Finding items to write about can be an interesting and fun search. One source that might surprise is when it can be found in the Sunday funnies.
For 70 years Mark Trail and his friend, now wife Cherry, have brought hiking, conservation, and wilderness adventure to the funnies. Created by Ed Dodd, and now drawn by James Allen, the dailies and the Sunday strips can still be found in newspapers as well as on-line. I always enjoy the Sunday strip and found a recent one (9/23/2018) very interesting. It dealt with an expedition in May 2018 to a world virtually hidden from humanity atop a singular mount in Mozambique.
The initial idea for an expedition to Mount Lico came to Julian Bayliss of Oxford Brookes University in 2006 when he found the highland during a search of Goggle Earth. But it was not until six years later that he would lead an expedition of 28 scientists on a ten-day visit to the top of this granite monolith. It must have been like being on the top of the world, or perhaps the top of a new world.
The top of Mount Lico is separated from the surrounding landscape by a near-vertical 375-foot (125 meters) cliff face. This mount is likely the remnants of an ancient volcano, a cinder cone, in which lava had been pushed up into its central shaft where it hardened. Then as the millennium passed the cinder cone eroded away leaving this massive granite mesa towering above the rain forests below. But another rain forest also developed at the crown of the mount. Perhaps it started when the cinder cone was still part of the landscape; or maybe it started from seeds being blown in the wind or carried by birds. But the forest is there at the top, and it is teeming with wildlife. One new species of butterfly has been confirmed, and several other animals are under study to determine if they are new to our knowledge as well.
To reach this unexplored forest each scientist had to steel themselves for the 375-foot vertical ascent by climbing rope. They were assisted by experienced, world-class climbers who laid out the pitch and secured the novice clambering-scientists by lines. Each made the arduous and dangerous climb, and the equally arduous and dangerous descent after the 10-day survey of the mount-top forest was finished.
The age of the forest has yet to be determined. The depth of the soil which generally aligns with the age of the forest was not established. Even after a 2-meter test pit was dug and a 50-cm probe was driven into the bottom of the pit, bedrock was not found. In addition to the plants and animals found in the forest, stone pots were discovered from previous human incursions into the new-found forest. Julian Bayliss is quoted on the Earth Alliance (link below) site as saying of the expedition and its findings; “It’s very exciting.”
I would say that is truly an understatement.
How many of us have stepped from the forest track or from that path in a park to investigate a tree, a flower, a bird, that we had not seen or heard before. And then we stand in awe of a new vision and perhaps wonder who was the last person to have stood here and marveled. There have been a few times for me when back in the lonesome territory – not deep wilderness but a place where others do not often go – when I have stopped and stared and marveled. There was a time in the marsh of South Carolina when I was investigating a palmetto and pine island in a tidal flat, that I stopped and stared and then stepped back in awe and wonder at the natural temple that I found in front of me. I did not go in. My entrance would have spoiled the place. Yet I can see it still in my mind’s eye.
Where Professor Bayliss led his team was truly into the wilderness. And their trek to the base of the granite wall more than 1,900 feet (575 meters) above the surrounding plains, and then up the 125-meter climb to the top surpasses my walk across the firm, sandy soil of the tidal flat, but each of us in a way experienced a similar exhilaration. There are still places out there to be discovered.
Picture is taken from the Alliance Earth site at https://allianceearth.org/mount-lico/ “It is a Rhampholeon, or Dwarf Chameleon, found during the expedition in another forest on nearby Mount Socone.”
Mark Trail current and past strips may be found at http://marktrail.com/