Author follows Darwin voyage and sets own course.

J. T. Barthelemy
Jbarthe3@mscd.edu


Darwin Slept Here
Author: Eric Simons- Overlook, Woodstock 2009

Two great men were born on February 12 1809 but only one is being feted in 39 countries with over 536 events. The international celebration of science and reason is February 12, 2009 and Eric Simon’s book “Darwin Slept Here” is a perfect way to get into, and be a part of the spirit of Charles Darwin this month.

Darwin spent years travelling the world, climbing mountains, crossing jungles, exploring continents and cataloging species in a way that’s still used to this day. In Eric Simons’ first book “Darwin Slept Here,” Simons follows in the route of Darwin’s own “Diary of the H.M.S. Beagle”
Simons writing style reflects enthusiasms for Darwin and for life. While at U.C. Santa Barbara he would “surf in the morning and hike the mountains in the evening for sunsets and star gazing.” During a six-month post graduate wilderness trip in South America Simons “washed up” in Tierra del Fuego. This is where he caught the Darwin bug.

As Simons intended, his trek took him too many of the exact places Darwin had explored. A lot of Simons prose is varied and colorful just as Darwin’s own was. Darwin’s letters to his wife contained verbiage like “with my pistols in my belt and geological hammer in hand, shall I not look like a grand barbarian” and “ten miles in I took to counting dead armadillos for amusement.” It turns out Patagonia is quite a desolate place.

Simons never fails to get us in with the indigenousness of being on such an adventure. Darwin laid the template, but Simons respectfully takes his own road. When he gets to the out of the way Patagonian towns such as Port Santa Cruz he lets on “when it comes to places to stop first in small Patagonian towns, travelers are a bit starved for choice.”

Even in such out of the way places, if Darwin was there chances are there is at least a one-room museum, or an epic musical celebrating Darwin, the Beagle or its voyage and crew. Simons searches out local professors, out of work fishing guides, or friendly students to get the present day feel, relevance and respect that Charles Darwin has throughout South America. It may be that the Spaniards discovered it, but Darwin gave the area life.

In Rio de Janeiro Simons is taken more by the beauty of the mountains and jungle as opposed to the bloated German tourists who is off to explore the Copacabana in Speedos. He meets up with a dreadlocked local who hikes up to a mountaintop with him, expresses that it is his favorite place to smoke a joint and suggests that Simons bring his friends. “They will love the view!” It seems more than likely that Darwin licked a toad a time or two.

Brazil also had Darwin encountering slavery. Something that Darwin the abolitionist observed not as a grand plantation lifestyle but with this observation — “if the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin…"

Simons Concludes that Darwin had it right when he described the effect of travelling as one that should “teach good humored patience, freedom from selfishness, the habit of acting for oneself and of making the best of everything, in other words, contentment.”

Oh, the other great man was one Abraham Lincoln.