Amaryllis sillyramA

Years ago for school I read a book by Charlotte Perkins Gilman called Herland. It is a feminist utopia story, written in 1915. It was a fairly interesting read, and parts of it have stayed with me over the years. The story goes that three men are stranded in deep wilderness, and discover a very large, completely isolated valley, populated by a thriving civilization of women. The society had grown over millennia from a few women who had been stranded there and had developed the ability to have children — girls, of course — without men.

At the time it was written, it must have been easier to believe that such a place — such a physical location — could exist unknown to the rest of the world, mainly because people weren’t flying all over the place back then.

I found myself thinking of that secret valley when I heard the news about the expedition to the Foja Mountains of New Guinea. Here is a place that is so untouched by human progress that the animals — many of them found nowhere else — are completely fearless.

How awful that the sign of an animal’s familiarity with us is its fear of us.

But it is an exciting story. Listen to the interview to hear a little bit of the mating song of the six-wired bird of paradise. Here are a couple other links to sites with a few more pictures. Hopefully more pictures will be out soon.

Even better news: the area is a wildlife sanctuary, and has been protected for over twenty years, and so there is no immediate threat to all the wonderful newly discovered species. Hooray!

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 16th, 2006 at 9:08 pm and is filed under blague, blooks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.