The Thinking, Walking Biped, part seven. Famous nature walks: Alexander von Humboldt and John Muir

Alexander von Humboldt was one of the great travelers of world history. He went all over the world, hiking in mountains everywhere. His spirit of exploration inspired generations of scholars after him, including Charles Darwin who took Humboldt’s book with him and followed his footsteps in South America.

But Humboldt did not just travel and hike. He made scientific observations which would later prove fundamental in the study of geography, particularly plant geography. Lots of people have noticed that trees tend to be found higher on mountain slopes, but Humboldt was the one who discovered that trees were higher on the south-facing than on the north-facing slopes. This is evidence that temperature and humidity are the important factors: the trees prefer the cooler temperatures and more humid conditions of the north slopes. After Humboldt’s detailed observations, the patterns of nature started to make sense.

Perhaps most famously, Humboldt ascended the slopes of the Andean volcano Chimborazo, in Ecuador. Because the top is covered by a glacier, and because of the crevasses, Humboldt could not actually reach the top of Chimborazo. When I climbed up the slope of Chimborazo in 1989—likewise not reaching the top—I felt inspired not just by the amazing geography but by the fact that almost two hundred years earlier, Humboldt had stood in that very spot.

 

It is particularly inspiring to stand in the exact location of an historical event. I have had this experience numerous times, including when I walked on part of the Cherokee Trail of Tears, but also on a remnant of the Native American trails near Tulsa, Oklahoma, and also a World War One graveyard in the Vosges Mountains of Alsace, France. I walked to these places.

The image of John Muir is inseparable from the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. It seems that he walked practically everywhere in the Sierras, and not just during nice weather the way I did in my Sierra explorations. He would not hesitate to climb a tree during a fierce snowstorm and revel in the forces of the wind. He seemed to need only a blanket for shelter and only bread and tea for nourishment.

The Thinking, Walking Biped, part six. Famous Nature Walks: Rosseau's Passion for Botany

In his Reveries of a Solitary Walker, Rousseau was depressed nearly all of the time until he was rescued by botany. The study of plant diversity in nature saved him from complete depression. It works for me, and I highly recommend it. Botany is, among many other things, the pursuit that saved Rousseau from insanity.

Rousseau did not just glance at flowers and grass and say, yeah, they are pretty. He looked closely at them. He observed them and thought about them. Above all, he wanted to know what they were. In Walk 2, he describes his joy at seeing Picris hieracioides the hawkweed; Bupleurum falcatum, the hare’s ear; and Cerastium aquaticum, the mouse-eared chickweed. These are all very common weeds, but Rousseau noticed their beauty. Alas, in Walk 2, he slipped back into depression, and these flowers just reminded him of how much of his life he had wasted by not being a botanist. I think.

Rousseau spent the two happiest months of his life on St. Peter’s Island in Lake Bienne in Switzerland. He thought that, on that isolated island, he was free from the condemnation of the government authorities in Berne. In Walk 5, he describes his “botanical fervor.” He was particularly enchanted by the alder-buckthorn (Frangula alnus), the willow-weed (Epilobium ciliatum), and wild thyme. He also mentioned the toothwort (Dentaria), wild cyclamen, the bird’s-nest orchid Neottia nidus-avis (which has no chlorophyll), Laserpitium gallicum, and the lycopodium clubmoss. He ate the very tart berries of the sea buckthorn tree (Hippophae rhamnoides). I tried them, and didn’t like them, but they are raised commercially for cosmetics. He was as happy as a child playing with the exploding capsules of the Himalayan balsam (Impatiens glandulifera). I can attest to the surprising joy of having these capsules explode in my hand, and my grandkids liked it even more. Rousseau briefly returned to childhood happiness. This was his one happiness, aside from sex.

I got lucky. My job (as a university botany professor) required me to spend a lot of time looking at and for plants in natural habitats, and leading students on field trips.

But Rousseau’s stresses could not be completely forgotten, even in paradise on St. Peter’s Island. Actually there were two islands, and Rousseau imagined that, because the big and the powerful always consume and destroy the small and weak in this world, the big island would someday consume the small one. My own experience coincides with Rousseau’s. When I was sitting on a rock in the middle of a rushing stream in Wyoming, in the middle of teaching a field botany course to some of the best students I have ever had, I could not ignore the pain I felt from the office politics back at the university where I worked, where our department chair enjoyed making people feel bad about themselves (according to other people who knew him).

Rousseau would use his botanical ecstasies to launch into thinking about other topics. Walk 6 begins with a wildflower hike near Fontainebleu. He was enjoying doing this good thing—but did it really count as personal goodness if he enjoyed doing good things? He wanted his enemies to suffer—but he could think of no greater suffering to visit upon them than for them to know he was happy in spite of them.

He wished he could know all the plants on Earth. They are, he said, the clothing of the Earth. They are the only spectacles of Nature of which we cannot grow weary. He much preferred the Greek philosopher-botanist Theophrastus, who loved plants for their own sake, over Dioscorides, for whom plants were only valuable because of the medicines they contained.

 I find this 1888 line drawing fascinating. Notice the botanist, despite his serious demeanor and despite the shabbiness of his house, is happy explaining a thistle (?) to two fellow seekers of wisdom. One of them is a winsome young woman. The wonders of botany can, in fact, attract a mate—worked for me. But notice also that Karl Marx is listening to him! I didn’t think Karl Marx listened to anyone! Oh, the wonderful things that botany can do!

It turns out that St. Peter’s Island was actually part of Berne, and the authorities made Rousseau leave. He went back to being depressed. But years later, he would look at his herbarium (pressed plant) specimens and relive his erstwhile joys. I have done this also. I could not bring my specimens with me to France, so I left them in university herbaria, as shown in these photos.

These specimens are: Acer macrophyllum, Alnus rhombifolia, Umbellularia californica (all from California), Rumex venosus (Nebraska), and Ipomopsis aggregata (Oklahoma).

“I see only animosity on the faces of men, whereas nature always smiles at me,” Rousseau wrote.

The Thinking, Walking Biped, part five. Famous Nature Walks: Rousseau Thinking about Himself

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (he called himself J.J.) was a famous writer and thinker of the eighteenth century. His specialty was to pugnaciously disagree with political and religious philosophers. One of his ideas was the social contract. He said that humans were basically good—not passionately good, but inclined to enjoy being good to one another. They did not need political systems (kings, knights, dictators, etc.) or religions (the threat of excommunication and hell) to be good, but just to be given the chance to form a contract of goodness with one another. I realize the full idea is more complex than this, and you are welcome to read more about it.

Rousseau was a great and almost daily walker. It is easy to assume that he used his daily walks to think of new and inspiring ideas about which to write. He stopped in a wooded area after visiting Diderot in prison in 1749. The hike was only three miles, but it is where he had his revelation about the social contract. This was not a wilderness area, but within metropolitan Paris. Still, it was not in a house or library or church, at least. Many writers, including myself, get a lot of ideas while walking. Is this why Rousseau walked?

For the most part the answer is no. His personal views can be kindly described as utter despair, and were most likely paranoia. His daily walks were to forget his past and to be the good man that Nature intended him to be. He described ten walks in his Reveries of a Solitary Walker. None of them were actual walks that he had taken, but were mostly unsorted piles of gripes and complaints. In his First Walk, Rousseau said that nobody could force you to be miserable. He was calm, because, he said, there is nothing more his enemies could do to him. He continued his self-pity in Walk Three, where he said he hoped for little, and received less. But he kept walking, saying that “I need to endure the miseries of my life.” He almost gave up trying to figure out his tribulations; I found myself wishing he had, in fact, given up. He said Solon, the Roman thinker, learned something new every day. But Rousseau said his old brain was worn out and he could not learn anything new. I just hope that as I get older I will never believe this about myself. He believed himself to be the most miserable of humans because literally everyone hated him, except his wife. And so on, with Walks 8, 9, and 10. He had to be a solitary walker, he said, because to understand society he had to stand outside of it. Also, I’m not sure he would have been such a good traveling companion for anyone.

He had some reason to be paranoid. When he lived in Môtiers, France, his house was stoned, breaking his window. The hostility of the local people was probably because he questioned the goodness of religion. During Rousseau’s life, many pamphlets were published against him. Some were apparently written by Voltaire. As Will and Ariel Durant describe it,

In Voltaire and Rousseau we see again the old clash between intellect and instinct. Voltaire believed in reason always; but Rousseau had little faith in reason; he desired action. In spite of his disagreement, Voltaire respected Rousseau’s right to speak what he believed in… Voltaire didn’t agree with Rousseau’s denunciation of civilization. He informs Rousseau that man is by nature a beast of prey, and that civilized society means a chaining of this beast…

But I have not seen evidence (not being an historian, this is not surprising) that people were preparing false and defamatory documents to be inserted into his works to be “discovered” upon his death. Rousseau was not an easy man to like; he could like you and then, as with David Hume and Dénis Diderot, change his mind about you completely.

For most of his life, Rousseau’s walks were nearly blind, as he thought only about himself. He looked at his path only enough to keep from tripping over sticks and stones. But for a brief time, this was not the case. See the next essay.

Enjoying Music: John Kuzma

When I arrived at University of California, Santa Barbara in 1975, I wanted to take music theory classes even though I was a biology major. I needed special permission from the department chair, to demonstrate that I was not just a student trying to get arts credit without being a serious musician. I brought in a pile of ignominious but serious compositions, and convinced him to let me in.

There were two choices for music theory: the established professor Roger Grove, and the young new organist John Kuzma. We were assigned at random to the two professors. At first, I ended up in Grove’s class. The class was utterly silent and the only way I can describe Roger Grove is that he was grim. How, I wondered, could anyone enjoy music in this kind of setting? Then the assistant discovered that I was in the wrong room and sent me downstairs to Kuzma’s class.

Then one morning we all heard that Roger Grove had been shot by his wife. All I can say is, it could have happened to a nicer guy.

What a difference to be in Kuzma’s class! He was really excited about all aspects of music. Though he taught us the basics of music, he was open to our creativity. I remember the whole class singing a song I had written for voice and piano. It was a horrible song (Carol Winston, you played piano while I sang it, and know what I mean) but nobody laughed at it. Kuzma pointed out some of its many flaws to me personally. I spent many hours composing bad music during my years at UCSB.

John Kuzma was particularly passionate about choral and organ music and conducting. He went on to compose some significant youth choral works. I got back in contact with him about 2008 and he sent me some of his CDs. He remembers me as smart (not, you will note, as a good musician).

John Kuzma took a whole quarter going through the songs of Schubert’s Die Winterreise and showing us how the Schubert’s music related, in detail, to Müller’s poetry. It was an experience that opened my eyes forever. I owe this dimension of my life to John Kuzma. I used many of Kuzma’s ideas in my novel Meet Me in Strasbourg.

John Kuzma died recently from a slow degenerative nerve disease. He dictated his email to me through his wife. He was 75 years old. A good life. I’m glad I had a chance to thank him before it was too late. I encourage anyone reading this to thank someone in your life before it is too late.

The Thinking, Walking Biped, part four. Famous Nature Walks: Petrarch and the Great Mt. Ventoux Hoax

I first heard about the Italian poet Petrarch’s famous ascent of Mt. Ventoux in southern France (April 26, 1336) during a high school humanities class. Petrarch supposedly presaged the Renaissance by making this artistic, as opposed to religious, pilgrimage. Some people have called him the first mountain climber because he made his ascent for no reason other than to see the view. An earlier monk (Jean Buridan) had ascended it on his way to see the Pope at Avignon, to make meteorological observations. And other people had probably climbed this mountain for strategic or economic reasons. Petrarch said he met a shepherd on the lower slopes of the mountain who claimed to have been the only person to have climbed the mountain, and he said it was just a bunch of rocks and not worth the effort.

How different it is today. Thousands of people hike, bike, or drive on this mountain. Its steep incline is a famous point on the Tour de France.

Many scholars have concluded that Petrarch did not climb this mountain at all. It was all a hoax.

Here are some reasons for believing Petrarch’s ascent of Ventoux to be a hoax. Petrarch mentions precisely nothing about the natural wonders that he would have seen all around him. Foremost among these is the wind. Ventoux means “windy.” The mistral winds average 90 kilometers an hour for 240 days a year. Mt. Ventoux sticks up into a mass of cold air that moves from the north to the Mediterranean. No mention of it. Also, Mt. Ventoux is famous for its white limestone cap visible from a great distance. No mention of this either. A lot of the bare limestone has resulted from deforestation, which might not have been as extensive in the fourteenth century as today. But most mountains in France have been deforested, and yet few have such visible summits. Certainly there would have been something that Petrarch might have noticed, had he actually been there.

Perhaps most of all, Petrarch made his entire ascent and descent in one day, then went back to the inn and wrote about it before supper. Might we suspect Petrarch, not noted for physical prowess, to have exaggerated his vigor a little bit? Conveniently, he had no eyewitnesses other than his little brother.

Instead of Petrarch being an early Thoreau or Muir, he was actually writing in the tradition of pilgrimage fiction, a tradition that began before Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and has continued long after C. S. Lewis’s Pilgrim’s Regress. Petrarch wrote about how he kept taking descending trails, hoping to find an easier path, only to have to climb back up and do it the hard way. This, he said, is a symbol of how, when we choose the easier path in life toward spiritual salvation, we have to keep starting over and over again. Bunyan could have done no better.

So if Petrarch is to be remembered today, and taught about in humanities classes, let it least be for something he actually did or wrote, and not for the Mount Ventoux hoax.

The Thinking, Walking Bipded, part three. Jesus

In the past, great religious leaders did a lot of walking. More recently, they have preferred limousines and jets paid for by rich donors who think God wants them to do this. Mahatma Gandhi did a lot of walking. In 1944, a back country preacher named Guy Howard published his biography, Walkin’ Preacher of the Ozarks.

Jesus of Nazareth walked everywhere during his short ministry on Earth. He gave the impression of wandering aimlessly—at least, he did not explain his itinerary to his disciples. He wandered in the desert, and took his disciples north into Galilee, the country-bumpkin part of Israel where he was born. He briefly rode on a donkey, when he triumphally entered Jerusalem on his last Passover.

Can you imagine how different Jesus’ impact would have been on his listeners, and on history, if he had ridden around on a horse and preached down at the people, with his sword sticking out?

He certainly gave the impression of poor planning in his walks. He did not arrange for his disciples to have enough food for them to eat, and wouldn’t you know it, he was leading them right through Samaria. Samaria was the place with the remnants of the northern kingdom who worshipped in a way Jerusalem Jews considered unholy. Righteous Jews did not want to even be in Samaria, much less get caught there without food. The disciples went off to find food, leaving Jesus alone at a well.

We see now that Jesus had planned it this way all along. A woman came to the well to draw water. She noticed Jesus did not have a bucket and wondered if he would like a drink. He offered her living water, which confused her. He surprised her by telling her about her past: she had had a succession of lovers. It couldn’t get much worse for a righteous Jew—having a personal conversation with a Samaritan woman of loose morals. The disciples were not pleased. Long afterwards, Christians realized that Jesus was teaching them, and the Samaritans, something important about how God does not look down on certain cultures of people.

Jesus summarized his whole way of life as not just walking, but walking on narrow, difficult paths. It is on such paths that you learn about the world and about yourself. Can I, in fact, complete this path, and more, can I learn from it and enjoy it? “Enter in at the narrow gate,” he said. “For the way is narrow and the path difficult that leads to life, but the way to hell is smooth and wide.” I preached a sermon on this topic to a bunch of Boy Scouts about 1969, when I was a scout myself. We were camping and hiking in the lower Sierra Nevada mountains.

As a botanist who walks nearly every day, I can tell you that the easy roads are mostly bordered by weeds; to find the beautiful wildflowers, you need to hike the narrow trails.

 

Nancy's War, The Last Cherokee Warrior Woman, a novel by Stan Rice, part three. Peace of War: It Can Get Really Personal

 

Author Stan Rice has just published the first of three novels in the series Trail of Tears: Novels of Cherokee Identity. The first novel, Nancy's War, is about the life and struggles of one of the most famous figures of Cherokee history: Nancy Ward. Because Kindle has unreliable availability and formatting, the author has also posted a free PDF download. She is so famous that there is an association of her descendants. She lived at the same time as the “founding fathers” of the United States, and was just as important to the Cherokee Nation (which was not part of the United States) as the founding fathers were to the United States. She started off as a war hero, at exactly the same age as Joan of Arc (as explained in the next essay), then she became a lifelong zealous advocate for peace. All her life, the Cherokee tribe revered her, even when they began to disregard her opinions.

We hear about war and its casualties all the time in the news. As I write this, the United States is at “war” (undeclared, solely at the discretion of Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth) with Iran, and supports Israel in its strikes against Lebanon. We hear and forget the numbers but it gets personal when I meet and talk with Iranians and Lebanese, some of whom live in France where I do. I hear about their family members who died in American and Israeli bomb strikes. I also remember, years ago, hearing the story of an Israeli air strike on a Palestinian home of a man who was not a terrorist. His daughter was excelling in school and wanted to be a doctor so she could help people. A minute later, her blood was dripping from the ceiling. It gets personal.

Seldom has war been a more personal issue than it was between Nanyehi (later Nancy Ward) and her cousin Tsiyu Gansini, also known as The Canoe. He was such a dedicated warrior that he wore war paint every day and was instantly ready to defend Cherokee interests against those of other tribes and of the whites. He believed the only way to withstand the whites was by war. To accomplish this, all the tribes that had long been at war had to unite together, something he worked hard to achieve. He was the enemy of the Muskogee tribe, until it was clear that their interests were better served by uniting with them against the whites. Rice clearly takes the side of Nancy Ward, but he puts words into The Canoe’s mouth that make his viewpoint seem irresistible. Rice gets inside of his mind. The Canoe’s slogan was, We are not yet conquered.

Nancy Ward, however, realized that the white path of peace and the red path of war were separate but often parallel, sometimes intersecting: sometimes war was necessary to obtain peace. But she compromised when she thought the Cherokee tribe would benefit, even if it meant becoming more and more culturally white herself. She married the white man Bryan Ward (see the next essay), and encouraged their daughter to marry a Virginia government official. Nancy Ward released a white prisoner who promptly ran to warn white outposts of The Canoe’s impending attacks. This caused her cousin’s war plans to fail ignominiously. He had reason to hate her. He considered her the prostitute of the white man—especially since the white prisoner she released may have been her lover. Her slogan was, Our cry is all for peace.

Peace or War? Rice clearly chooses peace, as did Nancy Ward, but sometimes the choice was not clear. Rice speaks through the voice of The Canoe with sympathy.

Rice weaves in some of the brutalities that white armies took against the Cherokees, such as pulling up all of their cornstalks to starve them out of their villages. This was one of the reasons that The Canoe fought until the bitter end, when his entire Chickamauga nation consisted of just a few villages in the mountains of Georgia.