A 4:00 AM departure had me part way up Koko Head in the predawn darkness just after 5:00 AM. When I reached the section where there is no railroad bed under the railroad ties, I wondered if I had perhaps tackled more than I can handle. I sure did not want to slip off of tie and have to be rescued off of Koko Head. That would be too embarrassing. To ensure that I did not drop a leg between the ties, I set my ego aside and held one rail with my hand as I crossed that section of the climb.
As I moved up Koko Head I knew to focus only on the next railroad tie. To not think about the hundreds of ties ahead, 1050 ties in all. Just grind it out one railroad tie at a time. Long runs require the same discipline. If one thinks about the whole distance ahead, one will lose hope. You run to get to the next tree. The next telephone pole. And then the next. One tie at a time.
This academic term is the same. When I look at the mountain ahead, I wonder whether I have tackled more than I can crank out. So I focus only on the next railroad tie. The next task. Relentlessly. There will be no days off. No easy days. But you get up the mountain by putting one foot in front of the other. Ceaselessly. Getting stressed out only wastes energy. Running is a guiding philosophy. Running teaches one to relax into the load. That one can get to the next telephone pole. Or tree. So that is my approach this term. Grind mode.
Not looking ahead across the next 16 weeks, but just slugging away in the present moment. A chance to see what I can still do. To be just a little out in front of my comfort zone. At my age I spend too much time in my comfort zone – and comfort zones tend to shrink with age. Until one is left sitting idle on a porch watching the world go by. The porch can wait – for now I still get to run.
In my youth I flew small model aircraft powered by miniature two cycle gas engines. The planes were controlled by two lines and flew only in a circle. Friends had a couple of planes and we flew them in the open area out behind our houses. Sometimes we would stand back-to-back to race them to see whose plane was faster. Most of the planes were plastic prebuilt models of pre-existing aircraft. I realized that there were flying wing kits of wood and paper designed to fly faster and began building those. These planes were faster and could do simple stunts. Soon we were building and flying these.
All of us used a three bladed propeller on the theory that more blades would bring more speed, produce more thrust that two bladed propellers. At some point, however, I saw a power output chart for our small engines, known as ½A engines. The engines were rated for maximum power output at 22,500 RPM. And achieving that rotation rate required using a two bladed propeller known as a five and a quarter four.
I eventually found a five and quarter four propeller in a local hobby shop. The propeller was smaller than our three bladed props we used. So when I came out into the flight area with my too small prop my friends laughed. I was worried too – I could not see how a smaller propeller with one fewer blade was going to improve the speed of my plane. I flipped the prop with the prop spring and adjusted the needle valve until the engine was screaming at a pitch not before heard in the flight area. A friend launched the plane and from the get go the plane was hands down the fastest any of us had ever seen. I was being spun around at a dizzying speed by the plane until the fuel ran out. As the plane landed in the grass my friends all wanted to know what kind of propeller I was using. Smaller, only two blades, but the result was the engine could hit a far higher rate of rotation and generate even more thrust.
Some time back I had purchased an electric string trimmer for my daughter – she had really wanted one for the yard. After she headed off island for college a nephew -in-law had come over a couple times to weed whack the lawn. He seemed to have trouble with the line feed mechanism. The line had been recommended by a chap at the local hardware store based on the trimmer model we have. I hadn’t been with on that particular run to the hardware store.
I recently tried to use the electric string trimmer myself in the garden, but the line feed mechanism was not working. Every time my line broke I had to take the head off, pop open the reel case, and manually feed the line. I figured the line feed mechanism must be broken. I spent that day whacking a couple of feet, then manually feeding more line, whacking two more feet.
I hadn’t paid much attention to the line since the line was the one recommended to my wife. The string was a hexagonally edged “maxi-edge” line. As the trimmer line was running out, I went to the hardware store today to pick up more line. I knew that the edged line could be more problematic and that the electric string trimmer used the lightest of lines at 0.065 inches. I picked up some smooth round 0.065 inch line to see if that might work better than the edged line.
Within a few feet the line had split off, but when, just for the heck of it, I pressed the line feed button, the line suddenly fed. I was surprised. Not once during the day did I have to manually feed the line. The machine whirred and purred feeding line. Only when I took a break to reload the reel did I realize that the old orange hex line was 0.095 line – the wrong size. Not to mention that the lighter weight electric trimmer is designed for the round, non-edged line.
The lighter line lasted longer and fed properly, making far quicker work of the lawn. Smaller was exactly what the string trimmer needed. The lighter line also seemed to let the head spin faster, providing a much cleaner cut line that the heavier 0.095 inch line had been able to produce.
Thus I was reminded of the five and a quarter four propeller once again after many years of not having thought about that time in my life. There is some deeper lesson about the right tools for a job, the right accessories for the tool, but for now I can just sit on the porch and enjoy the trimmed lawn.
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 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.
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.
Curry takeout when I go out. Four funerals and no weddings in four weeks gets a sexagenarian thinking about funerals. As in my own. Obviously once one is dead one no longer has a say in planning. But if I did have a voice at the family funeral planning session I would push for chicken curry takeout. My family knows my penchant for free food at a funeral. This is because I have long observed that many who attend a funeral are not in any way emotionally impacted by the death of the one who passed away. They can be thought of as only being there for the free food. Not that this is a bad thing, no, this makes the funeral a large social gathering. This distracts the immediate family from their pain by keeping them busy hosting hundreds of guests. The idea of being left alone to grieve in private is an anathema to the cultures here. Grieving is a shared social and communal experience. And this is good.
Chicken curry is a staple at funerals here, and a favorite of mine. The menu probably ought to also include Kosraean soup, Kosraean style funerary coffee. Sakau would be a plus, but not required and will probably be rejected by the planning committee. Skip the pigs and yams – no need to go overboard. And while I am not planning on expiring anytime soon, the pace of funerals here this summer and the number of funerals and aengyanis I have attended are reminders that one can never know. So while I hope to live many more healthy years, I want to put a vote in for chicken curry takeout when I go out before I go out. Just tell everyone, free food!
If, when I was younger and parked my car on a trip into a city, I got out of my car and there was a shirtless, shoeless old man sitting on a low cement retaining wall alongside the road, I would not have even looked his way. This morning I went down to Linda Carl’s takeout stand to pickup a quick breakfast on this FSM Constitution day holiday. I got out of my car and there was a shirtless, zori-less, old man sitting on the low cement wall that marks the drainage culvert where the Saidonokowa stream passes under Nan Mal Road. I stopped, turned towards him, and greeted him. He returned the greeting. I do not know him. He does not know me. He did not earn my respect, I gave the respect he was always due. I know that here respect is not earned, respect is the starting place. Respect is first, honor comes from carrying out the traditional obligations to the traditional leadership, the church, the family, and the community. Respect is given, honor is earned. Perhaps my birth nation’s issue is that they start from a premise that respect has to be earned, as they say, “respect is earned, honor is given.” Little wonder the fabric of that society is so combative and non-compromising. There is much these islands can teach others, and one is that respect is given, honor is earned.
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.
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.
For 28 years 5K fun runs here on Pohnpei have launched at 0700 hours whether a Saturday or the occasional Sunday run. 5K at around 10:45 on a sunny Saturday morning is new. There was the intent to give groups represented at the event more time to set up and to interact with the attendees. There was also a desire to allow for speakers to address the gathering.
A matriarchal clan lineage system on Pohnpei means that the girl child carries the future success of the clan in her. Without daughters, clans could conceivably be lost. The importance of the female child is culturally well understood. That said, there are factors that can negatively impact the girl child during her youth. When a relative is ill and hospitalized, school age girls are more often prevailed upon to remain in the hospital with the ill relative as an attendant. Married women too often have husbands and children to tend to, and school age boys a less likely to be chosen as an attendant. The result is a disproportionally negative impact of illnesses in a family on the education of the girl child than the boy child.
The run portion of the day was characterized by heat and traffic. The midmorning start put the runners and walkers onto the road at the peak of Saturday morning shopping on island. Too, the pavement was already heated by sun, increasing the ambient temperature for the participants. I knew the run would be heat test. Pohnpei is a wet heat. High humidity shuts down evaporative cooling by sweat. Add in a lack of any shade as the tropical sun climbed to its noontime zenith. I used a hat and throttled back on my pace as a way to manage the heat. Still, I felt the heat ebbing away the strength in my legs as I headed up some of the final uphills into the finish line. Small slopes, but still requiring pushing already overheated muscles.
I think I felt slightly delirious at the finish, that or overexcited at joggling successfully in the heat. After walking off my elevated heart rate I headed home on foot. By now traffic was hopelessly snarled due to all the walkers in the road. The Kolonia Town police worked valiantly in the heat to try to keep walkers safe and to keep traffic moving – the traffic jam effectively blocked potential emergency vehicle transit to the hospital side from Kolonia.
I never really know if events such as this have a significant positive impact on the intended target, in this case on the lives of girl children, I can only hope so. Perhaps awareness of the organizations which were present and which seek to support girls and young women will result in more young women participating in these organizations.
danaleeling 