THE KNIFE RIVER AFFAIR
Integrated Pest Management is one of those very important "behind the scenery" or literally, "behind the wood work" services that makes the National Park Service a success.
You see, there is no such thing as stasis in organic objects. Mother Nature is a bear when it comes to recycling. She wants to move all those biodegradable things (including you and I) back into the food chain as quickly as possible after we recyclables have completed our reproductive cycle.
Normally, this is all well and good or we would be up to our elbows in leaves, tree branches, and the corpses of our dear departed ancestors.
However, every so often there is something we want to hang onto. We become most upset when moth larvae start munching on the original "Star Spangled Banner" or carpenter ants start making a meal of Abe Lincoln's log cabin.
This is where the Integrated Pest Management people come in to save the day and the artifact.
This is even true when the "artifact" is a reproduction.
Now neighbors, when the NPS is gifted with an historic site by Congress, with the stern proviso that the events, people and causes that prevailed at that particular site and moment in time be commemorated for all eternity, the poor old NPS often has a problem: There is nothing there.
The Park Service is sort of presented with the problem of the Emperor who had no clothes. The taxpayer is asked to look out over a patch of grassy or wooded ground, cluttered with statues or plaques, and imagine that something happened there. All too often, the taxpayers imagination was drawn to the idea that he/she was maintaining a group of government bureaucrats for no discernable purpose.
Fortunately, the NPS is prickly with imagination. The problem of corpseless battlefields were solved as an interpretive problem with the addition of reenactors in period costumes and plenty of black powder to provide noise, smoke, and smell, plus verbal discussion on the part of the reenactors. The taxpayers leave happy.
Historical and archeological structures presented a different problem. Often, as noted, the original were not there, as people who make history are often indifferent to historical preservation.
Such was the case at Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site in southern Colorado.
Bent's Old Fort was an almost legendary fur trading post near the edge of the Southern Rockies, an adobe walled fortress rearing up out of the endless plains. As historic, dramatic and romantic as the Fort was, the owners had no sense of history and blew it up when the U.S Army could not meet the asking price for the facility.
Thus, when the piles of eroding mud became Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site more than a century later, the NPS had to rebuild the fort. Should we be sticklers for historical accuracy and rebuild with adobe? That would be an interesting idea, but the park and the region would be hit with not only an astronomical construction bill (Adobe is labor intensive), but also an astronomical yearly maintenance bill (Adobe tends to, well, melt away, unless assiduously maintained).
It was decided, and I think correctly, that the congressional mandate was not to demonstrate adobe construction, but to explain the life and times of the Southern Rockies fur trade at this crossroads hub and the colorful lifestyle and characters within.
With that goal firmly in mind, there was no problem in recreating the fort to the exact dimensions but with cinder block to replicate the adobe and earth colored cement stucco sprayed over the cinder blocks to replicate the adobe plaster. The result was a virtually maintenance free fort to serve as a handsome backdrop to the museum collection and the interpretive program. (Mr. Bent would undoubtably used the Denver Service Center to build the original had it been available during his era).
With Bent's Old Fort and other precedents behind it, the NPS and the Denver Service Center saw no problem when Congress established Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site in North Dakota.
Knife River is an archeological-historic site that celebrates the culture of three northern plains agricultural tribes before and just at the point of European contact.
According to the park brochure:
" The Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara tribes shared a culture superbly adapted to the conditions of the upper Missouri Valley. Their summer villages, located on natural terraces above the river were ordered communities as large as 120 lodges. These spacious structures sheltered from families of 10 to 30 people from the region's extreme temperatures....Agriculture was the economic foundation of the Knife River People who harvested much of their food from the rich flood plain gardens ...They raised squash, pumpkin, beans, sunflowers, and most importantly, tough, quick maturing varieties of corn that thrived in the meager rainfall and short growing season....The roles of the sexes were strictly defined. Men spent their time seeking spiritual knowledge or hunting, or horse raiding. Difficult and dangerous, but relatively infrequent undertaking. Women performed virtually all of the regular work, gardening, preparing food, maintaining the lodges, and until the tribes obtained horses, carrying the burdens."
Now neighbors, it is only fair to note that among us Europeans, until very recently , the guys did all communing with God and the requisite Deep thinking, while the gals did most of the heavy lifting and boring stuff.
Due to its strategic location, the Knife River Villages were a trade entrepot. The Knife River tribes had an agricultural surplus to trade with the Buffalo Indians and often acted as middlemen for Eastern and Western Tribes as well as the European traders who were beginning to enter the area in the 18th century.
They traded copper from the Great Lakes, shells from the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Northwest, guns from France, horses from anywhere, beads from Italy; in short, they were the K-MART of the Northern Plains (Attention, Knife River Village Shoppers! We have a special on obsidian blades from the Columbia River Basin!")
Almost as important as the trade goods was that other commodity that was always possessed by trading peoples: Information.
Where were the buffalo this year? What tribes were hostile and with whom? What white traders were operating and from what countries? What was the going rate for a beaver plew or a buffalo robe? Was there smallpox? Would the river flow be high this year? All sorts of practical questions and answers and just plain gossip was exchanged by all interested parties.
Since the Knife River Villages were such a crossroads (and the girls were famously pretty) trappers, explorers, missionaries, and just plain tourists dropped in. The villages were visited by gentlemen sportsmen such as Prince Maximilian of Wied, who brought along his court painter Karl Bodmer, another soon to be famous painter. George Catlin followed. Lewis & Clark visited in 1804, following the 1797 visit by perhaps the greatest of the contemporary explorers, David Thompson.
All these people, great and small, traded things, lost things. dropped things and threw things away. Archaeologists love this very human habit. No recycling program for them! They want abandoned dwellings and messy garbage middens, the more the better! The major archeological work at Knife River Villages was conducted by Dr. Stanley Alter of the University of North Dakota from 1976 to 1983 who investigated the sites of some 50 earth lodges that spanned some 500 years of human habitation, but were now barely discernable depressions in the ground. Dr. Alter and his graduate students found some 150,000 pottery shards and 5400 stone tools.
That's nice, but unless you're excavating a classical archeological site like an Egyptian tomb, a Greek theater, or a Mayan temple, your archeological excavation is going to resemble the ditches dug for sewer lines in the latest New Jersey housing development and be just about as interesting to the taxpayer.
So, if Knife River Villages National Historic Site was going to go anywhere, the National Park Service was going to have to put up some replica earth lodges so that Living History could be performed and the park interpreters would at least have something to point at.
Enter the Denver Service Center, and eventually, Integrated Pest Management.
You see, the Denver Service Center made a few mistakes in recreating the Earth Lodges.
Now before you say that the Denver Service Center is ALWAYS making mistakes, let me tell you that you or I would have made exactly the same mistakes had we been working under the same budgetary and time constraints as the Denver Service Center.
First of all, the Denver Service Center was the victim of Ironic bad luck. Ironic bad luck?
Yes, it seems the Army Corps of Engineers had dammed virtually the entire Northern Missouri Valley, creating a series of vast lakes and sterile lake shores over what was the flood plain of the Missouri. Not only has the Corps of Engineers changed the biological ecology of the Valley, they have also changed the historical ecology.
In order for the Knife River Peoples to build their earth lodges, they needed big cottonwood logs from the flood plain of the Knife River, a tributary of the nearby Missouri. This was no problem as long as there were no dams and reservoirs, there were plenty of big cottonwoods in the bottomlands. Naturally, when the waters of Lake Oahe backed up into the Knife River bottomlands, all the Cottonwoods died.
Undoubtably, there were cottonwoods on the upper Knife river or on the upper reaches of other North Dakota rivers, but remember, the Denver Service Center had time and budgetary problems. They had to get the earth lodges up and running as soon and as cheaply as possible. As in the case of Bent's Old Fort, some historical authenticity would have to be sacrificed.
So, rather than using cottonwood logs, it was decided to ship in Douglas Fir logs from Montana, a species exotic to the Dakota plains. A small mistake. It was decided not to debark the trees. Another small mistake. However, just to be on the safe side, it was decided to fumigate the logs with borate in case the logs had any pests (They did) Now borate is a good insecticide, but it doesn't work on trees that are reclusive, that is, whose tissue seal up after being cut. Douglas Fir is a reclusive species (Any insect eggs under the bark would be quite safe from the borate. Bad Luck!)
Finally, as in the case with Bent's Old Fort, in order to keep maintenance costs down, it would be necessary to modify the original Indian design. The layer of willow branches and earth was O.K. but in order to make the roof last (remember, we didn't have those Indian ladies constantly doing maintenance) Denver Service Center installed a rubber and plastic vapor barrier, which seemed to work fine. The barrier was out of sight and everything looked authentic, particularly the huge log roof supports (One would have thought people might have commented on the conifer tree bark; the Mandan were great traders, but not THAT great!) Unfortunately, the plastic and rubber vapor barrier set up almost perfect environmental conditions for the hatching and prosperity of powder post beetle eggs under the bark of the Douglas Fir logs
Anyways, all went well for a time. Park patrons would enter the smokey, dimly lit ceremonial earth lodge and have a religious epiphany. (This was particularly true of post Christian Europeans who have a thing about North American Indian culture)
Hidatsa Medicine men put on ceremonies. Park interpreters explained the First People's Oneness with Nature and the Land and all was well.
Then the powder post beetles started coming out of the roof supports. They were just as confused as anyone one else at being in North Dakota rather than Montana and started dropping off the Douglas Fir beams. They landed on the tax payers below. They got in hair and they got under collars. (I have it on good authority that it is impossible to have a religious experience if you have a powder post beetle in your bra.)
Now powder post beetles are harmless to humans, but that is difficult to explain to the park patron who is clawing at them and completely disregarding the ranger's talk. Moreover, the powder post beetles are exotic and were not part of the scene when the Mandans and others were living in the lodges.
Now in the pre-Rachel Carson, pre Integrated Pest Management days, the Chief of Maintenance would have gotten a pressurized tank of BLACK DEATH insecticide ("Takes no prisoners!" or some other broad spectrum biocide -- you and I included) and hosed the place down. The maintenance staff and some of the tax payers might be chronically ill for some time, but that's progress.
Nowadays, things are different. The idea of Integrated Pest Management is to defuse, deter, or inhibit the pest with as little modification or damage to other species (including you and I) and the environment as is possible.
Rather than using a chemical weapon first, the idea is to first find out as much about the problem as possible (Not a bad plan for any problem!) then strike at the pest at its weakest point. This might mean using biological controls (insect or bacterial specific to the pest), environmental control (changing the environment by removing a food source, preventing entry,) and so on. Chemical control is a last resort, and is as pest specific and short term biodegradable as is possible.
Knife River superintendent Lisa Eckert and her staff conferred with IPM coordinator, Carol DiSalvo from the Washington Office.
In the case of the Knife River Village Earth Lodge, the powder post beetles had a weak point that could be exploited. Coming from the Rockies, they were virtually immune to cold, but they were exquisitely sensitive to temperatures above 140 degrees for at least 8 hours. As they were exotic and there were no conifers nearby that they could colonize and reinfect, if this one colony were killed off, this would effectively end the problem.
A company was hired, huge plastic tarps were placed on the roof and portable heaters were placed in the earth lodge. The temperature was brought up to the requisite 140_degrees
The powder post beetles were eliminated at no cost to the environment and a valuable interpretive tool was saved (As well as an increasingly important cultural resource and source of pride to the nearby Native American descendants of the Knife River Village Peoples.)
So, thanks to the new philosophy of IPM, we are learning to live in the fabric of our environment, removing the intruder without destroying the blanket.
FLIGHT TO MEXICO
In the 1930's and '40's, travel by air was new, exciting, and, for the average citizen, a rare event. Along with " new and exciting", it was also sort of creepy. You hung suspended in the air, higher than most mountains, and you went very fast, three times as fast as a steam locomotive, and then you were there, half way across the continent, often in a single day. Kind of scary when you thought about it.
For this rare and mysterious event, the average citizen would tell friends and relatives that they were going to fly to Los Angeles. Not that they were merely going to Los Angeles, but they were FLYING to Los Angeles, as if they had suddenly sprouted wing and tail feathers. Friends and relatives would accompany them to the airport, not just to drop them off as we do today, but to participate vicariously in the adventure by going out on the tarmac and waving farewell. (In the prop-rotary engine days of aviation, there was always the unspoken fear that the farewell might be permanent. That fear was not without foundation. There was a statistically viable chance that the plane would not make it, and, unlike train wrecks, there would be no survivors. This hint of danger added spice to the romance of air travel.
Over the years, planes and pilots have improved to the degree that air travel is safer than bus travel (and about as interesting.) This has changed as of September 11. Thanks to Mr. Bin Laden, air travel is once again an adventure.
Joan and I had purchased our tickets to Mexico City long before September 11. We saw no reason to change our scheduled departure date of September 28 as Joan had pressing business in Mexico.
We would be leaving out of Dulles International Airport; the origin of the flight that had gone into the Pentagon 17 days previously.
We had been advised by the airline representatives that we should be at the airport three hours before departure for an (understandably) thorough security check.
That we did. Dulles International Airport was very quiet, very much like Thanksgiving or Christmas Day. We dutifully dragged our bags to the ticket counter where the check in lady asked us the usual questions about "Whether we had been given anything by a stranger or had let the bags out of our sight" with considerable interest.
Security check was a bit of a letdown. We had expected a state of the art search and heavy questioning as why we wanted to board a fully fueled jet and did we harbor any ulterior motives or belong to any race or religion that did.
On the contrary, the security check went smoother than pre September 11, mainly do to the paucity of passengers and plentitude of security staff. I was sort of disappointed.
Once in the departure lounge, everyone furtively started to size up the other passengers, looking for possible signs of crazed terrorist intent, sort of like characters in an Agatha Christie novel.
Suspicion immediately fell on two of our fellow passengers. He was wearing a black beard and a blue turban and was dressed in some kind of Third World jacket and pajamas, while his wife wore pantaloons and a wrap around blouse that seemed to wind up as a head scarf.
They were smiling reassuringly and enthusiastically every time someone made eye contact with them, as if to say "Nope, we aren't one of those folks!"
Indeed they were not. As it turned out, they were Sikhs, one of the truculent faiths originating on the Indian subcontinent, where they take their religions seriously.
Sikhism is really, definitely, never ever to be confused with Islam or Hinduism, though it contains elements of both.
Sikhism was founded in the 15th century in what is now Pakistan by an accountant chap by the name of Nanak. At that time, Northern India was the battleground of two major religions, Islam and Hinduism. Although Nanak's family was Hindu, his father was something of a liberal who saw to it that Nanak was made familiar with the beliefs of the Moslems as well as his own religion.
Nanak got an accounting position with an Afghan chieftain and employed a Moslem servant, Mardana, who played the rebec, a stringed instrument very much like a violin. Somehow, Nanak got the idea that if peoples of different religions made music together and ate together they would not make war on each other. (As you can see, Nanak was sort of a proto John Lennon or Bob Dylan) Anyways, Nanak composed songs and his Moslem friend played them on the rebec. They also set up canteens where the Moslems and Hindus could listen to the music and eat together and discuss World Peace and Brotherhood. Normally, Nanak and Mardana would have been off to Southern California and a juicy contract, but this was the 15th century and Southern California hadn't been invented yet.
One day Nanak went swimming in a local river, and as the NPS Morning Report often states, "His friends lost sight of him and he disappeared from view". However, three days later, he showed up and said that he had been talking to God and God had told him to preach to all Mankind. What he preached was sort of an amalgam of Islam and Hinduism. He took the Monotheistic God from the Moslems and some of the fun things from the Hindus such as the festivals and dropped the mean things like the caste system which was a kind of sociological enslavement with a touch of racism (The darker skinned guys got the nastierjobs) Naturally, these ideas were popular with quite a few people.
Nanak made the statement that "There is no Hindu, there is no Moslem" Now, neighbors, the problem with establishing a religion is that some of your faithful are going to take you literally. (No Hindus! No Moslems! Hmmm! Great idea! Let's kill the SOB's) The Hindus and the Moslems, the other hand, assumed that the new religion was coming to get them. Naturally, what Nanak really meant was that standing before God, no one was a Moslem, Hindu, Christian or whatever, merely a person to be judged on his/her merits. Unfortunately, people tend to simplify when the adrenaline is up and the sword is in the hand.
So, sandwiched between two militant religions, neither of which are theological shrinking violets, Sikhism ("Sikh" means "disciple", became a warrior religion for sheer survival. Nanek traveled his world, preaching his gospel of World Brotherhood, going as far north as Tibet and as far south as Ceylon. Unfortunately, nobody much listened as the faith was sort of based on healing the friction between Islam and Hinduism and where you didn't have that problem, what was the point? So Sikhism was pretty much confined to the Punjab region of North India.
The clever British, using divide and conquer tactics, found in the Sikhs just what the Empire ordered when it came to co-conspirators in taking over the Indian subcontinent from the Hindu and Moslem population. Indeed, had the Sikhs not stood with the British during the Great Indian Mutiny of 1857 when both the Hindus and Moslem troops rose against the British, the history of India and perhaps the world, would be quite different.
Due to their hard work, passion for detail and organization and respect and love of education, the Sikhs, like the Jews and the Mormons, have power and influence far beyond their numbers. Although their faith never caught on as a world religion, the Sikhs have migrated from Punjab to every corner of the world that encourages small businesses. (If you are a member of Lions International, sooner or later, no matter how small your town, you will be meeting affable, smiling Mr.Singh, because singh means "lion" in Punjabi and every Sikh has "singh" as his last name (The warrior tradition, remember) and so just about every Sikh businessman joins Lions International, and being gregarious, they like to drop in on their fellow "lions" throughout the world).
Like Lions International, the Sikhs are community and service oriented, providing charity and help to the less fortunate, including those outside their own faith, enriching any community in which they settle.
In truth, it was a relief to have them on board. In the event of an untoward incident on our flight, the Sikhs could be counted on to be on the right side of justice.
We began to board. Everyone was polite, but subdued. This would be no place for a flippant remark that could be construed as a terrorist threat. The plane would be a little more than half full. Clearly, not everyone had heeded the President's plea to keep traveling and doing what comes naturally.
This had its advantages. Namely space: something that had been missing in the coach section of commercial aircraft for nearly two decades. No longer was there need to frantically get your carry-on into the overhead bin before your neighbors stuffed it to the hinges. You could now put your grand piano into the spare empty bins if you had time to disassemble it. You could go to an empty row and turn it into a bed. The cabin crew would have more time to tend to your needs (International flights usually supply free wine; the drawback on a crowded flight is flagging down a refill without seeming like a raving alcoholic)
There was of course, the disadvantage of the reason for this space; the back of the brain fear of the possible that had kept the other half of the passengers off this normally full flight. We dutifully put seat back in full upright position and fastened seat belts. I rather expected a stirring, Pattonesque call to arms from the Captain as to what the passengers should do in the event of an attempted take over. Surprisingly, there was nothing beyond the usual safety message. It was as if September 11th had mercifully never happened. Odd. One would think the Captain would like us to take an interest in the proceedings. Perhaps we were supposed to improvise.
We would be flying non stop to Mexico City and thus would have a full load of jet fuel, a tempting ticket to paradise for anyone who wanted to park the plane in the Oval Office. The first few minutes of light would be critical. Paranoia reigned supreme. I kept a finger on the seat belt release. If that silver haired old lady in the seat ahead suddenly yelled "Allah Akbar!" and started for the cockpit, I was prepared to tackle her.
Of course, nothing happened.
The jet rose quickly to its assigned 30,000 feet and headed Southwest toward Mexico. I settled down to my normal flight pastime of reading. Hours passed. Unless the terrorist goal was that center of Western European civilization, Lubbock, Texas, we were off the hook, terror-wise.
I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Joan (We normally take aisle seats across from each other). She wanted to talk, quietly. We leaned across the aisle and she whispered in my ear.
"The passenger in the window seat behind me is insane. He is sitting beside the emergency escape hatch. If he tries to open the hatch, you had better jump him." After imparting this bit of information and suggestion, Joan went back to her reading. (Joan is very good at imparting hair-raising information in a quiet non-judgmental manner. I recalled a trip though the wild and desolate mountains of Western Turkey at two in the morning with a driver we did not know, and having Joan tell me in sotto voice that the driver had removed a semi-automatic pistol from under the dashboard and slipped it into his waistband, regarding this fact as "something I might be interested in.")
I cast what I hoped would appear as a casual glance at the passenger in question. He was definitely crazy (or to use the less pejorative terminology of our time, he was "situationally behaviorally challenged"). He was giggling, grimacing, talking to himself, rolling his eyes, and shaking his head.
In short, he was behaving like a normal New York subway crazy, but at 30,000 feet, it was a somewhat disconcerting performance.
I looked for probable cause: cell phone or Walkman usage. (Cell phones or Walkmans have changed what appeared to be aberrant behavior on public transportation) A few years ago, if you were riding on public transportation and the person next to you suddenly shouted "IT'S TIME TO SETTLE ALL ACCOUNTS!" or some other apocalyptic statement, you had the sinking feeling that the person might haul a sawed off shotgun from under his coat and start blasting his fellow passengers. Today, it simply is a businessman communicating by cell phone to his accountant (though why everyone has to yell on a cell phone is beyond me.) Similarly, if someone in the seat opposite you looks like they're conducting an unseen orchestra and their lips are moving like they're talking to God, they are not dangerous, they are simply listening to their Walkman.
Unfortunately, there was no evidence of a cell phone or a Walkman. The guy was definitely marching to his own drummer or demon.
I had planned on a middle eastern terrorist. I had not planned on a run of the metro, garden variety, all-American crazy. How serious was the situation? Like a stroke? Something in between? There was, after all, no prohibition on creative ways of passing time in an airplane as long as you didn't bother anyone else. I imagine one's right to jabber, mumble, gesticulate, and roll one's eyeballs are all protected under the First Amendment. (Congress shall make no laws prohibiting the right to drool")
So what to do? I could call the flight attendant and explain the situation to her (At the moment, the man was quiescent) She could then go to the passenger and explain that two of his fellow passengers, though not mental health professionals, had just voted him the plane's leading lunatic and would he move to a seat away from the emergency escape hatch?
This might cause more legal trouble than I was prepared to carry at the moment.
On the other hand, I could hardly sit staring at him the rest of the flight or HE might call the flight attendant! The only way to keep an eye on him was to engage him in conversation.
I am not a gifted small-talker. (Joan can extract a life story and a promise to lead a better life in the future from a complete stranger in five minutes flat!)
I had no choice but to try.
"Going to Mexico?" I inquired. (O.K, since it was a non stop flight to Mexico City, it was a pretty lame question, unless he had a bomb in his carry-on.)
"Yes." he replied, unequivocally.
"Your first visit?" I asked, brightly.
"No." he responded. (The guy was not exactly challenging the World Wide Web as a font of information, but he was at least no longer in touch with his inner demon and I could watch him politely.)
"How do you like Mexican food?" (Good non-controversial question, unless he was an anti-cheese fanatic)
My new friend said it was different from American food. It transpired that he thought Mexican food was different from Tex-Mex food you got in the United States.
I heartily disagree (Though I didn't let on) Tex-Mex is a continent conquering cuisine. From somewhere in Colorado and all the way south to the states of Chiapas and Quintana Roo, Tex-Mex has flattened every regional cuisine like a D9 cat. Guidebooks make a big fuss about "exotic Mexican regional cuisine", but fried maguay worms and baked ant eggs are basically tourist food and you will pay through the plastic for the opportunity to sample them. The average Jose Blow Mexican working stiff eats the same Tex-Mex you are familiar with. You could swipe a menu from a Mexican restaurant in, say, Durango, Colorado and use it to order your meals all the way down to Tapachula on the Guatemalan border without the threat of encountering the exotic or strange. With the exception of Bud and Coors, even the beers will be the same.
"Have you been to Acapulco?" I asked, changing tack from food to resorts.
The prospective mental patient allowed as how he hadn't.
"Hmm", I said brightly. "I've heard nice things about Acapulco." (Actually, I've heard some fairly bad things about Mexico's West Coast resort in that Acapulco now placed a seedy second to bright, shiny new Cancun on the Caribbean, with an unfortunate increase in crime.) Not having been there, my new friend refused to take a stand on Acapulco one way or the other.
And so it went. I found that it wasn't necessary to watch our man constantly, but just sort of drop in on him from time to time.
Every so often, when it came time to check on his proximity to the escape hatch handle, I would check in with an observation on the probable weather in Mexico City.
"You know, even though we're more than a thousand miles south of Washington, DC", I said brightly, "It's probably a bit cooler in Mexico City. That's because Mexico City is over 7,000 feet higher than DC." I concluded, ingeniously (By now, the chap had probably concluded that I was either the world's biggest bore or that I was a possible psychiatric threat, but as I've said, I'm not very good at small talk.
We were saved from further banalities by our arrival in the Federal District airspace.
Mexico City is unique in that it has one of the world's most spectacular natural sights, an 17,781 active volcano with the world's largest city at its feet. To approach the Mountain and the City by air at dusk is to gain the feeling that God really enjoys huge, flamboyant volcanos and huge, flamboyant cities.
Popocatepetl does not so much dominate as complement the vast carpet of diamond points of light that is the City below it. Although night has come to Mexico City, there is still alpine glow on the upper slopes of Popo. The steam cloud coming from the crater is a vast golden curl of angel's hair and the snow on the north slope reflects back a copper red salute to the end of the day.
At night from the air, Mexico City seems to fill the Valley of Mexico. "Seems to" is getting to be an actuality. The City is roughly 25 miles wide (North to South and about 15 miles wide east and west. It has between 18 and 20 million people, making it the largest city in the world, according to some, (but not all) standard references. It is more densely populated than Paris or London, but less so than Hong Kong or Calcutta.
Now is it a good idea for the environment and the population to pack so many people into such a small area?
Probably.
Natural environments seems to thrive in inverse proportion to the number of people trying to make a living in them. Huge cities are a great place to park people if you want to save potential park land and natural areas.
Fortunately, most major cities are located on sites that are sort of zilch from an aesthetic or even an environmental angle. Few but the most fanatical luddites would claim that the World lost something priceless when the sites presently occupied by Chicago, Berlin,Shanghai, Moscow, London, Paris, and Dallas-Fort Worth were developed. A case can be made that perhaps the sites of present day Rio De Janeiro, San Francisco, Sydney, Hong Kong and Capetown might have been better served as national parks rather than as urban areas. However, even in these gem-like natural settings, the buildings, bridges and other infrastructures seem to complement the natural grandeur of the site.
So, did we lose anything by putting Mexico City where it is?
Probably not. The main pre-settlement feature of the site was a shallow, slightly saline lake that occupied much of the surface of the bowl shaped valley. This was of great importance if you were migratory waterfowl, but ecology-wise, no great shakes compared to Ngorongoro Crater in East Africa.
But is it a good idea of have a great clump of human beings living together in one relatively tiny place like the Valley of Mexico? Isn't it unnatural? Doesn't such crowding divorce Man from Nature? as Friend of the Earth, David Brower used to say?
Well, yes. Thank God!
And, as the American philosopher, PJ O'Rourke would say, the quicker the divorce papers between us and Mother Nature are filed and finalized, the better it will be for both Mother Nature and ourselves as we will both have visitation rights to planet earth and can stop bitching at each other.
O'Rourke points out that humans are pathetically, hilariously ill-equipped for life in Nature. As proof, he suggests that after your morning shower, that you not dress for work, but simply dash outside in the altogether, leaping over the hedge, rolling around in your neighbor's rose garden, climb the trees and happily brachiate through the neighborhood, experiencing Nature as she was meant to be (Editor's note: This experiment should only be attempted in Berkeley or Marin County, California due to insensitivity on the part of the police in other jurisdictions) O'Rourke suggests that the experiment be conducted winter as well as summer, so that one gets the full effect of the climate on one's, um, extremities. This experiment, according to O'Rourke, would draw attention to Mother Nature's failure to equip us with a fur coat and hooves at birth.
This failure on the part of Mother Nature has led us humans to improvise, something that we are very, very good at. This ability to think,act and improvise outside of Nature's box has led us away from hunting and gathering as a way of making a living.
One beneficial side effect is that the stuff that was hunted and gathered can be left alone and (b) you don't need as much land to support a rather large population and (c) If you are wise and sensitive, you put your human development on land that is initially unattractive and ecologically impoverished, spending money to sculpt it to your needs and saving the beautiful and ecologically diverse for the enjoyment of all, including our four and six legged brethren and their chlorophyll-toting neighbors.
So, do we usually do "wise and sensitive?" Not usually, but occasionally we luck out. Along with the huge 20 million population, the Valley of Mexico also sports two huge national parks, Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl with forested slopes and wildlife, plus a surprisingly extensive (and beautiful) pine forest that surrounds the city.
Naturally, these parks and forests would not exist if the local folks were restricted to some sort of subsistence living off the land. Fortunately, the development and expansion of Mexico City tended to be on the dry lake bed, because the land was (a) flat and (b) cheap rather than into the surrounding hills and mountains. As dry lake beds are pretty marginal as to both scenery and species diversity, the people of Mexico City lucked out through geographical happenstance. The Los Angeles Basin should have been so lucky.
Actually, folks like Edward Abbey, David Brower, and John Muir who regularly panned big cities were a bit hypocritical as they certainly liked to live in or near them. "Cactus Ed" Abbey always gave his address as "Wolf Hole, Arizona" in his books, leading the credulous to assume that he lived in the remote cross road of that name in the rugged country north of the Grand Canyon. Actually, he lived on the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona, a true suburbanite, albeit without the lawn. David Brower lived in the hills of Berkeley, California, more the habitat of endangered Republicans rather than the four footed or feathered endangered species. John Muir had his own railroad station, Muir Station at his farm which allowed him to take the short rail and ferry journey into San Francisco at his leisure. These sensible folk, like you and I, preferred Nature in manageable bites and not all the time.
We were beginning the final approach to Mexico City Airport.
Mexico City International Airport resembles the airports of New York City in that they are all placed in the middle of the town.
This is convenient if your final destination is Mexico City or New York City. It is not so convenient if you have to access the airport though downtown traffic and it is disastrously inconvenient to the city folks below if the tail happens to come off your plane.
With this in mind, there is a plan to move the Mexico City airport around 30 miles outside the city, up in the hills. As per usual in big money matters in Mexico, there are rumors of bribery and corruption on a grand scale involving the site of the proposed airport. The rumors are probably true.
However, there are some changes from the bad old days. (a) An indignant Mexican press and media corps reports that (b) the local farmers at the site of the proposed new airport don't want to sell their land at the price offered by the federal government and will fight in the courts, and if that fails, they will take up arms, just like the lads at Concord and Lexington, and, finally (c) Mexico's Green Party and a number of environmental groups say the new airport site is in an environmentally sensitive area.
Now, neighbors, A, B, and C are relatively new factors in Mexican life. Newspapers and other media take on corruption and the oligarchy like they were a free press, the country people who always had a bitter choice of going along with the local "cacaque" or boss, or being shot down in their huaraches, or fleeing to Los Angeles, are now taking a stand. Finally, Mexico is rich enough and educated enough to field a first rate environmental movement. Things are indeed looking up.
For the moment at least, we would be landing in the center of the sea of lights in Mexico City.
As we thundered over the rooftops on our approach, I cast a final glance at our companion to make sure he didn't try opening the hatch and walk the final few hundred feet to the ground. He seemed completely normal and bovinely happy that our trip was over. We hissed down the tarmac with nary a bump and came to rest at a point where an aluminum umbilical cord was extended to the plane's door.
Normally, the "Jet Way" serves the purpose of eliminating climbing or descending stairs to get on or off the airplane, protection from rain, snow or cold, and a psychological boost to those souls who have a fear of flying, as it provides that illusion that you're are simply walking down a long hall into a narrow room that has seats, rather than into an airplane that will shortly whisk you up five miles into the sky.
In Mexico City, the "Jet Way" has an additional purpose. It provides some protection from Mexico City air.
Air pollution in Mexico City is everything the anti-big city apocalyptic doomsayers claim it is. On a good day you can see and smell the pollution. On a bad day, all fives senses are negatively involved, as well as your cardiovascular system. You literally think about breathing and only the alternative keeps you doing so. Mexico City is a living, breathing, ad for hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius or the Honda Insight
So, protected somewhat from the Venusian atmosphere, we trooped through the jet way into the terminal to meet the Mexican customs people. Apparently, we did not fit the profile of smuggler or terrorist and we were waved through (As was the lunatic and the jaunty Sikh couple, probably on their way to their first Mexican Lions Club Meeting.)
One of the nice things about the terminal was that it was not necessary to go outside to get to the hotel: Down the hall and up an elevator and we were at the Marriott reception desk. The hotel room was done in "International Space Cube" decor which means that you could be in Shanghai or Sioux City and you wouldn't know the difference.
Best of all, the television had CNN in English. CNN is to news what Marriott and Hilton are to hotel architecture; bland, but with you throughout the world and throughout the day. A hopeless news junkie, I turned the televison on to watch the unfolding drama of Afghanistan.
There are three things that you immediately notice about Afghanistan.
The first is that the clock seems to have stopped two or three thousand years ago. I mean the television shots look like scenes from "Bible Stories for Children". There are windowless stone and adobe houses, and donkeys and camels, and there are guys milling around in colorful Bible clothes with turbans and robes. They all look like Jesus and the 12 apostles, that is, if Christ and his guys all carried AK-47's. The second thing you notice is that all the Afghans have great teeth! Better than most Americans. Whether they are yelling "Death to the Taliban!" or "Death to the United States!" they are flashing pearly white teeth. They could all pose for toothpaste ads. (Sheik Abdul says "I never go on Jihad without a good supply of CREST toothpaste and CREST whitener tape as you never know if CNN will be doing a video!")
The third thing you notice is there is not a tree or a green blade of grass in the whole bloody place! This is totally amazing! Afghanistan must approach Antarctica in being totally free of vegetation. There are miles of what looks like the Devil's kitty litter. Rising out of these sterile plains are mountains that look like fresh slag from a steel mill. Not a sign of anything green. I mean, we have deserts in the U.S., but we also have desert plants in these deserts. If you sit down on the floor of the Sonoran Desert, you will not be able to see for more than a hundred yards as the greasewood, palo verde, smoke trees, mesquite, saguaro and a hundred other cactus will obscure your view. In Afghanistan you can see into the next Millennium.
The truly amazing thing is that there are all these guys walking around in their Bible clothes, smiling and laughing, totally enjoying themselves, and acting as if they truly LIKED living in Afghanistan. What in God's gray earth do they eat? Are there nutritious rocks in Afghanistan?
The Department of the Interior and the California Parks & Recreation will indeed have their work cut out for them in the post Taliban era, introducing the Afghans to the concept of trees, plants and the idea of nature beyond raw geology. There will be yeoman tasks available for the Bureau of Reclamation (think of all those virgin dam sites) The Bureau of Land Management (Wise forest management and rotational grazing for people who have AK-47's. The National Park Service and California Park & Rec will share expertise in the development of natural and historic sites, deftly sorting out clan and tribal rivalries as to which areas have the best park potential in Afghanistan. I suspect that both the NPS and California State Parks will be asking for volunteers for this daunting but not impossible task of bringing parks to the Afghans.
Watching CNN, you have to admit that Bin Laden and the Taliban are the best villains we've had since the days of Hitler and his gang! They really try! The Communist leaders of the Cold War could never manage to look particularly evil. Nikita Krushchev with his bald head and rumpled suit looked like an unsuccessful football coach who was always talking about next year. Bresnev, his successor, looked and acted like used car dealer and about as threatening. Fidel Castro reminds you of your hippie uncle who never quite got the word the "60's were over and dressed and acted accordingly even though his beard was turning white.
Bin Laden & Co really get into the villain role and are very convincing. First of all, they've got great villain costumes. The Taliban leaders all wear sinister black turbans, black beards, and black vests. (Mullah Omar's sidekick, the Taliban PR guy, actually sports a black eye patch to appear even more villainous.)
Bin Laden looks like he has gotten hold of some sort of Evil Arab Prince costume from the property room of a particularly stereotypical Hollywood movie. He does everything but twirl his moustache and threaten to foreclose on the heroine's farm.
Best of all, they get to make really neat villain statements like "May Allah the beneficent and merciful, allow us to wade around in infidel blood until America is completely crushed." and other stuff that is normally censored unless you can prove that you are a crazy fanatic, which these guys certainly can.
Surfeited with the news, and plump with information, I turned off CNN and turned in for the evening. Tomorrow, Mexico, that forever ongoing adventure lie before us. (TO BE CONTINUED)
SAFETY MESSAGE
(Ah! That jewel of information for which you have wading through the foregoing dross!)
One of the most dreadful scenes of that dreadful September day was the sight of people forced to jump to their deaths from the twin towers to avoid the flames.
It occurred to me as it occurred to countless others that parachutes of some type might have been useful. Conventional wisdom would hold that they would do no good as there would not be enough time/altitude even on the upper floors for the parachutes to deploy.
However, conventional wisdom is a bit outdated. U.S Special Forces have been experimenting with LALO (Low Altitude Low Opening) parachutes for some time.
Another outfit that has obtained a great deal of mostly undesired knowledge on the subject is the National Park Service.
You see, there is a strange tribe of thrill seekers called BASE jumpers that like to jump off cliffs and buildings, mostly without the permission of the owners, who often turn out to be units of the NPS. (One exception being New River Gorge NRA which hosts, once a year, an annual idiot's day called Bridge Day, in which folks are allowed to jump off a 700 foot high bridge, without being arrested upon survival.)
Since the NPS has a long, reluctant relationship with these people, I thought something could be learned from them on the possible use of LALO parachutes for escape from skyscrapers. So I checked with Bob Marriott in deepest WASO and he put me onto Special Agent Dan Horner out at YOSE, who specializes in apprehending and dealing with BASE jumpers.
Now BASE jumpers are essentially white collar petty criminals who endanger their own lives and the lives of others through the malicious mischief of their "hobby", so their opinions on safety may not be of much value, but their equipment is of some interest.
Dan suggested going to the BASE jumpers web page at www.baselogic.com not so much for the philosophy of the BASE brethren but rather for banner advertisements for LALO parachutes that will permit you to escape from a middling high building.
Would this be of use to the NPS? Well now, I suspect that if you are the safety officer of an NPS regional office or support group that is quartered in a high rise in a major city, you might like to bring this up at the next safety meeting.
It is not an entirely moot question. I recall that years ago, I was on business at the San Francisco Regional Office on the 14th floor of the Federal Building. I heard the sirens of fire engines. "I hope they're not coming for us" a secretary said conversationally "Their aerial ladders only reach to the 9th floor." As it turned out, they were coming for us. There was a fire in the climate control system. We evacuated down the stairwell, which generally speaking remains intact and relatively smoke free during all but the worst events. Sadly, we now have a sample of the worst event.
So, if you are on the safety committee of your highrise, you might like to check out the ads for LALO parachutes on www.baselogic.com or contact Dan Horner at (209) 372-0361 or at his e mail address of Dan_Horner@nps.gov.