#01

"The Gulf of Mexico is largely known for its shrimping, fishing, and extensive offshore oil and gas development, but evidence of the earliest Gulf coast inhabitants could be preserved, buried under sediment and sea. But on a continental shelf where approximately 40 million acres could have been dry land in the last 12,000 years, where do you start looking?" Tag along with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Researches on the Paleolandscapes of the Gulf of Mexico 2020 expedition, underway now!

#02

Recently we featured an interview with paraplegic Angela Madsen, an accomplished trans-oceanic rower. Regrettably, she died at sea while attempting to row from Los Angeles to Hawai'i. It appears that she entered the water to repair a shackle in preparation for a tropical storm and never made it back to the deck of the boat. “A life forged by unbelievable hardship, she overcame it all and championed the exact path she envisioned for herself since she was a little girl. To row an ocean solo was her biggest goal. She knew the risks better than any of us and was willing to take those risks because being at sea made her happier than anything else.”

Matthew Henson may be the best polar explorer you've never heard of. Henson partnered with famed explorer Robert Peary on numerous expeditions including Nicaragua, the far north, and most famously, the pair's 1909 attempt to reach the north pole (of which there is some debate regarding if they made it, and if so, who got there first). "Peary made his intention [of including Henson] clear. He said, 'Henson must go all the way. I can’t make it there without him.'" Peary went onto worldwide fame after the expedition, whereas Henson returned quietly to his job as a civil servant. A black explorer in what was largely a white man's world.

#03

The New Horizons spacecraft, the first to ever visit Pluto and another far away object called Arrokoth, is now the first spacecraft to return images demonstrating stellar parallax. Meaning that the spacecraft is so far away from Earth that the stars are no longer in quite the same position relative to each other.

The Solar Orbiter, a joint project between the European Space Agency and NASA, launched last February to study the sun. The probe completed its first close approach (passing within 48 million miles of the sun, about half the distance from the earth to the sun) and officially transitioned from commissioning to cruise stage. The scientists will now start testing its many instruments with the hope of going into full science operations in a few months.

#04

Space tourists may no longer have to risk a ride on a column of fire if a new company called Space Perspectives gets their way. The company "aims to send paying customers and research payloads to the stratosphere aboard Spaceship Neptune, a balloon-borne pressurized capsule that's scheduled to make its first test flights early next year." Costs will likely be in the $75K range, about half of a suborbital rocket ride with Virgin Galactic. Passengers would ride in style in a capsule including a restroom an even a bar!

If rockets are more your style and your spare change is burning a hole in your pocket, you might consider becoming the first space tourist to get a shot at a spacewalk. 

#05

Bears are synonymous with Bern, the capitol of Switzerland. Live animals have been on display in the city since at least 1513, when a bear was brought back as a war spoil from the battle of Novara. For the following centuries, the Bear Pit (or Bärengraben) was a rock or concrete fortification largely designed to showcase man's dominance over animals. However, things for the Bernese bears improved significantly when the Swiss government passed a law decreeing animals to be living entities with legal rights in 2002. Today, the bears enjoy a sprawling Bären Park along a hillside facing the Aare River. Learn how the infamous Bear Pit became a model for change. (Editor's Note: I have no idea if it is related but there is a delightful board game called Bären Park where you play to build your own Bear Park!)

#06

The Into The Wild bus is no longer in the wild. Readers of the book by Jon Krakauer will recognize the bus as the location where where Christopher McCandless escaped into the wilderness and ultimately died. The bus was airlifted out of its current location to discourage unprepared hikers from making a 20 mile trek to the site, the cause of dozens of rescues and a couple of deaths due to hikers getting stuck on the wrong side of the unpredictable Teklanika River. Incidentally, the same thing that indirectly led to McCandless's death 30 years ago. 

#07

The Tarahumara, a tribe native to the canyons of northwest Mexico, were described in the 2009 book Born to Run as a "'near-mythical tribe of Stone Age superathletes' who run marathon and longer length distances without breaking a sweat". Among other things, the book led to an explosion of popularity in barefoot in minimalist running.  The truth is never quite that simple though. New research dispelling the notion of the "athletic savage" has humanized the Tarahumaran tradition. "Tarahumara runners are just as challenged as Western ultramarathoners, and they too suffer from injuries, cramps, nausea, and other problems when racing long distances .... In other words, it’s not about the shoes. Societies become good at the things they value, and the Tarahumara, rather than possessing some exotic hidden superpower, simply reflect that truth."

#08

We're big fans of maps here at the Explore & Observe HQ (a.k.a. my apartment), and I found this map of the world using literal place name translations to be particularly delightful. Care for a trip to the curiously named Land of the Many Rabbits (Spain) or the Place Where One Stands (Kazahkstan)? Start planning today!

The Bookshelf

In 1943, three Italian prisoners of war escaped from a British POW camp in Kenya. Their goal: to reach the 17,000 ft summit of Mt. Kenya. The crazy part is that they nearly made it! The epic yarn is recounted by one of the prisoners, Felice Benuzzi, in his book No Picnic on Mt. Kenya. The trio spent months preparing, somehow stashing away a weeks of food, commandeered some equipment, and fabricating it when needed. One of their ‘maps’ was a stylized image of Mt. Kenya printed on a can of beans. There was no trail. The trio hacked their way through dense forest and used improvised mountaineering equipment to scale rock walls and ice faces. In the end, they didn’t quite make it to the summit but did plant a flag on Lenana, a nearby peak at 16,355ft. Exhausted and out of food, they fulfilled their original plan and snuck back into the camp a few days later. The punishment for their adventure was 27 days in confinement, but the men only served 7 of those because the camp commandment “appreciated our sporting good effort!” On whether or not this adventure was worth it, Benuzzi reflects:

“… the strange voices of night in the forest, the smell of bivouac fire and of heath resin, the feeling of utter independence from man and the inhabited world, the fullness of life and action, the sure knowledge that adventure is still a challenge and beauty still a reality for those who care. Even for those degraded from man to a mere number in a camp… We did not conquer [Mt Kenya], but we have conquered ourselves.”

Climbing Mt. Kenya gave the prisoners a sense of identity that propelled them through years of captivity, and to them, that was worth the world.  

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This newsletter was produced as a private venture and not in the author's capacity as an employee of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology or of Griffith Observatory. Any views and opinions expressed herein or on exploreandobserve.com are his own and not those of his employers.

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