Chapel Talk by Mickey Mittermeier '11

I didn’t do anything there that really stuck with me, or deeply affected my life. I mean of course there were students there who were profoundly affected by the experience, but I just wasn’t one of them. Now, what I am going to talk to you about tonight is an experience that I had this summer, that I found to be incredibly valuable. But in order for you to understand this, I am going to have to rewind back to freshman year. Because freshman year was when I first went to Suriname, the small tropical country in the Guyana shield, located right above Brazil.

It was my first time in Suriname, and it was a very important trip, seeing as how I was one of the only members of my family who had never gone there. You see, my father, the primatologist, had been doing research there for the past 40 years, and it is where he conducted his thesis, on the brachiation between spider monkeys and colobus monkeys, but that’s a different story. Also my older brother, John, had done over 4 months of bird research there while at Yale, and my mother has done extensive photography of the indigenous cultures of the Sarramaccanse and the Trio Indians. So as you can see it’s a pretty important place for my family. Anyways, while I was there with my father, we went around and did the average Mittermeier stuff: we had a Krutu, or chieftain meeting, with gramman of the Sarramacaners tribe, we also went and saw his friends in the villages of Akisi Amo and Asin Dopo. Finally we visited Fungu Island, a tourist lodge in the middle of the Coppename river, in the Central Suriname nature reserve, which is 2.4 million hectare reserve that my dad created in the 80’s.

But what I am getting at with all this is that when I was at Fungu Island, I visited the Voltzberg, which is an insulberg, or forest mountain. In the area of the Guyana Shield, the land is dotted with these granitic domes, which seem to rise out of the forest floor like the humps of a whale. The trip from Fungu to the voltzberg was only about a 12 km hike, and to reach the peak of the 300 m mountain was relatively easy, but at the top, you had the most astounding view; it was nothing but shear untouched rainforest in every direction. I can recall thinking of the land as a compass, and looking westwards towards Guyana, east to French Guyana, south to Brazil, and north to the Atlantic ocean. It was empowering, but while I was up there, my dad pointed out to me another mountain, miles and miles away. He called it the "gum drop mountain," but it’s real name was the Van Der Wijck top, one of the unclimbed peaks. He told me that ever since he started doing research at the base of the voltzberg, he had looked at that mountain and had wanted to climb it. Which brings me back to Island school. It was a Sunday night, at Island school, and I had just had my phone time, which is the twenty minutes a week, where you can call your family just to make sure the world hadn’t ended in your absence. And my dad told me, when I spoke to him, that he was mounting an expedition to climb the Van Der Wijck top, and as my birthday present, he was letting me and my brother come to do the logistics.

This filled me with excitement, and I spent the rest of Island School, which after that news seemed pretty boring, awaiting the trip.

Time passed, and IS ended, I went home and hit up several countries over this past summer, like Turks and Caicos, Bahamas, UAE, Kuwait, Brazil, and finally ended going through the south east U.S. looking for turtles with my dad and sister, when we ended in Florida, I spent a few days with a friend of mine and after a trip to Harry Potter world with my sister, I went down to Paramaribo with my older brother, who had come to Florida and met up with us.

From there began my epic adventure, My older brother John and I took a plane down to Trinidad and Tobago, and then got down to the capital city of Suriname, Paramaribo, which is a really incredible city that looks like some kind of old Dutch Colony, but yet has an amazing level of cultural diversity in terms of the people living there, ranging from West African maroons, called “bushnegroes” that have a culture dating back to the original days of the slave trade, to Javans, Chinese, Dutch, Brazilians, and dozens of other cultures, which, surprisingly, all mange to get along together. While in the city, my brother and I spent 3 days getting supplies, like food for the expedition, and other gear. We had a 7 foot receipt at one grocery store! We were also faced with the most challenging part of organizing, which was rounding up, what John and I dubbed the “X-men of field teams;” we spent hours on radios tracking down trio Indians from Calabas creek and searching the city streets for Kwinti bushnegroes we had worked with in the past.

Finally, we gathered all the boys we needed. The team consisted of: myself and my brother; the logistical organizers; my father; the funder and leader of the expedition; John Martin, CI filmmaker and old friend; Ambassador John Nay, the US-Suriname Ambassador, who decided to tag along, Igor, the nature reserve guy, who came to make sure we didn’t break any rules; Iwan, or Doru, an old kwinti bushnegro who was the cook; and Goo, a friend of ours. With him came Andre Semmie, an Aucaner bushnegro, and one of the toughest men I have ever met. He was 56, and still had zero body fat, Then came, Mando and Krimbo, two incredibly tough Caribe Indians from Calabas Creek. They were part of the cutting team, and I think they’re the only two people I have ever met, that lacked the ability to smile. Then there was the rest of the Kwinti boys too, Pecha, who over the course of the trip befriended the ambassador in hopes of getting a passport faster, Bogoa, who had been to prison a few times in the past (I didn't really speak with him much). Setman and Sonny, who were the boatsmen, and also Benny, who was one of our friends from Fungu Is.

This was the team we had gathered, and it was likely the best group of trail cutters, and experienced bushnegroes in the entire country. We were ready to go.

On the morning of Monday, August 23, 2010, we took as Gumair charter flight out of Zoog en horp airport and went back to Fungu island, the first time for me in over 3 years. En route, we flew over the mountain to obtain some accurate GPS readings and to determine were we intended to climb. I can only remember listening to the Indiana Jones theme song at this point and thinking that this was going to be a pretty cool trip.

That day followed as such, we arrived, unloaded gear. And left the lodge area of Fungu, and proceeded up the Coppename River a ways until we arrived at a place called, "team site," where researchers stayed. Luckily we arrived at dusk, just in time for the tarantulas to come out, and annoy me while I tried to set up my hammock. John and I had some trouble with a big female and her babies while we were setting up, but we, of course, showed her by waking up her babies, which then of course proceeded to invade all of our stuff. The next morning at 6, we loaded up the 2 river boats, which were 25 feet each. And began navigating up the Coppename River, which had in it the Raleighvallen Falls, which were the enormous rapids of the area, but I’ll get back to those later. In order to avoid the rapids, we had to avert to another creek, and unload the gear, and carry it 3 miles overland to another section, then we actually had to bring the two boats up, and carry them the same distance, rolling them along on logs, which was very time consuming. I want you to remember this part especially, because it relates later on in the story. After that ordeal we continued up the river until we found ourselves at the mouth of the Tangimame Creek, which was a smaller tributary of the Coppename. From here, we traveled about 7 miles inland, the entire time struggling to maneuver around giant granite boulders and logs in the river, while not getting flipped by the rapids. On several occasions we did get stuck and several people did in fact get swept away and had to be recovered. Finally after much work, we arrived to the desired location, which was just a low-lying area of the riverbank, parallel to the mountain’s readings, where we could unload gear, and set up base camp. From there we spent several hours clearing bush, making a rain tarp, and preparing dinner. The next day we started the hard stuff.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010: wake up time 5:30, we were parallel to the mountain. We were very close. All that stood in between us was a vast stretch of untouched rainforest, never seen before by man. We packed the essential gear, food, hammocks, etc, (we got our water from rivers and streams because it was all clean). Then we began cutting, My brother in the lead with the GPS, cutting an initial path, followed by Semmie, Mando, Krimbo, and the carriers, including, me, Benny, Bogoa, Pecha, Sonny, and Setman, my father, the ambassador, John Martin, and Igor, walked after. This was the arrangement for walking, and believe it or not, there is a certain protocol you must follow while walking in rainforests. First off, “Never walk up someone’s ass”, as my father called it; always give the man in front of you at least 15 feet, otherwise you could get cut up by their backswing. Two, if someone yells, “Was Wasy” run like hell because those are the nasty little wasps, that if you hit their nests, with your machete, they’ll chase you, and sting you in the eyes and ears. Three, if someone tells you stop moving or be quiet, you have to freeze, because there was plenty of stuff in that forest that was willing to kill you: be it, peccaries, bushmaster, jaguar, tapirs, peraponera, treefalls, anything. If someone told you to do something you did it immediately because the guys there were incredibly experienced, and by comparison, you knew nothing. I will admit, I was anxious going into the expedition. I can recall back to the night before leaving, my brother and I had decided to have dinner, with Semmie and Douru, who were kind of the old, weathered guys, that everyone listened to, and I remember that it started down pouring outside, and it was kind of an open restaurant thing, and we were getting wet. I looked displeased with the situation, as anyone could imagine. And suddenly Semmie, who had not said a word the entire night, but rather just sat there with his generic tough guy scowl, looked up at me, and, with a menacing grin, said in Sranan, “Boy, you go die na bossi” which directly translated means, "Boy, you are going to die in the forest." This was slightly off putting for me as one can imagine.

With that in mind, we spent the next day and a half cutting trails, going through rivers, running from irritating ants and wasps and spiders. You see in the Guyana shield, the soil is not very deep because it is a granite dome, so there is not much room for big trees to grow, so what really grows well there is Lianas, which is just a kind of vine. The one thing about Liana Forest is, that its incredibly hard to cut through. We spent much of our time cutting through this tangled mess of vegetation, and it wasn’t until the second day when my dad and I had decided to turn back to base camp as we were about 5 miles into the cut trail, and it was about 3 pm, and we needed time to get back. My brother, Semmie, Mando and Krimbo, had continued cutting up ahead, to call them, we had banged on some banyan tree buttresses with the butts of our machetes, but had no response, so we started turning back. It wasn’t until 7:30, that they got back to the base camp by the river. We had really began to worry, when they came back, John said that they had continued cutting and made it about 9 miles in, and that they had made it to the point where the GPS coordinates were, but the mountain wasn’t there, so they were really scared that they had gone to the wrong place. But then he said that they kept on going for another 300 meters, and the forest started getting really dark, and they realized that they were in the shadow of the Van Der wijck top!

This was incredibly exciting, because after almost 3 days of strenuous cutting, through dense Liana forests, our goal was finally in grasp. The news also got better; they said that at the base they had found a small river, where we could set up camp instead of having to backtrack almost three miles to find clean water. With this news, we started the next morning more excited than ever.

Once more, we woke up at 5:30, and took the food and gear necessary for 1 to 2 days in the bush, and we started out. We hiked the same trails we had been cutting for the last 3 days, and I basically had the route memorized by that point. It was late afternoon when we finally reached where John had been the day before. We could finally see the mountain, in the haze of the late afternoon light; it just barely poked out above the canopy. Still it was incredibly exciting to see that we were right about it’s location, and that we had actually made it. We all pitched a camp, about 100 meters from the base of the mountain. Then my dad, John, Semmie, and I decided that we were going to go check it out. It was about 5:30, so the sun had just dipped below the backside of the mountain, and what happened next was probably the most significant part of the whole trip for me. As we ascended through the forest, it was noticeably cooler. As we went up, because the forest was switching from humid lowland rainforest, to more of a savanna type environment, as the soil got thinner, approaching the mountain.

Then we reached a mound of earth, and my brother said that the base was just above it. I saw him climb up, and then disappear into the sunlight, and then I went up, and it was like I had been transported to another world. I looked on at the massive 453 m mountain that stood before me, I felt the sensation on my feet, from stepping on a firm even surface for the first time in days, everything was clear, and bright. None of us said anything for the first few minutes, as we were letting it sink in, the fact that we were the first people in recorded history to be standing on that ground. It was a remarkable feeling; it was silent as we all stood in awe of the situation, then my brother yelled out “Oh no, dad look at this!” We all ran over to see these rocks about plate sized all lined up in a row that stretched for several hundred feet. At first we all started panicking that perhaps we had not been the first to reach the mountain, seeing as how we knew of other expeditions that had attempted in the past, but had failed, but upon closer examination, we found that the rocks went right through little patches of cacti, which took hundreds of years to grow, which told us something else, that perhaps, these were remnants of a ancient Caribe Indian culture. These petroglyths were fascinating, as no Indian groups had been recorded in that area for thousands of years. Indicating to us, that we were most likely, not only on sacred Indian land, which is a great archaeological find, but also that this mountain and surrounding forest had not been touched by man for at least a few thousand years.

Following the discovery of these rocks, we continued up the mountain a ways, but seeing as how nightfall was coming, we decided to return to camp. We were incredibly anxious to begin the strenuous task of climbing it the next day. The next morning we started early as usual, only filled with a newfound excitement, as to what we were about to embark on. In preparation, we only brought with us the essential camera gear, and plenty of water, as temperatures on the face of the mountain could easily reach over a hundred degrees, and you could not risk getting heat stroke while climbing. The idea of it raining also posed a serious threat because most of these Insulbergs had a species of lichen growing on them, and if it rained on them, they would make the slopes very slippery, and then it would take hours for it to dry again. So the threats in climbing were very high. Still we were determined to make it up. From the photographs we had taken from the air, it was clear that the route up would be safest by going up the south side of the mountain, and climbing up from there. Unfortunately for us, this involved cutting our way through, lots and lots of vegetation, which was mostly cacti, bromeliads, and other plants of the spiny nature. It gave us an opportunity to observe the bizarre, unexplored ecosystems of the mountain, but was still very painful. The climb quickly went from exploring the surrounding habitat, to trying not to fall off, as time went on, the slopes got steeper and steeper; it got particularly difficult to hold on when we were faced on a near vertical section of forest, where we clung precariously, while still cutting through, tangled cacti and lianas, and trying not to roll down the 150 feet of hill next to us.

This dangerous task of cutting/climbing represented a hefty majority of our morning, until we made it out onto a clear plate, where we found small stream, where we refilled water bottles, and where I think I may of gotten amoebic dysentery from, which kept me out of XC season for about a week. Anyways from there we started climbing up the actual face of the mountain. It was incredibly hot, and as we had brought no climbing equipment, getting up the side was daunting.

One by one, each member of the expedition climbed up these narrow little eroded streambeds that went down the side of the rock face; it was the only place where the boots were able to grip. So for the next few hours we spent our time carefully crawling up the side of the mountain. And I can tell you for sure, that it was probably one of the scariest things I have ever done, despite having been to 54 countries on all seven continents, and having seen some incredibly scary and intimidating stuff, ranging from bull elephants charges, leopard seal attacks, swimming with great whites, and many other terrifying encounters that I wont bother mentioning. This still stuck with me as one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. I can still go back to that rock face, where I was crawling up the near vertical column, completely at the mercy of nature, Fearing every little cloud that passed over, having the midday sun beat down on my back, looking back at my 60 year-old dad, making sure he was alright. On the stream beds, one had to place his steps just right while climbing because there were sections of the face that were hollowed out from erosion, and if one broke, you would slide down 600 feet, and probably die. That was the truth in it, and the allure - the fact that what we were doing was truly dangerous, we were faced with death everyday while out there, because it was still real wilderness, and it was scary, but I loved it, nonetheless.

Anyways, by the mid afternoon, we hadn’t had anyone fall, and we had made it to the second peak, the top peak, was too hard to climb without serious technical equipment, and we weren’t about to risk it. Besides we had made it to a safe 300 meters of the total 453 meters, and we were pleased about that. We spent a good amount of time on the top, just admiring the view, looking out on the other mountains, the voltzberg, the krutu berg, Van Stockum berg, and the Juliana Mountains -no relation to my sister. I enjoyed every thing I did while up there, because every thing we did was the first one ever. For instance, I had the first pop-tart on the Van Der Wijck top ever, and believe it or not, it did taste better, being a first. Towards the end, we built a small cairn, and placed in it some simple proof of our accomplishment, as well as some other objects, that must be kept secret for good luck.

The descent was just as challenging as the ascent, yet we made it down with no fatalities - just burnt feet and exhausted bodies. The evening was spent in well-deserved leisure. The next morning, we spent some time at the base again to shoot some interviews, and then we packed up, and started the trek back. En route, we found some giant Jaguar tracks right near camp, which was incredibly off putting, as we were not aware we had been followed. Still we carried on back, everyone moved surprisingly fast, clueing that they were very ready to return to the city. We made it back to the original base camp, at about noon, then loaded our gear in two boats and returned back down the Tangimame, and then through the Coppename…

Now recall those rapids I told you about earlier? Well this was the only mistake we managed to make during the entirety of the expedition, Setman, our boatman, had decided that we should take the rapids instead of rerouting through the other tributary, just to save time. This was a mistake that cost him his boat, and his credibility as a captain. We didn’t even get 30 feet into the rapids, before our boat took on too much water, and flipped. It was caught between two boulders, but still with the force of the water, we lost the cameraman, and his $10,000 video camera with the footage of the expedition, as well as the ambassador. My brother, dad, and I, having been in these kinds of situations before, held tight to the boat, and stayed on. Unfortunately though, we lost most of our gear and equipment, which is why I don’t have very many photos of me in this presentation. In fact my camera, was the sole survivor of the accident. Luckily, Sonny, the second boats man, had more experience and was able to recover our lost crewmembers, and most of our gear…

Fortunately, there were no major injuries, and the latter was left unharmed. We did lose though several thousands of dollars in equipment, and nearly all documentation of the trip. Still we returned triumphant, having had an incredibly successful trip, and that night we had a big party with the Raleighboyz, or the native band at Fungu Is. The next day we retuned back to Parbo, and we were swarmed with news teams and newspapers, we were featured on the news, we met with the president, and were on the front page. it was all very exciting. Now we are given the credit for having been the first expedition, ever to successfully make it to the top of the Van Der Wijck top.

And there it is, my incredible summer experience. Now what you all might be asking yourself is, okay, well that sounds cool and all, but why are you giving a chapel talk about it? Well, the problem that I faced going into this trip, was the fact that, I thought that there were no more unexplored, wild places left on earth. That human beings had, in one way or another, permeated every last space blank space on the map, and that the grand “Age of Discovery” ended with the great explorers of the 19th century, like Darwin, and Stanley. Well what I found through this trip, is that there is always incredible potential for exploration and adventure, and that we all live in an amazingly rich, diverse, and beautiful planet. And I’m not saying that you should go out, and play Indiana Jones, but rather, that you should just never stop exploring, and never stop learning, and growing to understand your surroundings, and the world you live in. There is too much out there to see, and I encourage you all to take every opportunity to see it. National Geographic said that 72% of the world still remains unexplored, and I am excited to see what other incredible things our planet has in store, I want to represent the small percentage of great explorers that our generation has to offer, and in the end that’s all you really need, a desire, a desire to better understand what lies beyond your realm of security. Be it, climbing an unclimbed mountain in the middle of the rainforest, or being the sole student in your class to go abroad to study, the opportunities to explore are limitless, and I want to leave you all with a desire to continue exploring, and to continue learning, and to never stop broadening your horizons, because there is so much out there to see and life is all too short.

Thank you.