Chapter 2 The Beauty and Wonder in Nature.
Tonight I stand peacefully beneath a cloudless sky, enchanted by thousands of stars. They are winking at me, with the light that they flashed hundreds of lightyears ago! The splendour of the universe still stuns me. I am waiting for a falling star to make a special wish for you.
There it goes! I wish that in your lifetime, you will see and experience most of the natural and man-made wonders of the world, some of which I have relished myself. First, let us admire the natural wonders, which are really a mouthful. There are 900,000 types of insects on this planet, 250,000 species of plants, including 25,000 specimens of orchids and 20,000 varieties of roses. There are 30,000 kinds of fishes, thousands of breeds of mammals, and even 10,000 sorts of worms! That is enough to fill many sets of encyclopedias, and keep you busy for many lifetimes!
The first things that come to mind are the big ones, like the Grand Canyon in Arizona. It is a gigantic trench in the landscape, 450 km (280 miles) long, up to 29 km (18 miles) wide and 1.6 km (1 mile) deep! The gash was formed in the last 10 million years, mainly by the slow erosion of the Colorado river. The sight is awe-striking. See the magnificent Niagara Falls, straddling Canada and USA, called the honeymoon capital of the world. The voluminous descent looks like a curtain of white ropes; often bathed in dreamy, romantic colours from the nightly spotlights. If you have the chance, adore the Angel Falls in Venezuela, the highest waterfall on earth; then tour the worlds largest river, the Amazon, in neighbouring Brazil. The upper reaches of the Amazon are home to some of the prettiest aquarium fishes, such as the Neon Tetra.
Let the worlds tal lest geyser thrill you at the Yellowstone Park in USA, called the „Old Faithful for its regularity. It hurls 45,000 litres (10,000 gallons) of hot water, 45 metres (150 ft) into the air! There are also sensational boiling mud and yellow sulphur pools nearby. Did you know there are smaller ones in Taupo and Rotorua in New Zealand and elsewhere too? These are all parts of the bewildering volcanic actions around the globe; but I hope you will never meet an erupting volcano! There are still 500 active ones. Under them, the intense 6,000 degrees Celsius temperature of the earths core has formed brilliant and glamorous gems and crystals. Examine the sparkle of a diamond at the jeweller, the rich green of the emerald, the mesmerising blue of the sapphire, and the alluring red of the ruby! The lustrous pearl is something else, it is formed after the wrapping of a foreign particle, by an oyster!
Waltz or drink to the charm of the Danube river, which inspired Strauss and Ivanovici in their masterpiece-compositions of The Blue Danube and Danube Waves. The river winds through Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Germany, and Austria - the setting of the great movie The Sound of Music. What a combination and heritage!
Go south of the equator, and venture onto the Ayers Rock in Central Australia and savour its changing colours, then move eastward to the Great Barrier Reef - 1,500 kilometres of underwater wonderland for swimmers and divers. The Reef is only 7 hours drive from the Sunshine Coast my family visited recently! Study the dozens of Australian species of parrots, Macaws, Cockatoos, Budgies, Parakeets, and the rainbow Lorikeets too, which my family befriended on our last trip. Farther north, the mangrove swamp will show you the delicious mud-crabs, the naughty mud-skippers, the underground Lung Fish, and an occasional crocodile. If you are lucky enough, you may get acquainted with the strange Darwin Frog that hatches its eggs in the mouth. If you dig hard enough in the Australian desert, you may even find the Spade-Foot Toad It keeps moist by hibernating deep in the sand, until a heavy downpour induces it lay eggs.
We hope that one day you will chance upon the exquisite Midnight Sun in Northern Europe or Alaska, as the Arctic region tilts towards the summer sun, which does not set for a few nights! Stay a few more days and watch the astonishing Aurora - the Northern Lights - dramatic colours and dancing lights across the sky, caused by highly charged solar particles and atmospheric gases. Below the sky, view the icebergs and glaciers, but avoid the avalanche at all costs! Stay clear of the typhoons, tornadoes and hurricanes too, but watch the common yet spectacular lightning, and listen to its roaring thunder. You need not be afraid; it is estimated that every minute there are 6,000 lightnings flashing around our good earth. After the thunderstorms, look for the rainbow and let its prettiness linger in your mind. You can create your own rainbow too by splitting a spectrum of light. Put a torch light behind a glass prism, or cast a fine spray of water in a sunlit garden (which I used to do for my children), it is lovely!
Away from the biggies, the average things are even more miraculous and mesmerising. Recline lazily in the Dead Sea in Jordan, and read my book; the saltiest water in the world will keep you afloat forever. Walk on the black-sand beaches in Iceland, or watch the rising and falling tides of rivers anywhere around the globe, obediently magnetised by the moon.
Tumble into the deep jungles of New Guinea, and peep at the several species of Birds of Paradise. Their colours of red, orange, green and iridescent blue, coupled with angel-like long tail-streamers and discs, make them truly blissful and unforgettable. Then there is the peacock, with its jubilant tail display, spanning 1.5 metres. The superb Lyre Bird has a tail shaped like the ancient Greek guitar. Watch the brilliant blue Fairy-Wren of Australia, the gorgeous FairyBlue Bird of Asia, the elegant plumage colours of the Kingfishers, the pleasing Toucans, the charming Cocks-of-the-Rock, and numerous pretty Sunbirds. Do not miss the petite Hummingbird, which flaps its wings 80 times a second! You must listen to the beautiful songs of the New Zealand Bellbird, with a musical pitch so hypnotic and unique that I almost heard ‘The Bluebells of Scotland’. Listen to the melodic Asian Magpie Robin. Remember too, to converse with the mimicking Myna from Borneo.
Do not forget the clownish Puffin, carrying 10 fish at once in its beak. The short-tailed Shearwater birds take a yearly 30,000 km tour of Japan, Alaska, Canada, and Fiji, and return unfailingly, to South Australia in the last few days of September. The sun-loving Arctic Terns make the longest bird migration, from the North Pole to the South Pole, and back! Oh, the wonders are endless.
You should have joined the group of scientists, who in 1977 descended 2,500 metres to the pitch-dark ocean floor near Galapagos Islands. They did it in a special submarine called „Alvin. The world they saw, unseen by the sun, was incredible and bustling with life that ranged from the bizarre to the beautiful. There were strange creatures, and fishes that had various lights to show the way! The Football Fish, for example, has a round body covered in bony plates, plus a cable carrying a light-bulb above its head. Nearer the surface, you have giant squids growing up to 20 metres, the length of your classroom. The South African electric eel has enough power to light up 10 household bulbs! The adorable dolphins find their way by making sounds and listening to their echoes. Salmons navigate back to their exact birthplaces, to lay eggs and die. In California, the Grunion Fish dances out of the soupy sand, to lay thousands of eggs in a minute.
I hope too, that one day in Mexico, you will stumble onto the picnicking ground of a few million Monarch butterflies; the sight is dazzling. Illuminations, mind you, are not confined to ocean floors. On the Japanese island of Hachijo, fungus plants glow like lanterns in the night, bright enough to be seen 20 metres away. Elsewhere in various countries, the fireflies flash orange in flight and green on the ground. Glow-worms are common too. Someday, I hope you can get a camera with a zoom-lens, and capture various sensational sights, like the flying Lemurs, gliding from tree to tree. Do you know there are 1000 species of bats and flying-foxes, and that spiders have up to 8 eyes? The dragonfly has 40,000 small eyes compounded together! Not to forget the big eyes of the owls, and the ridiculous-looking wide-eyed Tarsier, a tiny brown tree dweller, whose big round eyes will make you laugh.
Before I finish off here, let us turn our camera to the eyefilling Noahs Ark, forever around us, with such a rapturous array of: Seashells, starfish, lobsters, Jellyfish, caterpillars, butterflies, bees, squirrels, rabbits, porcupines, camels, zebras, giraffes, rhinoceros, elephants, sharks and rays, frogs and toads, newts and salamanders, lizards and crocodiles, turtles and tortoises, dolphins and whales, seals and sea-lions, penguins and polar bears, flowerpeckers and woodpeckers, falcons and hawks, platypus and spiny ant-eaters that lay eggs, gibbons and orangutans, leopards and cheetahs, Pugs and Malteses, Dalmatians and Silky Terriers.
“And Papillon, and Samoyed, and Bichon Frise… my children would chip in as usual, they love dogs; but I would say: „The world is so beautiful, but how many people really see it?