Pssst! You! Yeah, you... are a passenger on a planet... on a blue-green planet that's orbiting a golden star. And right now we are traveling through a part of our yearly orbit (a place called June 4th) where we're celebrating the awesome success of an impossible mission. Mind you, this mission was impossible ONLY in the eyes of Western scientists and historians.

Last month we talked about the Polynesian Voyaging Society. Formed in 1973, it set out to prove that Western science was wrong in claiming that open ocean cannot navigated without the man-made latitude-longitude grid created by Western sailors, and wrong in claiming that the migrations of the Polynesian peoples were just a series of happy accidents made by fisherman drifting aimlessly around the Pacific.

In the early 1970's a Hawaiian boy named Nainoa Thompson was burning with the desire to sail the Pacific, the way his ancient ancestors had done - using the ancient, non-Western, methods of navigating with guidance from stars. Unfortunately, nobody could show him how to do this because it hadn't been done for several centuries. So Nainoa went to the Bishop Museum Planetarium in Honolulu and asked the director, Will Kyselka, to help him learn how to navigate by the stars. The director used the Planetarium to simulate the changes in the sky that Nainoa would see if he were moving across the Pacific. This is how Nainoa learned how use the stars as mile markers.

On June 4, 1976 the Hokulea canoe (built by the Polynesian Voyaging Society in the ancient style) arrived in Tahiti after its month-long maiden voyage. Since then we've seen the revival of navigating by stars, driftwood, clouds, seaweed, winds, birds, weather, the smell, taste and temperature of the ocean, ripple patterns on the sea surface, the sense of smell of an on-board pig - and the navigator's testicles.

Then, suddenly, in the 1980's, leading-edge scientific researchers were shocked by an accidental discovery. They had uncovered a flaw in the foundation of Western science. Scientists always assumed that an ocean is a random and disorderly thing and the only way to navigate it is to super-impose a longitudinal/latitudinal grid onto it. Because of this, Western sailors could navigate this man-made grid - but not the ocean. Then, scientists discovered that an ocean is not random and disorderly, after all. It is profoundly orderly - in ways that are all but invisible to the eyes of classical science. In fact, an ocean retains the memory of all its previous states.

As we celebrate the anniversary of Hokulea's maiden voyage, I honor Nainoa Thompson and the many others who have contributed the Polynesian Voyaging Society's many successes. Doing this helps me to look at where I may be navigating a grid of assumptions myself.

So I'm hoping that this message is an opportunity for you, too, to leave behind whatever grid of assumptions you may be using - and immerse yourself in the waters of life.

This is Harriet Witt, your guide for this little ride on our passenger planet.


If you have any questions, drop Harriet an email: harriet@passengerplanet.com


return to home page