Becky Keller, Writer

IS IT LEARN TO PLAY OR PLAY TO LEARN?

I asked my daughters what they liked best about school. The answer from each of them was usually “recess”. At least in elementary school. The elementary school that all three of my daughters attended had playgrounds sectioned off by levels of playground equipment, kind of. I don’t recall them being formally marked as such, but I remember my daughters being clear as to which equipment they were allowed to play on during which grade. Except on the weekends. When the playgrounds were open to the community.

Prior to when my youngest was old enough for elementary school, even before Kindergarten, she wanted to play on the playground. Because she looked up to her sisters, she wanted to play on the same playground equipment as they did. This meant the tallest slide on this particular day.

I remember looking at this slide and thinking, this should only be for sixth graders! It was very tall and had many steps to get to the landing from which to start “the slide”. So, we devised a plan with safety in mind (I hoped). With my youngest daughter excitedly climbing up the ladder first and my second daughter closely covering her from behind looking very protective (probably for my benefit more than her sister’s), they happily climbed to the top of the slide while I gave instructions (which from their body language told me they were neither listening to or paying attention to) from my position at the bottom of the slide ready to sn**ch and catch at any time as my youngest was coming down. Granted, the top of the slide was higher than I could even reach with my arms fully stretched out so I had to depend on my second daughter to keep my youngest centered and upright as her sister started her decline.

Which took mere seconds once they reached the top and launched themselves down the metal pathway, laughing hysterically the entire few more seconds it took them to reach my arms. My youngest immediately said “Again” and started running to the ladder with her sister close behind her. It took several more slides down before they were ready to go on to other parts of the playground. They were pleased with themselves. And frankly, so was I. I did not admit how many times I held my breath when they tried these types of adventures as they were growing up. I did tell them, however, how proud I was of them for trying things that looked a little scary. I didn’t specify whether I meant scary to them or me.

I remembered that when all three of my daughters learned to rappel using ropes and harnesses. I remembered when my 4-year-old again, wanted to do what her older sisters were doing. I remembered when the two older daughters went with their youth group leader and a group of friends to an island off the southern coast of Korea and climbed to the top of a 300-foot cliff so they could rappel down. When I later heard that my oldest daughter had cried looking down, off the cliff, being totally scared being held by a harness hooked to a rope and making a face first rappel rather than a backing down rappel. It was more like going face first and walking down seeing the distance the whole time. Her youth group leader and friends encouraged her as she peered down that cliff with tears falling down her cheeks. She was a teenager at the time. It was probably a good thing that I, as Mom, was not there. For both of us. I am not sure how they convinced her to go. But she did it. When she got to the bottom of that cliff, I was told there was a very big celebration.

Being scared is part of fun apparently, at least for my family. Not always, But enough. Sometimes, though, fun is just fun. Laughing and joy and playing with friends or by yourself. There are different kinds of fun. They are all important.

When watching young orangutans play in the rainforest and stray from their mothers, I wondered how the mother orangutan felt. She looked calm. I wondered though, if she was scared for her infant and somehow set boundaries for him or her that was unknown to the humans watching from below.

The mother orangutan sat on her branch eating the fruit she had just picked from the tree. The youngster was slightly above her and appeared to be trying out her swinging capabilities as she reached for another branch in the same tree. The mother looked up. If the youngster seemed to be going too far, the mother pulled her back nearer to her. The youngster usually was given some food to eat or encouraged to pick some of her own easily accessible. As we watched mothers on different days who were with different babies or older youngsters, we could see that as the young orangutans grew, those older were pulled back to the mother less and less.
There were times when another mother orangutan would be feeding in an adjacent tree with their youngster and the two youngsters would begin to interact. We saw that more often in rehabilitation centers where orangutans were housed after being found in the forest abandoned usually after their mother had been killed somehow. Caregivers in orangutan rehabilitation centers are careful regarding allowing young orangutans ways to interact and with each other, knowing the end goal is usually to release them back into the wild when they are older and they have to manage and figure out how to live peacefully together in their natural rainforest habitat.

In the wild, the orangutan mother teaches them boundaries and unspoken rules on how far to explore. If they encounter another youngster in the wild, interacting with them teaches them social skills similar to human children learning on an elementary school playground. Sometimes in the wild, a young orangutan may see something that looks interesting. Her attempt at discovery will determine her experience of fun vs. fear perhaps. Human children also have similar encounters. Both may determine how they learn to manage and handle risks in their life.

TOOL USE - STICKS, SILVERWARE AND FORTS

I love(d) building forts! Truth…I still do. There is something about constructing a place…a safe place…that is all yours, that is somehow very self-satisfying. It’s personal. It’s comfortable. It’s private, unless you decide to invite others to join you. Which I usually did because it was fun!

My daughters built their share of forts growing up. Inside and outside. The only difference was the materials used in construction. In their bedroom, all furniture, clothes, hangars, and everything else in the immediate fort construction area were fair game. Outside, when we were camping or even hiking, sticks and stones were the construction materials of choice. Along with leaves and branches of whatever non-poisonous plant life was in their chosen fort location.

My oldest daughter was often the construction manager announcing the need for more construction supplies, how to hook them together or the space allocations of the finished fort.

My second daughter often focused on the activities carried out within the finished fort after construction was complete. Her creativity could usually devise scenes of whatever scenarios she wanted to enact. She could also assign roles to her sisters. On occasion, if a particular stick was not holding up a key component in the fort, the stick became the microphone. Or maybe a director’s wand as she led her sisters in song. We had numerous concerts involving singing and dancing.

The youngest…well…she didn’t really understand the purpose of roles. She usually just wanted to enjoy the new space her sisters had made “for her” being, for the most part, compliant with their scenarios as long as she could dig in the stones with her stick. She was curious about those bugs, even if they ended up crawling on her. This would prove to be to her detriment later, when she ended up covered with fire ants while poking them with a stick in Borneo.

When we saw monitor lizards on the side and under the wooden ramp to the boat dock in Borneo, my youngest daughter was the first one to find a stick to try to reach them. Admittedly, she was also the shortest and closest to the ground so could reach them potentially the quickest. Luckily, for the lizards, they were quicker and scurried away. Efforts did not go unnoticed, however. I am not sure of the intelligence of lizards, but they were smart enough to not stay long under the ramp when we were bound for boarding the Klotok boat for a trip on the water.

Following orangutans through the rainforest, I would sometimes see a mother orangutan with a small branch or stick, peeling off all the leaves. It seemed like a very thin stick for her to bother taking off the leaves. Until I saw her try to push the stick into a small crevice in the tree. She seemed to be fishing for something inside the tree. She kept pushing in the stick, pulling it out and then examining the stick as if to see what she may have extracted when pulling it out. She would sometimes swipe the stick between her lips as if to wipe or lick off whatever may have come out on the stick. The guides told me they were using the sticks to get small insects or honey if they could see what was in that particular tree. I was glad my daughters had, at least, not tried that activity with their sticks.

When the guides indicated they may be trying to extract honey, we moved back further just in case the bees decided to take out their dissatisfaction with having their honey stolen on the humans below. The orangutans didn’t seem to mind the bees flying around their activity voicing their displeasure, but the humans were certainly anticipating any potential transfer of their anger.

We waited for the orangutans to finish. Being finished was also indicated by the orangutan discarding the stick and moving on. The sticks my daughters used somehow usually ended up in the car at the end of a camping trip or in their bedroom, at the end of the day of playing outside. As they got older and chose sticks to use during hiking, those particular sticks often stayed around for more than one season, leaning up against the corner of the wall, near the front door, ever ready for a spontaneous or next hike we were destined to take.

When orangutans used their sticks to try to extricate insects, it appeared to be an activity with less possible side effects for humans following them trying to observe their activities. The orangutans appeared to use their sticks for very purposeful activities. Mostly getting to some kind of food source that they somehow could not use their hands or even fingers to access. They needed something small to get to the places where they seemed to know there was something delicious. They were good with it taking a bit more effort to extract it.

My daughters’ use of sticks seemed to have more variety or choice to their chosen activities. Although I did not allow my daughters to eat any delicacies desired with a stick, I did allow or even insist they use silverware. Knives, forks, and spoons, I thought were perhaps the substitution humans used for eating rather than like orangutans, using sticks. Perhaps that is evolution. Maybe progress. Or maybe it’s just the development of manners and decorum over many, many years.

SLEEP PATTERNS

They start building their daily night nest around dusk. They get up in the morning around dawn. Simpler times. I have grown to understand that pattern and I like it.

Since I retired, I no longer have an office I have to go to each morning. I am free to get up when I want to get up and go to bed when I want to go to sleep. I am finding that I am becoming more like an orangutan every day. It is amazing to me. For the past 20 years, at least, I have been a morning person. I had been getting up very early in the morning. Close to three a.m. as I started work at my desk by six a.m. I was happy with that and took pride in being “a morning person”. That is when I got my best work done. That is when I felt the most alert (after I got to work anyway.)

While following orangutans in the rainforest, I always appreciated their early bedtime. It was dusk when they would start to stay in one place feeding and start to bend leaves back and forth making a night nest in which they could partake of their final meal for the day. Those of us following the orangutans were usually very hot and tired by that time, so the realization of that end of day activity was a welcome event in our daily trek.

As I transition into retired life and see my ability to change my schedule to whatever I would want it to be, I am happy. It feels very comfortable. I am beginning to understand the pattern of the orangutan more and more.

Living in San Diego, California, I love the sunshine. I need a dose of sunbeams on my face every day. I do occasionally set my alarm clock to get up at a certain time. I have found that often to be more of a reminder to prevent me from sleeping the day away though, more than anything. Even though, I have done that a couple of times, just because I can. I digress.

I still like to “work” in the mornings, however. But I am letting my body tell me when my times are or better yet, what time that really means to me. Interestingly, it is following the sun, similar to the orangutans. The rainforest is at the equator where day and night are theoretically an equidistance apart, 12 hours in each. San Diego is further north so although our summers do result in longer days of sunlight, they are not equal. Our winter months are also unequal with shorter days of sunlight. I manage that with “black out” curtains that still allow me to manage my sleeping patterns similar to a 12-hour (kind of) pattern. The important part is that I get to choose. I’m loving that part.

When I think of the orangutan night nest, I think it may be more like me climbing into my bed each night. Except I usually choose the same bed, unless I fall asleep in front of the television. The orangutan makes a new night nest each night. In the morning when they wake up and start their day, they move on. They leave that night nest and make a new and separate night nest the next night. They may be on to something. They are leaving their “troubles” or whatever happened the previous day each morning when they get up. They start each day as a brand-new day of exploring the rainforest. Humans could learn from that. Too often, I have looked back on something that happened the previous day or even the previous week and worry about it. I have asked myself if I did everything I could about a situation. I have asked myself if I shoulda, coulda done something better or different.

When I climbed up the tree and into an orangutan night nest, I remembered the smells of the nest. The nest was high in the canopy. I was nervous and excited to be there. The smells, however, were oddly calming. Even soothing. There were berries in the nest and branches with leaves that felt soft when I climbed into the nest. Until I saw the rather large female across the tree top canopy staring back at me from the top of her tree, I was beginning to feel more relaxed about being that high. Knowing that she could get to me quicker than I could lower myself back down to the forest floor where the guides awaited, however, interrupted my enjoyment of the night nest environment. I decided to start my descent.

When I think of how the orangutan may have felt who slept in that nest, the nest felt safe. As my bed does when I crawl under my covers each night and sink my head into my pillow. Although I rarely eat in my bed prior to falling asleep, I do go through a ritual of things to close down my day it would seem. I check my phone for any last minute messages, if I have an early event or activity I want to ensure I make, I make sure my clothes for the next day are available, I may set a rare alarm, I brush my teeth, I put on my pajamas, I tell my cats it is bedtime so they know their day is also winding down. (Although my cats seem to take that as an indication it is time for them to activate their guard cat posture.) I appreciate their efforts.

I think our bedtime routines are more similar than may be apparent at first glance. Perhaps they are similar for most species. After all, most mammals would appear to need some kind of “down time”. We all need to recharge at times. Regeneration takes time. It may be called “Creature Comfort” for a reason.

THE RAINFOREST CANOPY – THE GROCERY STORE FOR ORANGUTANS

I grabbed a cart and headed inside. I was already hungry. That is probably not the best time to choose to go shopping for groceries. But I had put it off as long as I could.

As I navigated inside, I looked to where the fresh vegetables were normally located. I usually start there and just make my way around the grocery store I had been going to for several years. I stopped. Something was different. They had rearranged things. I suddenly saw holiday themed food in the area where I usually found my vegetable favorites. I turned to the other direction. There were canned goods there. Okay, this was going to take a bit longer today to find my food favorites. This did not appear to be a little moving around. This was beginning to look like a major redecoration project. I was on the move.

I eventually found the basic food areas but the delicate intricacies of individual items I went looking for were hidden better than most. Suffice it to say, that some items that I enjoyed eating were not the favorites of the masses and therefore appeared to have been discreetly moved to a lesser shelf or area of less traffic? I was not sure. I just knew that I had to find someone who worked there to assist me in finding some items that were invisible to my naked eye at least.

This particular grocery store was quite large. It had over 20 aisles, along with sections on each side and in the back. Walking around trying to find the new locations of my favorite items took a while, even with assistance from their very helpful staff. I wondered if they would put it back after the holidays or even how often they changed things around. Since I have a few grocery stores in which I shop, depending on the specialty of my chosen cuisine desired, I hadn’t been in this specific store for a while. Last I remember, however, I was able to go in, find what I needed, purchase my items and get out in a somewhat expeditious manner. I tried to remember where things were now located, or at least the general direction of where to start when I next entered the store to fill my refrigerator with goodies. This time may have taken longer as I was shopping alone. I had no daughters or other family with me which I could assign certain food items for them to go seek and find. It was all on me.

I admit, at one point when searching for a specific item I distinctly remember purchasing just from this store, I could not find it. Even when the helpful assistant pointed me down the supposedly correct aisle. It wasn’t in its appointed place or on its appointed shelf. They were out. I was disappointed. I had to decide on a substitute. I decided to try another store. One with more specialty items.

I tried. The next store was also out. Hmmm…were the food powers against me or were they out of season and I had waited too long to decide I wanted that particular item. The assistant told me it was me. I had waited too long (although he had put it in a much more polite manner when relaying that information.) My grocery list was getting shorter.

Since I was looking for “fresh” food, my mind wondered to the question of how orangutans found their food. They “shopped” on a daily basis. They had no refrigerators or even a pantry, nor would they know what to do with either even if they did. They had no grocery list. They just had a rainforest full of trees with a variety of fruits and vegetables growing, ready to be plucked.

I also remember when living in both Germany and Korea that on the economy, people seemed to shop more and purchase less. Maybe because they did not have the large storage areas and equipment in their homes as Americans did. Not sure. But shopping more frequently definitely sounded more efficient at the time.

The more I thought about it, the more impressed I was regarding the orangutans and their ability to know where their next meal would be picked. How they remembered what fruit were in what tree and ripe at what time is a masterful undertaking it would seem. I was unable to find an item when given specific directions to a specific aisle and shelf. Yet orangutans seemed to remember which fruit was ripe in what tree and what time of the year in order to go there and to find their food. Not only that, but they also ensured the food they found was clean, free of disease and palatable for their young ones to chew and digest. This meant that sometimes, the mother would first chew a few bites to make it soft enough for their baby to swallow it before the baby would somehow get it from her mouth and eat it themselves.

They, in turn, were responsible for ensuring their offspring learned the same patterns of ripening and placement of over 400 different types of fruit found in the rainforest. Some fruit, such as the durian fruit, had to be pounded or poked to get it open. The soft, delicious fruit pulp was on the inside as a reward for being able to open the hard, outer core first. This “culture” was passed down from parent to youngster as they grew and traveled together throughout the rainforest. As the baby orangutans watched their mother go from tree to tree gathering their next meal and ensuring the baby had a full stomach as well, the baby was learning when and where each type of fruit was ready to pick and eat.

Shopping more like the orangutan could be useful. It could also result in a perhaps healthier diet being delivered to my home. Shopping more frequently than at least what I had been accomplishing may enable me to find more of the delectable specialty items I preferred. Hmmm…food for thought. (pun intended).

MEDICAL ATTENTION NEEDED

I finally had her in my arms. We were going home. I called my friend. I needed her to get us a doctor’s appointment as soon as we arrived. I wasn’t sure what was involved, but I knew my third daughter needed an appointment right away. Me and my other two daughters were bringing her home from China. She had the brightest eyes but the thinnest little body I had ever seen on a 4-and-a-half-month-old baby.

We had endured a 12-hour train ride in a train car with triple non-private bunkbeds on a sweltering hot day in June to get to the southwest corner of China. Getting off the train with my two Korean-born daughters and trying to find a hotel where Cantonese Chinese was all we heard spoken made us the center of attraction, Somehow, we were able to find the orphanage where my daughter currently lived.

We met our Chinese facilitator who luckily spoke English pretty well. He guided us to a large building where we were instructed to go up a tall flight of stairs. A baby was brought in and given to me by laying her down in my lap. Just like that. I looked at our facilitator. The baby looked at me. My other two daughters looked at the baby. The baby had the brightest, shiniest eyes I had ever seen. Her arms and legs were pencil thin and she was dressed in a diaper that even the tiniest newborn size would have still fallen off her tiny body if it weren’t for the pins holding it together. I looked at her again and didn’t know exactly what to do so I asked the facilitator if she was mine. He laughed and said yes.

I wanted to know more about her. I wondered where she had been living, what she ate, was she healthy? They didn’t seem to either know or want to talk about it. The language challenges made it difficult. I was not allowed to go into her sleeping area to see where she had been staying. I was told she slept on a hard crib with no diaper, with a hole in the bed where any elimination could just be cleaned off and down. I later found out she had most likely been fed milk mixed with contaminated water due to the very low body weight and apparent malnutrition.

We had to get a doctor to sign off on being able to take her out of the country. When we went for the appointment, was when it was discovered she had a serious scar on her hip where it appeared that she had been vaccinated or had something removed such as a mole or growth. I needed to take her to a western doctor to find out her truth. It didn’t matter to me what it was, I just knew this baby needed to get out.

When the paperwork was completed, we went to our hotel where I wanted to just give her a bath and start getting the layers of crud and crust off her baby skin. As I filled our hotel tub with a very shallow amount of warm water, I started to soak and pat her skin in an effort to bathe her as best I could. When I started to rub my hands on her head full of hair, I suddenly felt a fluid or some kind of substance that was coming out of the top of her head. Her body was so emaciated, I, for a brief minute, thought her brains were somehow seeping out of the top of her head. I was horrified and petrified at the same time. I was alone in a hotel with two daughters ages 11 and 7 and with a 4.5-month-old baby whose brains were leaking. I took a deep breath. My baby was looking at me and not crying. I thought she must be okay. I looked closer at her head. The seepage appeared to be coming from a cyst that had burst due to the soaking in the bathtub most likely. I hadn’t even seen it prior to the bath. I soaked her a bit longer. I dried her and wrapped her snugly in a blanket I had brought with us to China. I fed her a special formula I had brought with me from the military Base hospital in Korea. We really needed to get home to see a doctor.

The next day we flew to Beijing from the southwestern part of China where the orphanage was located. My new little baby cried the entire two-hour flight due to what we later found out was a ruptured ear drum along with all her other ailments discovered. When we were finally home and had a doctor’s appointment, my daughter was immediately admitted to the hospital where they ran a battery of tests to find out why she was so fragile and small. At one point, when the doctors were determining the possibilities and naming syphilis, tuberculosis and a variety of other scary sounding diseases for a 4-month-old, we waited. While waiting, I began to think syphilis would be a blessing. At least that was curable and would give us something to work with. They finally determined that her many areas of maladies were all caused by malnutrition. I cried as I realized how much I had been holding in and holding up. After a week in the hospital where she was given intravenous medicine and nutrition, along with many bottles of nutritious baby formulas, I was told I could finally take her home. The exceptional 24/7-hour hospital staff care along with love and attention from me and friends who either watched over my other two daughters and/or stayed with my new baby all night after insisting I go home and get some sleep, made her strong enough to fight on her own. To the friends who were there I will be eternally grateful and indebted.

To the hospital staff who cared for her, medicated her so gently, had access and investigated every avenue in their arsenal of medicine and research to figure out how to approach the care of my daughter I was and still am in awe. I marveled at how they knew what medicine to try and how much to administer to such a tiny, frail new human being.

When years later, these same three healthy, energetic daughters traveled to the rainforests of Borneo, Indonesia, I remember trekking through the forests looking for orangutans and coming across what the guides told me were plants the orangutans used to keep themselves healthy. The guides stopped beside one specific plant that had no remarkable looking features except that it did kind of stand out by itself. It was thin and shaped like the letter T. It was small. The kind of plant that would not necessarily be noticed as it was low on the rainforest floor and looked more like a w**d than a medicinal plant that orangutans might use to cure an ailment. The guides told us that orangutans used that plant to somehow settle their stomachs. In cases where they may have eaten something that upset their stomachs that may have been poisonous or somehow didn’t get digested properly, they chewed on this plant. The orangutans had been seen eating this plant to self-medicate. There were other plants used as medicine that were pointed out by the guides as we trekked in parts of the rainforest. They told us that was one of the things researchers were still studying in the rainforest to find out what plants could be used as medicine or cure some ailment in the future.

The importance of rainforest conservation hit home on that trek.

The Solution of Leaves and Umbrellas

As a new mom of my first daughter, I brought her home when she was almost 3 years old. We lived in Korea. I was adopting her from the local Korean Adoption Agency in Seoul. She had just spent a short amount of time in foster care with another American family who lived on Base. For most of her young life, so far, she had been in a Korean foster home. I understood her English skills to be very limited.

I was both thrilled and nervous. I had practically begged the Korean Adoption Agency to allow me to adopt a child. That was after they had patiently (many times) explained to me there was a Korean law against single parents adopting in Korea. But this situation was different. They needed to find a placement quickly as the American foster family was no longer able to take care of her. I could. And I desperately wanted to be her mom. So, they agreed. I became a mom.
When we got home, my new daughter needed things. Her first request appeared to be spoken to me in Korean (which I didn’t understand), I gave her a stick of gum. That seemed to satisfy her, so I thought that was what she wanted. We were good.

Her next request appeared to be more Korean, English and a little bit of sign language. She needed to use the bathroom. She was toilet trained so it was just a matter of helping her onto the toilet and making sure she was comfortable. Until water started dripping from the ceiling. I looked up and realized that having water come down from above while this tiny little girl was trying her best to use a new toilet (which was different than other Korean toilets she had probably used prior to this) at the same time wondering if this was some kind of a new indoor/outdoor toilet. I was glad, at that moment, that no social workers were coming by to check anything while I desperately tried to think of how to protect my new small daughter.

I grabbed an umbrella that happened to be lying near the front door. It was near enough I could quickly get to it. I opened the umbrella and held it over my daughter. She didn’t seem to mind as long as the water was no longer dripping on her head. She finished her bathroom duties. I helped her, then called my Korean neighbors for help with the pipe. Not exactly how I had imagined starting my foray into motherhood, but it worked. I smile at those memories now. I don’t ask my daughter if they scarred her for life or even if she remembers it.

Since it rains a lot in Korea, there were many opportunities for me to show my daughter proper umbrella protocol as she was growing up. Water comes down on you from the sky, not the bathroom ceiling…normally.

Years later we were in the rainforest. It was raining. We were on the trails looking for orangutans high in the trees or anywhere we could find them. We were wet, as was most of everything we had with us. The guides stopped and pointed up. We were excited to see what looked like a mother and her youngster. Not a baby, but a very young orangutan sitting close by her on the branch.

The mother was sitting on a branch holding what looked like a very large leaf over her head. Although the young orangutan was sitting close to her, the youngster was trying to grab another large leaf close to her as well. It looked like they were using them as umbrellas. The guides started telling us they were indeed doing that. The guides even found some leaves as well and started holding them over their own heads in the same manner to show us. It reminded me of my daughter’s first experience with me as her mother. She was there. I didn’t remind her. She didn’t mention it.

The orangutan didn’t seem to be bothered by the rain, similar to my daughter not seeming to be bothered by the “ceiling rain” when she was two years old. They both seemed to just shift their position, both the orangutan and my daughter in the bathroom, and continued on with their business. The orangutan, on the other hand, continued to feed on the fruit that she and her mother had been gathering. Playing in the rain and swinging on nearby branches within sight of her mother seemed to be even more energetic in the rain.

There are no weather announcements in the rainforest. It comes regularly and without warning. Sudden downpours which can seem like they obliterate the surrounding trees to slighter constant rain which reminded me of a lazy rainy afternoon that you knew would eventually stop and dry out. The stop and dry out part rarely happened, if ever, when we were in the rainforest.

A human normally caught in such a downpour would duck and run for cover…somewhere. The orangutan simply reaches for the largest leaf with one hand or foot and continues eating with the other three. There is little notice of the droplets falling around them. Holding the leaf over their head with one limb while continuing their activity allows them to calmly exist in their natural environment in the canopy of the trees. If the leaf being used becomes unusable, she simply grabs another one and continues. When the rain stops, the leaves are discarded and they move on. As our time in the rainforest increased, we learned to be more like the orangutan.

Someone decided to manufacture umbrellas to prevent humans from getting wet when it rained. Somehow orangutans, over time, figured out they too could keep themselves dry by holding large leaves over their head to keep dry. Both were problems that somehow got solved over time. The simplicity of using natural resources such as leaves for protection from natural elements such as rain probably was solved generations prior to humans inventing umbrellas. Nevertheless, both developed a similar solution to a similar problem. We both found a useful tool to keep us dry. The orangutan has many choices existing in their rainforest home. Humans probably keep their tool near the door in their home to grab just before they step outside. We can learn so much when we slow down enough to observe and listen. I love it!