The Parallel Lives

 Jane Goodall turned 90 years old last April. In the late 1950’s, Jane—then an English girl in her twenties—dared to travel to Africa. There she met the renowned anthropologist, Louis Leaky, who suggested she study chimpanzees at Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania.

     Jane arrived at Gombe on July 14, 1960, with her mother, who acted as Jane’s chaperone.

     On December 22, 1965, a Wednesday, “National Geographic” ran a televised documentary on Jane’s work over the previous five years, entitled, “Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees.”

     I watched that special on my grandparents’ black and white television.

     Jane began, “Louis Leakey sent me to Gombe because he believed an understanding of chimpanzees would help him better guess how our stone-age ancestors may have behaved.”

     In an instant, Jane was world-famous. She said, “It was because chimps are so eye-catching, so like us, that my work was recognized world wide.”

     Days ago, I happened to re-watch a “60 Minutes” segment from April 9, 2006, on Daphne Sheldrick’s orphanage near Nairobi in Kenya, an orphanage for elephants. Poachers kill the parents for their ivory tusks, and leave the young alone, defenseless, grieving for their loss.

     Daphne, now deceased, rescued them, fed them, and taught them how to survive in the wild. 

     Bob Simon, of CBS, asked Daphne, “What is the most extraordinary thing she has learned about elephants?”

     She answered, “Their tremendous capacity for caring is I think perhaps the most amazing thing about them.  Even at a very young age. Their sort of forgiveness, unselfishness. They have all the best attributes of us humans and not very many of the bad.”

     “Indeed,” she says, “A loss of a parent can cause a baby elephant to grieve to death.”

     Cephalopods are marine animals, and within this class of mollusks, one will find squid, octopus, cuttlefish, and nautilus. Scientist have discovered that a typical octopus displays advanced intelligence, the highest among the invertebrates. 

     For example, Inky, a former resident of New Zealand’s aquarium, escaped to freedom by slipping through a gap at the top of its tank, and then squeezing through a small drain pipe that led to the wider ocean. Workers followed a trail left by Inky’s suction marks.     

     Joshua Hawkins, in last week’s edition of BGR, Boy Genius Report, reveals that astronomers at the Max Planck Institute in Munich, Germany, have “discovered cosmic tunnels that connect our solar system to the star constellation Centaurus.”

     “Using the eRosita x-ray instrument, researchers believe that the tunnel appears to move through the material that makes up the Local Hot Bubble, a feature of our solar system.”

     In Ralph Waldo’s first book, “Nature,” published in 1836, he too mentions stars.

     “But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible.”

     Emerson also mentions the woods. “In the woods, we return to reason and faith. To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society.” 

     He concludes, “To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature.” 

     Henry David Thoreau, Emerson’s protege, said in his book, “Walden,” first published in 1854,   

     “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” The woods called for Thoreau, and he answered.

     Chimpanzees, elephants, octopi, cosmic tunnels, stars, the woods. Pick one. All of nature calls out, “Look at us!” A challenge. A resolution. Do we dare to devote 30 minutes per day over the next 365 days, 8760 hours, of 2025, to learning even a small slice of our natural world?

     Mother Nature rewards those who pay attention to her.