Journal of a Sabbatical

May 18, 2000

south blog

Today's Bird Sightings:
Plum Island:
4 great egrets
2 mourning doves
hordes of common grackles
hordes of starlings
red-tailed hawk

Today's Reading: Uttermost Part of the Earth by E. Lucas Bridges

Today's Starting Pitcher:
The first place Red Sox are off today.

I'm deeply into reading Uttermost Part of the Earth - about halfway through it. After reading Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle , and my brief whirlwind tour of Ushuaia on the way to Antarctica, I've been curious about the early settlement of Ushuaia. E. Lucas Bridges was the son of Thomas Bridges, who essentially founded the settlement along with some of the Yaghan people from Tierra del Fuego. His story reads like a romantic wild west anthropological adventure story - told by an Englishman. I mean he writes like one of those 19th century British adventurers although he grew up in Argentina among the Yaghans. What's even stranger is his fixation on getting to know and even become one of the Ona, a tribe the Yaghans fear greatly. At the point where I fell asleep while reading in bed last night, Bridges and some of his Ona friends had just returned from crossing the interior mountains together, just to prove they could. It's a helluva good story. I've stopped minding that it's taking me so long to read it, because I just don't want it to end.

Some cool links about Bridges' book and Ushuaia:

A Literary Journey to Fireland

some great photos of Ushuaia

seismology of Tierra del Fuego

Chapter 10 from Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle

I've been listening to The Connection show on weblogs on the way home from failing to do my plover warden shift because of the wild weather, and feel like I should start one. I haven't got the slightest idea what that would be like despite listening to the whole hour of The Connection. It sounds like a cross between an online journal and making your bookmarks file public. One of the guests spends three hours a night web surfing and adding to her weblog. My pitiful modem connected via my even more pitiful telephone can't manage to stay connected for 3 hours. The gist of the weblog thing seemed to be recording the blogger's online life. Since I don't live online, my blog might be a little different. We'll see. Meanwhile, the above links will have to serve as a pseudo-blog for today.