Huelas

(First of two parts)

Talking with a Columbian friend who hardly spoke any English, I noticed that his shirt had "Patagonia" embroidered into it. I told him I would like to go there someday and he made a warning motion with his fingers and asked me if I knew what "Patagonia" meant. I shook my head. He said: "Huelas." That word waved at me from beyond the boundaries of my comfort zone in the Spanish language. After some sort of gesture-guessing a-la-charades as to what it meant and after I verified it with my Spanish-English dictionary, "huelas" I found out, meant "traces," in other words, my friend was warning against "Big Foot." But I think that traces, either physical or mental, instinctively make us follow its trail to see where it came from and where it might lead. In science, evidence is crucial and traces are one form of evidence. So it does not matter whether you are a sloppy human fugitive or someone who desperately wants attention, Big Foot or the Comet Swift-Tuttle, we will know you by the traces you leave behind. I will leave the hunting of human fugitives to those investigators who are given to another direction in their imagination and job skills. That requires far more imagination and patience than the job before me. I will explore in this column some traces of the wild both on Earth and in the heavens.

There are concepts of the "wild man" in various cultures, territories and points in history. From my own personal brushes with accounts ranging from the personal, casual to the quite serious, I have so far heard of three continental versions of "Big Foot." I already mentioned the one from Argentina above. That is about as much as I know of it. Another is simply named "Sasquatch," said to have been seen in the Pacific Northwest in the North American continent. Sasquatch has been under very close scrutiny by the scientific community and so far, no evidence has been yielded to prove its existence in scientific terms. The last one I heard from the native folk in Bhutan as fodder for conversation as we once wove precariously through the winding trails of that tiny Himalayan kingdom. This last one I feel competent to share with you, in more detail.

The Himalayan version of Big Foot is called "Migoi," Yeti, an abominable snowman of sorts. I could imagine him/her peeking as quietly as snowfall through the thicket of trees and lamenting that another batch of pesky visitors has landed in this tiny Himalayan kingdom – a kingdom lifted from the heavy Earth not only by its altitude but by the Buddhist prayer flags they fly everywhere and by the dzongs or monasteries that sit precariously atop cliffs as if they were shutters to the heavens. I subsequently read about some scientific expeditions on the Migoi and found an excellent one written by award-winning science-writers Richard Coniff and Harry Marshall for the Smithsonian (September 2001). Entitled "In the Realm of Virtual Reality," it was a detailed account of marvel and wonder at the seamless weave of folklore, Buddhist ritual and practical living in Bhutan as the writers tried to weave in their own science story consisting of camera traps, plaster of paris for casting footprints, lab jars for sending back hair, scat or tissue samples for DNA analysis later. The traveling science kit included humans, namely an evolutionary biologist, a primatologist, a savvy techie who kept all the hardware in working order and a British film crew. The group did not see Migoi in the flesh with their own eyes or even in a photograph but following some wildlife traces which their Bhutanese wildlife expert-guide thought were unlike any other species he had encountered in those forests, they finally arrived at a tree cavity that seemed to have served as a refuge recently for that wild, mysterious one they were after. They scraped some hair found inside the cavity. The DNA results later at Oxford University Lab turned out puzzling for scientists. They said they could not sequence it as they would if it were a bear or some wild pig. The samples brought back by the group turned out to be unidentifiable yet from known existing DNA sequences of known species. We have yet to see how this story turns out. This is an example of how in science, traces do not necessarily and immediately provide a definitive answer and that is okay. For now, scientific probes continue albeit Migoi serves some meaning within the Bhutanese way of life. These people, known to be among the gentlest in the world, with themselves, with each other and with nature, are indeed wise to give form and substance to the notion of "mystery and wonder" so innate and unique in being human and at the crux of scientific passion.

Stop. Big Foot’s traces have led us only this far, so far. But traces of another kind – that which points to our older birth as part of the solar system have also been appearing lately in the sky. This shall be the kind of traces I will tell you about in next week’s conclusion of this column "Huelas."