Le Tour 2012

ASO announced the 2012 route earlier in the week. It appears that there is a lot of climbing in it, but I’ll have a closer look later in the day.

Reflections of Kilimanjaro, Part 2

It has been said that travel literature is dead, made obsolete by the likes of Google Earth and the internet more generally and the plethora of travel books that do seemingly cover every square inch of the globe. But the great travel writer Paul Theroux, in a recent piece in the Financial Times (“The places in between” May 28/29 2011) reminds us that there are still plenty of places, and plenty of experiences, that are well worth description. It helps to have had a miserable experience, a close call with death, or some other disaster or mishap, or so he argues. Perhaps so. Just to prove the point, go to the National Geographic’s “Extreme Classics: the 100 greatest adventure books of all time.” Number one on the list? The Worst Journey in the World, by Apsley Cherry-Garrard (1922). But I am no Richard Burton traveling in disguise to Mecca, or Apsley Cherry-Garrard describing Scott’s expedition to the Antarctic.

And I am afraid that my experiences in the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater traced a well worn path, and were far too pleasant.  So I will not remotely come close to the standards that Theroux suggested should characterize good, literary travel narrative. On the other hand, I have more modest aims. What I hope, following Theroux’s broader view, is that my descriptions of Kilimanjaro, the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater, evoke a sense of place. That’s what really counts.

Mountain climbing, and travel generally, changes you. The two are in some ways opposed, climbing, or trekking, focuses the mind, in my case, fairly fully, on the task at hand. Bad weather on Kili meant that the week was literally spent thinking about putting one foot in front of the other most of the time, whether your socks really stank as bad as you thought they did (in my case….they did), would you have to get out of the tent at 3 AM for a nature call (and where the hell was your headlamp!), and so on. The week’s safari, on the other hand, offered the possibility of a more expansive frame of mind, set on seeing vistas far and near, and simply experiencing a new, and vast, landscape. I have come back from Tanzania much the richer for the experiences and for the memories. I learned a lot about myself, and about Tanzania.

The safari drive for three days surprised me at just about every turn.  From the Serengeti, we headed eastward, and spent an hour visiting Olduvai Gorge and the small museum there along the way.

Next we drove up to and into the Ngorongoro Crater. Here was an even more surprising day than the Serengeti was and it turned out to be a real joy. I thought that it might simply be an interesting place geologically. We had a long drive up to the crater rim and then we drove down into the crater.  From  a hawk’s perspective,  we reached the crater’s floor from the animal’s perspective.

The Crater floor was teeming. The crater itself is something like 120 square miles. A big place.

Perhaps my favorite creature of the whole trip was the Topi Antelope. Handsome:

We spent an entire day cross-crossing the crater, encountering another wide assortment of animals, from the ubiquitous zebra and wildebeest to the rare black rhino.

At the end of the day we drove up out of the crater and arrived at a spectacular hotel on the crater rim at about 8,ooo feet. We hit the veranda just in time for a sunset.

I cannot think of a better way to end the two weeks of travel in northern Tanzania than our sitting quietly, almost in wonder, looking out over the crater. Watching the sunset below the crater rim, having a nice chat with Alan about Kili and future climbs, put a lot of things in perspective for me. It was nice to encounter, on the long drive back to Arusha, a cycling team climbing up the steep mountain road that we were descending to get back to the plateau. I have no idea what they were doing there but it was a perfect mix for me of mountains and cycling. I did not make it to Lake Victoria on this trip (and had no plans to do so). That was a bit of a shame since the sources of the Nile River were so close. So I am hoping to get back to Tanzania. More mountains are certainly on the horizon for me, first in New Hampshire, then Colorado and Mt Rainier next Summer. I do hope, I confess, to encounter not too much trouble, so I am afraid Paul Theorux will not be reading me. What I am hoping for instead is more challenges in the mountains, as always more cycling, and many more memories of wonderful places.

Stunning story on Alzheimer’s today

An article in today’s (August 5) Wall Street Journal discusses recent research that suggests that the chemical changes in the brain that are the precursors to the disease begin years, even decades, before they are detectable. By the time of many diagnoses, it appears that it may already be too late to do anything about it. Want to know why I support Alan Arnette’s 7 Summits quest to support research in Alzheimer’s? When I say about some experience, like climbing Mt Yale for example, “I am going to remember that my whole life,” I really want to!

 

Alan just left for Elbrus. Make a donation today, HERE

 

 

Alan Arnette in the Huff Post today

A nice piece appeared today in the Huff post about Alan’s quest for the Seven Summits this year to raise awareness, and badly needed funding, for Alzheimer’s research. Great piece; great quest. It’s been really enjoyable following along. Denali next. Climb on Alan!

hiking in Point Reyes seashore

Well, I am out in CA taking a bit of a break. I’ve been hiking in the Point Reyes National Seashore-great place to hike. I was fearing the crowds this weekend but the trails were very mellow, and the weather was perfect. Hiked up to Mt Wittenberg (ca 1400 feet) yesterday, the highest point in the park. It is a good climb up and I  walked at a really good pace to get a workout in. It was great, well worth it, except that the guidebooks describe a great view from the top . But all I got was the USGS datum point, below, and zero views!! Looks like some new trees have been placed at the summit, blocking all views to the shoreline. Ah well Got a good walk in, and had a nice lunch at Point Reyes Station which, these days, has been yuppified some. Some very nice cafes there. Tomorrow I am going on a coastal ride, from Palo Alto out over the Santa Cruz mountains to the coast and back.

Point Reyes Station

Mt Wittenberg summit!

Wisteria at Yale

Ok ok, this has nothing to due with my self-imposed blogging subjects, and it was not much of an adventure since it was just outside of a dining hall I frequent, but it does count as cool. Ive discovered today an ancient wisteria plant at one of the Yale University colleges, with some of the branch welded naturally onto the steel post.

Cool

Everest is really heating up

I am following with great interest now the Everest season. It is crowded this year on the south side, and there are lots of really compelling personal stories. You can get great reporting over on The Adventurist and Alan Arnette’s site, both on my Blogroll. As my new friend Jason over on the Adventurist reports, the First Ascent team is an amazing collection  of talented American mountaineers, including my hero Ed Viesturs. The team is sponsored primarily by Eddie Bauer, who are launching a new line of mountaineering clothes. I’ve just ordered a couple of pieces, so I’ll let you know. The stuff does look good, you can see the men’s stuff  HERE and in an intensely competitive market, I guess it is going to help to have these climbers going for Everest, after their tests on Aconcagua. You get a sense of the logistics, and this year’s bad weather, on the FirstAscent posts:

A demotic marriage contract, 97 BC, (Gebelein) Upper Egypt

The following is a legal document written at the beginning of the first century BC, from a military community established in the southern Egyptian Nile valley in the Ptolemaic period. It is the kind of primary documentary material that I am looking at with some of my students this term. We are examining such material from several Mediterranean cultures formthe point of view of how such texts functioned within society as well as some of the technical points of ancient legal documents.   Notice the upper and lower margins here, to protect the preservation of the writing, the scribe would leave wide margins on all four sides typically, so when the text was rolled up and sealed, wear and tear would not effect the contents. Can you spot the beginning of the text? The text is now part of the Schoyen collection (the Adler papyri).

The study of ancient law and ancient legal texts

I thought I would start off my blog over Yale’s Spring break (at some point I really will take a  “break”) by posting a little bit about a new course I am teaching here, and hope to develop over the next few years. It is an undergraduate course on ancient law, taken mainly, but not exclusively, by Junior History majors. It’s designed to be small and intimate, and intended to introduce History students to a body of academic literature in a particualr field. It is not an easy course to teach (or to take I dare say) but the students are doing really well with the material, and in fact the final project, the creation of a wiki on ancient law, and supported by a blog where they from time to time post what they are doing, how they are gathering material and so on, is a really fun approach to learning. I am also learning as we go.