January 2012 – Mystery, fantasy and romance at the dangerous ends of the earth

Westward Ho!

By Karen Abrahamson | January 28, 2012

I’m sitting here watching the snow fall on the western edge of North America and contemplating how with the spread of people over all of the continents leaves no mysterious ‘promised land’ to cling to. As I’ve written in previous posts, in earlier centuries people sought Prestor John or mysterious islands. They sought an easy route to India and the Northwest Passage. All of these were, over time, debunked, but in our restless human need to seek, we replaced those distant vistas with something else. At least in the past we did.

_DSC0114 — Old Ranch, Yukon (2009) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson

The exploration of North America helped with that. As the surveyors moved west they opened up awareness of a great mysterious place called the American West. The acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase brought Lewis and Clark’s expedition and knowledge that the western mountains were more than one range and a new awareness of how broad the continent was. While they set to rest the final hopes that the Columbia and Missouri Rivers might connect and form a Passage to India, tales of what they had seen brought a new hope that, if not a promised land, there might at least be a Garden of the World in the rich lands westward.

_DSC0143 — Channel at edge of Yukon River (2009) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson

Lewis and Clark were followed by the Topographical Engineers – a small elite branch of the army, whose most famous member was John Charles Fremont. Fremont took with him a red-faced German topographer named Charles Preuss. With Kit Carson, these three set out to map the trail west, determine where to establish outposts, and scout passes over the mountains. While the results of their first venture were of only limited value for its maps, Fremont’s dramatic escapades of planting a US flag on a high peak to demonstrate the national resolve of ‘America strong and triumphant from sea to sea’, and his colorful journal, apparently launched many settlers westward. Subsequent Fremont/Preuss ventures resulted in some of the best maps of the day, extending knowledge down into California and erasing as much fanciful cartographic information, as it established. Preuss’s expertise in creating maps led not only to cartographic information, but also to the first ‘road map’ to the west.

Other explorers like John Wesley Powell, extended our knowledge of areas around the Grand Canyon as they travelled down the Green River and into the cataracts of the Colorado River within the Canyon. His further expeditions surveyed much of southern Utah from the Colorado to the Nevada line. Powell’s work also resulted in warnings about the old methods of agricultural farming. The warnings weren’t heeded and it took the dust bowl dirty thirties to prove him right. But Powell gave America an even greater legacy. He lobbied for, and finally achieved, the creation of the United States Geological Survey, which continues to this day to provide detailed maps of the country.

_DSC0104 — Old Ranch, Yukon River (2009) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson

The only problem with this is that detailed maps removed the mystery and it seems to me it impacted the human psyche. From America, explorers joined the Europeans in the further exploration of our planet. We delve into the depths of the ocean, the frigid wastes of the Arctic, and into the humid breadth of the Amazon Rain Forest. But even those areas are being explored and the race for space seems to have died. It makes me wonder if part of the anger and anxiety we see in our culture isn’t partially due to the fact we have no new vista to call us and no new ‘promised land’ to bring out our best.

New Short Fiction

By Karen Abrahamson | January 26, 2012

Two new short stories are now available on Amazon.com and Smashwords.

A small child, a string of pearls and a colony of swans converge in this short story of family life gone wrong. In Bella’s world of beautiful swans, her mother is the most beautiful creature of all. But swans abandon Bella every year and now her mother may abandon her, too. In a world filled with magic, what’s a child to do?

Amazon

Smashwords

Lost in Rajasthan, the home of camels, hevalis, ornate men’s turbans and women draped in mirror-embossed saris, freelance journalist, Lena, must deal with strange customs and two men who profess to love her. Choosing the right path can be as convoluted as the twists on a Rajasthani turban.

Amazon

Smashwords

Free Fiction

By Karen Abrahamson | January 24, 2012

Welcome to my latest free fiction short story, Blood Knowledge of Swans. The tragic tale of a child, and magic gone horribly wrong, to read on, click Here.

Boundaries and Goals: The straight edge of the map

By Karen Abrahamson | January 21, 2012

Old Roman Road, Portugal (2005) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson

I just read a great post by my friend and fellow writer, Matthew Buchman. Matt wrote about goal setting and why he always sets hugely high goals, and how he (usually) berates himself for not reaching those goals instead of celebrating the numerous accomplishments his goals have helped him achieve. He also wrote about how he intends to continue set superhuman goals, because it keeps him going, pursuing the dreams he has for his writing. This got me thinking about goals and maps, because what is a goal, anyway, but a map of where you are trying to go? You set your goals farther and you’ll probably go farther. You set easy to accomplish goals and you might not reach the brass ring you really wanted to achieve.

This made me think about the boundaries we place around our lives and how the mapmakers of North America have perhaps influenced how we think. I’m talking about the surveyors who first set boundaries across the landscape. At first, North American surveyors took a metes and bounds approach to surveying, much the same as is used in England. A metes and bounds description might be something like, Beginning at the cherry tree growing where Hazy Creek joins the Swift River, north along Swift River 200 rods to the stone wall next to Cascade bridge bordering the road, then West along the road to a lightning-struck maple at the corner of Christopher Hopper’s place, thence, south toward Hazy Creek where a cairn has been set next to the ford, and thence eastward along Hazy Creek to the beginning place.

HIlltop Fortress, Alentejo, Portugal (2005) Photo Karen Abrahamson

This approach to placing boundaries relative to the landscape, shifted with the survey of the Mason-Dixon line, to an approach dependent upon accurate readings of latitude, and on a process of taking horizontal measure with a chain and surveyors level and frequent (every 10 degrees or 17.5 kilometers) astronomical observations. They even made careful adjustments for the earth’s curvature.

Surveyors subsequent to Mason and Dixon used similar methods as they moved forward to comply with the Land Ordinance Act of 1785, which modified a proposal originally made by Thomas Jefferson, to use the principle of rectangular surveys, instead of the irregular metes and bounds, to partition the landscape. Congress envisioned a series of townships along the Ohio River and up to the great lakes and so on westward. As a result, teams of surveyors headed west with axemen chopping a line through the forest. Of course the Indians had other thoughts about the measuring of the land which they thought of theirs. But the surveyors kept coming and the trees fell as the surveys were made and the lands of America became something new: a checkerboard landscape of straight lines and right angles as exemplified by the four corner meeting if Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona and as seen on any map of America.

French village spire (2004) Photo Karen Abrahamson

How does this relate to goals? Well all these straight lines got me wondering if setting too-clear boundaries might also set boundaries in our minds. It got me wondering if Matt’s ideas of setting goals that almost surely surpass our abilities (read boundaries) might actually make us reach farther.

With that in mind, I’ve modified my annual writing goals as follows:

Original:

Write 30 pages a week
Write four novels (or three if one is a fat fantasy)
Post one blog a week
Publish at least one new short story and three novels
Work on craft of openings and voice

Revised writing goals:

Write 30 pages a week
Write four novels (or three if one is a fat fantasy)
Post one blog a week
Publish 25 items (Novels and short stories) in 2012
Work on craft of openings and voice.

On Kane Lake Road - 200-300 — Snake fence along the Kane Lake Road, British Columbia, (2006) Photo(c) Karen Abrahamson

The thought of publishing 25 items fills me with fear because it means I have to write those stories or novels. I knew I could accomplish the 3-4 novels, but I don’t know if I can accomplish this. So I’ve stretched beyond those neat little borders I set for myself. I’m back into the wild spaces marked by metes and bounds. And you know what? If you fly over all those neatly surveyed spaces, you’ll find that fence lines and roads and buildings generally follow more natural paths anyway. So here’s to breaking boundaries and going to those new places nature takes us.

Free Fiction

By Karen Abrahamson | January 19, 2012

This week’s Free Fiction is a fantasy/horror when a loving eldest child is consumed by jealousy. In a Fold of Green Leaf Shadows can be read Here.

Mapping Dark Matter – Walking Like an Inca

By Karen Abrahamson | January 15, 2012

A recent Facebook posting referred me to an article about dark matter and how astronomers are mapping dark matter through space by identifying how light distorts as it travels through the invisible web of the dark. Scientists hope that, by mapping dark matter’s distribution through the sky, they can gain a better understanding of this substance and the underlying physics of the universe.

Reading this article reminded me of my recent trip to Peru and the unique Incan astronomy. Most of us are taught that the Incan’s worshiped the sun, and indeed the sun was a deity to the nobles. But beyond that worship, the Inca used their astronomical studies to not only follow the sun, moon and stars, but also to map the dark parts of the sky. They even had a special word for those places: ‘Yana Phuyu’, or dark clouds – the vacant places in the sky.

Huinay Huayna, Forever Young, hung above the Urubumba River (2011) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson — Huinay Huayna, Forever Young, hung above the Urubamba River (2011) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson

The Inca believed the Milky Way was a great river and the Yana Phuyu were animals called Pachatira that came from mother earth to drink at its side. These dark clouds were known and tracked across the sky and watched with interest. There was the fox, the black llama with her child, the serpent, the toad, the partridge. Each had their place in the sky and each was watched for signs of what would happen on earth. As the black llama descended from the sky she would lower her head and drink from the oceans to stop flooding. The toad, Hanaptu, rose in the sky, when the toads came out of hibernation, and Azoq, the fox rose during the summer solstice when foxes gave birth. For that was the strength of Inca astronomy, they truly believed ‘as above so below’. They watched the heavens and foretold the seasons and the rains by when certain animals appeared over the horizon or climbed the sky and, according to legends, major ecological events like devastating earthquakes and floods, along with the ages of the world.

But the Inca did more than that. They saw the heavens as a map of their world, with the great river of the Andes, the Rio Vilconota (aka the Urubamba) as the terrestrial version of the Milky Way. They recognized hundreds of holy sites (Huacas) around their empire that often were related to special days of the year and the places where the rising and falling sun was observed.

Today, stories of the skies are still taught to children in Inca villages. In Quechua they teach how the llamas in the fields watch the heavenly llama for news of the rains. They tell tales of the moon and his wife and how the ‘fall’ of the Moon’s wife led to the pumpkin-color of the soil in the Amazon. So though we will never know the true depths of Inca astronomical knowledge – too much was lost to the Spanish conquest – we do know that the Inca were much like the scientists of today: They mapped the heavens as a means to understand the connections of the universe around them.

Machu Picchu caught in the coil of the coil of the Urubamba River (2011) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson

Free Fiction

By Karen Abrahamson | January 11, 2012

I’m pleased to provide to a new short fantasy, Bees in the Morning, to celebrate the new year.

What happens when an aging apiarist’s best hive is destroyed?

Bees in the Morning can be found here.

Maps and Spies

By Karen Abrahamson | January 7, 2012

monastery — Himalaya Monastery outpost (2000) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson

In one of my last posts (here) I wrote about how Sir Francis Drake may have been the real first discoverer of the Pacific Northwest coast, and how this fact was likely kept under wraps by the British government because of the potential for Spanish spies. Maps and spies have gone hand-in-hand for years and are still important in modern battles. I recently picked up the book Swan Song and the opening scene is the President looking at spy satellite images (maps) of Russian Territory. Spies and maps. That’s what this post is about.

Of course spy satellites weren’t always around, but spies were, and they have played an important role in the Great Game of Asia (the name given to the period between 1813 and 1907 when the Brits and Russians duked it out over influence and ownership over Central Asia). Being able to map an area and to gain control over important vantage points, rivers, towns and countries was all part of ‘the game’. The Survey of India I mentioned here, was all part of the British Raj’s need to know about and control their holdings.

But they ran up against a barrier – the physical boundary of the Himalayan Mountains and the geopolitical border with Tibet that had been closed by order of the Chinese Emperor. Although Europeans had sighted the heights of K2 and had scaled peaks only slightly less tall than Mount Everest, they hadn’t been able to map Tibet because of the Chinese border that specifically excluded Europeans. As a result, a captain of the Indian Survey, Thomas G. Montgomerie, decided to train and send disguised native agents into the mountains. Only two men passed the rigorous training: cousins Nain and Mani Singh.

montain monastery2 — Himalayan Monastery along the Spiti Valley India (2000) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson

In 1865 they went on their first mission through Nepal and into Tibet to try to reach Lhasa. The two became separated on their journey. Mani made it into western Tibet and returned with some mapping information, but it was Nain who managed to make it to Lhasa. Along the way he was robbed, but managed to retain his survey instruments. Trained to take even paces as his means of measuring distance and using a 100-bead rosary to keep track of his pace-count, he eventually entered the fabled city disguised as devout pilgrim. There he chanced public beheading by taking night-time measurements of altitude and latitude using mercury he poured into his begging bowl.

When he thought people were becoming suspicious of him, he left the city with a Ladakh caravan and headed west along the great Tibetan river, the Tsangpo. Along the way he mapped the river’s course and kept up his careful measures before finally escaping one night to make his way back across the Nepali border. He’d travelled 2,000 miles and mapped it all and returned with descriptions of Lhasa and the first reasonable placement of it on the map.

Nain’s accomplishment was followed by similar mapping parties, not all of which ended well. One agent travelled into northern Afghanistan and was murdered in his sleep. Another returned to Lhasa and back to India with data on almost 48,000 square kilometers of previously unmapped territory. A nephew of Nain’s continued the work and travelled for nearly six years in the mountains. He’d mapped a caravan route to China as well as the headwaters of the Mekon, the Salween and Irrawaddy rivers.

More impressive still, is the adventure of Kinthup, another native trained to survey the mountains. In 1880, he and another man were sent into the mountains to answer the question of whether the Tsangpo River became the Brahamputra. He braved the mountains and escaped after being sold as a slave by his ‘partner’ on the venture, but still managed to complete his mission in a feat that became legendary to Survey of India.

But it was only in 1911, after the Great Game was over, that the mapping of the Himalayas was completed, when the British joined their surveys with those of the Russians they had so long fought against. But it was brave native spies like Nain Singh and Kinthup who did the work for us and brought Lhasa and the Himalayas into the known world.