I tried to go back in December...

India was awesome. I wanted to return but the visa bureaucracy was such a hassle the first time, I expanded my horizons for my "travel year." (I hate to sound superstitious, but it's amazing that I was able to fly in possibly the only ethical way available in the era of Global Warming!) Since I was flying stand-by, I could make plans last minute. Unfortunately that squeezed out Brazil, which also demands visa hurdles.

I started studying Russian in hopes of going to support leopards in the 'Stans... but that didn't pan out. So in 2014 I ended up speaking Spanish,

Arabic,
French,

German,

Italian,

Indonesian,

Mandarin, Japanese,

Romanian,
and...

Tibetan! ག་ལེར་ཕེབས་། (Goodbye!)

VC Bestor
FangedWilds.org
Twitter
Facebook

Fanged Wilds and Women Program is a 501c3 Tax-Exempt Organization

Goddess in Stones

Thanks to you who wrote via our website, FangedWilds.org.
I'll suspend the blog till I get back from India.

Till then, I recommend A Goddess in the Stones :

The Dongria Kondh girls "....came skipping down the paths in parties, flashing their eyes in all directions, chattering in high-pitched birdlike voices." They wore "richly embroidered scarves, and combs plus a dagger in their hair."

My blog continues here.
Namaste!

VC Bestor
FangedWilds.org
Twitter
Facebook

Fanged Wilds and Women Program is a 501c3 Tax-Exempt Organization

Love is a Menace

I put myself at risk out of love for the planet. A friend said about my blog, "You don't hold back." Isn't that the earmark of passion? In contrast, people who desecrate Mother Nature or, say, proudly hunt wolves are often passionate about their religions. Do their brains make a significant connection between Creator and creation? Can insecure egos drive the need to dominate?

Research participants who watched awe-inspiring images became increasingly intolerant of uncertainty. Yet life seems to demand things in good measure. Spirituality, biodiversity, doubt, and human responsibility can all co-exist. We need the will to be both puny and powerful. We need passion.

Yet the awe in love makes us crave certainty. We may destroy what we love, just to get certainty. The cost may not just be to this world. Our souls may grow in spurts each time we feel awe without defining it by what we think we know. Going in and out of our minds may be the engine that builds character. It may be logical to try to dominate nature. It may be insane to risk your life for love of the ecosystem.

My blog-reading friend may think he knows me, and think I'm not holding back. We imagine Mother Nature will hold back because God is ultimately pulling the strings. In the Hindu pantheon, Kali interests me. Humanity may lose all certainty and security when we feel awe of Climate Change!

VC Bestor
FangedWilds.org
Twitter
Facebook

Fanged Wilds and Women Program is a 501c3 Tax-Exempt Organization

Coarse Miracles

I dated an electrical engineer from HP. On his daughter's birthday, he confided that she had become entangled with a drug-dealer boyfriend. Optimistically I suggested the perfect birthday present for her was a Ba Gua mirror, the Chinese symbol for protection.

We were at my house, where I happened to have a Ba Gua on hand. To add mystique to the second-hand gift, I said I was going to put a spell on it. I portentously led my skeptical date out onto the deck to create some drama. I raised the mirror to the sky and pronounced some sort of prayer for her: "Angels and all good energies of the universe, please come guide and guard this young woman." But mostly I was putting on a show for the guy's amusement. He was an engineer, right?

To my surprise, as I held the small mirror up toward the sun, I saw glowing orbs descend into the object. The engineer said something like, "Those balls of light must be angels."

Startled, I exclaimed, "You saw those too?" My jaw was open.

He denied, "No, I didn't see anything."

Contrast that to several years before, when I had a boyfriend in the Eckankar cult. He proposed marriage. My refusal inspired him to stomp off and, in his exit, lift up and smash to the ground a cinder block in my driveway. Later, I was cleaning my bedroom when a sudden image flooded my brain of that guy hitting me in the head with an ax. The vision was so distinct, I didn't hesitate to mention it the next time I saw him. "Yeah," he said, "I went home that day and split kindling... and I pretended the wood was you."

Thoughts do have substance. How much? Do they have as much substance as some of us believe?

The Dalai Lama or someone said, “The best meditation is critical thinking – followed by action.” If your daughter dates a drug dealer, forget the magic mirror: give her an intervention.

Common sense must balance magic and religion. I'm going to India soon, to see the women rangers of Gir. I'm prepared to have some swami come up and pronounce my mother's maiden name or something. Mystical events are a huge industry in India, if you take into account all the temples, ashrams and festivals. Meanwhile, Mother Teresa preached against abortion while children died of malnutrition before her eyes.

If you can't trust a woman with a choice, how can you trust a woman with orbs of light?

VC Bestor
FangedWilds.org
Twitter
Facebook

Fanged Wilds and Women Program is a 501c3 Tax-Exempt Organization

You and your Bad Banana

Humanity's soul is in a tango with this Earth. Of the issue from that marriage, species extinctions are like botched, illegal back-room abortions performed on a global scale by the Big-Oil ilk of Dick Cheney. Humanity, please stop aborting species!

The last population of Asiatic lions is protected by the women rangers of the Gir Forest. For my trip to document them, I'm learning some Hindi. Their word for expand -- as in, to expand your mind -- is badhaana, so the mnemonic I'm using is Bad Banana.

Speaking of bad bananas, in the memoir I'm reading, Dreaming in Hindi, the author's ambitiously libertine friend is warned not to "expand the mind" of an Indian's fiancee.

I don't want to create any international incidents. But I'm going to a country where, beyond the Muslim influence, a Hindi woman is deemed less likely to reincarnate as a man than an animal is to reincarnate into a person. By the way, I tried to find a word for "woman libertine" and failed: all the synonyms suggest tramps rather than someone who is merely adventurous and sensually opportunistic. So Western culture isn't ready to go around pointing fingers at who is sexist. "Belonging to a tribal Muslim community that did not let its womenfolk seek work outside home," one of the Gir lion guards is as much an icon for women's-work home-bodies in our country as, say, Hillary Clinton.

Women like us can be Bad Bananas. We can expand one another more deeply into the web of life.

We can set the standard against which abominations against nature stand out like industrial pollution would in a wildlife preserve.



VC Bestor
FangedWilds.org
Twitter
Facebook

Fanged Wilds and Women Program is a 501c3 Tax-Exempt Organization

Miracles versus Magic

Just back from my first trip to Hawaii, I realized the guy I'd fallen in love with at Hookena Beach used the same pick-up line as the romantic hero of my novel: "Let me remodel your kitchen in Oregon." The statistical likelihood of his words defied the laws of physics and probably even of some religions.

No-one had read my book. Yet my soon-to-be-fiancé shared distinct qualities not only with that mountaineer character, but with the book's other love interest who sailed around Manhattan. The improbabilities spooked me so much, I asked the actual stud if we should consult a rabbi or priest.

I conscientiously emailed my author acquaintances to warn, "Be careful what you write - it may come true!"

Surely the miracle was an omen that my whole "Fanged Wilds" ecology project was about to achieve success. But that was two years ago. Ahem. As for romance, let's just say I'm glad the analogy I used was "remodel your kitchen" rather than "clean your clock."

In my novel, the kitchen was a metaphor not just for a woman's hearth and home, but for her heart. In my passion to serve the greater good, I put my kitchen on my sleeve, and my sleeve became an industrial oven-mitt made of something like asbestos that saves your life now but kills you in the long run. Meaning? Based on the miracle that happened to me, I made assumptions. For instance, I extrapolated that justice exists. Ha ha.

Am I beat? Is Global Warming* hopeless? I can stand the heat, babe, and I'm not getting out of this kitchen. (*Climate Deniers: if you are cold right now, that does not disprove the greenhouse effect. You may want to put on an extra pair of your sacred underwear.)

I just told someone about the miracle of my kitchen, and she piped up, "Have you read The Secret?!" $ome $ecret. I've written affirmations since the 1980s, made vision boards, and immersed myself in all possible New-Age positivities. Yet the kitchen-remodel event two years ago was the only remotely related result of my scripted longings. After twenty-eight years. Who wants to admit failure? The shadow side of empowerment is that we blame ourselves for futility. I used Louise Hay's "Heal Your Body" for 28 years. My mistake (cough).

I have years of formal training in science (including a Master's degree) so - while not indoctrinated so far as to ignore my own direct experience - I can apply Occam's Razor even to splendid mysteries. Reductionists as well as fantasists may get convulsions from my conclusion. Yet consider that my consciousness may be independent of entropy while within the space-time continuum. I've often had verifiable premonitions. That at least partly explains the miracle of that sexy "soul mate" saying the same pick-up line as the hottest character in my novel.

Science: gotta luv it. "The Secret"? Not so much.

***

Wishful thinking and magical beliefs cause pregnancy. (Okay, sex also plays a role.) Nearly half of fetuses are unintended. Surprise! Women can be irrational about birth control. As Jezebel Magazine says, "'The Secret' is a terrible contraception plan."

Seven hundred tons of carbon aren't blanketing our climate -- trapping heat -- for each child whom I do not have. That's also 700 tons per grand-kid, great-grand-kid.... down through Mad Max #946.

Seven hundred tons of carbon footprint per American child: bravo, Mommy. Yeah, childbirth is a miracle.

Instead I have kitty-cats as my babies. And, as my gawky teen-age brain-child, I nurture the "Fanged Wilds and Women Program." My ex-soul-mate pointed out, "A sunset is a miracle." Reductionism comes in all shades. Whether someone harms my idealism or my biosphere, they dishonor a   miracle .

VC Bestor
FangedWilds.org
Twitter
Facebook

Fanged Wilds and Women Program is a 501c3 Tax-Exempt Organization

Women are to be Herded and Not Seen

Do you feel as if lions in far-flung forests belong to us? A magical transformation can take place when we belong to them. That's one reason the female rangers (like at Gir) are so important. Those women not only exit their comfort zone, they risk their lives for wilderness and its animal residents. I can't wait to see firsthand their esprit de corps.

I also wonder if their outfits are hot.

As I wonder what to wear in India, I wish I had a uniform that would give me authority and thus protect me. But would dressing mannishly endanger me where homosexuality is illegal?

I'm drawn to the "dupatta" shawl with which women traditionally drape themselves. Cover for my blondish hair, a veil could make me less conspicuous and serve as a "cloak of invisibility." Of course, in the USA, my youthful movements have fooled more than one frat boy when they saw me from the back; after their wolf-calls, I laughed to see their faces when they saw my face. Still, will looking feminine make me too much of an "Eve-teasing" target in India?


A veil will make me seem to belong in rural areas where, too often, women are to be herded and not seen.

This trip is sending me far away from my own herd. Where lies safety? While I venture where it's too hot and too dry, my comfort-seeking herd is taking a long walk off a short pier into the rising sea level of Climate Change. And you? What's your herd? Do I belong to you at all? Love is the real way for us to belong to one another. On the soul level, living beings are one another's Earthly belongings.

While protecting the vulnerable is a feminine urge, protecting lions is not a lady's first instinct. It may be her last. Do you care what happens to me? Do you see why I'm going public, stepping out of line, and putting myself in harm's way?

VC Bestor
FangedWilds.org
Twitter
Facebook

Fanged Wilds and Women Program is a 501c3 Tax-Exempt Organization