When I was a kid, I said that Jane Goodall had my job
— to go to Africa and study animals.
But I was wrong. It was her job.
Field study all day, every day in the jungle? I
wouldn't have the patience, skill, or fortitude to do what she did.
I would be screaming from the hilltops that it took me
6 months to get close enough to a wild troop to really study their behavior.
Yet, all day, Goodall would sit or travel with her binoculars, trying to make
contact with a wild troop of Chimpanzees. She spent her evenings writing up her
notes. Her hiring company knew that sending a young woman out into the
jungle was unheard of, so, her mother, her number one supporter, went along.
The mother would cook, and she and Jane would, ceremoniously, have a small
glass of whiskey before they went to bed.
"As I traveled more, we'd each raise
a glass at our respective 7 p.ms. It was a way to feel connected. Now I toast
her up in the clouds every evening."—Jane Goodall.
Goodall said she knew she was safe in the jungle.
Her benefactor, Louis Leaky, curator of the Natural
History Museums in Nairobi, saw in Jane, the Secretary they sent to him, the
patience and love of animals he knew was necessary for the job as a field
researcher. She said she was never bored. Nature provided endless
entertainment.
She did what she set out to do. She made contact with
the chimpanzees and changed the definition of a human being. You watch. You'll
see it.
I devoured her book, In the Shadow of Man, when
it came out. It was her first account of the field study and told of the time a
chimpanzee, Mr. Gray Beard, came close enough to her to allow his shadow to
fall upon hers.
She declared as a child that she wanted to go to
Africa and study animals. And her mother never discouraged her.
She believes that we are all put here on the earth
with a purpose. We may not know what it is, but our presence matters.
Last night, my husband and I watched/listened to her
last interview on Netflix. "Famous Last Words: Dr. Jane Goodall," with
Brad Falchuk. They recorded the interview in March on the condition that it
would only be aired after Goodall's death.
What a woman!
How can we not love the animals, and want to preserve
our planet?! It seems that it isn't a priority for us anymore, but this little
lady, having seen many things in her 91 years, admonished us not to lose HOPE.
If we lose hope, we are lost.
We have come out of hard times before—we will come out
of it again.
Notice how grand the Earth is and how thin the
breathable atmosphere surrounding it is.
Our atmosphere is so thin that our mountains protrude
through it to such a height that you need to carry Oxygen with you to climb Mt.
Everest. ("Earth's
breathable atmosphere H is about 8500 meters. Mount Everest is 8850
meters high, so it does poke out of the atmosphere, but barely.")
A friend, who climbed to the base camp of Mt. Everest,
really, she did, I was blown away, she was slight of build, one you would never
guess had that fortitude, said we climbed high, slept low. In other
words, they climb higher than their intended camping place, then they descended
to camp so they slept at a lower altitude than the day's climb. That gave their
body a chance to adapt.)
A trip up to around 10,000 feet has us breathing
heavily. And Altitude sickness is a real threat.
Save
our air. Do not pollute it. It is our life.
And
do not die with the song within you unsung.
