Reflections
I’m about to take a three-month sabbatical to deal with webmaster matters and do a bit of travelling, but before going offline I need to make a correction. In April, and for that matter whenever I’ve written about visiting the world’s highest mountain, I’ve repeated the common story that the Tibetan and Sherpa name for Mount Everest – Chomolungma – means “Goddess Mother of the Earth”. I’ve now learned that’s not quite true.
Continue reading “Naming a Goddess – The many guises of Mount Everest”
Browsing through photos of a 2007 visit to the vast “Forbidden City” in Beijing got me thinking about how, in imperial China, even the most distinguished foreign visitors to the Emperor were expected to prostrate themselves to acknowledge his supremacy. Imperial officials would ensure that this was done, after which the Emperor would condescend to accept tribute and grant gifts. That got me reflecting on an unrelated event in the US capital a few months ago.
Continue reading “The Art of the Kowtow – From Beijing to Washington”
On a hot mid-morning during a 6-week walk from France to Santiago de Compostela I was grateful to see an enterprising young man selling cold drinks, fruit and souvenirs to pilgrims in the middle of nowhere. His little dog bounded up, wagging its tail and barking so furiously that I couldn’t resist joking “¿No pasarán?” to its owner. He looked startled. “My God” he said, “Do you know what that means?” I did – but not the significance of the day on which I’d said it. Which led to a thought-provoking discussion about the Spanish Civil War, 80 years earlier.
Tourists are told that Tibet’s Rongbuk (Rongphu) monastery is the highest in the world, but it isn’t. That honour goes to the slightly higher monastery at Dirapuk, facing Mount Kailash far to the west.(*) Nonetheless, at 5,000 metres (16,400 feet) above sea level, Rongbuk is magnificently located on the northern approach to the world’s highest mountain, known in the West as Mount Everest and in Tibet as Qomolongma, “Goddess Mother of the Earth”. A visit can be humbling, in more ways than one.
One of many lessons I’ve learned from long-distance travel is to seize any opportunity for stopovers, no matter how brief. They’re a chance for unique mini-adventures, like the 10-hour stop in Jordan and 24-hour stay in Malaysia that I’ve shared previously. Recent events remind me of another stopover, just three months after the trip to Washington described last month – an overnight in Finland’s capital. Ironically, both memories prompt reflections on Friday’s disgraceful episode in Washington and so (trigger warning) I feel compelled to continue a political theme raised last month.
A lot has changed since I was last on business in Washington. Its imposing classic architecture and urban landscape had got me imagining what it must have been like to stroll through ancient Rome at the height of its imperial glory. Who would have thought then that the Western world’s mightiest economic and military power was on a path from great republic to imperial oligarchy, and ultimately to inglorious decline and fall? A decade later that’s not so hard to imagine.
Continue reading “Rome on the Potomac? – Washington, 2015-2025”
The leader of Syria’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebel movement certainly had history at his back in December when he appeared in the ancient Umayyad Mosque in Damascus to announce the fall of the odious Assad regime. The site had begun as an Aramean temple to the god Hadad, then to Zeus of the Greeks and Jupiter of the Romans, becoming a Christian basilica in the 4th Century and finally, in the 8th, a Muslim mosque. But impressive though it is, my favourite memory of the place is a modest mausoleum tucked outside the northern wall ‒ the tomb of Saladin.
Seen from the walls of a medieval castle the view couldn’t have been more dissonant. As far as the eye could see it was a dystopian, post-apocalyptic landscape of oil-soaked ponds and rusting Soviet-era oil pumps. A low plume of smoke drifting in front of the city skyline marked a huge landfill which had been burning for years. Many have criticized the choice of Azerbaijan as host for last month’s 29th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29), especially as it was the second “petro-state” in a row to do so. Yet Baku is the birthplace of the modern petroleum industry and its history has environmental lessons to offer.
Continue reading “An Environmental Morality Tale – Baku, 2007”
Each year I take the eleven days between November 1st and Remembrance Day to reflect on the folly of war. This year, talk of ceasefire in the Middle East recalls memories of facilitating one in the Balkans three decades ago. As with most issues of war and peace, especially in places like the Balkans or Middle East, things are rarely simple.
Continue reading “Reflections on Ceasefires – From Ex-Yugoslavia to Gaza”
One difference between pilgrimage and a walking adventure is that while everyone may be treading the same physical path, the pilgrim is also on an inner journey: walking mindfully; living simply; accepting rather than avoiding challenges; being open to lessons along the way. On my first Camino de Santiago, walking mindfully along the eight hundred kilometre pilgrim way across Northern Spain, I was reminded that even the simplest of experiences can offer profound life lessons. Like watching a snail cross a road.
I can never quite decide whether it’s endearing or annoying when Canadians ”punch above their weight” in world affairs and then passively allow our collective memory to fade away. Case in point: while today’s clash of hard-line ideologues rips lives apart in the Middle East, few people these days remember that that thirty years ago Canadians were assisting Israelis and Arabs from across the Middle East and North Africa to build confidence and cooperation, including at sea among navies, coast guards and, in the case of Palestinians, coastal police.
Continue reading “An Adriatic Anecdote – Venice, 1994”
And time seems to go by so fast
In the twinkling of an eye
Let’s enjoy it while we can (let’s enjoy it while we can)
To the bright side of the road
(Van Morrison)
I’m a great admirer of professionals who make difficult work look easy – none more so than the guides, cooks and porters who support foreign travellers in the mountains and foothills of Nepal. Mountaineers know this of course: few would reach a Himalayan summit without an extensive local support team behind them. But less recognized – outside Nepal at least – are those who support ordinary trekkers from around the world whose “summit” is not a mountaintop but rather a peak experience; walking spectacular countryside in the company of its tough, resilient, gracious and hospitable people.
Continue reading “The Bright Side of the Rhodo(dendrons) – Nepal 2024”
I’m off to Nepal again soon and may take the opportunity to do some site maintenance after I get back, so it may be a couple of months before the next post. Meanwhile, there are sixty-one stories from around the world already here (or, if you’re really bored and desperate for something to read, links here to published work on professional matters). Otherwise, I’ll be dusting off the keyboard again some time after returning home.
Namaste
p.s. The picture is of spinning a prayer wheel en route to Mount Everest in 2013
“You’ll have no trouble getting a ride out of Sydney mate” I’d been assured. Hitchhiking was common in Australia and lots of people would be driving out of the city for Easter. So, standing on the outskirts of the city I was mystified at the lack of response to a jaunty thumb and cheerful smile. It was getting dark when the driver of a little Mini stopped, rolled down his window cautiously, and asked if I was having trouble getting a ride. And that’s how I learned two murderous rapists had escaped from a ward for the criminally insane, triggering the biggest manhunt in the history of New South Wales. And that the police description of one sounded very much like me. It was promising to be a long night.
Ecuador’s seaport of Guayaquil made the news recently when armed youths burst into a television studio during a live broadcast, threatening everyone with pistols, shotguns and dynamite. Looking back on a visit to Guayaquil thirty-five years earlier, I may have some appreciation of motives, although I certainly don’t condone the crime.
Continue reading “Musing on Marxism – Guayaquil, Ecuador, 1989”
Mention “the Kremlin” and most of us will picture the brooding fortress-palace in Moscow, and perhaps use it as a shorthand title for authoritarian Russian regimes, from medieval tsars to Vladimir Putin. But although it’s customary to refer to it as “The” Kremlin it is, in fact, just one of about twenty such fortified complexes still standing in Russia – ornate monuments to its vibrant culture and stormy history.
Continue reading “Of Kremlins and Camaraderie – Russia, 2005”
Security was a hot topic in December 2002, just over a year after a gang of mostly Saudi suicides had hijacked four American airliners (along with the good name of Allah “the Compassionate, the Merciful”) to murder thousands on 11 September 2001. I’d been invited to give the keynote address to a security panel at the International Ocean Institute’s twenty-ninth Pacem in Maribus conference. It was to be held in Cape Town, but I wasn’t going to travel all the way to South Africa without seeing something of the country. So, I flew to Johannesburg to visit a friend in nearby Pretoria (the nation’s capital), then boarded a train for Cape Town, 1,500 kilometres away.
Many things will have changed in the Gulf States since I was last there. Happily, one of them is abolition of child slavery associated with the camel-racing industry – one of the richer sports in the world. Twenty years ago, I was appalled to see tiny, skinny boys, some as young as four, who had been trafficked from poor Muslim countries to be exploited as camel jockeys in Qatar. Across the region such kids were being under-fed, educationally deprived, often injured and sometime killed. Now, it seems, innovative application of technology has contributed to much-needed reform. Continue reading “Child Camel Jockeys – Qatar, 2002”
Somehow I had imagined Spain’s Cape Finisterre – “End of the Earth” – to be like a finger of Europe pointing westward toward the open sea. But it isn’t. It’s more like an appendix, hanging “down” from north to south. And that’s part of the magic. The pilgrim who augments their Camino de Santiago (the “Way of Saint James”) by walking an additional 90 kilometres westward eventually turns south toward the point, through the charming little town of Finisterre. To their left is the familiar land from which they have come. Over the hill to the right, the western cliffs plunge precipitously into open ocean and empty horizon. It’s not hard to see why, for millennia, Finisterre was a revered destination in its own right; a threshold between the known and unknown worlds.
Continue reading “A Walk to the End of the Earth – Galicia, 2023”
Thirty years ago this month the world watched as Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s Yasser Arafat joined US President Clinton on the White House lawn to sign what became known as the Oslo Accord. Nowhere was that being more closely watched than at the Canadian Coast Guard College, where wary naval, coast guard and other maritime professionals from Israel, the PLO and a number of neighbouring Arab countries were meeting for the first time.
Continue reading “Musical Diplomacy in the Middle East: 1993-1995”
A few more days and I’ll be leaving for another camino; walking a pilgrimage toward the great 12th Century cathedral in Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. This will probably be my last post until September, so I’ll leave you with some personal thoughts on pilgrimage in general and the camino tradition in particular.
I would have expected my secular Western sensibilities to be offended at the very idea of secluding a prepubescent girl as an object of worship. Yet reflecting on an experience of darshan – a Sanskrit term for beholding a deity – in Nepal, I’m left with more nuanced thoughts as we approach International Women’s Day later this month.
Continue reading ““Living Goddesses” – Kathmandu, 2019”
On Azerbaijan’s Abşeron Peninsula jutting eastward into the Caspian Sea, the ground on a hillside called Yanar Dağ appears to be on fire. At one time that was not uncommon here. Indeed, Azerbaijan may take its name from the words “azer” (fire) and “baydjan” meaning “guardian”. Ancient traders and pilgrims along the Silk Road, including Marco Polo in the 13th Century, marvelled at flames emerging from the ground, and occasionally from water. Strangely enough, there’s even a (very) loose connection to the Christmas story.
Continue reading “Epiphany at a Fire Temple – Baku, Azerbaijan, 2007”
For your amusement, I’ve just changed the featured image at the top of the “Days of Our Youth” story to a recently-discovered photo of my teenage self ushering my “clients” aboard the ultra-modern Viscount airliner.
The rugged back roads between Montenegro and the valleys of Bosnia and Hercegovina are not for the faint-hearted. Particularly in winter, with isolated checkpoints manned by unsympathetic militia whose discipline and sobriety could be questionable. But in wartime you go with what you’ve got. The brutal tide of “ethnic cleansing” sweeping the former Yugoslavia had finally reached a place that our team from the European Community Monitoring Mission had been watching closely. With a fellow monitor from Greece, along with our Montenegrin interpreter and French driver, we set out to do what we could. Thirty years later, my most enduring memory of the days that followed is of someone I never met – a decent, likeable and talented young man who made a split-second decision that cost him his life, but became a symbol of reconciliation for decent Bosnian Muslims and Serbs alike. Continue reading “Death on St Sava’s Day – “Republika Srpska”, January 1993”
The shady courtyard of Sera Monastery hums with energy as dozens of maroon-robed monks pair off in philosophical debate. One defends a proposition calmly, seated cross-legged on the ground. The other stands; challenging animatedly, concluding each argument with a dramatic sweep of the arms and a stamp of a foot. It looks like some sort of exotic scholastic Tai Chi, and perhaps in some ways it is. But it also has lessons to offer on critical thinking in a world awash with digitally-proliferated information misinformation, disinformation, opinion and downright lies.
This weekend’s visit to Halifax by the latest and greatest United States Navy aircraft carrier, Gerald R. Ford, has put me in mind of a lesson from fifty years ago. Impressive as these great ships are, and while we can be justifiably awed by the technology, we shouldn’t get over-awed. Let me take you back to 1972 for an example.
Continue reading “Aircraft Carrier vs. Submarine – Exercise RIMPAC 1972”
On my first opportunity to greet royalty I flubbed my lines. As a six year-old lad welcoming the newly crowned Queen on her first visit to Wales, I’d been given a little flag to wave and encouragement to give a hearty cheer as she walked by. I was well-placed at the front of the crowd, but when the time came to perform I was so over-awed that I just stood speechless with my little flag drooping [insert your own joke here]. In my defence, as well as being The Queen she was also the first TV star I’d ever seen. Her funeral last month reminded me of watching her coronation seven decades earlier, and a Canadian operation that made North American television history.
“You’d be silly to take the Hejaz Railway” the locals assured us. It would be primitive, shabby and slow. We could travel from Damascus to Amman in comfort by car, or even bus, in less than half the time. They were right of course, but for less than the cost of a movie at home, a friend and I opted for an excellent little adventure and a memory to last a lifetime.
Continue reading “The Hejaz Railway: Syria to Jordan, 2001”
June First. Canada Day. Or, as we are calling it Halifax this year, “Kana’ta Day” to acknowledge the discoverers of this country whose descendants made it their home for millennia before Europeans mastered ocean navigation and gunpowder. “Kana’ta” is an indigenous work for “village”, which European arrivals mistakenly thought was the name of the entire country. Still, when you stop to think about it, that seems appropriate on many levels. Despite its many imperfections and inequalities, this half-continent village of ours is relatively one of the freest, safest and most affluent places in the world to live, notwithstanding the carping and tantrums of the trumpkins among us who persist on using that freedom to take their “fifteen minutes of fame” in spite of inconveniencing everyone else.