Dedicated to Ibn Battuta–a Dubai mall.
Author Archives: eflaherty
Today’s Happy Birthday wishes: Ibn Battuta
Who is Ibn Battuta? …he was from the West…western North Africa.
Shifting Sands and Shifting Loyalties
Who is Gertrude Bell?
…still felix? Hardly!
Our Western image of the Empty Quarter landscape, an image pieced together from the writings of our past, the holy books, the Greeks, the Romans, Marco Polo(1254-1324), Ibn Battuta(1304-1369), the ships docking in Genoa and Venice, the writings of Richard Francis Burton(1821-1890), Gertrude Bell(1868-1926), T.E. Lawrence(1888-1935), Wilfred Thesiger(1910-2003), and others, continues today–even with GPS, even with 24/7 online large pipe digital coms–to be a mystery…an unknown landscape…still beckoning…still threatening.
Arabia Felix
There is no Arabia Felix without the Rub Al Khali.
Straddling the Tropic of Cancer and, known in English as The Empty Quarter, the world’s largest contiguous sand desert…has always been, and still is, for humans…an enigma…throughout millennia…a massive natural and cultural enigma.
Wet and Dry
Wet and dry can describe a lot of situations in life.
Lots of ways to understand wet landscapes from dry landscapes–the landscape of the humid temperate northern slopes of the Berner Oberland from the arid tropical sands of the Rub Al Khali.
Wet is not equally distributed on the Earth’s surface. Wet and dry have to be managed. Please permit me to offer a tenuously linked digression, just for fun.
In the big picture:
Wet: water, if you just measure surface coverage, makes up 70% of the Earth’s surface or 70% wet. Ignores the underground water table wetness.
Dry: the land surface coverage makes up 30% of the Earth’s surface or 30% dry. Includes the land permanently covered by snow and or ice.
If we generously average the area covered by a standing human, averaging babies and adults, we can say each human covers 0.5 square meter. The number of humans in the world is 7 billion, therefore humans, standing shoulder to shoulder cover much, much less than 1% of the Earth’s surface.
Is there truly a shortage of water on the planet? Plentiful water or water paucity? I wonder…if someone, in the Berner Oberland flushes the toilet with less water, will more dates grow at the edge of the Empty Quarter?
Summary of numbers:
- 510,000,000 square kilometers=total surface of Earth
- 350,000,000 square kilometers=wet surface of Earth
- 160,000,000 square kilometers=dry surface of Earth
- 2,600 square kilometers=7 billion human shoulder to shoulder surface of Earth
- 500,000 cubic kilometers=rainfall per year on surface of Earth, or 70,000 cubic meters per human per year.
- Each human uses an average of 200 cubic meters water per year.
Shortage? Hardly seems like there should be a shortage of wetness does there? Am I on the edge of an enigma here? Or is ‘water shortage’ just another nuanced imperialistic push by the globalizing Western world on others…they won’t find me…I am tucked away in an enigma.
!!!Ah–but the population growth projections! Ah–but the climate change projections! Ah–but the software programs that are without fault or human error or human political influence! Ah, yes, we are sure we can control climate and weather, right?
Another glass of water, please…I know a place where the tap water is really good!
An ancient saying comes from Bharat Varsha, known these days as India–‘austerity is the wealth of the brahmanas’.
That is an intriguing concept–a lack of material possessions as a source of wealth. It does indeed respond as a balance to the obvious excesses of material acquisition, does it not?
New on 500px : Silence of the Mountains by RolfSterchi
These are the geographical heart of the Berner Oberland. Everything happens under their gaze.
How do humans fit in?
The animals are celebrated, applauded and cheered by the villagers twice a year. In the early summer when they leave the village heading up to mountain pastures and then in the fall when they return.
The animals wear decorative headdresses made by humans from pasture and woodland wild flowers and leaves.
I wonder if the energy expended by humans and animals in the landscape, combined with human attitudes of service, duty and reverence, add together to help generate a healthy feeling in the landscape–despite the avalanches, despite the rock and landslides, despite the flash floods.
Today, after seven hundred years of humans managing forests, pastures, animals, villages and themselves, this Berner Oberland Jungfrau Region landscape attracts visitors from every corner of the world to have their breath taken away by the actual beauty and the aura this landscape brings to all.
The Relinking Chain
The food chain of Berner Oberland sustainable agriculture has worked for nearly a millennium.
Now over the last century, the advent of tourism–itself is a mark of increasing affluence–has thrown a bunch of new challenges at these farmers. They continue to work through them.
But the landscape–look at it–it is cared for–the animals are cared for–it is beautiful and beautifully managed. This image depicts the essence of human stewardship of the landscape.
The Tree Engine
I was walking along pastures this weekend and noticed melted snow beneath tree canopies.
See the heat generated by the root mass.