Memories

The tree was still there. I had scrambled up behind Walung elementary school following tracks that led only to a bamboo grove. From the bamboo I made my way up to the ridgeback. If there is a passageway in the forests of Kosrae, then they are to be found atop the ridge. The shadowy figure of a dark concrete water catchment tank could be made out.

Just past the tank, a cluster of dieffenbachia sprouted from the forest floor. I was not alone – the dieffenbachia assured me someone had been here before. I had been here before. As I was now.

Beyond the dieffenbachia I stumbled across the coral paver walkway. Literally. The walkway was obscured under leaf litter and ground growth, the edge still able to catch my foot. Filtered sunlight dappled the sea of thelypteris ferns around me. A Micronesian dove cooed in the distance.

I followed the trace of the coral pavers up the ridgeline, as I had some 30 years earlier. Where the pavers ended, however, the tree was not on my left as my memory had expected. I looked around, but could not see the tree. Turning right, I headed further up the slope.

Now any vestige of a trail was gone. A hole in the canopy had permitted a tangle of understory vegetation to take hold of the slope. A mix of vines, shrubs, and macaranga tree seedlings. Without a machete I had to think like a wild pig and scramble under the underbrush. There are almost always tunnels in a tangle.

When I came up through a hole in the greenery, there was the tree. Larger than I remembered. When I first saw the tree I was baffled by the pine tree-like trunk, the thick, narrow, leaves with no midrib. The hardened pine resin where cuts had once occurred.

I would remain puzzled by the tree after returning to Pohnpei. On a visit to the Pwunso botanic garden, back around by the tennis courts, I would be stunned to discover that there were three of the same tree as I had encountered in Walung. Only later would I learn that the tree is a kauri pine, possibly Agathis lanceolata. Not to be confused with the more common Cook Island pine, Araucaria columnaris, that is commonly seen on Pohnpei.

On a second visit almost twenty years ago I would find my way back up to the tree, now knowing what the tree is. Three years ago on a visit to Walung I would attempt to find the trail, but the trail was gone and I wasn’t dressed for punching through the dense brush. This time I brought a change of clothes appropriate for pushing through underbrush.

Although I had gotten to the kauri in the past, I had not figured out which way to go to get to the lone Cook Island pine that also stands above Walung on the site of the long ago closed Mwot pastoral training school. On prior visits the kauri was surrounded by forest and I could not see which way to go to reach the Cook Island pine. This time the kauri stood in an open patch of the forest canopy. I could see the Cook Island pine reaching into the sky off to my right, but there appeared to be no obvious way to reach the pine.

To the right was a denser tangle that combined hibiscus tileaceus, vines, and other plants, along with the remnant cement walls of the old school. Underfoot was downed and partially rotting logs. As I made my way to the right I found that some sort of ditch or gully now ran through what must have been the middle of campus. On the other side of the ditch the ground was soft, an upland mud patch, which was filled with a head high tangle of vines held up by smothered and stunted premna obtusifolia.

The going was slow. The sun, the greenery, and the wet mud underneath contributed to a near hundred percent humidity and no breeze. I was carrying no water and had been sweating for nearly an hour. I was reminded that I no longer have the body that could whack through brush high above Takumi’s place for a few hours without feeling the heat.

As I slid back down into the ditch a second time I saw the male cones of the araucaria pine on the ground around me. I was so excited. I looked up and sure enough, I was almost directly under the pine. I scrambled up the other side of the ditch and pulled myself up under the pine, surrounded by decades of male cones. This was my first visit, and not unlikely, given my age, my last visit to the pine. I was happy to be there, and sad that this would a one time visit.

I made my way back to the kauri pine and paused there for a while. I had wanted to return to this tree, and had done so. The kauri reminded me of all that Kosrae had brought me in the years since I first laid eyes on the tree. The tree had been a true giving tree. A loving partner. Wonderful children. A good life. The man who had first brought me to Walung was now gone, but he had welcomed me into his home, treated me as family, and made me realize that were I to leave, memories of Kosrae would always haunt me.

This summer has been a series of places and events that bring back memories both from Kosrae and from other times and places in my life. A series of touchstone events and places. A return trip to Leluh with students in my class. A paddle on a river in Yela that brought back memories of a canoe trip long forgotten. Clearing the path to the beach and seeing a coral paver that reminded me of the pavers I once placed there when I was young and single. A journey up to Takumi’s place, long ago lost to the jungle, to express thanks to no one in particular, just a chance to bathe in the memories that place holds. To give thanks for the blessings and gifts that place brought into my life. A summer of having faith that everything will work out, a summer of thankfulness and of memories.

Paddling

Paddling up the mangrove channel I reached a place where pebbles washed down from upstream formed a submerged mound. Water over the broad mound sped up, the Bernoulli effect in full display. Along the right side the fast flowing water had carved out a narrow, deeper place. The kayak had only a single ended paddle, so generating any consistent thrust was challenging. Both the paddle and the onrushing water worked to push the bow away from an upstream heading.

As I worked to pass the mound I realized I could just step out and walk this stretch. With that realization a long untouched memory flooded back into my consciousness. A memory of a canoe journey in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area wilderness between Minnesota and Canada. My father and I had had launched from Gunflint Lodge on Lake Gunflint headed roughly west then north. I had not canoed before, but my father had. After a day of paddling we camped on an island. Rain was starting to settle in and my father had difficulty getting any kind of fire going for hot water with which to rehydrate our freeze dried food supplies. Dinner was somewhat of a disaster.

Morning came and although we were still wet and cold, a dawn laughing loon cry made for a magic moment on the shore of the island.

Rain continued into the next day, and a portage proved challenging for my father. Decades earlier when canoed he had been stronger, in better cardiovascular condition, and many pounds lighter. Years at a desk in the city had added weight and, more critically to canoeing, led to a loss of cardiovascular endurance.

By the afternoon of the second day we were wet, cold, and hungry. He may have realized another night of cold rain, no fire, hunger, and us being wet was ill advised and risked hypothermia. His chart suggested a way out to the west, essentially a river in a broad swampy area we could traverse to reach a road.

We were paddling against the flow, which made going slow. The swampy area seemed to generated by old abandoned beaver dam type structures, often submerged. My arms were aching, but the thought of a good hot meal and warm bed motivated me. I was up front, dad was in the back.

At some point the canoe hung up on one of the submerged dam like structures. We could not paddle our way out of the situation. I realized in that moment that my father was in beyond his own capabilities. Up until that time my dad was the man who could do anything, resolve any situation, knew just what to do. Now I understood he had misjudged his own capabilities and knowledge. I also saw that he had not fully understood how what the chart depicts plays out in reality of the boundary waters. Of course what looks like a river in a swamp will be dammed.

Until that moment I had waited for instructions, essentially followed orders, trusting dad knew what he was doing. Not knowing what good it might do, I stood partway up and put my right leg out of the canoe, intending to get into the water to see if I could get the canoe over the submerged barrier. To my shock and surprise my right foot landed on solid ground. No more than a divot of solidity, but more than enough to push off of and to pull the canoe up over the barrier. I viewed that small divot as nothing short of a miracle – as water and swamp grass extended as far as I could see.

That one barrier would be the worst, and other than some hard paddling, we made it to the road without further incident. A passing motorist eventually helped us out and we were back in Gunflint Lodge by nightfall.

I stood in the mangrove channel awash in the nearly forgotten memory of that journey, that moment at the divot etched in the recesses of my mind. My father has been gone 36 years now – his cardiovascular condition was more precarious than any of us realized. Not much more than a decade after that canoe journey he was gone. I have already outlived him by six years, my cardiovascular system apparently at least that much healthier than his.

I looked ahead and saw giant ka trees, the largest stand of Terminalia carolinensis on the planet. Around me the plants and rocks were familiar to me. In the boundary waters everything had been unfamiliar to me. I was out of place there. Here in the Yela channel I felt strangely at home. I paddled upstream a little way further, and then flipped around to let the current carry me back down towards the sea.

Beauty

Okuappeman Secondary School instructors circa 1985

My friend sat across the table from me looking worried. “My sister was taken to the hospital yesterday,” he explained. I asked what happened. “She took some pills to gain weight and became ill.” I thought I misheard him, “Weight loss pills?” thinking maybe she had taken too many pills based on some ephedrine compound that is sometimes found in weight loss pills. “No, weight gain pills,” he corrected me. “Weight gain?” I asked. His sister was a beautiful young woman with a slender figure, physically fit and otherwise healthy. I learned that she did not see herself as attractive. This was a place where real women have curves. I was at the beginning of my understanding that beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder, beauty is something that gets selected for in a society. And of course this was Darwin’s theory as well, once survival is possible, other features of a species are free variables that can be pushed by sexual selection. And while the theory undoubtedly could use an update based on genetics and Darwin’s underestimation of the role women play in that selection process, the theory provides one possible explanation as to why some human body parts are larger than is necessary for them to function properly.

The other side of sexual selection pressures applied by a population is individual preferences. A population that sexually selects for specific features deemed to be attractive must have, even if at an unspoken level, a general concurrence on what features are attractive. And these preferences have to be both broadly held in the population and endure across generations. Put another way, on average an individual born into a population should find themselves in a population with potential mates that are beautiful. The processes that drive sexual selection in a given direction are going to be both nature and nurture, both genetics and environment. They must be. And there will be gender differences. There is an industry devoted to satiating men’s visual desires, an industry whose customers are dominantly male. There is also the telling of family line stories, sagas, sometimes referred to as “soap operas” that targets a more dominantly female audience. One might argue that men are more prone to selecting for visual features while women are perhaps also selecting for other qualities in a mate.

Tahitian women on a beach by Paul Gauguin, Public Domain by Yorck Project

In my bedroom were posters from a 1988 Gauguin exhibition I attended that had been at the Art Institute of Chicago. I had developed an interest in Gauguin and his art after reading a biography while in college. I also understood that Gauguin was exploitive and problematic. The images, however, captured my imagination, and I longed to return to a tropical environment. As a young single cisgender visually oriented male with desires a product of my own nature and nurture, my own life experiences, I saw beauty in the images. I understood that such beauty would haunt my mind, would turn my head, and make me wonder what if in the decades ahead.

I also understood that at a personal level I could not alter what I found attractive. Perhaps I was born this way. Whatever drives each of our own streetcars named desire, we each seem to have no choice as to the tracks our trolley runs on – whether due to nature or nurture – what we each find beautiful and select for, to use the language of my own youth, what turns one on, does not seem to be something we get to choose. I understand how I got here. Beauty brought me here.

Gardening

I have long enjoyed gardening, preferring to work alone with a machete. I had thought none of my children would pick up the pleasure land tending, but this past year my youngest daughter has taken to gardening.

She says she has no interest in gardening or agriculture, her only interest is in organizing and making places look clean. Including the yard. But she asks me to go with her to state agriculture to pick out vegetable seedlings to grow. When she is there she is interested in what they have, deciding which plants to take home and grow. Her eyes shine as she looks over the plants.

Gardening is perhaps most rewarding when one’s livelihood is not dependent on the success or failure of the plants. Relaxing because the stakes are low. As a marine science major she can unwind in a terrestrial garden.

Watching her plant tend brings to me a deep sense of of generations passing along personal passions, a sense of pride in her, a sense of the circles of life and continuity.

Waves

As I flip the switch on 61, my youngest daughter rolled over 19. I am reminded that at her age I had recently taken up bodyboard surfing, and by 19 had moved into what were then deemed serious boards. Morey Boogie boards were the only broadly available boards.

I learned quickly that the ocean is always more powerful. The ocean does not teach humility, the ocean demands humility by pounding one deep underwater and then dumping a second pressure wave onto one forcing out whatever remaining air one had. Yeah, humility.

I also learned that while one cannot control the ocean, one can make choices, albeit constrained choices, while arcing across the face of a wave. Choices that have very immediate consequences.

These learnings, trite though they may be, have proved useful in the years since I put my bodyboard in the back of closet in Piyuul. Among them is that all rides come to an end, some painfully so with a crash landing into the reef rash zone.

Learnings such as once one commits to going and paddles in, backing out is the single most dangerous choice. Sure, the bottom of the wave may have dropped farther than one expected, and is now sucking out backwards towards blue water, but once the go button is hit, the rest is ride or die. Or ride and die. All options are on the table. And the risk of death is far less than the risk of injury. In until the end.

Life is that way too. Once you commit into a monogamous relationship, the rest is ride until death. In until the end. Still, to never have paddled in, to not have taken the drop, swung that bottom turn, and lived for a moment frozen in time on that face… No, that would be to sit in the line up forever.

One has to paddle into life. I am still riding in the sunshine on the face of a wave that began at the break in Malem. A setting sun at 61, but still shining, looking out towards Piyuul and the gifts given to me from that place. I often rode those Malem waves alone until dark settled in the hills. I would look at the sleepy seaside village and wonder what the future might hold. Now I see what I could not then, those hills held times of love and joy for me.

While waves end, there is no need while on the wave to think too much on that. There will be darker days ahead, but joy is only found in the present instant. And this instant is a joyous one.

Solidarity

At home I have explained to the family that even if we could be certain the island has no Covid-19 cases, there is value in joining the planet in social distancing and in not gathering in large groups at this time. To do so when most of the rest of the planet cannot, when so many are hospitalized, some of whom will not recover, feels wrong. When there is a funeral next door, one should not throw a party.

This is a time to show solidarity with our family and friends who are sheltering in place abroad. And in doing so we will also protect each other in the event that this virus does find a way onto the island. We shelter in place not because sheltering is required but because sheltering is the way to join together in this planetary effort, because sheltering is the right thing to do.

Annual Numbers

Although I usually try to schedule my annual physical examination around the time I add one to the digits of my age, that happens during a busy time of the year in my calendar. An annual physical does not always get done. I also no longer make an annual physical a specific target. I participate in screenings for blood pressure and blood sugar as they occur here on island and keep an eye on my numbers throughout the year. I have been aware for a few years now that in asymptomatic patients the rate of false positives is an area of concern. Recommendations at present suggest that for otherwise healthy adults, a physical examination on a three year cycle is sufficient.

Throughout the year I post on matters of health and exercise on social media. I encourage family and friends to engage in physical activities as appropriate to their current physical condition and health. On health days at the college I encourage students to participate in the routine screenings. During statistics class data is gathered on resting heart rates and heart rates after climbing three sets of stairs. The Federated States of Micronesia faces epidemic levels of non-communicable lifestyle induced diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart diseases, and lifestyle related cancers. The rates of diabetes in the population are sufficiently high that some of my students view ill health with aging as an inevitable and unalterable fate about which nothing can be done.

I suppose when I point out that I am 58 years old and not in particularly ill health some will think that my genetics are different. I am from another place after all. The genetics that count, however, are the same human genetics. Heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes are found in my family as well. My father passed away at 56 from a heart attack. I have no special genetics. I say this to encourage others who live in families beset by lifestyle diseases – exercise and eating right make the difference. And I do not always eat right. My running habit is perhaps the primary difference.

What running does to your body via RunRepeat.com

In light of my focus on knowing one’s health numbers and encouraging others to get active in their health maintenance, I feel that sharing my own numbers is incumbent on me.

With 39 years of running under my feet, my annual physical numbers were encouraging. Statistically speaking I am aware that trends are perhaps more important than individual values. The individual values can and will vary, a long term trend would be a matter of more concern.

Indicator	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2018	Optimal
Weight				144	140	142	140	142
Systolic				110	100	117	110	110	Below 120
Diastolic				70	70	80	70	70	Below 80
Sugar		85	97	102	86	87	98	96	Below 100
A1C								5.6	Below 5.7
Cholesterol	169	219	178	138	165	158	142	188	Below 200
Triglycerides					78	124		105	Below 200
HDL		57	41	41	47	45	51	62	Above 45
LDL	100	144	118	86	103	88	79	105	Under 100
Ratio					3.5	3.5		3.1	Below 5
Uric acid		7.7	6.9	7.8	6.8	7.1	9.4	6.3	Below 6
Amylase								57	Normal 23-85
PSA				1.1	1.26		1.34
ALT				79
Heart Rate					49	60	53
Oxygen							97%
Hemoglobin					13.9	12.3		11.7	Above 12
Hemocrit					41.8	39.6

My numbers help me make choices on what areas I need to work on. My cholesterol has crept back up again.  This does not mean changing my diet – dietary cholesterol is now known to not be linked to blood cholesterol. The link between low density lipoproteins (LDL) and the build-up of plaque on the arteries of the heart runs through sugar. Excess sugar in the blood produces oxidative stress resulting in inflammation of the endothelium lining the inside of the arteries. The endothelium goes from being “slippery” to being “sticky” with respect to LDL in the presence of excess blood sugar. The result is blockage in the arteries and eventually a heart attack. The culprit, however, is sugar, not LDL per se. Thus my focus should be on the quantity of calories consumed and the type of foods eaten. Simple starches that convert rapidly to high blood sugar levels are going to be more problematic than complex starches.

The message is simple: go local. White flour based products are particularly problematic as they convert rapidly to blood sugar, but all wheat products are already out of my diet due to my own gluten intolerance. Moving completely onto taro, breadfruit, and yams remains challenging. White rice is still in my diet and I know I eat more rice when there is only white rice and not a mix of white and brown rice. The latter is more filling on smaller quantities. While eating pure brown rice is not an option in the house, a mix of white and brown is an option.

Exercise will always be the other part of the equation, although my family doctor suggested I consider taking up tennis. Tennis can help one live longer, but perhaps not running. There was a catch, however, in the sample underneath that study extolling the virtues of tennis. The study was short term and the runners were younger. There were also possible sampling issues that led to skew in the results. Although I had thought tennis might be associated with higher rates of injury due to the more complex turning movements, one study found that the rates of injury for running and tennis are essentially equivalent. At the Olympic level, track and field athletes experience more injuries than tennis athletes.

Ultimately one should choose a sport that keeps one coming back for more. Any aerobic sports activity is better for the cardiovascular system than being sedentary. Running keeps me coming back for another run day after day. Runners do see more of a place when they travel. And if my numbers are good, then blame my running as my diet is hardly exemplary of healthy choices.

My thanks to those in leadership who put in place running tracks, sidewalks in town, and lights along the causeway that provide places for those of us who run to do so. These investments in infrastructure usable by walkers and runners provides return on investment in healthy outcomes.

35 mm slides

My son was exploring in a family basement and came across the cabinets of 35 mm photographic slides therein.

35 mm slide cases

35 mm slide projectors are only available as used items these days. There really is no practical way to preserve these thousands of family slides and carry the images forward into the future. These are not paintings of yore that hung on a wall, these are creations of technology that lived and died by the sword of technology. Like the glass slides of my grandfather’s generation.

Among the slides are slivers of my own past.

September 1963

My sister and I, photographed in September 1963, processed in October 1963, just a month before the nation would lose John F. Kennedy.  The hands holding the photo – the son of the boy in the picture.

I think about images and photographs mostly in the frame of family history – how to pass down the family photos. I have no idea how long Google or FaceBook will be around. CompuServe came and went in its time, as did GeoCities. Each time I moved photos to the next available platform.

And even on Google and FaceBook there is the issue of access into the future. I can “friend” my currently living children, but how to pass along permissions to descendants in perpetuity? Short of setting everything to public sharing? Perhaps future descendants will not care to see images of the ancestors.

As for the slides, they are most likely to continue to remain in the darkness of their cases for the foreseeable future.

Halloween 2016

Halloween 2016 fell on a Monday school night evening. This was also a Monday social security day – the end of the month when senior citizens come to Kolonia to collect their social security checks and go shopping. That income is important in many families here, and falling on a Monday meant that the Halloween shopping weekend would likely have been negatively impacted. In local parlance, October 29 and 30 were a “broke weekend.”

Tristan and Kisha Halloween 2016

The weather was acceptable, only a brief passing light rain shower in Dolihner, otherwise generally dry conditions.

Perhaps the largest factor was that last year Halloween fell on a Saturday night. A weekend with no school the next day.

Whatever the underlying factors, numbers were down year-on-year. Groups are a very roughly estimated with overestimation more likely than under. That said, the front porch saw a drop from 90 groups in 2015 to 79 groups in 2016. Traffic began around 18:35 but by 20:30 no further trick or treaters arrived on the porch.

Halloween group sizes 2015

Note the nine outlying groups in 2015 – groups with more than roughly 15 candy receivers, including one up near 45 and another above 50. The differential in the number of groups is a drop of only eleven. The lack of large groups, however, meant raw numbers of individual candy takers was down more significantly.

Halloween group sizes 2016

The numbers were down even more significantly. The count of candy receivers in 2015 was 590. In 2016 only 416 showed up on the porch, a drop of 174 trick or treaters. Average group size also dropped, primarily a function of the drop in the number of large groups and the absence of any group larger that 35. The household thought that the choice to block cars from driving up the interior road negatively impacted the large group counts. My sense is that the large trucks used to haul the big groups of kids from other parts of the island may not have been as available as they were on a Saturday night last night.

In 2015 the average group size was 6.56 with a standard deviation of 8.90. In 2016 average group size was 5.27 with a standard deviation of 5.50. The median, however, increased from 3 to 4 year-on-year.

We again used the dual bowl system. One twenty-five dollar bag of better candy and a single 330 count bag of Hershey Kisses. Elterina added in three bags of additional small candies that may have added upwards of 90 candies to the Kisses bowl. We would end the evening with candy on hand.

For those who want to play with the raw data, the data is available in a Google Sheets spreadsheet. Analysis was done using Google Sheets with the above charts prepared using the Google Statistics add-in for Google Sheets.

Contemplations

As those who follow me may be aware this age year is an age year of reflection. I am the age at which my father passed away. As a runner I seem to be in better physical shape than my father was at this age. While his risk at my age was a heart attack, my larger risk this age year is the traffic I joggle in amidst on an evening run.

This evening was a particularly poignant nightfall. As is the custom I headed to the state morgue to join family in keeping watch until an off-island brother can arrive for the funeral. I had been visiting when I could over the past few evenings. I knew those who came and went, and how they were connected.

Tonight when I arrived at the morgue the faces there confused me. They were from other connections. I gradually realized some were connected to the passing of a wonderful wife and loving mother I heard about earlier in the day. Her remains were in the morgue. There were other faces there, friends and family, that did not fit into either of the deaths I knew of.  And I saw a third coffin.

I learned that a third friend had passed away and that the remains were also there at the morgue. The third friend was someone who had come many years ago to Pohnpei and had made Pohnpei their home. A family who had hosted them in their early years on Pohnpei sent members up to note that they would handle the burial. The family even noted that Mwohnsapw Isipahu was awaiting the arrival of the deceased. I was comforted by the love shown.

In this age of social media I am more aware of the passing of the loved ones of friends. People I might not directly know, but whose passing directly impacts people I do know. There are not more people passing away, social media simply surfaces deaths more efficiently than I would normally stumble across.

When the funeral is far away I always wonder what I can to be of comfort. As do others, I offer my prayers and condolences. These are what I can do yet they seem insufficient – a friend who recently lost their father said that a memory will return to their mind unbidden and then they  fall to a million pieces all over again at the sense of loss. The living are left to comfort those whom the deceased is survived by.

While this is an age year of reflection and contemplation, and few know when they’ve seen their last sunrise, I expect to see a good many sunrises to come. Still, I will leave this suggestion, should you be around in some future decade when my passing surfaces on social media – when you are wondering what to post or perchance do, to go out and run a mile. Run a mile and lose yourself in thoughts of those you’ve known, those you’ve loved, and have lost.