destruction – Page 2 – Mystery, fantasy and romance at the dangerous ends of the earth

Maps, Highways, and Their Imprint on The World

By Karen Abrahamson | April 14, 2012

camino inca23 — Path through the rain forest on the Camino Inca, Peru (2011) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson

The ancient T.O. maps didn’t represent reality, but they did map the reality of the Christian spirit at the time. Portolan Charts gave a realistic representation of coastlines and the work of the Indian spy/cartographers, placed rivers on the maps well before aerial mapping existed.

One of the last bastions of ‘unmapped’ territory was the Amazon basin of Brazil. In 1799 Alexander von Humboldt, the son of a Prussian baron, spent five years travelling from Venezuela’s Orinoco river through the Amazon, collecting specimens and surveying. Afterwards he produced 33 volumes of maps and illustrations. That was the last mapping for over a hundred and fifty years except for the occasional scientific or rubber company exploration.

Until 1970.

That’s when the Brazilian government got the idea to construct a highway from the Atlantic Coast, across 5,000 kilometers (about 3,400 miles) of rainforest to the Peruvian border. The construction was a nightmare due to a dearth of maps. The rainforest had too many clouds and—gee, rain in a rainforest?—for aerial mapping to work. The result was construction following ground-based surveyors who were barely ahead of the bulldozers and this led to the construction having to cross the same river multiple times leading to enormous unforeseen costs.

camino inca10b — Cloud Forest tree along Camino Inca, Peru (2011) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson

Enter the cartographers. In this case it was cartographers and the invention of side-looking radar (SLAR). SLAR is an improvement on the radar that helped safe Great Britain during the Battle of Britain. It’s the invention that allows radar to be shot out the side of an aircraft to take long horizontal pictures of the landscape. This technology can ‘see’ through clouds and trees to the landforms. With the help of computers, SLAR can provide accurate pictures of the rise and fall of the landscape.

The survey team with their aircraft arrived in Brazil on the summer of 1971. In just under a year SLAR mapped the Amazon in 32-kilometer-wide swaths which lead to the first detailed maps of the Amazon and an understanding that this huge territory wasn’t the previously-thought Amazon “basin”. Instead they found that only about 20% of the area was lowlands, with most of the landscape being hilly and mountainous.

This ‘sped up’ the construction of the highway which was completed in 2011 except for a single bridge in the Peruvian part of the road. But what has this meant for the area? For some, it replaces weeks of travel on dirt roads to a relatively short drive. For others it promises income from a potential huge influx of tourists. But what it also means is environmental degradation.

Brazil has a long history of environmental issues springing directly from road-building into this relatively delicate biosphere. Previous road building shows that almost 90% of deforestation lies within 50 kilometers of a road (about 23miles). Timber and mineral extraction are followed by hydroelectric dam development and the destruction this causes.

What’s disturbing is that the Amazon is truly the lungs of the world and cartography has provided the data needed to seriously damage those lungs. It places a different perspective on maps; one that undermines the beauty of what I’ve always thought and suggests the need for ethical standards that stand up to the push of corporate greed.

Yukon path — Path along the Yukon River. The quiet places like this are the ones lost in rampant development. (2010) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson

There are means to ameliorate the potential destructiveness of developments like the Transoceanic Highway or the construction of pipelines like the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline through British Columbia, but it requires people like cartographers, citizens, and government officials to demand agreements that protect the environment BEFORE, planning starts. Otherwise ‘progress’ can just as easily lead to widespread destruction like what is happening in the Amazon.

The new maps of the Amazon not only map progress, but also the destruction of a reality. Unlike the T.O. maps of the Christians that cemented the Christian spirit firmly in Jerusalem, these maps not only mark destruction of biodiversity, but they record the destruction of the spirit of the indigenous people.

Cuzco Conversion

By Karen Abrahamson | April 11, 2011

I’ve now been in Cuzco for three days and I have to say I really like this city. People are friendly. The scenery is beautiful with red-tile roofs swirling across and up the sides of the valley like a terra cotta wine in a glass. There are 16th Century churches, camposinos on the corners, wild and wooly local markets and beautiful, quiet parks where I can sit in the shade and think. There are lovely old mansions surrounding the Plaza des Armas, that have their second floors converted to restaurants so you can sit in a screened alcove and peer out old carved windows at the colorful crowds in the plaza. I guess, that’s the theme for Cuzco – conversion.

Old Camposino Woman. She shows such strength. (2011) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson

Today is Sunday and election day, but the city has been magnificently quiet all things considered. Stores were open (at least tourist ones were), and there were none of the rallies and rousing music I’ve come to associate with this election. I spent the morning climbing out of Cuzco proper to the ancient site of Sacsaywaman – one of the last strongholds of the Inca before the Spanish finally triumphed – and, in the ancient city plan (where streets formed a puma), Sacsaywaman was the part that formed the head.

It’s a long climb: first up steep, cobbled streets that are slippery enough cars must take a run to reach the top. Then follow the road until a cobbled path leads you into a pass between two of the hills surrounding the city. I kept telling myself that if I couldn’t do this then I had no business even contemplating Machu Picchu. The old heart was pumping and I was gulping in air, but I made it and, sweating, handed in my entry ticket.

A ruined wall at Sacsaywaman (2011) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson

There was virtually no one there at 8:30 in the morning. A few alpaca grazed the green grass between the two sets of ruins. The great stone towers are gone, but the zigzag line of battlements that form the teeth of the Puma of ancient Cuzco, still jut into the ancient field. Instead of ritual sacrifice or battle cries, there were birds and butterflies and horses grazing in the next field over.

I climbed to the top of the exposed rocks and sat there in the sun. A friend had asked me to soak up the feel of the place and I have to say all I felt was silence, just as yesterday, when I travelled out to the Sacred Valley and Pisac fortress, there was just the wind through the fallen stone.

The terraces of Pisac with the ruins of the fortress on the bluff behind (2011) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson

This was a great civilization, but it lasted only through a hundred years of expansion, before being blasted into oblivion by Pizzaro’s conquest. The Inca way was to take over a territory and subsume the local belief system into their own. Walking around Cuzco today I was more aware than ever of the thievery of conquest. Every cathedral, church and convent in this city is built on the remains of an ancient Incan palace or temple and they are built of stones robbed from said palaces and Sacsaywaman.

As I drove out to Pisac yesterday, my driver started talking about this. He is born of Spanish and Quechua (local Indian)-speaking parents, and I could hear the anger in his voice, which came back to me as I toured the great Cathedral of Cuzco. Every blasted surface of the place is gilded with gold or silver plate – probably robbed from the ancient temples. (Did you know that crazy old Puno was once called the City of Silver because during Incan times one street was actualy paved with it?) But most of all I was struck by the stark contrast to the ruins I’ve seen. Clean stone and narrow ways that give onto vistas. Perched on the heights, the ruins were automatically closer to Incan Apus and the sun.

The churches, however are encrusted with treasure and filled to the brim with figures of Christ and Mary of the mountains (an attempt to convert people from their worship of Pachamama- the earth mother), and I swear every other saint or maybe-saint known to man, as if said cathedral was looking for safety in numbers from what lurked beyond its doors. There is figure after figure in niche after niche, and altar after altar in chapel after cloister until I felt almost sick with the panoply and actually longed for the clean lines of the ruins.

I realized then that what the Spanish did in Peru, wasn’t really a matter of civilizing the people, but, like the Incas before them, was instead a matter of trading one form of Idolatry for another.

Cuzco's Plaza des Armas and the red roofs of the city from Sacsaywaman (2011) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson

Big Cats and Small – Nurturing what we have

By Karen Abrahamson | February 26, 2011

Male lion, Serengeti (1994) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson

I’m trying to write this blog with a 16 pound cat yelling in my ear and grabbing my sleeve in his teeth to get my attention. He’s an insistent, not-so-little guy who knows when he needs me and I don’t know anyone who can completely ignore him. Frankly, some people wonder how I put up with his delinquency and I know that Bengal cats are frequently turned in to the SPCA for exactly the types of behavior Ben exhibits, but Ben is just asking for what he needs – in this case a few minutes of my time for pats and belly rubs. I can react to it either by ignoring him or doing what I signed on for when I adopted him – nurturing him just as he meets my need for company.

Sometimes, when I’m extremely busy or in the heat of writing, my first inclination is to ignore him—as much as you can ignore a 16 lb cat gnawing on your sleeve – but lately I’ve come to accept this is part of having this wonderful companion and that the best I can do is nurture him, just as I need to nurture myself as a writer.

For me, nurturing does not come natural. I once described myself as having been AWOL when they handed out the Florence Nightingale gene. I’m regimented in my life and always seem to put the hard work first, before I get to the things that nurture my soul, and giving cats attention. Thus, at this moment, I’m so swamped it feels like having a life just comes second. Of course, my life is what I’m using up while I’m consumed with work. Somehow I forget to take care of the little things – like spending five minutes of play with each of my cats. So little and yet it has such wonderful pay-off. There is just nothing like thick fur and a purring, ecstatic kitty-face to make me smile and relax from the rat race.

So as writers we need to give ourselves time off. We need to do things like stop to listen to the first birds of spring, read good books and go for walks alone or with friends, or just have a bubble bath – whatever makes you feel whole again. Nurturing yourself as a writer also means giving yourself a chance to celebrate what you have. The skills you’ve gained as a writer, and the determination to keep writing – or the fact that you’ve started or finished a short story, a novel, whatever you’ve written—should be celebrated. Writers shouldn’t let defeat and negativity make them blind to those assets and accomplishments.

This is a lot like recognizing the wonderfulness of the two little demons I cohabit with. They forgive me when I ignore them and are so thrilled when I pay attention.

There is something wonderful about cats, whether a placid housecat or the great wild cats. They both have something mystical about them. Or maybe it’s mythic, except there is such an element of the clown in most cats. I’ve never seen a tiger in the wild, and I likely never will given the decline of their population. But I have been fortunate enough to see a mother cheetah teach her youngsters to hunt and have watched their playful lounging after they gorged. I’ve seen elusive leopards hang limp in a tree after gorging on a gazelle that must have outweighed them. And I’ve seen lions – prides of them – sprawled on a sunny kopje in the Serengeti, and playing silly games in the game parks of Botswana. I remember one young female who thought it was fun to push over a small tree. Every time she did, it smacked another lioness in the face, and I swear the youngster knew exactly what she was doing. A lot like Ben knows what he’s doing when he takes a swipe at one of my pictures and sends it sliding.

Yup. Got my attention, little man.

I read a sad article in the Vancouver Sun newspaper the other day. It was about African lions and how they may disappear from the wild within 10 years. Their numbers have fallen from about 150,000 in the wild ten years ago to about 20,000 total today. IN ALL OF AFRICA. The article went on to say that once the numbers of a species fall below a certain level the race to extinction accelerates. I was so shaken by the article I couldn’t even read it all the way to the end in one sitting. A world with no lions? I couldn’t imagine it; or I could, and it broke my heart.

The article went on to talk about how a few National Geographic researchers and the Botswana government are working to try to bring them back in that country. Nurturing. And it made me realize that lack of nurturing is a huge problem in our world. From our children, to the oceans, to the jungles, to other cultures, to ourselves, to my cats – we are failing our world because, at least in the west, we’ve become far too focused on work and our own personal challenge to just get through it, to the point where we don’t appreciate the gifts around us.

I feel so fortunate to have heard the grunt-grumble roar of a lion and to have seen the magnificent sprint of cheetahs. To have smelled the dusty cat-scent of a lion as it nosed the side of the jeep I was in, and to have looked into its amber eyes. There was something there: intelligence, but different than a person’s. Something wild and foolish and wonderful that I see mimicked in Ben and Shiva’s gaze. And we’re at risk of losing the great cats unless we take the time to nurture the other inhabitants of this world.

So I’m going to step away from my desk and write a check to the National Geographic Society. I’m going to find out what I can do locally to help the environment.

But before that, I’m going to go pat my cats.

Destructive Forces, or The Beauty of Making Things Worse

By Karen Abrahamson | February 19, 2011

I’ve mentioned in previous posts about the destructive force of Ben and Shiva. Ben has his penchant for getting in behind breakable objects and purposefully shoving them off of shelves. (I have much less brick-a-brack these days.) Shiva has developed a penchant for shredding paper—cardboard—plastic. Anything he can sink his little teeth and claws into and I constantly am catching him at this lovely trick on things like – oh – my business license, or a manuscript stacked and ready to be mailed out.

I wonder if editors would understand a few chewed corners.

Hmm, maybe they would just figure I have mice, or was particularly nervous about mailing this one out?

Ruins and fromages trees, Angkor, Cambodia (2008) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson

Anyway, in the midst of trying to preserve my manuscripts and various and sundry pieces of memorabilia from my travels, I got to thinking about destruction and its place in our lives and writing. At the same time a writer friend of mine sent me a link to some fantastic photos of the erosion and destruction of Detroit . The photos are bizarrely science fictional and evoked thoughts of Night of the Living Dead, Twelve Monkeys and War of the Worlds, and yet they are absolutely and utterly beautiful with their haunting look at faded glories. Maybe it’s just me, (but I think not, given the hordes of other visitors to places like Angkor, and Athens and Machu Picchu) but I am fascinated not just by the vestiges of what was once great and has now been destroyed, but also in the cracks in the great edifices and the things climbing through from the other side. As I watch the people of Egypt struggle for democracy I think of new life, like the fromages tree that grow from the Angkor ruins (one is on my website home page). Or maybe it’s the wisdom and laughter that shines through from an age-ruined face.

Buddhist nun at Mingan, Mandalay, (1997) Photo (c) Karen Abraha

What does this have to do with writing?

A writer’s job is to make things worse and to recognize that destruction is life. This is hard, because even though I think we are attracted to destruction—fascinated by it, even, if you notice the way traffic slows next to a serious traffic accident—we hate to inflict it on other beings. We are fascinated and repulsed by news of a slaughter of others. Haiti’s earthquake, for example, or Hurricane Katrina, or the Tsunami that wiped out so many in Malaysia and Thailand. And yet as a writer our hands pause as we destroy our character’s beloved possession, or reputation. We hold back from hurting them physically or mentally. We take heed of the cardinal rule and DON’T kill their cat or the dog or the horse, but we don’t do other things to wound them either.

Which makes our writing boring.

Think about it. Are we interested in a character skipping happily through life? No. Even all those Jackie Collins novels of the beautiful people carry their own carnage. That’s what makes us read those novels and all those T.V. magazines: seeing the crumbling of those magnificent edifices of the cults of personality.

So it’s not just thrillers and action stories that should have destructive forces, whether they’re external or internal to our characters, we need them to ignite the passion in the reader and make them want to read on. The ‘oh-no’ moment. The tension of anticipation of when the lover finds out that they’ve been cheated on. The implications when a character finds their home, their family, their life (insert your character’s loss here) is gone. We want to know and we want to understand how character’s overcome, because we all have those forces in our lives and we want to see what comes after.

The difference is, in our writing (unlike all life situations), the edifices of the character’s old life may crumble or burn, but something lovely and fragile and – more – arises from the ashes. Like that fromages tree. Like the wisdom I see in those old eyes.

So get back to your destruction when you turn to your keyboard. I’m going to keep an eye on that chewed box in the corner to see what loveliness arises.

Destructive Forces, or The Beauty of Making Things Worse

By Karen Abrahamson | February 5, 2011

I’ve mentioned in previous posts about the destructive force of Ben and Shiva. Ben has his penchant for getting in behind breakable objects and purposefully shoving them off of shelves. (I have much less brick-a-brack these days.) Shiva has developed a penchant for shredding paper—cardboard—plastic. Anything he can sink his little teeth and claws into and I constantly am catching him at this lovely trick on things like – oh – my business license, the cardboard box in the corner, or a manuscript stacked and ready to be mailed out.

I wonder if editors would understand a few chewed corners.

Hmm, maybe they would just figure I have mice, or was particularly nervous about mailing this one out?

Anyway, in the midst of trying to preserve my manuscripts and various and sundry pieces of memorabilia from my travels, I got to thinking about destruction and its place in our lives and writing. At the same time a writer friend of mine sent me a link to some fantastic photos of the erosion and destruction of Detroit . The photos are bizarrely science fictional and evoked thoughts of Night of the Living Dead, Twelve Monkeys and War of the Worlds, and yet they are absolutely and utterly beautiful with their haunting look at faded glories. Maybe it’s just me, (but I think not, given the hordes of other visitors to places like Angkor, and Athens and Machu Picchu) but I am fascinated not just by the vestiges of what was once great and has now been destroyed, but also in the cracks in the great edifices and the things climbing through from the other side. As I watch the people of Egypt struggle for democracy I think of new life, like the fromages tree that grow from the Angkor ruins that I have on the home page of this web site. Or maybe it’s the wisdom and laughter that shines through from an age-ruined face.

What does this have to do with writing?

Which makes our writing boring.

So get back to your destruction when you turn to your keyboard. I’m going to keep an eye on that chewed box in the corner to see what loveliness arises.