Nicaragua
Erik The Broken Hearted And The Perils Of Tropical Volcanoes
Feb 6th
“A man sits as many risks as he runs. For as long as a man is alive, there is a chance that he may die.”
-Henry David Thoreau
In swinging hammocks with grande sized beers in hand, my childhood friend Erik and I looked up at the soaring peak of Volcan Ometepe. Rising sharply out of the placid calmness of Lago de Nicaragua, the volcano looked impeccable, unconquerable- dare I say, Godly. “You can go up there if you want,” Erik told me, “but I am going to sit right down here drinking my beer watching your monkey ass climb that mountain.” I took this as a challenge, and Erik’s comfortable solace would soon come to a fallow end.
We drank a few more beers that night than our heads could steadily carry, and, in this state of folly, I coerced Erik in a pact to climb Volcan Ometepe with me the following morning. Upon waking at the crack dawn, I roused Erik from his rosy dreams with the unwelcomed details of our pact of the night before. Like the righteous man that he his, Erik peeled himself out of his hammock and sleepily stuffed his feet into his hiking boots. I smiled. He groaned.
“But I’m hung over,” Erik whined as he blearily assembled his gear, “lets climb the mountain tomorrow.”
“Nice try, kid,” I spoke in my best back woodsman voice, “but as soon as we get up into those heights not even your hangover will want to come down again.”
Erik just groaned, again.
Soon our bags were packed and we made quick way on the trail up the volcano. I was smiling and singing little mountain songs to myself, Erik grumbled out the lines of a hangover chorus, and the rain began singing its own little tune down upon our heads. It was a beautiful day for mountain climbing in the tropics, and I reached out my arms to embrace the gently falling rain. Erik soon began trailing behind a little, pulling up each leg as if he were an elephant in a forced march over the Pyrenees.
“Can we take a break?” he called out from behind, as the gentle sprinkle of rain was growing ever more robust.
We took shelter at a little switchback that had an amazing view over the surrounding countryside. Erik, who has been my best friend since the fifth grade and my compadre on previous climbing trips in the Andes, basked in the beauty of our position on the volcano.
“I don’t know if I am going to be able to make it this time,” he stated with a disappointed look on his face. Years of driving a delivery truck in the USA and a few too many beers the night before did not exactly leave him in prime condition for scaling volcanic peaks. “Lets just stay here for today and climb this mountain tomorrow when it is not raining,” he pleaded.
I was not receptive to such talk and looked up at the quickly blackening sky in defiance. The horizon was covered with a wall of ominous, dark storm clouds, which, as if my defiant sacrilege had provoked it, suddenly bursted forth with the fury of a tropical storm.
“Lets go ” I yelled over the deafening roar of the pouring rain, and we began running up the mountain at full speed.
Erik plunged in for one last go and we braved the torrents of water that quickly began pouring down the mountain. Our deeply worn path soon transformed itself into the perfect drainage channel for the river of rain that was raging down to meet us. This torrential rapid was soon up to our knees and threatened to knock us off our feet at every step. We grappled for any vines, plants, and tree roots that we could hold on to, as we pulled ourselves up against the rapids that threatened to debunk us back down the mountain.
“This is crazy ” Erik yelled, “I’m going back We can’t make it up there through this We are going to be killed This is stupid “
It was stupid. But I was in the thorough of an all-encompassing bout of summit fever, and could not even think of turning back. Erik, utilizing his large supply of common sense, yielded on the side of discretion, and bided me a quick farewell. He took what then seemed to be the route of safety, and returned to his comfortable hammock and grande beer back at camp.
I on the other hand kept going up through the river of rain, and even the monkeys began yelling at me to turn back. They ran through the branches overhead, throwing mangoes and screaming at me the whole while. The timely words of Richard Halliburton then jumped into my consciousness:
“Yes, Blake was right: Discretion was nothing but a “rich, ugly, old maid wooed by incapacity.” How much more entertaining it was to woo Folly.”
With this reassurance, I continued on my upward surge and, after a couple hours of hard climbing, came upon the summit. The rain had by now let up and the storm clouds gave way to wondrous tropical sunshine. The beauty from the top of the volcano made the trials of the journey completely worth while, and the hardships endured through the climb conversely made the summit all the more beautiful and gratifying. But I could not fully enjoy it; my thoughts were of Erik. I wished only that he could have been up there with me, looking out over the entire span of Isle Ometepe and on to Nicaragua and the sparkling sea beyond.
I took in this beauty and soon made my way back to Erik down below, who I imagined to be safe and snug in his hammock, joking about how I tried to make him climb up a volcano in the middle of a tropical storm. When I got back to camp, I saw Erik all curled up in his hammock, looking as smug as I had imagined he would be. I ran up to him and excitedly began telling him of the splendors of the rest of the climb and how he should have stuck it out. But then I realized that he did not really seem alright and I asked him of he was OK.
He looked up at me with a big droopy set of eyes and a crack of a guilty smile on his lips, as he slowly revealed his elbow to me. It was beaten and battered, swollen up to three times its normal size, and had an enormous stitched-up gash that ran all the way over it. To add insult to injury, the cut perfectly bisected his tattoo of a heart that covered his elbow, making it look as if were broken in two.
“Oh no ” I exclaimed. “What happened ? ” I immediately thought that he had fallen on his way down the mountain, and I was suddenly overwhelmed with grief because I did not descend with him.
He chuckled slightly and then sheepishly said, “I slipped and fell as I was getting out of the shower.”
“A man sits as many risks as he runs . . .”
Now fellow wanderers, think of Erik the Broken Hearted the next time you are struggling to decide between discretion and folly. As sometimes, “wooing folly” can actually leave you in better shape than taking a simple shower.
EU Rides Herd on Pro Life Nations – Threatens No Membership
Feb 5th
The Roe v Wade decision of the US Supreme Court on January 22, 1973 is often seen as the first and the worst in a series of America’s bad decision making. Some believe it has a life all of its own now throughout the rest of the globe. In a country where the latest news about Paris Hilton far outweighs the question of declining morality it hardly matters what is influencing the EU or the rest of the world to most Americans.
Whether anyone believes Roe v Wade set the precedent for the rest of the world or not it is now becoming the standard for fully developed nations, or is it?
Poland is appealing a recent EU ruling on abortion that was handed down by the European Court of Human Rights that requires it to pay $52,000 in damages for a citizen who has been denied the right to abort her unborn child.
Poland is the birth place of former Pope John Paul who was beloved among the Poles and surely set many of the moral parameters for that nation. Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said he would appeal the decision of the court based simply on the idea that it would not be good for the country.
Yet more recently in June of 2007 the EU began threatening to cut funding to Nicaragua because of its recent decision to completely ban all abortions. Bert Koenders, Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Netherlands says he wants both the United Nations and the European Union to crack down on pro life countries. Koenders wants the EU to put “women’s rights on a higher agenda.”
To Bible believing Christians including Catholics the world over this is seen as a very clear agenda but not one that could be termed “high.” In fact except in cases where a women’s life or health are at risk this is seen as the very lowest of all causes to the Christian.
The argument from most of Christendom is based not on denying a woman her rights but in completely ignoring the rights of the unborn who have no voice or recourse by which to defend their own right to life. The unborn may not be able to provide testimony at hearings, carry placards or sit on the steps of a court house but many believers figuratively hear their voices crying out continuously with a haunting refrain of “we want to live.”
Mankind is thought to be the most physically and morally advanced species on the planet and thus we would assume the most sensitive to the life of its own kind. The death of unborn children it seems can go unfelt if the abortion proceedings are done in a remote and clinically sterile area. This is proving to be a complete unreality. The trauma suffered by women who have undergone abortions is now a matter of public record and the reports are dismal.
In natures realm animals and birds will protect and defend their young even if it means their own death. They have no knowledge of how they are going to feed or care for their young, they rely only on instinct. That is the key word “instinct.” It seems that instinct is what is now missing in a post modern world, not ways and means. In fact in developed countries that have welfare and other provisions for unwed mothers the question of a child’s survival is almost moot. It is only a matter of well the child may fare as compared to others in the same society.
Anyone who has taken horticulture or a basic botany course would be familiar with the “brine shrimp” experiment. Scientist discovered that plants in the same room with a tank of brine shrimp had a severe reaction when all of the shrimp were suddenly killed with an electric current. Supposing that it may have been altered by the reactions of humans in the same room, the experiment was conducted under more controlled conditions.
The current was set to go through the tank of shrimp randomly and remotely and electrodes were placed on the plants to record the time when or if they reacted to the death of the shrimp. In every case the plants exuded a thin layer of chemicals on their foliage at exactly the same moment the shrimp were killed.
It must be noted that these were only plants and also the reaction was inter species in nature. Does this mean plants are more sensitive to the life of other creatures than humans? The answer is ours to make.
In both the EU and the United States attention is being drawn to the ravages of disease and poverty in African countries especially Darfur. No one can make light of the horrors that are transpiring in these countries but it would seem that they are being used to draw attention away from other horrors that post modern morality refuses to address.
Every few seconds in Africa a person dies (often children) from aids, hunger or warfare. Every few seconds in fully developed countries an unborn child dies at the hands of an abortionist. Is one scourge any worse than the other? That answer is also ours to make.
The best solutions ever accomplished by mankind have come not by pulling the trigger, but by pulling the plug. As our world spirals toward Armageddon it is not likely we will universally pull the plug on abortion but the decision is still open to one individual at a time and it always will be. To wit; “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: Dt. 30:19″
