It has been exactly one year since I packed my bags and headed to Malaysia. The trip feels so distant now--did I really do that? Did two Nebraskans and two South Dakotans really tackle the wild rainforests of Borneo? And yet the memories stay fresh in my mind: the eerie night hike, eating on the floor, the smiles of the Iban kids. Burning my mouth on a hot pepper while the rest of us sang karaoke. Watching a Nephila spider spin a six-foot web. Slipping and sliding up and down the hills, while trying to avoid spiky flora and venomous fauna. Talking about '90s pop music while hanging up clothes to dry under our humble porch.
I apologize for not keeping you posted of the happenings after Gulung Mulu; things got very hectic at that time. Here's a summary: we flew from Mulu back to Miri on June 6. We finished up some analyses, wrote a rough draft of our results for the park staff, and said our last goodbyes. It was a very touching moment, leaving our professor, leaving Lambir. On June 8 we went to Bako National Park, near Kuching. It's a bizarre park, with at least eight completely different ecotopes. We walked from a monkey-infested mangrove forest to the greenest rainforest I've ever seen to a coniferous dry forest to an open grassland with pitcher plants to a kerangas white-sand forest, all within half a mile. The beaches were magnificent, quintessential tropical lagoons, and I did get sunburnt pretty badly. From Kuching we spent two days in SIngapore, wandering around the precious little shops of Little India by day and hanging out at a sidewalk karaoke bar by night. June 12 was the longest day of my life, literally. We flew from Singapore to Tokyo to Dallas to Omaha, crossing the International Date Line, so we left Tokyo around 10 a.m. and arrived in Dallas around 8 a.m. the same day. Our parents were waiting at the airport, as their little kiddies came home from the adventure of a lifetime.
Once we were back, we had a week off before starting chemical analyses on the leaves we had collected. So I slept 16 hours straight, caught up with friends, organized my many pictures, chilled with my family. I wish that would have lasted longer. We reluctantly congregated in Lincoln and started grinding up leaves, in order to run them through a machine that essentially set them on fire. This was to see how much carbon and nitrogen was in the leaves. In the meantime we used computer software to analyze surface area from the scans we had made, and we used another program to find best-fit curves for our photosynthesis data. Over the next semester, we found that the mathematical model and the empirical data didn't really fit together, so the project really became two projects, one with a bunch of equations and the other with a bunch of statistics. We presented our findings at our university's math modeling seminar, and then at the Midwest Ecology and Evolution Conference in Ames, Iowa.
It's been difficult to work on the project after Borneo, because so many other things get in the way. I've taken some challenging classes, classes with names like Invertebrate Zoology and Principles of Operations Research. And then activities like marching band, Bible study, even intramural soccer have eaten up my time, and I like it that way. This summer, starting today actually, I will be a Technical Support intern at Li-Cor, the company who made the super-expensive photosynthesis machine we used. It's a bit of a stretch for me, since I'm not an engineer, but I'm willing to give it a try.
And that's what got me to Borneo in the first place. I was always more of an animal guy, but somehow I ended up studying plants, and it was one of the best experiences of my life. I made wonderful friends. I learned more about God. I learned how to get around in a foreign country. I experienced firsthand how empirical biology research works. I went to Malaysia, and I loved it.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
June 5--Dayaks and kayaks
(note--this lost post was only recently recovered. enjoy the details of one more day in Malaysia)
Everything we did today was something you can do at home. Yet none of it was anything like home. We became so enraptured by the vacation mindset that we didn't even enter Gulung Mulu National Park, instead opting to chill at the resort. We went kayaking, swimming, mountain biking, stargazing, and ended up watching TV and eating apples with peanut butter. Nothing out of the ordinary, right?
Yet it was completely different than any other day I've spent kayaking and mountain biking. We started off day two of our vacation by sleeping in until 9, then wandering down to the resort's dock. From there we embarked on a four-hour kayak expedition through various tributaries of the river that winds through the park as well. The other guy and I navigated one kayak up the river, while the girls in the other kayak basically traveled up the banks, bouncing from one to the other while only occasionally going straight against the current. This ensued for about two hours, scaring the local wildlife away with our laughter and camaraderie.
Of course, the river had my attention from the start. Massive green palms hung over the banks and dipped into the water. Fallen trees, their enormous trunks submerged mere inches below the water's surface, provided plenty of obstacles. Nothing moved, nothing changed save a few lizards on the banks and a gentle breeze against our faces. The verdant canopy muted not only the light levels, but also the sound levels, so the entire experience was a dim, deep journey, entirely isolated from humanity. I can see how boating excursions can turn from something like Gilligan's Island to The Heart of Darkness in no time.
The girls came ashore early, leaving the other guy and I to take independent kayaks and explore a wider, more open section of river. The current was stronger, but so was the motivation. We wanted to go as far as we could, dodging the motorboats coming our way while managing not to entangle ourselves in the branches of drowned trees. Eventually the wind began to change and the sky darkened; the mountains of Mulu appeared ready to cast a storm our way. We said, "Let's go just around that bend" about five times before letting the current carry us back to the resort.
It never did rain much; the sky cleared up enough to give us all sunburns as we sat around the (chlorinated!) pool, yet not enough to convince us that the bats would come out of the cave today. As I rented a mountain bike from the front desk, the lady warned me of rain, and I thanked her and rolled out anyway. It was refreshing, really, trying to race the threatening clouds as they spilled over Gulung Mulu, being passed by hurried motorcyclists, watching the greenery fly past. At one point I passed a school courtyard full of Penang kids playing soccer, and I desperately wanted to just drop the bike and join, but I had only rented the bike for one hour, and responsibility got the best of me. So I headed back, towards the orange sunshine, passing pygmy squirrels and giant grasses and the one-runway airport. Such a wonderful day, yet soon the sun will set on our vacation, our project, our time in Borneo. And then all we will have are data and memories, the cold hard mountains of science and the ephemeral clouds of experiences floating above them. That's why I write.
Everything we did today was something you can do at home. Yet none of it was anything like home. We became so enraptured by the vacation mindset that we didn't even enter Gulung Mulu National Park, instead opting to chill at the resort. We went kayaking, swimming, mountain biking, stargazing, and ended up watching TV and eating apples with peanut butter. Nothing out of the ordinary, right?
Yet it was completely different than any other day I've spent kayaking and mountain biking. We started off day two of our vacation by sleeping in until 9, then wandering down to the resort's dock. From there we embarked on a four-hour kayak expedition through various tributaries of the river that winds through the park as well. The other guy and I navigated one kayak up the river, while the girls in the other kayak basically traveled up the banks, bouncing from one to the other while only occasionally going straight against the current. This ensued for about two hours, scaring the local wildlife away with our laughter and camaraderie.
Of course, the river had my attention from the start. Massive green palms hung over the banks and dipped into the water. Fallen trees, their enormous trunks submerged mere inches below the water's surface, provided plenty of obstacles. Nothing moved, nothing changed save a few lizards on the banks and a gentle breeze against our faces. The verdant canopy muted not only the light levels, but also the sound levels, so the entire experience was a dim, deep journey, entirely isolated from humanity. I can see how boating excursions can turn from something like Gilligan's Island to The Heart of Darkness in no time.
The girls came ashore early, leaving the other guy and I to take independent kayaks and explore a wider, more open section of river. The current was stronger, but so was the motivation. We wanted to go as far as we could, dodging the motorboats coming our way while managing not to entangle ourselves in the branches of drowned trees. Eventually the wind began to change and the sky darkened; the mountains of Mulu appeared ready to cast a storm our way. We said, "Let's go just around that bend" about five times before letting the current carry us back to the resort.
It never did rain much; the sky cleared up enough to give us all sunburns as we sat around the (chlorinated!) pool, yet not enough to convince us that the bats would come out of the cave today. As I rented a mountain bike from the front desk, the lady warned me of rain, and I thanked her and rolled out anyway. It was refreshing, really, trying to race the threatening clouds as they spilled over Gulung Mulu, being passed by hurried motorcyclists, watching the greenery fly past. At one point I passed a school courtyard full of Penang kids playing soccer, and I desperately wanted to just drop the bike and join, but I had only rented the bike for one hour, and responsibility got the best of me. So I headed back, towards the orange sunshine, passing pygmy squirrels and giant grasses and the one-runway airport. Such a wonderful day, yet soon the sun will set on our vacation, our project, our time in Borneo. And then all we will have are data and memories, the cold hard mountains of science and the ephemeral clouds of experiences floating above them. That's why I write.
Friday, July 10, 2009
July 4--Spelunk
I could start this post several different ways. For example:
In my savory description of the olfactory wonders of Borneo, I forgot to mention one unique smell. Bat guano has the earthy odor one would expect, but it’s an altogether alien experience.
Or, I expected the Garden of Eden to be much less rainy.
Or, I can honestly now say that I’ve been attacked by a golden earwig.
Or, shooting at balloons with a blowgun may not be cultural, but it sure is fun.
These hooks all introduce the topic of today’s adventure: a mini-vacation. We’ve traded our Dr. Frankenstein personas for something more like Ferris Bueller, though hopefully an Indiana Jones complex comes along for the ride.
Today the four of us caught a half-hour flight to an isolated mountain range in the interior of Sarawak Borneo, a UNESCO World Heritage site named Gulung Mulu National Park. It’s been hailed as the Jurassic Park of Sarawak, without the dinosaurs. Included are the world’s largest cave passage and the world’s largest cave chamber (I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference though), as well as beautiful pristine rainforest, canopy walkways and birdwatching towers, a 4-day mountain, and giant limestone formations that have been described as the world’s worst parachute landing. The only ways to get here were propeller-plane, longboat, or four-wheel drive, the latter two taking half a day. You might say it’s fairly isolated.
The only housing still available was the posh Royal Mulu Resort. It’s a happenin’ place, with tons of bustle and commotion. Minus the sarcasm, it’s still a very luxurious resort, although the Rajah Brooke’s birdwing butterflies flitting lazily along the boardwalks indicate just how relaxing the place is. There’s plenty the resort offers, including ATV tours and kayaking and cultural demonstrations. But most people are here to explore the park.
We went on a guided tour to see the caves. Our tour guide, a very helpful fellow, showed us through the rainforest, which wasn’t hard considering that the entire route to the first show caves is a wooden boardwalk about a meter off the ground. But he did point out several trails and plants and bugs that we never would have seen, and explained the formation of the limestone caves and the diversity of the region.
He also took us through the first two show caves of the park. Lang’s Cave is a smallish cave, as far as these caves go, but in the grand scheme of things I would have no difficulty fitting my family’s entire possessions in about a quarter of it. There are several artificial lights in the cave, designed to emphasize the peculiar stalactites and helictites and limestone formations that make this place famous. From there we went to Deer Cave, which houses only a couple million bats, with plenty of room left over for swiftlets. Oh yeah, it’s the largest cave passage in the world, and it would have been even larger if a section of forest (the “Garden of Eden”) hadn’t fallen in. Since it’s also a show cave, the trail is a boardwalk, the lights are electric, although the guides are legit.
We were going to watch the bats make their grand exit from the cave, but like Niah, they didn’t show, probably because it was sprinkling pretty heavily when we came out. But the redeeming aspect of our cave experience was the fact that we got to party with Abraham Lincoln on the Fourth of July--there’s a perfect natural likeness of his facial profile jutting from the cave entrance.
In my savory description of the olfactory wonders of Borneo, I forgot to mention one unique smell. Bat guano has the earthy odor one would expect, but it’s an altogether alien experience.
Or, I expected the Garden of Eden to be much less rainy.
Or, I can honestly now say that I’ve been attacked by a golden earwig.
Or, shooting at balloons with a blowgun may not be cultural, but it sure is fun.
These hooks all introduce the topic of today’s adventure: a mini-vacation. We’ve traded our Dr. Frankenstein personas for something more like Ferris Bueller, though hopefully an Indiana Jones complex comes along for the ride.
Today the four of us caught a half-hour flight to an isolated mountain range in the interior of Sarawak Borneo, a UNESCO World Heritage site named Gulung Mulu National Park. It’s been hailed as the Jurassic Park of Sarawak, without the dinosaurs. Included are the world’s largest cave passage and the world’s largest cave chamber (I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference though), as well as beautiful pristine rainforest, canopy walkways and birdwatching towers, a 4-day mountain, and giant limestone formations that have been described as the world’s worst parachute landing. The only ways to get here were propeller-plane, longboat, or four-wheel drive, the latter two taking half a day. You might say it’s fairly isolated.
The only housing still available was the posh Royal Mulu Resort. It’s a happenin’ place, with tons of bustle and commotion. Minus the sarcasm, it’s still a very luxurious resort, although the Rajah Brooke’s birdwing butterflies flitting lazily along the boardwalks indicate just how relaxing the place is. There’s plenty the resort offers, including ATV tours and kayaking and cultural demonstrations. But most people are here to explore the park.
We went on a guided tour to see the caves. Our tour guide, a very helpful fellow, showed us through the rainforest, which wasn’t hard considering that the entire route to the first show caves is a wooden boardwalk about a meter off the ground. But he did point out several trails and plants and bugs that we never would have seen, and explained the formation of the limestone caves and the diversity of the region.
He also took us through the first two show caves of the park. Lang’s Cave is a smallish cave, as far as these caves go, but in the grand scheme of things I would have no difficulty fitting my family’s entire possessions in about a quarter of it. There are several artificial lights in the cave, designed to emphasize the peculiar stalactites and helictites and limestone formations that make this place famous. From there we went to Deer Cave, which houses only a couple million bats, with plenty of room left over for swiftlets. Oh yeah, it’s the largest cave passage in the world, and it would have been even larger if a section of forest (the “Garden of Eden”) hadn’t fallen in. Since it’s also a show cave, the trail is a boardwalk, the lights are electric, although the guides are legit.
We were going to watch the bats make their grand exit from the cave, but like Niah, they didn’t show, probably because it was sprinkling pretty heavily when we came out. But the redeeming aspect of our cave experience was the fact that we got to party with Abraham Lincoln on the Fourth of July--there’s a perfect natural likeness of his facial profile jutting from the cave entrance.
July 3--Air means water
Sorry to unnecessarily scare you. With all the last-minute excitement, the possibility of an extended stay in Borneo, I failed to emphasize that all plans hinged on the cooperation of several airlines and travel agencies, which we all know is a difficult feat to accomplish. So it looks like we will be staying for the original itinerary and coming back as planned. We’ll stay in (near) Lambir until June 7, when we will fly to Kuching for a few days. Then a day in Singapore, a few hours in Tokyo, and the rest of the summer in Lincoln. By the twelfth of July, 2009 A.D., I will have left Borneo. Surprisingly, I can’t even find the words to say right now. It all seems so fast.
We had to mail our leaf samples today. This means we’ll have no physical test subjects to work on for the remainder of our stay. We still have plenty to do—learning and writing code to analyze our light curves, and troubleshooting said code when it doesn’t work, as well as transferring numbers from book to computer, making graphs, and trying to understand what in the world our data tells us. Also, when we drove into Miri tonight to mail our leaves, we almost got hit by an SUV passing a motorbike over a hill, while we were being tailgated by another SUV. Somebody said it could have been annihilation for our little Proton.
Since it’s one of our last days here (we’re going on a mini vacation tomorrow) and it’s our Iban assistant’s last day here (before she goes back to university), we had a party tonight. We’re all going to miss her a lot, because she always brings a cheerful attitude to the house even after a rough day in the forest. Plus she cooks wonderfully and does laundry perfectly and serenades our late-night data analysis with a little guitar strumming. So we bought her a new guitar. I’m told it has much better action than the one she has now, and I guess that’s a guitarist’s term to indicate it makes playing more fun, less painful. Plus it looks like the quintessential acoustic guitar, and it’s a worldwide brand, and sounds like a heavenly harp in the right hands.
The party was fun, with a couple of Iban families gathered around several heaping pots of steaming rice and a plate of honest-to-goodness barbecued chicken. We even pitched in with a cake with American chocolate, which is a real step up apparently. We danced to the Indonesian version of Poco Poco, a local hit. I added a ton of sweetened condensed milk to rose-flavored juice to create a concoction called air bandung. We listened to a worship song accompanied by the new guitar. We relearned how to dance Iban-style. I ate a whole pepper, and regretted it immediately.
I’ll miss her. I’ll miss eating on the floor. I’ll miss it here.
We had to mail our leaf samples today. This means we’ll have no physical test subjects to work on for the remainder of our stay. We still have plenty to do—learning and writing code to analyze our light curves, and troubleshooting said code when it doesn’t work, as well as transferring numbers from book to computer, making graphs, and trying to understand what in the world our data tells us. Also, when we drove into Miri tonight to mail our leaves, we almost got hit by an SUV passing a motorbike over a hill, while we were being tailgated by another SUV. Somebody said it could have been annihilation for our little Proton.
Since it’s one of our last days here (we’re going on a mini vacation tomorrow) and it’s our Iban assistant’s last day here (before she goes back to university), we had a party tonight. We’re all going to miss her a lot, because she always brings a cheerful attitude to the house even after a rough day in the forest. Plus she cooks wonderfully and does laundry perfectly and serenades our late-night data analysis with a little guitar strumming. So we bought her a new guitar. I’m told it has much better action than the one she has now, and I guess that’s a guitarist’s term to indicate it makes playing more fun, less painful. Plus it looks like the quintessential acoustic guitar, and it’s a worldwide brand, and sounds like a heavenly harp in the right hands.
The party was fun, with a couple of Iban families gathered around several heaping pots of steaming rice and a plate of honest-to-goodness barbecued chicken. We even pitched in with a cake with American chocolate, which is a real step up apparently. We danced to the Indonesian version of Poco Poco, a local hit. I added a ton of sweetened condensed milk to rose-flavored juice to create a concoction called air bandung. We listened to a worship song accompanied by the new guitar. We relearned how to dance Iban-style. I ate a whole pepper, and regretted it immediately.
I’ll miss her. I’ll miss eating on the floor. I’ll miss it here.
Friday, July 3, 2009
July 2--Bukit Lambir
Since we don’t have much time left here, and since there’s nothing left to do but massing leaves and statisticizing data and verbing nouns, we took a ten hour hike.
The four of us left around nine in the morning, after a hearty second breakfast of leftover curry. We hiked through the forest, bypassing all the trails that would take us to the waterfalls that we’ve already been to (Latak, Nibong, and Pantu), the hills we’ve already conquered (Bukit Pantu), the ponds we’ve already tried to catch fish in. We found new ponds; don’t worry. We crossed several streams, which was a welcome break from the monotonous hilly trail. It seems like the trail between Pantu and Dinding goes up as much as it comes down, leading to a very exhausting trek without any noticeable net change in elevation. But after walking past the trail leading to Dinding Waterfall, we soon started the upward climb towards Bukit Lambir, the highest point in the forest. I don’t know the distinction between Bukit (hill) and Gulung (mountain), but this hill seems significantly higher than your average Midwestern knoll. At one point we were desperately holding on to the ropes leading up the rock face, which were conveniently slippery, as might expect in a rainforest. There was even a clear change in forest types; other plants started cropping up—fewer ferns, more conifer-like trees. We also saw a lot of mushrooms—big red flat ones with bright green undersides, huge shelf fungi hanging off abandoned logs, tiny neon highlighters of mushrooms showing off from the leaf litter. And a lot of rocks. But I’m not a geologist. Yet.
We finally decided to stop—at the top. We had a clear view of everything for several miles (sorry, kilometers). We could see the ocean—it turns out it’s not very far from us at all, but all this time we had no idea. We could see the interior of Borneo, a vast tangle of trees. We could see a giant rainstorm headed our way, including an impenetrable wall of rain slowly advancing. Fortunately, the chain of hills is large enough to significantly alter the weather patterns, and even though it rained a lot at the house and a little in the plot, we only felt a few drops.
On the way back down we stopped at Dinding to cool off. It’s a very nice waterfall, with a very tall drop and a moderate pool. Most importantly, no tourists. We spent a considerable amount of time there, not looking forward to the demanding hike back. We ended up arriving at the house around 7, just in time for a supper of fried okra, rice, omelets, and laksa Sarawak. And that was pretty much our entire day. We figured we’d see as much of Lambir as we could, and today we accomplished just that.
The four of us left around nine in the morning, after a hearty second breakfast of leftover curry. We hiked through the forest, bypassing all the trails that would take us to the waterfalls that we’ve already been to (Latak, Nibong, and Pantu), the hills we’ve already conquered (Bukit Pantu), the ponds we’ve already tried to catch fish in. We found new ponds; don’t worry. We crossed several streams, which was a welcome break from the monotonous hilly trail. It seems like the trail between Pantu and Dinding goes up as much as it comes down, leading to a very exhausting trek without any noticeable net change in elevation. But after walking past the trail leading to Dinding Waterfall, we soon started the upward climb towards Bukit Lambir, the highest point in the forest. I don’t know the distinction between Bukit (hill) and Gulung (mountain), but this hill seems significantly higher than your average Midwestern knoll. At one point we were desperately holding on to the ropes leading up the rock face, which were conveniently slippery, as might expect in a rainforest. There was even a clear change in forest types; other plants started cropping up—fewer ferns, more conifer-like trees. We also saw a lot of mushrooms—big red flat ones with bright green undersides, huge shelf fungi hanging off abandoned logs, tiny neon highlighters of mushrooms showing off from the leaf litter. And a lot of rocks. But I’m not a geologist. Yet.
We finally decided to stop—at the top. We had a clear view of everything for several miles (sorry, kilometers). We could see the ocean—it turns out it’s not very far from us at all, but all this time we had no idea. We could see the interior of Borneo, a vast tangle of trees. We could see a giant rainstorm headed our way, including an impenetrable wall of rain slowly advancing. Fortunately, the chain of hills is large enough to significantly alter the weather patterns, and even though it rained a lot at the house and a little in the plot, we only felt a few drops.
On the way back down we stopped at Dinding to cool off. It’s a very nice waterfall, with a very tall drop and a moderate pool. Most importantly, no tourists. We spent a considerable amount of time there, not looking forward to the demanding hike back. We ended up arriving at the house around 7, just in time for a supper of fried okra, rice, omelets, and laksa Sarawak. And that was pretty much our entire day. We figured we’d see as much of Lambir as we could, and today we accomplished just that.
June 30--Groovy
Fortunately, it did not rain today until we were well out of the field. After removing the leaves we needed, there was only one leaf left on Macala 4, and it seemed quite lonely as we released the tree. An austere flag, waving us a sad farewell.
It was spectacular, the way everything got accomplished. Now we can weigh the dry leaves, which doesn’t take very long at all. We’ll also start analyses with statistical tests and computer programs; I spent most of the night making 55 graphs on Excel, each with multiple sets of data and error bars. Once you get into a groove, it’s not that bad. That holds true for most everything we do—weighing leaves, measuring chlorophyll, wringing wet clothes. We got into so much of a groove that we didn’t realize how little time we have left.
But soon the groove will change, and who knows where it will go. Maybe it’ll end up as a jazzy halftime groove full of lazy days on the beach. Perhaps it’ll switch to a double time jam session supercharged with mountain climbing and city exploration. Most likely, the way our phone calls to ticket agencies and airlines have been going, it’ll simply fade into a familiar tune as we pack our bags and grab the next flight over the pond. We haven’t been able to make very many arrangements with such short notice, but however we go out, rest assured that we aren’t looking for any last-minute excursions to redeem our time here; every day has made it worthwhile.
It was spectacular, the way everything got accomplished. Now we can weigh the dry leaves, which doesn’t take very long at all. We’ll also start analyses with statistical tests and computer programs; I spent most of the night making 55 graphs on Excel, each with multiple sets of data and error bars. Once you get into a groove, it’s not that bad. That holds true for most everything we do—weighing leaves, measuring chlorophyll, wringing wet clothes. We got into so much of a groove that we didn’t realize how little time we have left.
But soon the groove will change, and who knows where it will go. Maybe it’ll end up as a jazzy halftime groove full of lazy days on the beach. Perhaps it’ll switch to a double time jam session supercharged with mountain climbing and city exploration. Most likely, the way our phone calls to ticket agencies and airlines have been going, it’ll simply fade into a familiar tune as we pack our bags and grab the next flight over the pond. We haven’t been able to make very many arrangements with such short notice, but however we go out, rest assured that we aren’t looking for any last-minute excursions to redeem our time here; every day has made it worthwhile.
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