A Countryside Jewel

I have Blogger to thank for this. They've changed things so that I can now post photos throughout my blog and that has given me the incentive to work on my riding blog and now to be able to share a favourite spot in the neighbourhood. One of my neighbours went riding with me a month or so ago and offered to show me a new trail. He's known me a long time and is very aware that there aren't many trails in the area that I don't know by now, so this was an irresistable offer. What he had to show me was exquisite, a tiny patch of countryside untouched by cars, appalling villas or roads.

Today I set out with a couple of friends, one of whom hadn't seen this wonderful little patch of land. It's been hot lately, in the high 90's F or high 30's C, and we set out about 10 am which seems late to avoid the heat but actually the timing was good. About 10 am the air in the valley floor begins to heat up and rise, which in turn causes breezes to set up in the open areas. As we left the more confined area of the paddocks where buildings cut off the airflow, we all sighed with relief at the refreshing wind. We still rode relatively slowly at a brisk walk, however, because the heat index was real even if we felt cool from the breeze. Children from the village were either helping parents in the fields or playing beside the paths in the shade of mulberry trees or the shelters built for the animals. One of the joys of riding in the countryside is the fact that one can ride every day on the same trail and never see the same thing twice. Today one of the first encounters that we had was with a donkey left hitched to a cart. Usually they are left tied to a tree or hobbled because donkeys, having extremely independent natures, are inclined to head home if they get bored. We had to walk carefully past this one to be sure that some poor fellow wouldn't have to be running after his donkey and cart in the heat.

This particular donkey was happy to rest where he was as we passed and we continued on our way past a group of homes belonging to some farmers and grooms for horses in the country club just down the road. Flocks of geese paddled happily in the canal as a couple of girls tried to coax them out and back to their pens. The geese weren't having any of it and the girls were helpless to get them out of the canal, so they sat at the edge of the canal tossing stones at the opposite bank. Other children tended flocks of goats and sheep who were mostly resting in the shade. Some of the families in this area collect wood from people who cut down trees and then burn it slowly in pits to produce charcoal. The piles of wood make marvelous climbing places for human kids and the four-legged kind as well.

We made our way past beside some of the enormous villas that the city folk are prone to build out here. These ghastly piles of brick are a blight on the countryside, but on the other hand, their presence has kept away the random low-rise apartments that are the hallmark of the expanding villages. At least the countryside will be transformed into large gardens rather than solid chunks of brick and concrete. Finally we found ourselves at the entrance to the path within the gardens. From the herbal tea factory there is a dirt road that cuts into an area in which there are stables and country houses, but if we continue straight ahead rather than turning left, we find ourselves on a narrow dirt track that winds through a mango grove.
The mangoes are almost ripe and we were thankful that we were wearing helmets because if one of these hard green fruit smack you in the head, it is memorable. The horses, on the other hand, were dying to stop and graze in the tall green grass. From the mango grove the path winds along a bamboo wall that separates the farmland from the back of the tea factory. The other side of the path could be a scene from an illustration of Egypt one hundred years ago. There is an area of about 20 feddan (roughly 20 acres) surrounded by mango and palm groves, within which a few families farm plots of corn, peppers, berseem, okra, and other vegetables. Scattered through the plots are small shelters for the farmers and their animals over which banana trees lean and grapevines wind. If I were wealthy, I'd love to buy the land and leave it to be farmed just as it is for a sort of agricultural museum to remind the people who are living in the increasingly crushing, stressful city of what they've lost. But I'm not wealthy and can't possibly buy this land or even a part of it, so I try to ride through as often as possible to soak it into me before it disappears like so much of our farmland.

Leaving the area we travel through another magical passage, this time along a shallow irrigation ditch that waters a grove of pear trees on one side and small vegetable gardens on the other under the towering palms. The richness of the land is unmistakable and impossible to ignore. I've taken many of my riding students through this land on their lessons and as many friends as possible to let it live at least in the memories of others.

Fooling Around On A Thursday Afternoon

Egypt is really hot during the day and it's pretty amazing how little you can get done. I was supposed to be taking some friends riding this evening, but they had to be home by 9:30 pm and at 7 pm it was still 30 degrees C...way too hot to ride in the desert. We postponed the ride to Saturday and Tracy and I hung out in the garden instead. I cut some dried sunflower heads for the parrots, pruned some bushes and trimmed some shoots from my white mulberry tree. The parrots also got the mulberry branches since they are a real treat for parrots. Someone told me that the bark and wood of the mulberry have medicinal value to birds. I don't know if it's true, but they certainly love chewing on them. The dogs thought that it was great having everyone home in the garden in the afternoon and they ran about barking at whatever nonsense that was occurring outside the fence or chasing the hoopoes that were mining grubs in the lawn. Morgana, my Great Dane pup, wrestled with Daemon, my last Rat Terrier pup and her boy toy, all over the grass. The two of them are the original odd couple as Morgana grows larger and larger.

As the sun set about 8 pm, the heat finally dropped to bearable levels and a couple of neighbours dropped by to have a cup of tea in the garden. We sat and talked about medieval history, horse training and gardening as the sky darkened above us and the music for tonight's wedding began wafting from the neighbouring village. Every night during the summer there is an engagement, a henna party (local tradition has the women dye their hands with henna just before a wedding) or a wedding in the area. Years ago I was visiting Sudan and one of my husband's enormous family in Khartoum was going to be married in a few days. I was invited to the henna party for his cousin and the family insisted that I try the full henna treatment. The Sudanese paint intricate floral designs all over the bride's feet, hands, legs, and arms. The part that I thought was really nice was the fact that having all of this herbal paste painted all over her hands and feet meant that the bride could not even feed herself for a number of hours while the henna dried and the design set in full strength. Therefore on this day, the bride was waited on hand and foot (pun intended), not even having to feed herself. In the villages here, none of the women can be out of commission that long and most of them simply dye their palms black or red. During wedding season you can find all the little girls sporting red palms.

Unfortunately, one of the other wedding traditions here is the firing of pistols or automatic weapons in the air. My son was horrified to hear that there were guns in the neighbourhood, but weddings are the only things that they are used for. My difficulty with them lies in the fact that my dogs all go rushing out into the garden barking like maniacs when they hear the report of a gun. I can live without that.


By 9:30 pm or so, the neighbours each had to go off to do errands or deal with things, so Tracy and I packed up the tea and cookies and headed into the house. She just arrived from California two days ago and is suffering from major jet lag. We've been joking that her body may be here but her brain has only made it as far as Labrador as yet. She's wanting dinner at breakfast time and breakfast at dinner time, and she falls asleep every couple of hours. I can really sympathise with the falling asleep part. I have no air conditioning and the fan keeps the house at perfecct nap temperature.

We realised this morning that it was the end of the month and I needed to collect some cash from the bank for my grooms' salaries and for my housekeeper, so we grabbed a bottle of cold water from the freezer and headed into Maadi to seek out friendly ATM's. On the way into town, as I was driving along the Mariouteya Road with the canal on my left, I noticed a red VW Beetle come zooming up behind us to pass us on the left. As the car was just behind me and to my left, it suddenly veered severely to the left and sailed off the road into the canal. We screeched to a halt along with all of the other traffic on the road and everyone ran back to make sure that the driver was all right. One of the other drivers had already jumped down into the canal to help the driver out of his car and was assisting him in climbing the bank. The car was rather dinged up in the front, but otherwise man and Beetle looked pretty good considering what they'd just been through. One of the nicest things about Egyptians is that they will almost always stop to help you if you have any sort of accident.

After searching out a variety of ATM's we finally found one whose system wasn't down and which also had cash so that I could pay my grooms and housekeeper. Electrically speaking, today wasn't the best day for ATM's. We then went hunting some minor items that were needed at home and for the horses. A jerry can of disinfectent for washing down floors was requested by the grooms. I needed to find some decently priced rubber thongs, and there were a couple of items from the grocery store. When we finished the errands we were so happy to be home.

Tracy (on the left with our friend Merri) came to Egypt about a year ago last February with the endurance women and, as she puts it, realised that there were things she needed to do here. She explored possibilities for a year then went back to California for her sister's wedding in June. She was amazed at what a great conversation starter "I live in Egypt" is. Everyone wanted to hear about Egypt and how she found living here. Not everyone could understand her decision to come back to work here, but I suspect that we are going to have some more American visitors next winter. That's great from my point of view, since the more people who come to Egypt to visit us, the more will go back to the US and tell others that it's really a lovely place. Especially on a Thursday in the summer.

By the way, many many thanks to Blogger for organising the ability to post a number of pictures in one post. Wow! This is fun.

Looking for Miracles

Sunset and Ropes, originally uploaded by Miloflamingo.

A friend of mine in Georgia wrote this to an endurance riding email list yesterday:

On a serious note. I had a student who was an *amazing* skater...as in
one of those kids who goes flying down the sidewalk, leaps up, rides the
handrail, leaps across to the other hand rail on the other side, turns a
few times and jumps off the side of the retainer wall the handrail was
above and lands skating backwards 1 story down. He was also a movie
maker...carried a camera everywhere, filmed other skaters and had them
film him. He won a city wide movie contest last year. He also taught me
how to use a movie making program so his number is at the top of my
cellphone directory for tech help. May 23 he was on the 5th floor of an
abandoned building taking photos with a new camera and stepped onto a
piece of corrugated fiberglass roofing laying on the floor, only it
wasn't laying on the floor it was laying over a 5 story abandoned
elevator shaft. He fell five stories and landed on some boards which kept
him from going down to the basement. He had a compound fracture of the
femur but otherwise hardly had a scratch on him. However, he has been in
a coma for 32 days now. He'll never walk again, can only hope he's not
paralized from the neck down. Crushed his C-5 which was replaced with
metal and totally dislocated a lower vertabrae which is now braced with a
rod. All these years I've been on his case about how dangerous his
*skating* was, and he gets hurt taking pictures! I watched a video of him
today doing all those amazing things, then read the update on the website
they set up for him describing the tremendous news that he licked a
lollipop on command yesterday. The moral is, live while you can. Every
day's a gift. Asher and I had really hit it off because we both had
hobbies we were obsessed with. He was more like us than most.
Prayer is a huge part of Asher's recovery effort and I invite any of you
who have the urge to visit http://asher.chattablogs.com Asher's dad has
been very specific in his request for prayer each day and it's one of the
best uses of the net I've come across so far. Thanks,
Angie

I visited the blog and left a note. Angie's right. It is one of the best uses of the net that I can see. I've been close to this situation, but thankfully not fully there. When my son was about twelve and we'd just moved to Cairo, he and I went riding on our mares in the desert. As we were gallloping across the supposedly empty desert, we came to the top of a small hill and found ourselves face to face with three other riders walking horses in the opposite direction. Having to make evasive maneuvers at fairly high speed, the horse my son was riding slipped in the sand and went down. He had a mild concussion but more importantly a compression fracture of the 3rd and 4th dorsal vertebrae. When we CAT scanned him, there was only about a millimeter before he would have been paralysed from the chest down. The mare he was riding got up after the accident and stood quietly by his side while we saw to him and she carried him quietly back to the stables, there not being any other form of transport available. She was promised the best of care from me for this gift and she is still with me and treasured for having cared for my son.

Miracles happen and I do believe that the combined love of people who focus on a need can help. If you have the time to visit Asher's site and leave a note, and if you can think of him and offer love for his healing, please do.

Feluccas on the Nile

Feluccas on the Nile, originally uploaded by Miloflamingo.

At least once a summer I get out on a felucca in the evening. There's no real reason that I can't do it almost any night, other than the fact that life tends to get in the way. Summer evenings are also the main time for riding, so that presents a major conflict, but every time I get out on the river I wonder why I don't do this more often. Sliding silently up the river as we hear the noise of traffic fall away in the wind takes me back to many of the summer nights spent sailing from Alexandria to Cyprus many years ago.

Before we moved from Toronto to Egypt, my husband had a 32 foot Jeanneau Atalia built in the south of France, his only toy. He sailed it from France to Egypt during the spring before we moved and we did a lot of day sailing from Alexandria's Eastern Harbour. The sad thing about having a sailboat in Egypt is that the bureaucracy really takes the fun out of a lot of it. Night sailing in Egypt is pretty much restricted to the Nile and Lake Nasser because the Coast Guard forbids night dockings in Egyptian ports. Boats have to be in the harbour before sunset.

For about five years we would sail our boat to Limassol, Cyprus, where the kids and I would live on the boat in the marina doing maintenance all summer and then my husband would join us to sail back in the fall. It was a magical time for the kids, living on the boat and having a dinghy to zip around in along the shore. I loved the escape from the complexities of life and the ease of simply getting up to dress in a bathing suit, doing laundry in a bucket on the dock, and reading in the cockpit in the evening.

Now I get my sailing fix from the feluccas in the summer. The evening that this photo was taken I'd gotten a phone call in the afternoon from a young friend who wanted to come riding that night. I'd already promised to join friends for the felucca and gave her a rain check for the next day. As we sailed up the Nile, a mass of other feluccas wove their ways in and out of the islands and other boats. Lo and behold, one of them contained the girl who had wanted to go riding! She called out that it had sounded like such a good idea that they'd also headed for the river.

With the almost constant breeze blowing up river from the North, the feluccas are out sailing almost 24 hours a day. During the day they may ferry people across the river, they may be carrying refugees from the city heat. At night they are hired by the hour and may be out sailing all night long. The boats are constructed of heavy wood and the lateen rigging is simple and elegant for the river work. As Ratty in Wind In The Willows avowed, there's nothing like messing about in a boat.

Oh Rats!

Guarding The Kill, originally uploaded by Miloflamingo.

One of the things about feeding half a dozen parrots and four chickens properly is that there are plenty of leftovers for other animals. The sparrows around me have nominated me for sainthood, I'm sure. They are so fat it's a wonder that they can even fly. Last week I noticed an increase in the quantity of rat droppings under the parrot dishes and decided that enough was enough.

Rats are everywhere,especially out here in the country. We have three species of them to deal with and they are smart, tough, little monsters. During the day you can see the Nile Rats (Arvicanthus niloticus) running around the canals. Unlike the other rats (Rattus rattus and Rattus norwegicus)the Black Rat and the Norwegian Rat respectively, the Nile Rats are out and about in sunlight. The other two rats are imports to Egypt from India and Europe, but they've found the climate and abundance of food to be a blessing as well. About ten years ago I began breeding American Rat Terriers to hunt the rats that frequented the grain siloes in Alexandria at my husband's request. By last year we had about twenty of them split up between the hunting pack in Alexandria and my house, but my brother in law, who took over as manager of the siloes, is not a dog person to say the least and he shipped the Alex dogs to me. Hmmm. Just what I needed.

So recently there have been signs of rat activity in the bird cages and I've been puzzling over what to do. The dogs had also been digging holes around the concrete floor of the cages, in an attempt (to my weary brain) to get the chickens. But do I own Chicken Terriers? No, dummy, they are Rat Terriers and finally I slid my brain out of neutral and assembled the household garden hoses, sliding each into one of the holes around the birdcage and turning them all on full blast.

Why I hadn't thought of doing this before is beyond me, since hosing the rats for the dogs was one of the techniques used by the handlers in Alex. So Sabrine and I sat in the shade watching the water run into what must have been an enormous burrow complex for at least an hour!Litre after litre after litre poured in under the birdcages and nothing reappeared! I was really beginning to wonder when there was a flurry of excitement and the first rat poked its wet nose up into the air and was snatched by a waiting dog. A quick chomp broke its back and the rat was dropped with disinterest by the terriers who went back to watching the holes for more refugees. Koheila the Dalmation, on the other hand, found the trophy to be irrestistible and ran all over the garden with it, to Sabrine's disgust since she was collecting the bodies in a plastic bag for disposal. Morgana the Dane found the entire exercise utterly bewildering and went to sleep in the shade after sniffing around the holes for a bit.

Over the next 40 minutes we caught ten rats of varying sizes as the relentless onslaught of the water drove them into the sunlight. At the end of the hunt we had about 2 kilos of dead rats. Success! Rats were tossed, dogs were very disappointed not to have any more to hunt, and I figured that I had the problem solved. Not exactly. The next day the inroads on the left over parrot food were much less, but there were still signs that the rats were still with us. Rats! I waited about a week for the ground to dry out, not wanting to drown my garden in hunting the rodents down, and we repeated the process. There was still some residual dampness down there because the water rose much more quickly this time, and with it rose three more rats, two of which are shown in the photo with Al, who seemed to feel the need to guard the bodies.

Have I evicted my rodent squatters for good? Not a chance. Just a day after the second rat raid on the bird house, I saw a fat and sassy Nile rat run along the fence of my garden and go to ground under a short bushy palm tree in the corner. With the spiky branches reaching the ground, the bloody rat is almost untouchable and we haven't been able to find its hole yet. The dogs have been digging around the tree and one of these days we will try flooding the area to see what comes up.

In case anyone has fond memories of childhood rat pets and feels that I'm being callous and cruel, they should reflect on the fact that one breeding pair of Black Rats, if left undisturbed, can produce more than one million offspring of multiple generations in one year. Furthermore rats are carriers of wonderfully nasty diseases such as leptospirosis and plague. In fact, while checking the correct spelling for the Latin name of the Nile Rat I ran across a National Geographic article that suggests that plague may have come from ancient Egypt rather than from the far east. See http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/03/0310_040310_blackdeath.html

I guess that flooding the garden is going to be a regular job around here, and while the temperatures are in the 90's, it's not such a bad one. One of the interesting historical things about rats in Egypt is that the annual flood of the Nile used to do a lot to keep them under control, since they would have to leave their flooded burrows to find higher ground, leaving them prey to dogs, cats, jackals, hyenas, raptors, and snakes. Now that the Nile no longer floods, the rats have only to deal with us humans, and I guess that we aren't much of a challenge.

Laying Ghosts

Five years ago, June 9 was a Friday. The school year was just about over, my son was home from his first year of college, and the children were sleeping late in the house in Maadi. Five years ago I decided to slip out of the house early to go take my favourite mare for a ramble in the countryside since the desert was going to be much too hot, so I got up early, stopped by Greco for a latte, and drove out to Morad's place where my horses were stabled then. Some of my neighbours had gone out into the desert (yes, mad dogs and horsemen!), and were meeting for breakfast at Morad's aunt and uncle's house down the road, so I let myself be distracted by good company and laughter over a leisurely breakfast with friends. A country breakfast of fava beans, boiled eggs, salty white cheese, bread and coffee can last for hours and by the time we'd finished the sun was fairly high in the sky. Magdy and Janie had people drop by and the morning moved on into afternoon as we sat in the shade in their garden gossiping, chatting over the news of the day, planning equestrian events, and doing autopsies on events just past.

Around 3 pm I decided that if I was going to ride, I'd better get busy and I walked back to the stables at Morad's to get Dory ready to go. We started out alone and headed north along the canal in the shade of the huge eucalyptus trees that line the road. The dusty road was almost empty at that hour on a Friday. Friday is the main day off work for people in Egypt, and 3 pm is prime siesta time on a Friday afternoon. Dory and I had the world to ourselves. The kingfishers divebombed fish in the canal while the cattle egrets and the white egrets looked up at us on the trail occasionally as they gulped down minnows and frogs from the banks. The crows only grumbled quietly in the tops of the eucalyptus trees. Even the birds were taking time off. Sleepy village dogs couldn't be bothered to jump up from their shady spots to bark at us and just barely lifted their heads to growl.

In the heat I chose a path that kept us in as much shade as possible so we worked our way north along the canal to the asphalt road that goes from Shubramint to the desert dump for Giza. Even on a Friday the enormous trucks were moving in and out of the desert carrying the waste for the city out and bringing sand and gravel for construction in. The intersection (if it can really be called that) of this road and the Mansoureya Road is always crowded with vehicles and workers. Some enterprising individuals have set up tea shops along the road under the trees where drivers can stop for a cup of the black baladi tea and something to eat while they stretch their legs out on the woven mats that mark the area of the "shop". Some horses would find making their way through the trucks and cars intimidating, but Dory doesn't find anything intimidating anymore. She does her own looking at oncoming traffic and responds to the slightest touch from me to adjust her path around these enormous vehicles trailing streams of sand and dust.

Just before we arrived at the intersection, I placed a call to Germany. My husband had flown his Beechcraft C90 there the day before and was planning on returning that evening. I caught him as he was on the tarmac in Augsberg doing a final check on the plane before taking off. We chatted, the usual sorts of things said between people who have been partners for about 25 years, and then I asked when he expected to arrive in Cairo. I was to have the driver go to the airport at about 11 pm unless I got a phone call from Greece where he might stop to refuel if necessary. Yes sir. No problem and have a good flight. Be careful. He'd been working much too hard lately and I was happy to hear that he'd slept late that morning. Dory and I negotiated the traffic as I finished my call to Germany, and we headed on down another shady dirt road on our rather indirect way home.

That was the last time I spoke to the man that I loved more than my own life. The next morning I was a widow facing challenges that I could not even imagine at the time and my children had lost their guide, their protector, their tyrant, their father. The greyness that I remember of the morning of June 10 might not have been there in reality but it was so much there in my being that the shreds of it linger today. Five years ago I had no idea that I would be plunged into financial and corporate chaos so horrific that I wouldn't even have a moment to consider what his loss meant to me as a woman. Five years later the chaos is down to mere confusion at times, I'm out of the corporate quagmire for the most part, and I've had time to consider my loss in the peace of my home in the country. That isn't really such a blessing, I guess.

I woke this morning to the calling of the parrots and the crowing of the rooster who shares the flight cages with his little harem of hens. One of the dogs was barking at someone passing by on his way to the fields and the sparrows were arguing as usual outside my bedroom window. I shoved a dog off my foot and recognised the enormous crater where my heart used to be, and I realised that I have to come to terms with my life alone. I've had to make a trade for the quiet of the country that I love for the excitement of never knowing what fascinating plan that man would come up with next. My life now is much calmer, less stressful, but I miss the electricity, I miss the confusion, I miss the anticipation that was so much a part of it before. I miss waking up next to a large warm body that isn't a Great Dane pup who has sneaked onto the bed at night.

My life goes on. Friends have asked after me and pointed out that I've been alone for five years. Isn't it enough? Have I thought of moving on, of finding a new partner? I've realised over the past few weeks as I've reflected on this anniversary that I haven't been ready for anyone new in my life. I still haven't said good-bye. When I finished my phone call to Germany, I said "I'll see you soon." I think I've been expecting to all this time, but I know now that it isn't going to happen. Yes, I need to finally say good-bye. I need to let it go and perhaps the empty place inside will fill again. But it is so terribly hard to say.

Mad Dogs and California Women

Jog Dogs, originally uploaded by Miloflamingo.

Tracy is a runner. I'm not. I let my horses do the running for me, and while she loves riding as well, she also really loves getting down and gritty and running in the sand herself. As she's correctly pointed out, it gives her a great perspective on what the horses go through working in the desert. When we went out to take some photos of her running in the desert, the dogs thought that this was a great idea and piled into the car to be able to go out and join her.

Koheila the Dalmation naturally ran with Tracy. Koheila, despite the fact that she has only three functional legs and one of the others tends to lose track of those on the lefthand side of her body, is also a runner. Morgana, the Dane puppy chased along for a while and then sat down to watch with Terra and Geo, who are both old enough at seven and six years old to know better than wear themselves out in the sun. Misu, one of my smallest Rat Terriers, thinks that the sun sets on Koheila's head and had to chase after The Spotted One and Tracy. Frankly, they were all exhausted in fairly short order in the heat of the summer desert.

Cross country running is not one of the things that my neighbours really understand. Most of them don't own cars, so if they go anywhere it's either on foot, by donkey, or hitchhiking. Most of them walk miles daily just going to their fields and returning, not to mention the walking involved in the work in the fields. Why anyone would go out and run in the desert is an utter mystery to them. But they give Tracy the privacy that she loves for her running, and this is the important point.

Most days Tracy slips a pair of long jogging pants on over her shorts and heads for the mango grove that gives us access to the desert. When she is sufficiently out in the desert to be alone, she slips off the long pants to run the hills along the wadi that heads into the plateau. After she's sufficiently run out, she heads back to the mango grove and, after putting the long pants back on, she comes home. Sometimes the kids on the road by the canal race her back to our gate and she plays along with them good naturedly.

Her behaviour is most decidedly odd by my neighbours' standards, but she's never been bothered by anyone. I suspect that in part this is because she is very respectful of their ideas in never going out on the street in her running shorts. I also suspect that there is a real respect for the kind of lunatic who can run up and down hills of sand in the desert for an hours or so. I know that the fact that she is a foreigner gives her a certain amount of leeway that an Egyptian might not be given, but for whatever reason her insanity is tolerated, we appreciate it.

I remember a male runner who used to train in the desert in our area. We would see him working his way across the dunes and up and down the hills between Sakkara Country Club and Abu Sir. He was always regarded with a certain mixture of humour and awe. No one ever bothered him and his solitary task was always respected. Maybe that's a lesson to us that if we attempt something sufficiently difficult and bizarre, the rest of the world will be content to sit back and watch in wonder.