Originally posted at http://olduvaireads.wordpress.com/201...This is the fourth book in the National Geographic Directions series that I’ve read. If you haven’t seen any of these yet you’re in for a treat. Jamaica Kincaid writes about Nepal, Jan Morris about Wales, Louise Erdrich about books and islands in Ojibwe County, and here, neurologist Oliver Sacks writes about his journeys in Oaxaca.And ferns.Yup. Ferns.For Sacks is a member of the American Fern Society (AFS), which has been around since the 1890s.Most of the thirty people on the Oaxaca tour are members of the AFS.They are quite a different breed of tourist. “Luis – our tour guide for the next week – points out the innumerable churches and the confines of the old colonial city. No one pays the least attention.”Instead they are scanning the roadside for ferns or the skies for birds.Sacks writes a good travel journal. He throws in some facts about ferns and other plant life, but not too much that it would throw off those with black thumbs (i.e. me). For instance, his own fascination with ferns: “Ferns delighted me with their curlicues, their croziers, their Victorian quality (not unlike the grilled antimacassars and lacy curtains in our house). But at a deeper level, they filled me with wonder because they were of such ancient origin. All of the coal that heated our home, my mother told me, was essentially composed of ferns or other primitive plants, greatly compressed, and one could sometimes find their fossils by splitting coal balls. Ferns had survived, with little change, for a third of a billion years. Other creatures, like dinosaurs, had done and gone, but ferns, seemingly so frail and vulnerable, had survived all the vicissitudes, all the extinctions the earth had known. My sense of a prehistoric world, of immense spans of time, was first simulated by ferns and fossil ferns.”It intrigues me, this interest in ferns. A passion for a plant that leads them to hike and travel and observe.I wonder what it would be like to have a love for plants. I so very admire people with green thumbs, who grow fruits and vegetables, whose gardens bloom with every shade of the rainbow. While I like to look at plants, I just don’t care very much for taking care of them. Insects and bugs and mud and all that (I know I know…).So the idea of devoting a trip (and for many of Sack’s fellow fern-lovers, many other trips past and future) to plants is rather fascinating.And it made for a fun read too.
Sacks' writes a short but richly varied, observant and descriptive account of a trip to Mexico's Oaxaca region. The trip revolves around a search and passion for ferns but Sacks' illustrations and observations cast a far deeper and wider net leading the reader to discoveries and insights related to human nature, history, culture and people in general. That's not to say there is a healthy and interesting dose of information about the both the symbiotic and parasitic relationships in nature.. The richest passages sneak up on you - much as the "aha!" moments of life often do. One passage I liked which is simple yet elegant in it's serial listing of what constitutes a "fully human life":"If we compare Mesoamerica to Rome and Athens, I was beginning to realize, or to Babylon and Egypt, or to China and India, we find the disjuncture bewildering. But there is no scale, no linearity, in such matters. How can one evaluate a society, a culture? We can only ask whether there were the relationships and activities, the practices and skills, the beliefs and goals, the ideas and dreams, that make for a fully human life." - 151There are other rich passages - some of the more interesting are about the trades/skills belonging to the people of Oaxaca and neighboring areas.. or are about how Spanish Catholicism has been superimposed onto and integrated into a rich native historical past in Mexico forming more of a lattice-work of beliefs and symbolism rather than replacing one for the other. It's interesting to think how different Central America developed as a opposed to North America. In the former, natives were killed off or intermarried with the colonialists eventually making up the majority of the population - in other words, most Mexicans probably have some genetic link to the indigenous population and even a sense of connection to it. How different in American where not only did this NOT happen but our indigenous population is still something very separate and apart.
What do You think about Oaxaca Journal (2005)?
Now this is how you keep a travel journal. Originally intended to log a fern hunting trip in Southern Mexico, Oaxaca Journal quickly unravels, becoming many books in one: a personal examination, a brief cultural history, an environmental survey, and a celebration of the fast but lasting friendships that can arise when traveling. To be sure, it helps to have a mind as capacious, agile, and curious as Oliver Sacks’s, but, if nothing else, it’s wonderful how the text proceeds just as a good trip might--reveling in surprise, flitting from one subject to the next, musing upon the simple joys of a bit of shade and a cold beer on a hot day, etc. Most of all, it’s a joyous reverie in the powers of going somewhere different and experiencing, with open eyes, something new.
—Cody
Imagine a group of eclectic people ranging from botanists, artists, scientists and hobby enthusiasts together on a nine-day journey to observe ferns (yes the plants) in the southern state of Oaxaca, Mexico? Plus it is all recorded in the form of a journal. Sounds dull or at least, odd but under the penmanship of Oliver Sacks, it is simply brilliant. I enjoyed his foray into ferns, plants and assorted botanical musings along with his sketches and I never really had an interest in this subject but his awakening to the land, culture and people of Oaxaca was beautiful and heart-felt. I loved the way he paints the images which made me recall and appreciate this beautiful land. This is a truly very good read.
—David
The neurologist’s ruminations on his trip to Oaxaca with a few of his fellow American Fern Society members. There’s pteridological information, of course, but quite a bit more besides. Sacks writes about Mexican culture in general, varieties of peppers, the history of chocolate, the Aztecs, the Zapotecs, the specialized expertise of villages, and conquest. In fewer than 160 pages, Sacks’ clear, intelligent writing covers all these topics and more. It’s not by any means a definitive statement on any of these topics, even the ferns of Oaxaca, but it’s a highly enjoyable document of an informal scientific trek, and interesting travel writing.
—Ensiform
