Forbidden Island: There & back again

For the second time this month, I found myself taking some friends (no Hobbits) to Forbidden Island. Rosita wanted to show JP and her cousin, Lino the hidden pool there, and asked if I could lead hike. I asked Laurina and DJ to come and join us, since I haven’t taken them along in an excursion for quite some time now.

The hike almost got cancelled because the day started out quite rainy and there was some worry about the hike being too muddy. I was glad that I was able to convince the group that we can go slowly and that getting dirty on the hike was part of the fun anyway.

Rosita looked a little worried about the muddy trail.

Good thing she had her trusty walking stick! You have to go cut through some sword grass in the sabana to get to the islet.
Happy hikers: Rosita and Laurina
Then you go through a bit of secondary forest. It was pretty muddy and slippery. I thought for a second that maybe I shouldn't be so gung ho or determined the next time it's this rainy.

The hike was nice since the sun wasn’t too intense but we did need to be careful not to slip on the muddy ground. We had to make a few stops just to scrub the mud off the soles of our shoes on roots and rocks along the way. The trail was slowly getting overgrown by the foliage again. Time to bring a machete! DJ actually did most of the leading since this is his fourth time on the hike. I was glad to be at the back this time around, taking my time to look at things and to take a few pictures.

The pretty and fragrant Sumac or Aidia cochinchinnsis

Wild passionfuit or Passiflora suberosa
Dizzying heights

Can you see the fringing reefs? There she is!
There was enough walking sticks picked up on the trail between Laurina and Rosita for an entire cadre of hikers.

Looks quite treacherous!

Easy! Carefull!

Plenty rocks, nei!
Pretty sandstones in the dirt
Our constant seashore companion: Princess Naupaka, the Half-flower.

You can see two types of Screw Pines here: Pandanus tectorius in the foreground with the slimmer, longer leaves, and P. dubious in the background with the wider, shorter leaves. The Chamorros call these Kafu and Pahong respectively. There will be a quiz later.
Lantana camara or Wild sage. It is a pretty flowering shrub with an interesting odor.
We found some Dodder or what the Hawaiians call Kauna'oa growing in the sabana or grassland
Can you see the small white flowers of this parasitic plant?
I blogged earlier about the Hawaiian island of Lanai's official lei made of orange Kauna'oa

I made DJ a quick mwarmwar with Kauna'oa and Lantana .

I asked him to look like a matao: a Chamorro chieftain.

We made it! Laurina, JP, DJ, Lino and Rosita.

JP on location
Nice outcropping where you can see different layers of earth
I see you!

A Polished nerite (Nerita polita)

Some Plicate nerite (Nerita plicata).

These shells are bright yellow inside and can crawl pretty fast.

Are you all ready to go to the hidden pool?

Looking straight down to the opening of the cave

Lino squeezing in the narrow passage

C'mon, Rosita! I'll catch you if you fall!
JP, the avid photographer

The last time I was at the pool, I was a bit disappointed because the water was so low. We trekked out at about 2 P.M. thinking that the high tide would be upon us in an hour to insure enough water in the pool. Man, I’ve never seen that pool so low! It looks like the surf affects how much water there is more so than the tide itself. Oh, well. DJ and I jumped in the stagnant water anyway, and shared the time with the a few flagtail fishes and a lone sea cucumber.

An hour or two later, it was time to climb back out

Tanke Beach, Kagman

After Forbidden Island, I wanted to see Tanke Beach to maximize our time in Kagman. It gave DJ, Lauire and I the perfect opportunity to beachcomb a little for some neat critters. There are usually lots of marine debris on this beach since it faces the Pacific Ocean in the east. All sorts of trash washes up here from all over the Pacfic Rim.
Here's a curious sole with oysters growing in the little spaces or pockets.

A closer look after carefully taking out a few reveals some Isognomonidae, or Tree oysters. The beautiful inside is nacreous or pearly. The ancient Chamorros fashioned fish hooks out of these shells.

Plenty trash, nei!

A little hermit crab in a nice Fine-net Peristernia (Peristernia nassatula)

There are enough signs at Tanke Beach saying that it is a Marine Protected Area, yet we saw this guy obviously fishing there.

Goose barnacles (Lepas sp.) that were still alive attached to an old water jug.

Ti napu.

The Beachcomber

Coffee Shop Girl

I visited Dr. JP at his desk one morning about two months ago and I literally gasped with surprise seeing the new issue of American Scientist on his desk. You see I recently picked up that same March-April 2008 issue because of an article titled The Rise of Coffee by entomologist Fernando E. Vega. Apparently, JP and I share an interest in both coffee and scientifically technical rags. It was a good sign.
You see, you can only have admiration for this man, and I count myself very lucky to be his friend. He is a respected epidemiologist to people in the health profession all over the world. He has seen the rise and fall of epidemics, and has personally affected people’s lives with the preventive medicine that is his life endeavor. He is definitely someone I try to emulate not just professionally but due to the numerous talks that we’ve had, I also somewhat wish that I followed similarly in the footsteps of his personal life. Sure, he is not an infallible person, nor are his relationships perfect. But what JP is to me though (and to many others) answers the age old question of, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” My answer being, “I want to be a good man.”

JP and I also share interests in art, photography, beauty, nature, hiking, malacology, and even mycology (we take pictures of fungi), but I know personality wise we are different. Maybe my admiration for him is due to his similarities to my own father. They are the strong silent cerebral types, the old-school (forgive me) man’s man of previous generations that are solid in who they are and what they believe. In fact, when JP told me one day that his relationship with his son is better now that he is an adult, it reminded me of how my father and I have the same rapport now that I am much older. So, I seek his company whenever I can so that I can somehow through osmosis take a bit from his character, but most definitely partake of his wisdom and knowledge about life and love in the absence of my own father’s presence.

So, we got to talking about coffee and how we both appreciated a good strong brew, drinking it black in order to actually taste the quality of the beans. Just as in so many of our talks, I always somehow interject questions about women and relationships to hear what JP has to say backed with all of his wisdom, history and first-hand knowledge. No, actually this time was different as I said, “I just met an amazing woman, and guess what? She drinks her coffee black too!” A woman who appreciates the taste of pure coffee, he says to me, “Man, you better hold on to that one!” I smiled. My heart smiled too at the many possibilities at that time, yet some doubts and questions entered my mind. I finally had to ask, “JP, I really like her. How do I hold on to this one? ” He smiled wide and shrugged, “I don’t know. I’ve already found my coffee drinker. And when I did, I held on to her.” I chuckled and thoughts of JP and his wonderful wife, Frances drinking coffee together each morning into their midlives entered my mind. Smiling, I was left wanting for that same connection with someone one day.

This one is for you JP and Fran, and even though things did not go further for you and me, my Coffee Shop Girl, I will always cherish all you gave and our time together.
Coffee Shop
By Landon Pigg

I think that possibly, maybe I'm falling for you.
Yes there's a chance that I've fallen quite hard over you.
I've seen the paths that your eyes wander down,
I want to come too.

I think that possibly, maybe I'm falling for you
No one understands me, quite like you do,
Through all of the shadowy corners of me.

I never knew just what it was about this old coffee shop
I love so much.
All of the while, I never knew.
I never knew just what it was about this old coffee shop
I love so much.
All of the while, I never knew.

I think that possibly, maybe I'm falling for you.
Yes there's a chance that I've fallen quite hard over you.
I've seen the waters that make your eyes shine,
Now I'm shining too.

Because, oh because,
I've fallen quite hard over you.

If I didn't know you, I'd rather not know.
If I couldn't have you, I'd rather be alone.

I never knew just what it was about this old coffee shop
I love so much.
All of the while, I never knew.
I never knew just what it was about this old coffee shop
I love so much.
All of the while, I never knew.

All of the while, all of the while,
And it's you.

The Beachcomber

Ingredients

Recipe for ancient Chamorro adze replica

Ingredients:
1 Tridacna adze head
1 L-shaped wooden handle
A few yards of Coconut fiber cord

Instructions:
Uh....What instructions? Don't you just put all three together and then "Bam!" you got yourself an adze?

Well, I wish it is that easy. In embarking in this creative journey, I often am reminded that putting together the ingredients or parts that you need for a project is sometimes one of the hard parts. Instructions and guidance is another quite illusive integer in the equation. This post is about a project that is still very much unfinished at this point because it is taking me a while to figure out the recipe. But join me, and we'll "talk stories" about this and about that!

I wanted to make my own replica of the ancient Chamorro adze. Gachai is the Chamorro word for adze according to the Chamorro-English Dictionary (Topping, Ogo, & Dungca) but I am not sure if it means the whole instrument or just the adze head. The gachai was the tool that the ancient people of the Marianas (in fact in Micronesian islands) to cut, chop and carve wood. Although it is easy to imagine it as an axe as I described it, think of it more being shaped like a hoe, with the cutting shaft or adze head almost perpendicular to the wooden handle. There is an abundant amount of Tridacna adze head artifacts left behind giving us a hint of how important this tool was for constructing houses, implements, and canoes. The gachai is composed of an adze head that served as the blade, a wooden handle, and to bind the two, some cordage most commonly made of coconut fiber, or gunot. So it was these three ingredients that I needed, and in the begining it seemed like such an easy undertaking.

The adze head
The ancient Chamorros utilized mainly the shell of mollusks for their adze head. The cutting shaft needed to be able to keep a sharp cutting edge and be hard enough to withstand a lot of hammering pressure. Shells of the spider conch or do’gas (Lambis sp.), large cone shells (Conus sp.) and the giant clam or hima (Tridacna sp.) were used for this purpose. I have seen pictures of haggan (sea turtle) bone used in other locales as well, but the hima was the most utilized in Micronesia.

There are a few species of hima in the waters of the Marianas, but the most abundant is Tridacna maxima (Röding, 1798), the elongate or maximum giant clam. It is not the largest of the giant clam family growing to only about 35 cm. in length. The bivalve shell is heavy, with pronounced radiating ribs that form concentric scales, and the edges are interlocking and scalloped. The shell exterior is off white or cream colored, sometimes tinged with yellow or orange, and the interior is white. The hima is a shallow reef dweller which makes it prone to it being overfished in many areas for food. Luckily for me, fragments of hima washes up readily on Saipan’s beaches, although finding a fragment big and solid enough is a challenge. (Please take note that it is illegal to take any live marine invertebrate on Saipan. Any harvest of hima must be done with a permit from the Division of Fish & Wildlife, Puerto Rico).

Here is a picture of a complete hima shell that I found in Obyan Beach, Saipan. It looks like it had been dead in the water for some time due to the encrustation inside and outside of the clam. It is a small specimen of 13 cm length and probably not thick or solid enough for an adze head.

I consulted The Catalogue of Prehistoric Micronesian Artifacts Housed in Japan (Intoh, May 1998) for some drawing examples of ancient adze heads. They had numerous illustrated examples from Saipan, Tinian and Rota, as well as Palau, Pohnpei, Kosrae, and the Marshall Islands. The illustrations showed me that the hima was cut with a cone shaped end and a flat end that was sharpened in to the cutting edge.

This is the hima fragment that I found at Wing Beach, Saipan and it is a 15 cm long fragment that I decided to use for my gachai. It is not much longer than first clam shown above but this one was more solid at about 1 cm thickness. As you can see, I’ve already cut it to a typical adze shape. It is still unfinished since I have not yet grounded and sharpened the cutting edge and the other end that lies on the handle shaft will need some shaping done to it so that it sits well. I feel that it is a good start though.

The handle
The handle for a gachai needs to be hard and be able to take some pounding. The ancients could have used a number of indigenous hardwoods that could be found in forest and coastlines. I happened upon a niyoron (Cordia subcordata) that was butchered near San Jose Mart and that’s how I got this handle. It’s such a shame that property owners don’t know the value of trees though. Niyoron is not a very dense wood, but I chose to use it for my gachai to teach people of its importance. The Hawaiians esteemed this wood above all especially in the making of wooden bowls or calabashes. They called it kou and venerated it more than the now popular koa (Acacia koa) at one time before it became a rare tree due to an insect infestation from the States that was accidentally introduced to the islands. Check out Jack Ewing’s website on woodturning in Hawaii and their native trees like the kou here (I am a big fan): http://www.hawaiiwoodturning.com/. I wish our own islanders were more educated and appreciative of the native trees here. Check out the new Marianas Pride (MP) magazine's November-December 2007 issue for more information in an article on native trees and their importance.

Here’s a picture of the beautiful orange flowers of the niyoron. Some people believe that orange was a venerated color to the ancient Chamorros because of the Spondylus salape’ beads that they adorned themselves with. I really want to start a petition to change the CNMI’s State Tree and/or State Flower into indigenous/native ones. Why not place the same importance or esteem to the niyoron? We need to start appreciating our local trees more and educate ourselves on their importance.

Here is the beginning of my gachai handle. It will need to be carved to accommodate the hima adze head, get sanded, sealed, and maybe stained. I may also put some Spondylus inlays and carve some ancient Chamorro symbols on the handle as well.

The coconut fiber cord
Now this part of the ingredients is hard to come by on Saipan. I don’t think anyone here makes gunot or coconut fiber cord anymore unless it is a very special occasion (for the construction of a traditional canoe or a canoe house for example). I have seen some for sale during cultural festivals from Yap, but a bundle costs about $80 to $100. Knowing what making this cord entails, I would have paid that much to get some to finish my project plus some others that I have rolling in my mind.

To make cord out of gunot, mature punot or coconut husks are buried under wet sand for several weeks so that the “flesh” rots away from the gunot (I think someone told me once that the rotten flesh of the punot was malodorous but I will have to verify. Can you imagine though?). The flesh is then pounded out to reveal the golden brown fibers that are then dried and made ready to be rolled into cordage. A good friend, Jean Paul C. who has spent many years in Pohnpei has witnessed this traditional work. He said that people sit around “talking stories” and they roll the gunot on their thighs with their palms. Now that’s a lot of work! If you’ve touched coconut fiber, it’s not like cotton at all. It is rough and itchy! But a good tightly rolled and twisted cord is what I need to complete the ingredients for my traditional hima adze replica. Luckily, JP (as we call him) took a trip recently to Chuuk, and was able to find a man who was willing to part with a few yards gratis! The man had it twisted on a small stick and I am so thankful for his generosity. That’s the island way!

So, every time JP leaves Saipan for one of the Micronesian islands, I always ask him to keep an eye out for cordage. Thanks, JP! One day, I will experiment to make my own, or hopefully, I will get invited to a rare cord making session. But please, anyone else knows how to get some, please let me know.

Now, I got the ingredients: 1 Tridacna adze head (needs reshaping and sharpening), 1 wooden handle (needs carving, sanding, sealing, and maybe staining, inlaying and decorating), and a few yards of coconut fiber cord (to bind everything together. I even cut a cone shell adze head for a second one:

I’ll post up a follow up on this a bit later. I am already experimenting with some traditional and ornamental binding techniques. After looking for coconut fiber cordage, I say that this is the hardest part of the recipe because there really are no instructions or someone who can teach me how to do this. But once bound, my ancient Chamorro adze replica will be done! So keep it tuned and we’ll “talk stories” some more.

Thank you for letting me share.
The Beachcomber

UPDATE: Check out the finished adze and another one I made after.