no better way to get in touch with nature than to read Emerson’s essay, “Nature.” So, lying in a hostel bed in El Bolsón, using the internet connection on my iPhone for source material, I had hand-written Emerson’s essay into my notebook, for later absorption. I couldn’t have made a better choice. I began reading, and right off the bat I was hooked.

Lying outside, holding my battered spiralbound notebook up against the Patagonian stars, I read aloud.

I couldn’t help myself. I was like a man who’d just met the love of his life. I was like a Coloradan who’d just tried Chick-Fil-A for the first time, a life-changing event I would experience later that year. I was hooked. I knew, I was absolutely sure, that Ralph Waldo Emerson was speaking to me there, under a bed of stars as clear as day. The Patagonian 4 stars, due to the unusual combination of a 8 lack of nearby human pollution and lack of

ozone layer to block starlight, were the clearest stars I had ever seen. The cloudless night felt almost like daytime, eerily still and bright with a silver gleam that seemed to emanate as much from the objects around me as from the sky above. One might think that the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime.

If not to me, then to whom could Emerson possibly be speaking?

I read on, and continued reading Emerson’s “Nature” repeatedly every day for the six-day duration of my treks in Patagonia.

By the end, I had most of it memorized. On day three, I stopped for lunch on the shoulder of a mountain, eating in a slanted golden field on a rock promontory looking out over 200 or 220 degrees of open space all around me.

I kept picturing the final scene in the movie Blood Diamond, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou, and I could imagine that this was what the African highlands felt like. To my left were snow-capped peaks, edging the valley I was going to pass into.

To my right was a wide valley where further down, El Bolsón lay green and quiet. Straight ahead, past the foothills of one mountain range and the peaks of another, were the faroff Andes, partially obscured in fog, like a

dream or a goal just out of reach.

As I sat there in the sun eating an apple, I watched as a condor, or an eagle, or some massive and powerful beast, took flight and presided over the area as master. I just sat there and took it all in. Right on cue, Emerson came to mind.

“Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.” “How small we all are,” I thought. A tall blonde isn’t beautiful. A sleek convertible isn’t beautiful. This – this is beautiful.

I had ventured out into the furthest depths of the most exotic wilderness I could think of, all in the interest of being alone. Yet when I found myself alone, 1,000-foot cliffs on either side of me, hiking through bamboo forests or past trees 20 feet in diameter, I found that I didn’t want to be alone. At least not in the sense of directing my thoughts inward, or escaping the world. I didn’t want the physical company of a person, but I welcomed an emotional companion such as Emerson. I wanted to avoid the burden of conversation, of worrying about another person’s feelings,

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not alone whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he

touches. and by the expedience of being spared those mental burdens, I wanted to direct my thoughts elsewhere – to reflect on other, more personal and more meaningful things.

Hiking through gorges and over hilltops, I pondered things like race and religion, filling my notebook with pages of notes at night and during lunch breaks. I spent hours crystallizing half-formed thoughts and conversely breaking down the often incomplete thoughts I had believed to be fully formed. So, having the time, I broke things down to their basic level. Especially, I came to understand my unspoken relationship with nature, accepting the childlike, primordial joy that comes from a view, or a bird’s call, or the indescribable and brutish gloom that covers my heart when the I see dark clouds approaching. I thought about the basic connection to nature, on a level surpassing self-consciousness or upbringing – the way my id has a place in it reserved for green and growing things.

To me, Patagonian nature felt so… well, natural. I wondered why I felt so comfortable there. With that in mind, I turned to Emerson:

“In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows …

Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration.”

Yet again, he seemed to reach out of the page and grab me by the arm. The connection that I felt to nature was innate!

I had brought with me the best friend possible: Ralph Waldo Emerson. I read his words and found my own thoughts bouncing off them, reverberating through them and causing me to rethink the mental links between Point A and Point B. I read his language, and found myself ashamed to settle with “beautiful” or “extraordinary” to describe a scene to myself. He coaxed me to think about the basis for my relationship with nature, not just the language describing it – “why does this view strike a chord within me?” I asked.

“What exactly is the nature of my allegiance to that bird call?” I had a man incalculably smarter than I to push my mental limits, to cause me to reexamine things through the power of his words. In the process, I learned more about myself, and came to better know the work of a pillar of American literature.

An English professor of mine at Middlebury once said that the mark of a good novel is that when we read about the experiences of another, it rebounds upon the reader and we find that the story isn’t about Jake Barnes, or Charlie Marlow – it’s about us.

I think that’s true not just of good novels, but more broadly of good literature. It certainly was the case for “Nature.”

So I say unto you, dear reader, the next time you undertake an adventure in nature, don’t do it alone. Bring a friend. A silent friend, but one whose words will speak to you in a way no friend ever could. Frost, Emerson, Courtenay, Joyce, Conrad – it doesn’t matter.

But bring a friend. They might just become the best friend you could ask for.

And for God’s sake, bring insect repellant.

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ACCRA photos and story by Meagan Neal

I

stepped into the markets of accra, ghana clutching my handbag with nervous fingers, all wide eyes and white skin.

On the main roads, motorcycles zigzagged across traffic lanes and the haze of exhaust thickened the humid air, but the city’s side streets pulsed with slow movement. Here, women walked sway-hipped in the languid heat of June, balancing impossible loads on their heads: fruit baskets, laundry loads, sandwiches for sale. One woman held a bathtub steady on her crown, her neck stretched taut.

The markets sprawled for blocks on end, stalls nudging up on stalls nudging up on merchants spreading blankets of wares— bras! cell phone cases! gold-painted chain necklaces!— on the crumbling sidewalk. In a day, I would head into the Muslim region of northern Ghana, but the South is emphatically Christian, and here in Accra, nestled on the southern coast, Side streets in Accra, Ghana

the only other pale faces in the alleys were clothing-store mannequins and posters of a mysteriously blonde Jesus.

I was eighteen, fresh out of my first year of college. As a student of international development, I was fascinated by the processes at play in a post-colonial country like Ghana.

A billboard, towering over a street corner, proclaimed, “55th Independence Day Celebration: Sustaining Peace and Unity for Democracy and Development.” Ghana had been proven to be one of Africa’s most stable twoparty democracies in its 2008 election, after a runoff vote resulted in a significant peaceful turnover of power. Tensions had risen to a potentially dangerous level following the original close vote, and the international commu12

nity watched with bated breath to see if the post-election violence or coups of other African countries would be mimicked in Ghana.

The deliberate calm, and the prudence with which both parties maintained it, was applauded around the world. Although Ghana had been plagued by stagnation and inadequate infrastructure after its independence from Britain in 1957, today Ghana is one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. Still, over a quarter of its population lives below the international poverty line of $1.25 a day.

As I roamed its streets, Accra splayed in storefronts and billboards— LATEX FOAM, LION OF JUDAH JEWELRY, AIDS IS REAL— and I checked myself, knowing that my nerves were caused by more than the starkness of my skin. Nominally, I was in Ghana to build a water treatment system in a rural village, but in reality, I was simply there to learn. What works in development, what doesn’t? What do villagers really want? Is it

Girl in Yakura, Ghana, outside of Accra

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possible to go about development projects in a way that is truly community-oriented and not imposing? I worried that I would become another caricature of the “White Girl Who Goes To Africa,” returning with a lot of pictures of black babies and no deeper understanding. What if my first intimate encounter with dire poverty affected me more than I could handle? What if it didn’t affect me at all?

I stepped gingerly over trash piles, making peace with the fact that my moccasins would not survive this month. The rubbish clumped in the gutters, building street-side streams of plastic wrappers, soda bottles and fruit peels.

Three weeks later, after spending most of June in dusty Tamale and its surrounding rural villages, I would return to the streets of Accra and find them shockingly modern. “Look how tall the buildings are!” I would say.

“Look how well the roads are paved!” But for the moment, everything was still remarkably

Beach slum in Accra, Ghana

My shoulders loosened, I looked back and we shared a small, open-mouthed laugh. new to me, remarkably “third-world”—whatever, indeed, that phrase meant.

The street smells pressed in on me in a way that felt somehow familiar. The damp scent of sewage. The spices from food stalls flaunting fufu— a traditional Ghanaian dish made from cassava and yam, pounded into a doughy ball and served in a bowl of spicy soup— and fried plantains. The exhaust trailing from motorcycles and taxis, burning sticky in my throat. The heat rubbing from bodies on all sides, fingertips brushing my long brown ponytail in curiosity. The aftertaste of sweat.

Everywhere, people crowded onto each other: a child shawl-bound to its mother’s back, a family of five scrunched on a single motorcycle, a public bus with bodies bursting from its windows and sprawling on its rooftop. They lingered in each other’s doorways, congregated in each other’s stalls, gap-toothed and laughing; each salesperson seemed to have an entire family or network of friends

loitering beside their soccer jerseys or sunglasses. They tangled me in the throng, an immobile beacon of freckled skin.

Boys called out to me from all sides, the standard whistles and marriage proposals the guidebooks had told me to expect, and I kept my gaze straight ahead, fiddling with my old high school ring that I had brought to pass as married in a pinch. But after some time, I tucked my hand in my pocket.

No one grabbed me. No one was threatening. In fact, my hyper-obviousness seemed to give me a weird degree of security. A bald man in a blue button-down did a double take as I passed, pointing a flailing stub of a finger.

“I want one!” he said, and groaned good-naturedly as I walked on. My shoulders loosened. I looked back and we shared a small, open-mouthed laugh.

Slowly, I followed the dusty sky to the seaside. I wound through twisting alleys of shops with names like “His Majesty Cell Phones” and “Jesus Is Our Lord And Savior Tailor”. I paused at a food stall for a bowl of goat and fragrant rice smothered in spicy tomato sauce, and flushed it down with water from a plastic packet that the cook showed me how to rip open with my teeth. I hesitated before the first mouthful, my mother’s warnings about street food ringing in my head. What if I barfed the entire twelve-hour drive to Tamale?

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But— as usual— metabolism overruled logic.

I cleaned my plate.

I reached the city’s edge, finding myself on a concrete ledge overlooking a beach slum.

Its shacks leaned into each other, all but sinking into the sand. Beyond it, fishermen in wooden boats spotted the Atlantic, faded red designs swirling on their vessels’ sides.

I looked out at the slum and felt nothing. I waited for the harsh reality of life for so much of the world to slap me in the face and hold my breath captive, even for a moment.

But I felt calm—a little sadder, a little more respectful, nothing more. I wondered if I was numb to this, too, like so much of my life, or if I was just naïve.

I traced my way down shallow steps, unsure if I should be here. The slum was a series of improvisations: sheets of scrap metal as walls, curtains and cardboard as houses, ground as sewer. Women peeked out from their shelters with suspicious eyes. Young boys kicked a soccer ball in the damp sand. I didn’t dare touch my camera. One outgoing boy grabbed my hand while the others turned their heads shyly, sneaking glances, before erupting in a stream of chatter I wished I understood. Running impatiently in slow sand, tugging at my fingers, they led me down to the water’s edge.

Sliding off my shoes, I dipped my toes in the Atlantic. The cold sent a shock through my body, and I bent to trace spirals on the surface, struck that this opaque water had mingled with the same Atlantic that I used

to relish every other year with my grandparents in Florida, the same salt I tasted with my brother off the coast of Maine before we split ways for college, the same water that, at age sixteen in France, I soaked myself in and found myself whole. Wading knee-deep with rolled-up pant legs and disregarding the bits of floating trash, I studied the line between gray water and gray sky. It was hazy near the horizon.

Without warning, a wave smacked me up to my waist. The force of it nearly knocked me backwards, and I stumbled in shifting sand.

The wave slapped my eyes wide and my limbs shivering, but as I stood stomach-drenched and open-palmed, I slowly dissolved from shock into full-body laughter. The children on the shore shrieked with delight. I turned back to face their smiles and spread my arms in a mix of exhilaration and self-deprecation, wondering if this place would thaw me a bit, let me feel my numbed arteries. My answer: another wave to the backside.

The curse, or blessing, of beach footwear is that it is impossible to rid their soles of sand.

When I slipped my moccasins back on, my wet and wrinkled toes ground the stubborn grains permanently into the shoes’ arches.

Months later, I walked on Ghanaian sand at home in the cul-de-sacs of Carmel, Indiana.

The grains made my steps a little more uncomfortable, a little more thoughtful, but I did not mind. A bit of sand, I told myself, is far better than feet that do not feel.

Below: homes in Yakura, Ghana, outside of Accra

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SOME TITLE

JACKIE VOLUZ

View of the spiral of St. Peter’s Chruch from Dome Square in Central Riga

L

onely planet lists “riding any overnight train” as number seven in the top twenty-five things to do and see in eastern europe. it’s true that trains are an essential form of travel, since they are relatively convenient and fairly cheap, if you’re willing to rough it.

In Russia, I became accustomed to riding third class, or “platzkartniy,” which features a communal car of about eighty stacked, narrow bunk beds with storage under the seats; nothing very comfortable, but manageable if your neighbors bother to use deodorant.

Over the course of my year studying abroad in Moscow, I rode dozens of trains to places as varied as Petersburg in the north, Kazan in the south, and Vladivostok in the Far East.

The first time I crossed the Russian border by train was on a 16-hour sleeper to Riga, Latvia. It turns out that although both countries are technically within the Commonwealth of

Independent States, formed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, geographical boundaries are still a source of stress and hyper-vigilance.

The process of crossing the border was one of the best demonstrations of Russian bureaucratic inefficiency, paranoia, and scare tactics I have ever witnessed. It was one of the most torturous, yet memorable trips of my whole year abroad.

Border control is not entirely to blame for the difficulties of my journey. In planning the trip, two friends and I elected to buy fourth class, or “obshiy” tickets instead of our usual third class, with the understanding that we 16

Map by Stephanie Soussloff

would not get a bed. We expected Amtrakstyle seats, or perhaps rows like in an airplane, similar to previous, shorter trips we had taken to Russian villages. Instead, we discovered we were meant to share the usual, narrow, third class bunks with three other people, so that each person had a third of a bunk to sit on like a bench, and their neighbor to lean on all night long. Our neighbors were three Russian Latvians who were very friendly, and then very drunk, and then very spaciously spread out over our two tiny plank-beds. We suffered through the smell of vodka and herring in a car with no ventilation for nearly 12 hours.

Chances of sleep were already minimal, but an incident at around one in the morning ensured that every single person in the car woke up. I was just beginning to get drowsy when a sharp, noxious smell seemed to explode into the air of our cramped car. Our neighbors began shouting in Russian about “gas” and suddenly a woman came barreling up the aisle holding a child, screaming, “I have a baby! Make room for my baby!” as she rushed to the one wide window just outside the compartment. It was hard to breathe, and my friends and I were panicking because nobody seemed to be able to fully explain what the gas was. The train stopped, the police 1734

The general rule of thumb is to deal with the police as little as possible. came stomping through, and finally, a woman explained to me that some men had gotten into a fight at the end of the car and someone had sprayed pepper spray, or perhaps a stronger form of mace. We were stopped for at least a half hour, since the police and the train security had to write up separate reports, and I think eventually they kicked someone off the train. Eventually, the smell dissipated, the train started, and I got about forty-five minutes of sleep before we arrived at the border.

During border control, each train is subjected to two searches: one by the Russian border patrol and one by the corresponding Latvian forces. Each search requires each person to hand over his or her passports and surrender to a random search if deemed necessary. As young Americans able to speak Russian, my friends and I were not considered suspicious (especially on the Latvian side, where my friend accidentally flirted with the policewoman just by mentioning he was from California). Our bags were searched carefully, but with a certain hint of deference and embarrassment on the part of the patrol officers.

With the other passengers on the train, the

process was more complex, if not completely arbitrary. The police searched every single bag and clothing item of one of our middle-aged Russian neighbors, flustering her with endless questions, asking why she had so many coats and where she bought them. After inspecting even her trash bag filled with cucumber peelings and fish bones, an officer tried to begin the same interrogation with the woman’s

neighbors on the train simply did not have passports, and casually reported themselves as such to the patrols. This was inconceivable to me in a land where you must have all your documents on your person constantly, but these individuals were not citizens of any country. Olga and Irina explained to me that they considered themselves Russian Latvians, and did not deign to pick a single identity.

We arrived in Riga slightly delirious and happy to be alive. The city proved to be worth every hour of the journey. friend. In this case, when the officer asked her what was in her large suitcase, she looked at him with utter boredom and disdain and simply said, “Stuff.”

The policeman nodded quickly, blushing, and turned to interrogate the next man about what might be hidden inside his bouquet of flowers. It was the most typical, hysterical example of the fickle nature of the Russian security system I have ever witnessed. I often wonder whether the viciously vigilant attitudes of all of the guards, or “okhrana”, in every store, office, and school building are relics of the soviet system, kept up for appearances, just scary to me as a foreigner, or reflective of genuine suspicion towards every person who walks up to a grocery to buy watermelons. Their presence is a complex facet of Russian society, tied up with job creation and pension problems, but also propagated as an aspect of culture; I constantly saw roving bands of eleven-yearold boys from military academies and police programs “patrolling” the metro, doing nothing but tripping over their greatcoats and being a source of national pride. On the whole, the general rule of thumb is to deal with the police as little as possible: personally, I would never think to call the police in an emergency, let alone ask an officer for directions.

Given such paranoia surrounding police, passports, and documents in general, I was shocked to discover that two of my female 26

After the breakup of the Soviet Union, these women chose to decline citizenship to Latvia and to Russia, and as a result they can’t vote anywhere, but they can travel anywhere they like, and it is perfectly legal. Apparently a large portion of the Russian community in Latvia made the same decision, and the political ramifications of this phenomenon still affect Latvian voting trends.

Eventually, all the passports were stamped, the suitcases re-packed, and the train started again at 3am, with three hours left until arrival in Riga. My neighbor chose this time to merrily inform me about all of the differences between Latvians and Russians, complete with playfully racist anecdotes and the usual generalizations about the women of both nationalities. Admittedly, I learned many lessons over the course of the train ride, but this lecture was probably the least valuable. We arrived in Riga slightly delirious and happy to be alive.

The city proved to be worth every hour of the journey. It was a weekend trip, so after 36 hours of touring the Art Nouveau district, sampling balsam liqueur, and celebrating Latvian Independence Day, we got right back on the train for another overnight journey. This time, when the border patrol tried to interrogate us about the origins of the flashlight inside my backpack, we politely told him to go away and let us get some sleep. And he did.

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In Search of Ginsberg

By Anthony Stepney

“I

t was about creativity, art, music, love, everything!” said Joseph, a musician who I had met at an art showing at the Meridan Gallery in San Francisco.

His boyfriend, Andrew had been presenting some of his black and white photography in the space and suggested I ask Joseph about the Beat Generation. “It isn’t over, the beats still live. I’m one; we just call ourselves something different now. Hipsters, exhibitionists, any artists, they’re all beats. Time changes, names change.” Sniffling from his cigarette smoked, I asked, “So what do you think a beat actually is? What does it mean, I’m an artist, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say I’m a beat.” “I’ll make it simple; to me there are many things

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Approaching the City Lights bookstore

that make up a beat. A beat is a person looking for meaning in life. They just want to be.

They aspire and usually are able to live without all the bullshit that comes in life. They don’t need the money or any shit like that. All they need is their thoughts and a way to express them. That’s why artists are usually beats, they are looking for meaning in themselves and the world and they try to find it through writing, playing music, drawing and painting. Doesn’t this sound like you?”

He was right, writing and photography are what I use to give a glimpse into the inner workings of my mind and soul. I write in order to express my ideas and I use it as a tool to express things that I usually can’t in my real life. I always felt a connection to the Beat Generation, specifically Allen Ginsberg, one of its most recognizable figures. I embarked on this journey to find out more about this movement and to find out more about him. I was looking for meaning and still am. Meaning not only within myself, but also in life.

I don’t know who I am and if I followed in the footsteps of Ginsberg, who was also on a search for who he was then maybe I could find an answer. I needed to be in the place where the movement began and where Ginsberg felt he had to be in order to fully experience life, California.

My journey in search of Ginsberg actually began about twenty years ago. I was born in New York, and have always resided in the neighborhood of Harlem, the same place that Ginsberg resided in 1948. It is said that Ginsberg had a mystical hallucination while reading the poetry of William Blake. At first, Ginsberg claimed to have heard the voice of God, but later understood the voice as that

Map by Pippa Stanley

of Blake himself reading Ah, Sunflower, The Sick Rose, and Little Girl Lost. Ginsberg believed that he had witnessed the interconnectedness of the universe. He looked at latticework on the fire escape and realized some hand had crafted that; he then looked at the sky and perceived that some hand had constructed that also, or rather, that the sky was the hand that constructed itself. Harlem was the place that birthed the thoughts that awakened Ginsberg’s mind. It was also the place where I was born and raised; it was the first place that connected us.

I was only a junior in high school when I went on my first of many tours through Columbia University. This university located less than twenty blocks from my house was where I desired to go to school. Not only because it has a great reputation as an excellent academic institution, but because it’s also the university that Ginsberg attended. I walked up the ex-

tensive stairs toward the library, which was massive, sharing a similar size and structure to the White House, accented with a flat top and pillars that held it up. This was the library where Allen Ginsberg himself studied.

As I looked around the campus watching the students race to classes, I knew I needed to be here. The writer that I admired most went to this school and that was enough reason for me to want to attend.

Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and as mentioned above one of the leading figures in the Beat Generation of the 1950’s.

The Beat Generation started as a response to the Cold War, the Second Red Scare and McCarthyism. At this time Americans felt the need to unify against Communism within the country and abroad. Censorship and control were a major part of the American tradition at the time and some people did not fit into this way of life. While tensions between the Unit-

ed States and the Soviet Union increased Senator Joseph McCarthy began a crusade against communists he said had infiltrated the government. McCarthy used extreme tactics in order to discredit professionals and ruin their careers believing that they were part of a larger espionage scheme by the Soviet Union. Many people were afraid to be seen as Communist, they didn’t want to seem different ultimately reinforcing the importance of conformity.

During this time the Beat Generation started to take form. Many young people were seeking meaning in life, “Everywhere the Beat Generation seems occupied with the feverish production of answers—some of them frightening, some of them foolish—to a single question: how are we to live?” The Beat movement started out from people questioning life. People that were not compliant with the way things were and did not want to be put in a box.

In order to further explain what this movement meant Jack Kerouac published several articles in magazines in order to give a definition of what it meant to be Beat. One day Kerouac said, ‘You know, this is a really beat generation’ ... More than mere weariness, it implies the feeling of having been used, of being raw. It involves a sort of nakedness of mind, and ultimately, of soul: a feeling of being reduced to the bedrock of consciousness. In short, it means being undramatically pushed up against the wall of oneself.” Being a Beat can be described as a spiritual journey, a journey to find belief, belonging and meaning in life. The Beats were not content with the uniformity promoted not only by the government, but also by consumer culture and they yearned for something deeper, something that felt sincerer.

So am I beat like Joseph said? I am an artist of sorts. I love photography and writing.

I use these two mediums as a way to express not only my thoughts and ideas but also as a way to portray the desires, the questions, the

doubts and “Everywhere the Beat the insecu- Generation seems occupied rities I have with the feverish production in life. My of answers—some of them embarking on this frightening, some of them journey had foolish—to a single quess t e m m e d tion: how are we to live?” from my long connection to Allen Ginsberg. He celebrated non-conformity and creativity influencing not only my writing, but also my life. This is the writer that I look up to, Ginsberg’s Howl has been one of my favorite pieces of literature for many years, “Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz.” This quote from the poem struck something in me from my early teens. I knew what he meant by this, I was experiencing this in my life. I have known people; I have had friends who just like me have been searching for something within life.

People that have given up everything they have just in order to follow their dreams and they still are able to be perfectly happy. This connection to Howl and the Beats intensified as I went off to college. I knew that college was the safe thing to do, it was the next step after high school, but some of my friends did not take this step. Some decided that college wasn’t for them whether it was Chris who decided to intern on a sail boat for two years doing research or Adina who created her own art collective in New York and was doing a damn good job at it. Were they making the correct decisions in life and I was not? My high school, the Beacon School is a breeding ground for creativity as seen through Chris and Adina. In a school full of activists, artists and performers I always felt mundane in the

Radical literature from the past and present

environment. I never did anything worthwhile, never took risks, never traveled or let go of everything I know in order to search for my identity and what truly makes me happy.

My classmates evoked many more Ginsberg characteristics than I did.

My connection to Howl, to the Beats, to this whole journey has been due to an ongoing conflict in my life. I have never really known what I am doing. I always feel torn between actually just being versus conforming, going with what is safe. Hopefully this journey would give me some insight into who I actually am and where I want to be. Do I really want to be doing these things? Do I want to be in college? Do I want to travel into the unknown and try to find myself and actually gamble? Questions that have plagued my mind for years, which I still, have not found the answer to. I wanted to find out something new about myself on this journey, something that would maybe give me a little more understanding of my place in the world.

My cousin Mary had moved from New York many years ago and after many more moves had settled in Oakland with her husband and their two children, Tyler, their son and Ali, his older sister. They lived fairly close to San Francisco, the place where the Beat Movement and Ginsberg had their beginnings so I decided to stay with them during

my trip.

On my second day in Oakland, Ali and I headed towards San Francisco. I was introduced to the car that I would spend most of my trip in, Ali’s white Volkswagen Rabbit.

Small yet cozy, this car would become a sort of second home during the course of my journey.

We arrived in San Francisco in front of the City Lights Bookstore, which lay adjacent to Chinatown. City Lights is most famously known for publishing Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems and the obscenity trial that ensued following its publication. I stepped out of the Rabbit and into the bookstore.

The bookstore was located next to a psychic shop advertising Palm Readings and Tarot Card Readings, next to that was a smoke shop. Looking across the street it was clear that this neighborhood had become a sort of beat circus, with the Beat Museum located in close proximity to the bookstore. Behind the bookstore was Jack Kerouac Alley containing quotes from famous authors including Kerouac himself, John Steinbeck and Maya Angelou. The main floor of the bookstore was adorned with countless books. The plain walls were adorned with poems including Peter Klein’s, 13 ways of Looking at a Burrito. Pictures of Ginsberg22and past poets were hung up throughout the store. There were

signs that proclaimed City Lights as a “Free Speech Zone!” There were advertisements for Bayard Rustin’s “I Must Resist.” Rustin was known as the lost prophet of the civil rights movement. This place was definitely a place of nonconformity; all of these publications opposed the norm.

“Hello, Do you need any help?” said the cashier, with a slight smirk. He had short black hair, a Caesar haircut, black square glasses, a dark goatee and was dressed in all black.

“Yeah actually I do. I’m doing some research on the Beat Generation and I read about your store and its involvement with the movement. I was wondering if I could ask you some questions,” I said.

He replied, “Yeah I can give you a whole lesson on the Beats! That’s the reason I work here! I love them. I’m a musician and I like to combine my music with some performance art. Okay! Lets Start! The first thing you need to know is that this store was started by Lawrence Ferlinghetti who’s also an author. He comes here every so often, I wish he was here it would be great if you got to meet him. So basically the story goes that Lawrence went to the Six Gallery in 1955 and heard Allen Gins-

berg read Howl, like any other sane person he knew he had to publish it. Soon the book was the subject of the obscenity trial, because some thought it was vulgar.”

I interjected, “Yeah I mean it has a lot of sexual imagery and profanity in it.”

The cashier responded, “Yeah, but that’s what makes it great! In the end Ginsberg won the trial and all of this controversy just ended up making the book and this store very popular.”

“That’s all amazing. I…” He interrupted me, “You know this place is really important to San Francisco history, it’s a landmark, it became one in 2001. Here!

This will help you out with your research.”

He handed me a pamphlet on some of City Lights’ past publications, a book titled The Beat Generation, and a card. The card read, “Blake Eames, Musician.” Preparing to leave the store Blake stopped me, “Hey all of that stuff I told you. You can see it in the movie Howl with James Franco, it kinda sucks, but it does an okay job. You should also come to the Meridan Gallery tonight, my friend is having an art show, you’ll meet some great people there.”

I arrived to the Meridan Gallery, which had a sizeable crowd of at least thirty people. I found Blake and asked him if he could introduce me to anyone. He did just that, person after person I asked the same questions repeatedly, “What do you know about the Beat Generation?” “Who were your favorite authors of the movement?“ “What did the movement mean to you?” “What do you do for a living?” I met multiple artists and musicians but none of their answers really stood out. Taking a break from the crowd I surveyed the artwork. The photography was awe inspiring, the exhibition focused on transgender youth. I saw photos of these kids in alleys, in empty apartments, in parks, all with disheveled clothing, they were someA celebration of culture in San Francisco’s China Town

times sad and in other pictures seemed to be in utter bliss. As I stood alone looking at the pictures, Blake found me. “Here you need to meet Andrew, its his show, he can answer some questions!” He quickly pulled me towards Andrew who was talking to a group of ten people.

Blake introduced me and then Andrew who was far too busy handed me over to his boyfriend Joseph.

“So tell me where are you from, why are you here?” said Joseph.

“I’m from New York. I’m a college student.

I’m a writer and a photographer. I came here to see where Ginsberg got his start and see where the Beat Generation began.” I said “Why do that?”

“Because I always felt like I kind of, don’t know who I am or what I want out of life.

Ginsberg went through the same thing and he had to come all the way here from New York to find out who he was”, I replied.

“That makes sense, but why do you like art and writing,” asked Joseph.

“It makes me feel alive, I feel like these are the ways that I expose myself, and those glimpses of my true identity are amazing, It’s the only time I feel like I’m doing something worthwhile,” I admitted. “Now let me ask you a question, what does it mean to actually be a Beat?”

Riding in the Rabbit, Ali and I headed out to Berkley, driving through the Oakland hills, the elevation drastically rose and decreased so much that my ears popped three or four times in a thirty-minute drive. Telegraph Avenue was a diverse street. On one side there was the college store that had Berkley sweatshirts, shot glasses and sweat pants. This store was located to the north of some over priced thrift stores.

Going further south the atmosphere changed as the homeless were introduced into the setting with the backdrop of tattoo shops and discount music stores. Telegraph Avenue is also the location where Allen Ginsberg reportedly wrote Howl. I met June in the Caffe Medi-

terraneum, she was the barista and had a little to tell me about Allen Ginsberg, “Yeah he wrote the poem here, all those years ago. People come in all the time and ask about it, sometimes they don’t even buy anything, it gets a little annoying. He was a regular here and basically wrote the poem here, not much else to tell.” Our exchange was short and I made sure to buy a coffee before I left. I sat at the Café on my last day, watching the people of Telegraph Avenue pass by, just like Ginsberg did. I sat waiting for the same inspiration that hit Ginsberg; I had several thoughts, but none that I expected would turn out to be the next “Howl”. The smell of Columbian coffee beans wafted through the air tickling my nostrils. The sun faded as the clouds rolled in, I could smell the moisture in the air. It was the typical San Francisco change of weather.

I wasn’t really sure what I learned from the trip. I had so much new information

“Now

let me ask you a question,

what does it mean to actually be a

Beat?” about the Beats, about Ginsberg, about City Lights and about San Francisco. I learned about the people that started this movement and the people that still believe they are living it. I had hoped to be clearer on who I was by the end of the trip, but I think I only became more confused. I am still unsure about a lot of things pertaining to my identity, but what I did learn is that being a Beat is going on a journey. A Beat is a person that questions things and always wonders. The Beats challenged the norm. This is how Ginsberg lived his life.

I always have been a person that questions and wonders and I always will be. Maybe that does make me a Beat and maybe that makes me a little bit closer to Ginsberg.

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25

MONKS, MAIDENS, AND MAGIC

by Anthea Viragh

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Positivity, joy, and promise danced from stilt homes on Inle Lake to markets in Yangon to pagodas in Bagan. Aung San Suu Kyi, the most influential advocate for democracy, was recently freed from house arrest. With her chances of success in the upcoming elections, real change could transform Burma into a nation with stronger healthcare and education.

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30 Novice monks bathing in Inle Lake, Shan State, Myanmar

Palong tribe woman, Inle Lake

Rice farmer, Kyaukme

School girl, Yangon

Young girl

Novice Monk, Yangon

Resting

31 Longtail boat driver, Inle Lake

Proud grandmother, Kyaukme

Nun, Kalaw

Grandmother, Pyin Oo Lwin Novice monk, Yangon

32 Playful novice monks in Nyuang Shwe

Story of the Rana PHOTOS AND TEXT BY Jenny Johnston

- Garbage cans outside a rest stop on the road north of Otavalo.

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he white blanket of fog engulfs her surroundings, forming a canvas of misty, mysterious blankness. As the bus moves, the floating Merlin’s beard adjusts to the passing weight and reveals the trees floating like ghost ships, outlined as black prints on the canvas of white. The bus rattles and jerks over the invisible road.

She only hopes the driver is able to see.

She is on her way to a new adventure, one completely her own. The bumps and bounces send her into a state of sleepiness that she must fight off for fear of missing her destination.

“La escuelita de Santa Rosa” was all the email had said from her soon to be adviser, when he was describing the next month of her life.

She had been there before, but the last time the roads had been different. The weather had caused a landslide and thus a detour to the usual route. However strange the roads appeared, there soon became a familiarity to the twists and turns. She is no stranger to theoretical landslides and the changing weather of life causing “detours” to manifest themselves in her own experiences.

There will always be weather she can’t control and sometimes an entire landslide blocking the path. But she adjusts, decides on a new path, and continues forward. She closes her eyes, imagining the bus seat as more of a massage chair on haywire, avoiding the thought of the plunging mountainside less than an inch to the right of the bus wheel below her, and her mind begins to question.

She knows that she is prepared. She knows that there is a reason. And yet, she drifts into the corner of her mind that is engulfed with the anxiety and unjustifiable self-doubt that creeps up in the shape of fear before doing anything worthwhile.

She had been asked to come. They encouraged her with a faith and confidence that she sometimes doubted and failed to find in herself. Was it chance that she was the one who took a picture of the tiny frog on the path? That was, after all, the reason she had been asked to come; to further explore the

elusive cloud forest for tiny endangered and unique creatures. These discoveries could lead to the conservation of the land. They could be used as new weapons in the arsenal towards saving the forest forever, fighting the potential destructive inferno that could come if the land is not preserved in a legal manner.

Yet, she continues. Why had she stopped and taken that extra thirty seconds to make sure the camera was focused properly? Of all the photos taken, why was hers the best out of all the other students who took similar photos on their four hour hike through the reserve?

She blames it on the magic camera her sister generously lent her before embarking on the four-month search of this equatorial forest. It was an accident. Not intentional. Why did she feel like she was meant to take that photo? She felt like she had never boarded the cattle car the first time to leave and drive back to Otavalo.

Who is she? She wonders. Why her? She could be any nondescript, undecided, undeclared college student looking for a non-cliché sense of place.

View, frame, focus, click, snap.

Clarity.

She steps off the bus, off the road and onto the path about to walk the same trail she did a few months earlier. Backpacks strapped on front and back, this ninja turtle tourista breaths in deeply as the bus pulls down the road en route to Apuela. She has arrived. Almost. Ahead of her is the “easy 40 minute walk;” another note from the email. Yet, she does not blindly commence. She has clarity in a moment she thought would leave her empty and frightened. On past the big dipper, and straight on ‘til ‘morrow.

Roseary hanging on an exterior post of the house. Pueblo Nuevo.

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Roseary hanging on an exterior post of the house. Pueblo Nuevo.

For a girl lost in the clouds, she suddenly doesn’t feel so lost.

Constelaciones Siempre he tenido una afinidad con las estrellas. Las estrellas forman figuras en el cielo, un cielo que no es solamente una escena de oscuridad infinita. Durante toda mi vida, he podido ver las estrellas de noches. En las noches despejadas de verano, siempre observaba en el cielo y encontraba la Osa Mayor.

La Osa Mayor fue mi referente, mi voz cantante en los momentos escalofriantes cuando el miedo de la oscuridad se manifestaba. Con su gran brillo, siempre podía encontrar a mi amigo.

Aunque, no he sido que las constelaciones aquí son diferentes. Por meses ahora yo he tratado cada noche de buscar mi Osa Mayor, mi referente familiar de la noche. Sin

embargo, por meses ahora me he dormido sin lograrlo y sin comprensión porque no puedo encontrar las cosas más familiares de la oscuridad. Había estado tratando de traer mis comodidades de mi hogar aquí. Había querido trasplantarlas. Pero, una noche despejada durante mi estancia en las termas de Nangulvi una mujer de los Estados Unidos, quien estaba viajando por Ecuador con su familia por un mes, me dijo, “huh, that is funny. Why is Orion’s belt in the sky? That shouldn’t be in the southern hemisphere.” Qué curioso, ¿Por qué está la osa mayor en el cielo. No debe estar en el hemisfério sur?”

Claridad.

Finalmente. Durante meses he pensado que estaba haciendo algo malo, algo equivocado, cuando todo el tiempo fue solamente porque estaba buscando algo que no está aquí.

Había tratado de encontrar mis cosas conocidas en un cielo totalmente diferente, en un lugar totalmente diferente, en una experiencia totalmente diferente. Mi amiga en el cielo no fue la única cosa que había tratado de traer conmigo. Había esperado encontrar mis referentes en un mundo en donde me sentí ser una extranjera, en un mundo que necesité

un error. Aunque no tengo muchas cosas que me hacen sentir cómoda, yo tengo mi habilidad para adaptar, integrar, compartir y aprender. Viajar es aprender a sentirse cómoda en situaciones incómodas. Explorar es decir “sí” y vivir en el momento.

Crecer es caerse y levantarse de nuevo. En el proceso de caerme, descubrí una liberación en mi nuevo mundo. Hay libertad en un mundo en que todo es diferente y está esperando ser descubierto. Hay una libertad en el reconocimiento de una cultura diferente, en una interculturalidad, en una composición como un mosaico de una persona vieja y nueva al mismo tiempo.

A lo largo del camino yo me he caído, literalmente y figurativamente, y muchas veces en el barro resbaladizo de las calles y senderos. Sin embargo, siempre me levanté y siempre me levanté con algo diferente y nuevo. A veces, me levanté con una nueva lección o una perspectiva diferente pero siempre me levanté con una constelación diferente, en forma de las motas de barro diseminado y entrelazado en mis botas.

Saying goodbye to Hercules In the beginning, I didn’t think I was going to be able to say goodbye to my boots.

I still remember the search in Los Chillos for a size 42. Being born into a tall family and

Por meses ahora yo he tratado cada noche de buscar mi Osa Mayor, mi referente familiar de la noche crear nuevos referentes. Sin mi mapa brillante me había sentido un poco perdida y confundida. Pero ahora, entiendo. Ahora no estoy en búsqueda de algo que no existe aquí. Aquí no hay las mismas cosas que me van a hacer sentir cómoda. Necesito buscar y encontrar otras luces en el cielo oscuro, otros realces, otras formaciones, y otras constelaciones. No puedo trasplantar mis comodidades de mi vida vieja a aquí. Eso estaría hacer trampa, sería

thus endowed with larger feet, I was left in the hunt for the proper size long after my fellow more-average-height adventurers. I finally found two pairs: one plain black pair that fit perfectly, and one black pair with a sticker that read “HERCULES: HECHO EN ECUADOR.” The second pair fit fine, but not as well as the plain pair. However, for some 38 reason I loved the sticker and had to have the sticker. Choosing to forget the advice of

my directors, “make sure your boots are large enough and fit comfortably. You will be living in these boots,” I indulged my petty want for the sticker. And so my relationship with ‘Hercules’ began. Since then, the search for the boots seemed like nothing in comparison to the length of the journey I have had with them, or shall I say, him.

When I made the decision to conduct my ISP in Intag, I knew that my boots and I would become closer than ever. And, we did.

I wonder what stories they might tell if those boots could talk. I wouldn’t be doing them justice to try and describe the land they have trekked, the rivers they have crossed, and the patterns that have been speckled across them with each protected step directly into the mud. I never washed them. In my boots I was fearless, facing the unknown with courage. I never knew when the land would move, when a landslide would occur, when the path would change. I could never predict when stars would not light the sky, leaving my path obscure. With Hercules, I mounted the bus

tions. It is for using wisdom and goodness to overcome the physical strength of political powers. Development is a subjective word, and only through wisdom can it be understood. Development is not up to those of “noble blood” to define, and then use to exploit a land not their own. However, it is all too easy to feel that a great soul cannot overcome noble blood, physical strength, and political power. But, not for all the Hercules I met during my time in Junín. They all had come together as a community to resist the mining initiatives brought by the self-minded political powers. They had forced not one, but two foreign mining companies to leave their land with a simple rope across the road and a community behind it, relentless in their fraternal bond to their ancestral land. They, all real life Hercules, knew the trail was never going to be easy. It was never going to be clear or guaranteed. That is what made him great and forever remembered.

My last full day in Junín I woke up and immediately drew back the curtain. A smile

I mounted the bus to Otavalo to begin my personal study of ecotourism and even more importantly, my quest to join the mining resistance and fight for human rights. to Otavalo to begin my personal study of ecotourism and even more importantly, my quest to join the mining resistance and fight for human rights.

His great and glorious reputation was worldwide, and so firmly entrenched that he’ll always be remembered. But it was his wisdom and great soul that earned those honors; noble blood, physical strength, and political power just aren’t good enough.

Noble blood, physical strength, and political power aren’t good enough. They will never be good enough. A great and glorious reputation comes from wisdom and a great soul. It comes from understanding; eternally searching for both answers and more ques-

came to my face when I saw the sun streaming through the clouds. No rain meant that I was about to embark for my last adventure into the reserves of EcoJunín, to the sights of the contaminated wells that Bishi Metals, the first company to enter the region, left behind in the nineties. Boots waiting by the door, I put them on and was ready to make the eight-hour climb through what can only be described as quicksand. The day was perfect for one last date with Hercules. Photos were taken, waterfalls were frolicked in, and on the way home, the clouds covered the forest with the same mystical mist that made me fall in love the first time.

The next day I woke up very early in the

morning. I had had a moment of clarity amongst the clouds one last time. I wanted to wash my boots.

By cleaning away the mud mosaic I was not washing away my stories and adventures because I will always have them. I hoped to sneak out to wash them by myself, but somehow moms everywhere always know when you are trying to do something sneaky.

My hopeful solo ritual was now an activity for two. She took the left and I, the right. Water on and washed away was the mosaic, leaving a clean canvas for the next adventure.

My mom handed me both of the boots, and said that maybe if we left them in the sun they would dry before I had to leave. My moment of clarity had not only been about the marks the boots made on me, but about the mark the boots could make on another. My younger host brother, Jefferson, was deaf. Although I had thanked everyone in the family with my words, I had not yet found a way to thank Jefferson. I walked into the kitchen, Hercules in hand, and handed my boots to him.

He did not have his own pair as his feet, too, were of the larger variety. He could not say thank you but he did not need to. He and his family has welcomed me into their home, taken me in as a daughter of their own, and showed me a beauty and strength to life that I had never seen. No amount of audible thanks or gifts could ever match how appreciative I was. If anything, Jefferson’s silence was more powerful than any offering I could imagine. He did not need the boots to make

Caniste ermen

sions. M

him Hercules as they seemingly empowered me; he had been Hercules since the day he was born. Now he had the sticker.

Part of me will always be there, or shall I say here, as I sit in the warming afternoon Intag sun on some of my last days in Ecuador. There was a part of me that never left on my very first visit, and there is an even bigger part that will not leave now. And perhaps that part will forever live on in my silly ole rubber boots. They will always be remembered, and will continue to play a role in allowing the future generation of JunĂ­n continue their fight and sustain the courage that I learned so much from. It was for them that I gained wisdom, and will forever strive to have a good soul. It was for them that boots could become Hercules.

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BUZZARDS BAY AND THE SHOALS OF NANTUCKET

TEXT BY NICHOLAS DRAGONE

Parsons, Wm. Barclay, “Cape Cod Canal,” Annals of the American Academy of Polictical and Social Science 31 (1908).“The Opening of the Cape Cod Canal,” Bulletin of the American Geographic Society 46:11 (1914). Conway, J. North, The Cape Cod Canal: Breaking Through the Bared and Bended Arm (Charlston, SC: The History Press, 2008). Fisher, Susanna, “Knight, Sir John: naval officer and surveyor,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (London: Oxford University Press, 2004). Dear, I.C.B. and Kemp, P., The Oxford

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Companion to Ships and the Sea, second edition (London, Oxford University Press, 2005): 150

T

he arm of Cape Cod is surrounded by some of the most treacherous waters off of the coast of New England. Strong currents, prevalent fog, and dangerous shoals have claimed many ships attempting to sail north into Boston Harbor. From the middle of the 1600s to the late 1800s, over three thousand known shipwrecks occurred off of Cape Cod. Despite the dangers, the passage around Cape Cod has always been the most direct route between New York and Boston, making its mapping essential for expediting commercial shipping as well as for militaristic control over the area.

One of the earliest maps of this waterway was created in London in 1778 by Lieutenant John Knight, a officer and surveyor for the British Navy. Despite his naval background, Knight’s map, “Buzzards Bay and the Shoals of Nantucket,” is devoid of many features usually associated with navigational charts. While the coastline is relatively detailed, most likely to represent landscapes of the shore that could be useful for course plotting, rhumb lines, navigational routes, and even names of ports have been left off. Instead, in a combination of pencil and pen, Knight has drawn in dangerous shoals, written in fathom depths, and denoted typical wind patterns around the Bay. His data points follow penciled in lines that appear to indicate routes sailed by Knight. Frankly, the map is less than visually appealing. Knight’s markings are small and hard to read, and are haphazardly arranged. Furthermore, the colors blend together and pieces of land can be hard to distinguish from the water. In fact, on first glance this map does not appear to be an effective example of a navigational tool.

Despite how it may appear, the visual choices that Lieutenant Knight made while creating this map were not an indication of lack of skill, but instead of the specialization of its purpose. John Knight was not new to cartography. He was exposed to nautical surveying techniques while helping Joseph Fred-

erick Wallet Des Bares, a British mapmaker.

Several of these techniques were used to great effect in this work. To attain the general shape of the shoreline, Knight likely drew what he observed from his warship. In fact it is possible in many places to see where he drew, and then redrew coastlines as he gained more information. To attain water depth, Knight probably used a sounding line, either a chain or a rope.

It would have been lowered over the side of his ship until it hit the bottom. The line would then be measured to indicate the depth below the ship. These data points would have been easy to take quickly during a voyage or sea trial of a military ship, like the one Knight was stationed on at the time the map was made.

Since Lieutenant Knight’s map was created during the early years of the Revolutionary War, its omission of place names, ports of call, and navigational rhumb lines may further indicate its use for a more specialized form of navigation. Knight likely made it as a reference for identifying important hazards off of Cape Cod in order to make quick navigational choices. This map was probably not designed to be used by itself for long distance navigation. Instead it was most likely a reference for a skilled captain to use when they needed more specific “local knowledge” of the area. Knight’s condensed map gives enough information for a captain to understand where obstacles are located, but would not have taken as long as a navigational chart to interpret. His advanced knowledge of the area explains why he omitted all but the most important physical features of the waterway; he did not need them so he did not include them.

Throughout war, Lieutenant John Knight effectively used his knowledge of the passage around Cape Cod to help the British disrupt shipping to the port of Boston. While it is not known whether he used the maps he drew in his military campaigns, his skill as a sailor and his specialization on Massachusetts coastal waters is reflected in this detailed work of art.

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WE KEEP MOVING FORWARD TEXT BY ALI LEWIS

I

wasn’t surprised when Margot told me she couldn’t come to Père Lachaise. Sunday was a sacred day because it was completely detached from Monday until the evening, and she got to sleep until noon if she wanted. Then all afternoon there was time for the ironing and cleaning, even if she could never catch up, and time to sit at the table in the bright daylight and do nothing, play Coy Pond, and time to make paper flower chains to hang around the kitchen with Adélaïde, who was six and her fourth child. Sundays we stayed in pajamas and didn’t leave the apartment unless we had to, and I always remember the rooms being filled with light.

It was my last day in Paris, somehow. The grey months whipped by the wind in the 43

PHOTOS BY LILLIE HODGES streets and on the stairs into the metro had fallen away, and it was spring and the Jardin de Luxembourg was blooming giant Grecian pots of palm trees and pink geraniums. The tree with the tattered books hanging from its branches outside our apartment was blooming too, blooming purple, and I had emptied my white shelves into a suitcase and a giant duffle bag, which I would carry on my back to the Gare du Nord in the morning.

I wasn’t sad when Margot said she couldn’t come to Père Lachaise because I knew that she needed her Sundays. Before, I might have thought about how it was my last day, but I was learning not to be disappointed and to take things as they were, I think.

“Still it is very important that you go to Père Lachaise before you leave Paris.” Margot

said. “You can do it on your own; they have maps that they give you. It is a very special place for the French.” I nodded. “And there are Americans there too. There’s Jim Morrison, you know.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that.”

I went back to my room to get dressed and decide which books I could fit in my duffle and which I’d have to leave for the Guillaume’s. There were altogether too many books.

I looked up the metro route to Père Lachaise; it was forty minutes to the north. I played with my necklace and tried to decide if there was enough time to do that and to say a good goodbye to Léonie and Emma and Margot.

There was not enough time. I had run out of time. Then Margot rushed into my doorway in her white lace nightgown. I always wished I’d been able to tell her that she looked lovely in that deep décolleté, but she would complain about the two kilos she’d put on with the stress of the trials and everything going wrong for her children.

“Ali,” she said, “I’ve changed my mind. I’m going with you to Père Lachaise. Just give me a minute to get dressed, and we can go whenever you want to go.”

“Are you sure?” I said.

“Yes, of course. You just tell me when

Above: Parisian windows in Paris, France Across: Institut de France by Pont des Artes

you want to go.” She was heading back towards the kitchen. “You can bring your friend Emma if you want.” She called back. “We’ll take the convertible.” It was like a sacrifice to get dressed and go out the door for me on a Sunday. It was a pure kindness.

We had to push the green convertible hood to help it open, and Margot said she was sorry she hadn’t driven me through Paris with the top down like she promised.

“But we are now,” I said. “It’s beautiful.”

The city looked grand from the car; all the buildings got taller and everyone was turning towards you, and you did feel free—except when stuck in traffic—in the warm wind.

Margot always told us about the Marianne Faithfull song, “At the age of thirty-seven, she realized she’d never rideN through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair.”

She heard that song one day, twelve years ago, and felt that was the way her life was going, like some opportunity had passed her by.

“She could clean the house for hours or rearrange the flowers or run naked through the shady street screaming all the way.”

We reached the end of the Rue Broca and saw Emma running down to meet us in shorts and a long white sweater.

“I can get in the back.” I said.

“No, I want you next to me.” Margot said, and put her hand on my knee. Emma waved and smiled at us.

“Coucou Emma.” I called.

“You don’t mind taking the baby seat in the back?” said Margot.

“No, not at all.” she said. I got out and pushed the seat forward so she could crawl in.

“Have you been to Père Lachaise before, Emma?” asked Margot.

“No, never, if you can believe it.”

“Never? How long have you lived in Paris?”

“Just this year.” she said. “My family is in Ouistraham.”

“Ah, Ali told me. Well you will see,” Margot said, looking at me and then at Emma in the rearview mirror, “it’s not a normal cemetery. You don’t get the feeling of death. I used to walk Théodore in his stroller there on Saturdays when we lived in the eleventh.”

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“Théodore is your youngest?” said Emma.

“My oldest. He is in Brussels now doing architecture. Then it’s Félix, my most beautiful child, who is bit lost right now. And then Léonie, who you’ve met. We should introduce Emma to Félix, Ali, what do you think?”

“Oh I have a boyfriend.” said Emma, laughing.

As we drove north, the buildings became less uniformly white and grand, but the boulevards were lined with trees. We took the roundabout at Gambetta, and Margot pointed to the right towards Porte to Bagnolet.

“That’s where I am every morning of the week, Ali. Léonie can attest; it isn’t beautiful.”

We parked along the street and walked through the tall gates of Père Lachaise.

It was like entering a small city. The paths were wide and cobblestone and marked with blue street signs designating the sections by numbers and nationality. In place of gravestones, the French build monuments over their dead, raised stone tombs grown over with moss, sometimes stacked with statues—or sometimes rows of what look like little stone houses with wrought iron doors, which served, Margot said, as chapels to visit the deceased who were below. It was quiet in Père Lachaise, but not oppressively so. We visited Margot’s grandparents first, who had both won medals of honor for surgery in the war, and then Victor Noir, whose statue lay

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‘At the age of thirt-seven, she realized she had never riden through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair’ reclined over his tomb with his hat at his feet and his eyes closed, all green oxidized metal, except at the crotch of his pants, which was polished bronze.

“This is a favorite.” Margot smiled. “Women come to touch him, you see, when they want to get pregnant. I came here just before Félix was conceived.”

“We won’t touch him yet, I think,” I said.

We chatted as we wandered along the streets of the cemetery, under the green shade of the thin, tall trees, and our heels clicked on the cobblestones. We passed the Asian side, where tombs were covered with framed pictures and colorful garlands, and several Holocaust statues, and a park on a hill where families were picnicking and where you could look out over the living city.

We talked about how we each wanted to be buried. Emma and I wanted to be cremated; Margot couldn’t stand the idea of burning.

She knew exactly the song she wanted played

at her funeral—Schubert, maybe, I’ve forgotten. She sang part of it out for us, and Emma knew it. She’d told all her children that was the song she wanted, so they were prepared. I remembered my father once telling me where he wanted his ashes. Scattered over the wildflowers from some trail in the Rocky Mountains I think. I was young, and I wrote it on a sticky note so I could find it later.

“You must be entirely excited to be home, Ali.” said Margot.

“Yes, I guess I am.” I said. “I love it here though. I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“You’ll be back.” said Margot. “How much is a ticket to Europe? You work all year to save up for the ticket and then you stay with us for the summer and you don’t have to pay anything once you’re here… Maybe my life will change, I’ll fall in love with someone rich and we’ll visit you in America too.” If I were in America, I realized, I would have given her a hug right then. But we didn’t do that. “One day,” she said, “you’ll come with your fiancé to Paris, and he’ll want to take you to all the romantic places—the Pont des Arts, all that— but you’ll end up showing him around. I can’t wait for that.” she laughed.

We tried to find Proust’s tomb, but we got lost and gave up. That wasn’t really the point; it was about wandering. There was no organization once you got within the sections.

The tombs were so close together, they seemed

piled on top of one another at times. Some were crumbling under hundreds of years.

There were statues that were beautiful—a young lady smiling in her sleep, with flowers in her hand and her head resting on pillows— and others with gaunt, contorted faces, or hoods that made their faces dark. Emma was afraid when the stone was broken and you could look down into the space underneath.

Then she did grab my hand, but we kept chatting and looked up at the sun through the green leaves.

“You see, it isn’t a heavy place.” said Margot. A policeman came around ringing a bell and calling á la sortie. “Well, today it felt a little heavy, quand même, but mostly it feels light.” We walked past the great white mausoleum towards the exit. Small groups of people were emerging from all directions, joining the wide path up the hill to the gates. It was lovely to have made something so monumental out of the past, I thought. Paris was always doing that. A lot of young people think it’s too stuck remembering; they call it a ville musée, a ville figée. I don’t know. It is beautiful to walk in.

It was raining the next morning when I left on the train. I could see the Sacré Coeur from behind against the descending fog before the windows went dark as the train shot underground towards England.

Panoramic view from the Notre Dame

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Into the Wild

Photo Essay

Alix Bickson

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Photo Essay

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Photo Essay

Left: Amanda Wiggins Right: Andrew Catomeris

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Photo Essay

Clockwise from top left: Amanda Wiggins, Margaret Lindon, Emily Selch, Margaret Lindon 51

Photo

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The English Barn

Our Own Backyard TEXT BY EMMA CAMERON

E

PHOTOS BY PATRICK FREEMAN

ver since I was a little kid and told my mom I wanted to run away to Africa, I have been dreaming of faraway lands and trying to think of creative ways to get to them.

So far, I have been lucky to have many opportunities to satisfy my curiosity about the world, whether it’s encountering the fairytale beauty of Prague, the endangered giant turtles of the Galapagos or the intractable poverty of Uganda.

While these exotic seeming countries have always tugged at my imagination, I also spent most of middle school and high school harboring a burning desire to get to Middlebury, the college, that is. Now that I have been here for nearly two years, I realize that just beyond the magical world of our college, there is a place of beauty and nature and humanity that is as enriching as 34 53

any spot around the globe – the Champlain Valley. Right here, in our own backyard.

The landscape that surrounds us is absolutely stunning. In fact, I think a Middlebury fall should be listed as one of the natural wonders of the world! Driving up Route 7 to Burlington a few weeks ago, I stared in awe across rolling acres of fertile farmland to the sunset over Lake Champlain, the majestic Adirondack Mountains in the background.

Looking to the east, I drank in the vivacious autumnal colors that seemed to spread in every single direction over the now–red, orange and yellow Green Mountains. Every

Looking west from Snake Mountain over the town of Addison, VT.

time I climb Snake Mountain, with its plateaued top that lets you peak across the lake and sprawling farms into New York, I feel renewed by the breathtaking scene.

This beauty is intimated especially well in some of Robert Frost’s poems that I noticed while hiking the Interpretive Trail. He praises Vermont for “its stony and frugal soil, its sculptured, shimmering green glens bespeaking a timeless and mystical perfection, and its early winter melancholies.”

All this natural beauty invites us to explore I swam in an old granite quarry this fall, finding near daily rides after classes in September to Lake Dunmore or several breathtaking watering holes. I munched on the most crisp Macintosh –along with a few sugary cider donuts – during an afternoon of apple picking. I regularly run down to the

All this natural beauty invites us to explore. organic garden to watch the sunset, or later, star gaze. I kept my eyes out for wildlife, and although they may not be as exotic as giant turtles or black rhinos, the farm animals and deer and local birds connect me to nature.

Even though I now recognize the natural beauty of Vermont, it took me a while to really appreciate the life right in front of me.

At Middlebury, around 60% of students (myself included) travel abroad. In an article in Middlebury Magazine, College President Ron Leibowitz remarked, “a large percentage of our courses 54

Clockwise from top right: trees burst into color in Ripton, VT; the sun sets near the Middlebury College Organic Farm; nighttime on Middlebury’s Ross Commons following a snowstorm; apple cider-to-be at Happy Valley Orchard in Middlebury.

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are informed by the realization that we are living in a globalized, interconnected world.

This generation of students has no choice but to engage in this world while at Middlebury and after graduating.�

I would not want that important message to be interpreted solely as a push toward action in other parts of the world. I would not want the international focus to take away from the interconnectedness that links the community of Middlebury College with the town of Middlebury and with the greater population of Vermont and the subtle nuances of what is here.

But now that I have opened my eyes, I cannot get enough of the things that are unique to my experience in rural Vermont. I sampled moose and buffalo meat for the first time at the Chili festival last March, where I stuffed myself with about 32 different types

of chili. I embraced my first New England winter and found that though every cell in my body was pulsating from the cold, winter here is beautiful. When there is snow here, it is surreal. When there is not, I look for a cozy spot to read and have a hot chocolate.

When here,

there is snow it

is

surreal.

By springtime, simply sitting in an Adirondack chair on Battell Beach enjoying a few peaceful moments before scurrying off to the library is special to my world here.

So, continue exploring the world. I know I will. Just be sure to allow yourself space to step back and appreciate the magical beauty that sits in your own backyard.

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Editors-in-Chief Alexandria Jackman

Senior Editors Andrew Catomeris Cate Stanton Patrick Freeman Anthea von Viragh Lillie Hodges Emily Selch

Emma Cameron Editors Mariana Candela Jack Delano Olivia Heffernan Julia Kendrick

Photo and Art Contributors Alix Bickson Madelaine Hack Olivia Heffernan Liza Herzon Hanah Kahn

Maddy Lawler Margaret Lindon Hannah Peters Cori West Amanda Wiggins

Advisors Jeff Howarth, Geography

Riceman, Alix Bickson (Photo on previous page: Liza Herzog)

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Leslie Panella Georgia Wei

JOIN THE ADVENTURE If you are interested in submitting writing or photography to Middlebury ­Geographic or in being part of the magazine’s editing team, please contact us at mg@middlebury.edu.

Every issue of Middlebury Geographic is available at go.middlebury.edu/mg.

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Middlebury Geographic Fall 2013