From Orbit to the Orangutan Nest: A Shared Awakening

What happens when a NASA astronaut and an orangutan conservationist arrive at the same conclusion — from entirely different vantage points?

Ron Garan, a former NASA astronaut, spent 178 days in space, orbiting the Earth 2,842 times. From the window of the International Space Station, he experienced something that has transformed many space travelers: the Overview Effect — that awe-inspiring moment when you realize Earth is not a collection of nations or economies, but a singular, fragile, interconnected organism.

He described the atmosphere as so thin, you could “almost touch it with your hands.” A barely-there veil — paper-thin — shielding all life from the void of space. And yet, despite its fragility, this thin blue line is the only thing standing between life and lifelessness.

That same sense of fragile wonder is something I’ve experienced for decades, not from space, but from the swamps and forests of Borneo and Sumatra. My journey has taken me into the heart of Indonesia’s wild places, where I’ve studied and worked to protect our red-haired cousins — the orangutans — who quietly go about their lives in one of the most complex ecosystems on the planet.

While Ron looked down from the stars, I have looked up through the forest canopy — and what we both saw was the same thing: a living planet in delicate balance.

Standing in the peat swamp forest, you can feel the Earth breathing. The air is rich and heavy with life. Fungi break down fallen branches. Hornbills glide silently above. And in the trees, orangutans carefully construct their nests — a daily ritual of mindfulness, passed from mother to child over generations.

What astronaut Ron Garan calls a “great lie” — the idea that we can treat the planet as a limitless resource in service to the economy — is something I’ve seen play out on the ground. I've watched as once-intact forests are converted into oil palm plantations. I've seen rivers choked with sediment and smoke clouds from slash-and-burn fires darken the skies. And I’ve met villagers and indigenous peoples who mourn the loss not just of trees, but of their connection to the land.

Ron and I come from vastly different backgrounds, but our epiphanies echo the same truth: we are not separate from nature. We are a part of a whole.

He proposes that we reorder our priorities: from “economy, society, planet” to “planet, society, economy.” That shift may seem subtle, but it’s revolutionary. It means making the health of Earth our starting point — not an afterthought. It means recognizing that every action — from the energy we consume to the forests we protect — either supports or erodes the only home we have.

As someone who has spent a lifetime among the forests, I’ve seen that reordering in action. A healthy forest supports healthy communities. A thriving orangutan population reflects a thriving ecosystem. Local wisdom and global cooperation must go hand-in-hand. Whether you're floating above Earth in a space station or trekking through a peat swamp with leeches on your boots, the message is clear:

Everything is connected. Everything matters.

Ron calls the Overview Effect a “lightening lamp” — a flash of insight that changes everything. But you don’t need to go to space to feel it. You only need to pause, listen, and look at the living world around you.

Because in the end, whether we orbit above it or walk within it, this planet is our only home. And the time to care for it — deeply and urgently — is now

"Bookends of Being: Consciousness, Culture, and Mortality"

The Orangutan Dad has been diving deep about some weighty topics.

We do not choose the circumstances of our birth—our family, our country, or the time in which we arrive. We begin with no concept of time, responding only to stimuli that shape our primitive understanding of space, motion, and the presence of others. Gradually, we become sentient, self-aware, and deeply influenced by the stories our culture weaves around us. These narratives shape our reality, framing how we interpret the world and our place within it. Much of life is spent reconciling these inherited stories with our direct sensory experiences—testing, questioning, and often struggling with the contradictions between what we are told and what reason reveals. Some of us reject the myths passed down through generations, seeking truth through logic and science, while others cling to them, finding comfort in tradition.

Yet, we are not purely rational beings. As primates, we remain tethered to ancient biological drives—seeking pleasure, dominance, and security, often at the cost of critical thought. The allure of charismatic leaders and shared illusions can override our capacity for skepticism, disconnecting us further from the raw realities of our origins and place in nature. We accept that life existed before us, stretching back through an unbroken chain of ancestors, yet we struggle to accept the inevitability of our own nonexistence. To soften the weight of mortality, many embrace comforting fictions, while others find a stark, unsentimental beauty in the symmetry of existence—emerging from nothing, returning to nothing.

To me, this cyclical nature is an elegant resolution, like bookends enclosing the brief, luminous interlude of being. Whether we accept it or not, life will continue—its dramas and wonders unfolding just as they always have—indifferent, yet exquisitely whole, without us.