Fab Foundations # 46: “Where Beatles and Beetles Converge”

(Personal reflections inspired by Beatles songs)

 Song: “Mother Nature’s Son”
Album: The Beatles
Release Date: November 1968

In my decade or so of Music and Memory blog writing, I routinely have found myself maintaining a yearlong running document of loose notes in relation to the musician/band-focus of that given year. Occasionally when I am hard up for an idea, I dip into it. Seeing as I’m on the home stretch now with my Fab Foundations series, the related notes doc is pretty much tapped out. There are a handful of remaining bullets though, some of which have lingered in that doc since the beginning of the year. At this stage, I’m pretty sure that at least a few of these will never see the light of day in terms of fleshing them out (such as this one: “George’s stage fright”).

There was one lingering bullet though that caught my eye this week. It reads “Beetles prints in the movie Hard Day’s Night”. That’s not a misspell (although it would be in any other Fab Foundations entry this year). No, that indeed is a double-e “Beetles” as in the group of insects; one of the largest and most diverse Orders of life in the animal kingdom. Off the top of my head, I’m pretty sure that It’s a term I have not typed all year other than in that aforementioned notes file.

OK, so back to Hard Day’s Night. The scene in the movie that I am referring to is about halfway through, where the Beatles (as in the band) are rehearsing in front of beetles prints (as in the insect). The prints are fantastic and come close to stealing the show for me during that scene, distracting my otherwise regular focus on John, Paul, George and Ringo (and, yeah, Patti Boyd too).

Anyhow, I passed over that bulleted note numerous times over the last few months because it never fit a narrative. But this week a little lightbulb lit up in my mind, because a few lines above that bullet was a far more recent bulleted note suggesting a “Mother Nature’s Son” entry, with a focus on conservation, ecology, and the environment. Could I pull it all together? Heck may as well give it a try….

One of the great fortunes of being a Dad is getting to see what your children end up doing with their lives as they grow up; how they establish themselves in society and in the world in general. Both my daughter and my son - who are now young adults in their 20s - have a tremendous respect for the environment and appear on similar paths to dedicating their lives toward figuring out ways to preserve it. The two of them are coming at it from very different angles though. Charlotte is a biologist, and she is researching the effects of plastics on seabirds for her master’s thesis. Peter is well on his way to getting his undergrad degree in plastics engineering and is already working part time at a small company that has developed a technology which blends conventional plastics with a natural catalyst, essentially rendering the plastic biodegradable.

I envision a potential collaborative between them somewhere down the road.

When I was very young, my parents observed in me an interest in the natural world, particularly wild animals (I believe a key factor in what prompted all of this was tidepools, but I’m sure there were a few other contributing factors as well). The most amazing gift I ever got from Mom and Dad was in 1967, when I was 5 years old. It was a “blue box” of Britain’s LTD wild (“zoo”) animals. These figurines were plastic (go figure) and very well crafted. Included in the set were little-known mammals, such as the platypus, tapir, eland, and okapi. I’ve still got a handful of them today.  Around the same period, I also recall receiving a fantastic series of “Strangest Things” books, each focused on a different group of animals (i.e. “Birds Do the Strangest Things”, “Reptiles do the Strangest Things”, etc.). These books helped diversify my knowledge of the animal kingdom.

Mom and Dad did not stop there though. Within a few year’s conservation factored into the equation. When I was 10, I received a book from my parents called “Twilight of the Animal Kingdom” by Larry Harris, which focused on 22 endangered species such as the California Condor, the Mountain Gorilla, and the Blue Whale. Through this book, I was beginning to understand how mankind can have an adverse effect on the creatures we share the planet with.  Around that time, Dad also got me a subscription to Greenpeace, which I took to heart (one example of this was that for years I had a Greenpeace poster on my bedroom wall that read “Save the Whales. Boycott Japanese Goods”). 

I am forever grateful for my parent’s insights into my childhood heart.

Interestingly enough, the Beatles contributed to my early fascination in the natural world too, and it all pretty much hinged on one song: “Mother Nature’s Son” (“The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill” may have factored in there too). Arguably, “Mother Nature’s Son” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMMiXjwhODU ) was the first pop song written overtly about nature (although folk music had always been immersed in it). It certainly predated anything from John Denver and Bruce Coburn. Even Joni Mitchell.  The song is almost entirely a singular Paul McCartney composition (in terms of Beatles contributions), with John Lennon helping out with a few lyrics (Lennon was writing a song around the same time called “Child of Nature”, but that song was never released and eventually was rewritten into his solo effort “Jealous Guy”).

Much has been written about the Beatles pursuing spiritual enlightenment when they made their 1968 retreat to Rishikesh, India, with the Maharishi. George Harrison is front and center, seeing as he was already well on his way to a faith-centric life in the years before Rishikesh.  And he convinced the rest of the band to go to India. Also, of the four Beatles, he and John Lennon spent the most time in India that year. And so, George’s reflections (and to a slightly less degree, John’s) are deserving of the prominence they get in that part of the band’s history (which plays out in Beatles Anthology and many other writeups on the Beatles in Rishikesh).

However, not nearly as much has been written about one particular angle on life in that retreat: Harmony with the natural world. It’s that angle that Paul McCartney appears to have had latched onto the most. “Mother Nature’s Son” was written in Rishikesh. By the 1970s, and through to today, McCartney has been championing animal rights and other environmental causes (also humanitarian ones), and it may have all started with the Maharishi in the foothills of the Himalayas. Indeed, it was that eco-friendly angle on the retreat that truly worked for him.

Sometimes I feel as if my family (Charlotte and Peter, along with my wife Nancy) and I have been on one endless eco retreat. The kids have camped every year of their lives. The woods has always beckoned us. An endless parade of logs and rocks have been turned over in search of critters (on land and in water). An ever mounting list of trails have been hiked. We have been blessed by Cape Cod whales, Newfoundland puffins, Nova Scotia bald eagles, Yellowstone grizzlies, Costa Rican coral reefs, Panamanian sloths, Badlands prairie dogs, California sealions, Boston-Harbor-Island golden snails, streambed hellgrammites, tidepool brittle stars, backyard owls, saltmarsh osprey, low-tide spider crabs, riverine crocodiles, desert lizards, deep-sea dolphins, rainforest howler monkeys….

….and volcanic-rim blue fungus beetles. More on that last one later.

One of the most important developments in our lives in relation to eco retreats has been Charlotte’s love of Panama (where she has lived for a fair-percentage of her recent life, and where she has done most of her seabird research) as well as other parts of Central and South America. As a result of her enthusiasm, the rest of us have headed down there to visit Charlotte on several occasions in order to witness for ourselves what she has been so enamored by. We understand now. That part of the world remains a tropical paradise in many locales and is so worth trying to keep that way.

I suppose if I had to signal out one Rishikesh eco-retreat-like moment for me it would be the precious few days we spent in the Arenal region of Costa Rica 3 years ago. The village of Arenal is named after the active volcano that looms over it (which is very impressive in its fumarole steam emissions). There we stumbled upon a gem of place to stay for 3 nights; a pristine Airbnb on the outskirts of town. The charming quarters were enough of a lure, but it was the owner, Eduardo, and the land that were the real take home messages in the end. Here we got to witness someone truly in harmony with nature. In relation to this, Eduardo and his young family could not have been more gracious hosts.

On the first evening there, Eduardo took us for a tour of his multi-acre property, half of which was orchard and farm and the other half of which was rainforest. It was there I saw my first sloth (three-toed), as well as a prehensile-tailed porcupine and a handful of distinct rainforest birds. What impressed me the most though was how effortlessly Eduardo spotted wildlife and how serene he was. The next morning, he took us on a tour of his orchard. The large variety of fruiting trees were thriving. It was like a Garden of Eden.

Later that second morning, Eduardo took us down the road to his Aunt’s property, an ecofriendly-farm. It was a work in progress (i.e. an immense undertaking), but I was immediately impressed by her earnestness to see it through and her ability to attract others to help her, including a professor from the United States, who was there doing hard labor for the summer.  Eduardo’s aunt then showed us a significant piece of property which she set aside for preservation as virgin rainforest, wherein she had designed a trail system. We hiked it and then settled in for a small breakfast and more discussion with her team of workers.

Our experience in Arenal (and Costa Rica in general) had us convinced to head down to Central America to visit Charlotte for a second go-around, this time in her home base of Panama. A “Mother Nature’s Son” moment that stuck out for me there was in the extinct super-volcano region of El Valle de Anton, where a self-described tour guide took us on a 6 mile hike up a ridge line and onto a spectacular ringed summit around the village. After talking with him a bit early on (through our mutual linguistic barriers), I concluded this young dude did these hikes every day, sometimes two or three times.  He knew his natural surroundings and had a solid answer for all of our bio-centric questions, be they related to flora or fauna.

About halfway around the section of the ancient volcanic rim we were on, a large beetle landed on me. It was brilliant blue, with black spots; a type of blue fungus beetle. It looked familiar. Turns out Charlotte, who is also an artist, had painted it as part of several very cool Panama-inspired art-pieces not long before (images attached).  Now, here I was with that artwork steering me directly in the face for the first (and only) time.

The Panama trip occurred last summer, when I was just beginning to prep for this Fab Foundations series, and so I had the Beatles regularly in the back of my mind. As I steered at that blue fungus beetle, I had both Beatles and beetles on the brain: A convergence of Beat/beet/les. I suppose this writeup brings it full circle.

The Beatles “Mother Nature’s Son” sounds just as it should. The song is a testament to being one with nature. This week two of my favorite pastimes again molded into one.

 - Pete