From the Archives: Rini’s Experiment

Location: Swamp forest across the Sekonyer River from Camp Leakey, July 6, 1978

The day began with data and driftwood.

I spent the early morning running a pilot on manual diversity—fifteen focused minutes observing a three-year-old orangutan, logging hand movements every five seconds. It was the kind of observational work that grounded me here: repetitive, quiet, low-impact, and rich in potential insight. Afterward, the heat pushed me toward the river. I waded in, let the current lift the sweat from my skin, and swam across toward the other bank. Toward Rini.

Rini was an adult female orangutan, confident and observant, with the calm presence of someone who had known the forest—and captivity—long enough to recognize both freedom and change. She greeted me with a relaxed gaze and a casual descent through the trees. We had been working together for several days now, learning each other’s rhythms. My goal was to teach her basic hand signs—“brush,” “come,” “food.” Her goal, it seemed, was to decide how much of that was worth her time. She wasn’t always attentive, but today, something was different.

We worked on the brush sign. I demonstrated it near my head, showing the combing motion, then offered her the gesture. She mirrored part of it, clumsily but deliberately, then added something new: she reached toward me with extended fingers, made contact, then brought her hand to her own head, scratching with small, intentional movements.

It was the first time she had combined elements. A hybrid sign. I scratched her in response—my own reinforcement. She repeated the sequence, not identically, but clearly building on it. It felt like play. It felt like learning.

Then she shifted the game.

Rini reached for a piece of ubi kayu—raw cassava—snapped it with her teeth, and held it out to me. I took the piece and chewed it slowly. She leaned in close—unusually close—and, with gentle precision, retrieved the softened food from my lips and placed it into her own mouth.

Then she did it again.

Over and over, Rini broke off pieces of cassava and handed them to me—not to eat, but to process. She waited, watched, and then took them back. What at first seemed like a social exchange slowly revealed a deeper logic: the cassava, bland and fibrous on its own, became more palatable after I had chewed it. She was using me to transform the food into something more enjoyable. Whether it was the change in texture or a subtle sweetness released through the chewing, Rini had discovered value in the process—and she repeated it with quiet intent.

When one piece dropped to the ground, I rinsed it in the river before chewing it again. Later, when I hesitated, she rinsed the next piece herself before offering it to me—demonstrating not just patience, but a rudimentary understanding of hygiene. Or persuasion.

While we worked through this silent experiment, Gundul watched us from the edge of the trees.

Gundul was an adolescent male, large for his age and fiercely curious. He had a reputation at Camp Leakey—feared by many for his unpredictable behavior and remembered vividly for a disturbing incident years earlier when he forced himself on the camp cook. Some staff avoided him entirely. But he had also shown a particular wariness toward bearded Western men—people like Rod Brindamour, and now, perhaps, me.

I was new. And Gundul was testing that.

He crept forward deliberately, his eyes fixed on me as I focused on Rini. I sensed him before I saw him—branches flexing under his weight, a shift in the energy around us. Then suddenly he was there, far too close for comfort.

I picked up a stick—not as a weapon, but as a clear signal—and shook it hard in his direction. Not subtly. Not diplomatically. Like a madman. I wasn’t about to give him the opportunity to bite, and I wasn’t interested in being cast as his next experiment. Gundul froze, bared his teeth making crying sounds, then retreated a few feet and crouched, eyes locked, still calculating.

When he began inching forward again, I struck the ground with the stick sharply. He paused, then finally climbed into a perch just upriver where he could watch from a distance. It wasn’t exactly détente, but it was enough.

Rini, too, reacted to my sudden burst of aggression toward Gundul—letting out a sharp, startled cry. But within moments, she returned to me, settling back into our quiet exchange as though the tension had passed like a passing cloud. Unshaken, she resumed her cassava routine with the same calm focus as before. The ritual between us continued—me chewing, her receiving—unspoken but deliberate. By now, it wasn’t about signs or instruction. It was about trust, timing, and the mutual willingness to meet one another halfway in a language we were inventing together.

At last, after several cycles, I declined another piece. She paused, held it out for a moment, then dropped it into the water with a soft splash. I took that as the end of the lesson. I turned to the river, slipped into its current, and swam back to camp, the taste of cassava still lingering, and Rini’s intelligence still unfolding in my mind.

That evening, as the forest darkened and the calls of gibbons gave way to insect hum, I reflected on what had happened. Orangutans like Rini didn’t need language lessons to prove their minds. They were already testing, inferring, instructing. She hadn’t just mimicked me—she had guided me. She had conducted her own experiment and used me as the mechanism.

What I thought had been a training session had turned into something else entirely.

I had been the student all along.

—-----

More stories of my early adventures with orangutans can be found in Out of the Cage.

Riding the Waves of Time: How Our Minds Experience the Density of Years

As we move toward 2026, I find myself reflecting again on something I noticed years ago—an intriguing psychological rhythm that shapes how we experience time itself. It isn’t measured by clocks or calendars, but by our perception: a kind of perceptual temporal density function. It may or may not be formally recognized in academic literature, but it resonates deeply with lived experience.

Think about how we experience decades—whether it’s our age (in our 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond) or the decades of history we move through. At the start of a new decade, there’s often a feeling of space. Time feels wide open. The future stretches ahead like an open plain. Hope, potential, and possibility dominate the psychological landscape. We stand at a fresh marker: 30, 40, 50, 2020, 2030… and there is a sense that we have “time.”

Then something happens as we move toward the mid-decade point. The years begin to feel fuller. Life events accumulate. Responsibilities deepen. Health shifts. Children grow, parents age, careers evolve, and the world changes around us. The texture of time thickens. We feel the density increasing—not just in the number of things happening, but in their weight and emotional gravity. We become more aware of the finite nature of time, more conscious of what has been done… and what still hasn’t.

This is the hump of the decade, psychologically speaking. It is where the decade feels its heaviest. Time is no longer a vast open field; it becomes a forest—alive, layered, sometimes overwhelming, and undeniably real.

Then, as we move past that midpoint, something interesting happens. We begin to feel a shift. The density starts to release. The years may not actually be speeding up or slowing down, but our experience of them loosens. The second half of the decade can feel like coasting downhill after a long climb. We have accepted more of what is, rather than clinging to what might have been. We adjust expectations. We find rhythm. There may be a quiet grace here.

Yet as we near the boundary of the next decade, the psychological tempo compresses again. Suddenly, the next marker looms. Another birthday ending in zero. Another cultural timestamp that reminds us that time is moving forward whether we are ready or not. And once again, perception thickens, then resets when we cross that threshold into the “fresh” decade ahead.

This phenomenon isn’t just abstract. It affects well-being. At the beginning of a decade, we often feel energized. In the middle, we may feel pressured, reflective, evaluated by our own inner judge. Near the end, we feel a push—a compression of urgency, a desire to make meaning before the next marker arrives.

Perhaps this is how the human psyche processes continuity. Perhaps it is how we negotiate mortality. Or maybe it is a cognitive coping mechanism: our brain organizing time in psychologically manageable chapters.

As we stand near the opening of another mid-decade horizon, many of us feel it: the complexity, the fullness, the strange compression of significance. But rather than letting it become a source of anxiety, perhaps we can view it as an invitation.

An invitation to slow down inside the density. To honor what has accumulated. To release what cannot travel forward. To savor what remains open.

Time is not only something that passes—it is something we inhabit. And understanding the rhythm of how we psychologically experience it can give us compassion for ourselves and others as we move through the unfolding seasons of our lives.

As we journey toward 2026 and beyond, may we acknowledge the weight of the years, but not be burdened by them. May we find presence inside the density and grace in the flow. And may each decade, no matter where we stand within it, remind us that life is not simply measured in time… but in meaning

The Uneven Measure of Life

Some of us are granted long and layered lives.

Lives filled with love, work, mistakes, second chances, and moments of grace we did not always recognize at the time. We grow old enough to reflect, to revise our understanding of who we were and who we became. We accumulate stories. We are allowed, by fortune or chance, to complete arcs.

Others are not.

Their lives are taken too soon—not through fault, not through choice, not through moral failing. Many are children, still forming their sense of self, still trusting the world to be a place that will hold them. Some are helpless in ways that make the loss even harder to reconcile. And some are not even human, yet feel no less present in the web of life that sustains us all.

These early endings leave holes.

They leave holes in the hearts of those who loved them—parents, partners, friends, companions—who must continue living while carrying an absence that never fully closes. But they also leave holes in the collective psyche. Quiet questions linger long after the ceremonies and condolences fade. Questions about meaning. About fairness. About justice. About whether the universe keeps score, or whether we are simply witnesses to an uneven distribution of time.

When lives are cut short, we are forced to confront a truth we often try to avoid: that longevity is not merit-based. Time is not awarded according to goodness, usefulness, or love. It is not fair in any way we would design if fairness were ours to define.

And yet, here we are—those who remain.

For those of us who have lived long and rich lives, this realization carries an uncomfortable responsibility. Not guilt, but awareness. Not shame, but stewardship. If we have been given time that others were denied, what are we doing with it? Are we using it to deepen compassion, to widen our moral circle, to protect those who are vulnerable—human and nonhuman alike?

Loss has a way of stripping away illusion. It reminds us that life is not primarily about accumulation, status, or certainty. It is about presence. About care. About how we show up for one another while we can.

Perhaps meaning is not found in explaining why some lives end too soon. Perhaps meaning emerges in how we respond to those losses—in how we carry forward the love that no longer has a place to land, in how we refuse to let indifference be the final word.

Justice, in this sense, may not be cosmic or immediate. It may be something far more fragile and human. It may live in our choices: to protect rather than exploit, to remember rather than forget, to act with tenderness in a world that so often feels indifferent.

The holes remain. They always will.

But sometimes, if we are attentive, they become spaces through which deeper empathy enters. And in that quiet opening, life—uneven, imperfect, and precious—asks us not for answers, but for care.

Understanding Orangutans Is a Meditation Into Our Own Being

There are moments in the forest—quiet, humid, suspended in time—when the line between observer and observed dissolves. When the breath of an orangutan, slow and deliberate, becomes the breath of the human watching. When the rustle of leaves above is not simply a sign of movement but an invitation to awareness.

Understanding orangutans is not merely a scientific pursuit or an exercise in ethology. It is an inward journey. A kind of meditation. A way of remembering a part of ourselves we have nearly forgotten.

In the stillness of the canopy, stripped of the digital noise and the relentless demands of modern life, we meet a different version of ourselves—the one that knows how to be, how to wait, how to listen.

A Mirror in the Forest

For decades I have watched orangutans move with a mindfulness that borders on the sacred. Every gesture is intentional. Every pause meaningful. They do not rush, yet they do not waste time. They navigate the world with a clarity that feels almost foreign in our era of screens, distractions, and perpetual urgency.

To truly understand them, I’ve had to shed layers of my own conditioning—my need to categorize, interpret, and control. Orangutans defy hurry. They ask us to slow down. Sometimes they insist.

And in that slowing, something profound happens.

You begin to sense that your mind is not separate from the forest around you. That the distinction between “self” and “other” softens. That the orangutan gazing back at you is not inviting you to decode her, but to remember yourself.

Oneness Without Pretension

People often imagine mindfulness as a technique—a set of steps to calm the mind. But in the presence of an orangutan, mindfulness is not a practice. It is simply what is.

When you lock eyes with a mother orangutan who is nursing her infant high above the forest floor, you feel time loosen its grip. Her patience is not cultivated. It is embodied. Her awareness is not forced. It is natural.

She teaches without speaking:

Slow down.

Watch closely.

Trust your senses.

Take only what you need.

Let life unfold instead of forcing it.

And in that moment, stripped of our human striving, we are reminded of a primordial truth: stillness is not something we acquire—it is something we return to.

The Forest as a Clearing of the Mind

The modern world trains us to live in a constant outward orientation. Our attention pulled from one notification to the next. Our thoughts scattered across obligations, fears, ambitions. But the forest has its own rhythm, and orangutans abide by it without apology.

When you follow an orangutan through the canopy for hours, you enter that rhythm too. The mind begins to settle. The body matches the pace. Thoughts no longer rush; they meander.

This is not escapism. It is reacquaintance.

A reunion with the quieter parts of ourselves.

A Lesson in Pure Being

To know an orangutan is to sit with a being who lives free from the trappings of technology, ego, status, or performance. They are not trying to be anything other than what they are. They do not posture. They do not pretend. Their intelligence is calm, measured, deep—attuned to survival yet suffused with contemplation.

In their presence, we glimpse a version of humanity unencumbered by our own inventions.

A humanity grounded in presence.

A humanity rooted in connection.

A humanity capable of oneness.

Understanding orangutans is not about decoding their minds. It is about reawakening our own.

Coming Home to Ourselves

When I reflect on my time with Princess, Siswoyo, Rinnie, Moocher, and the many other wild and ex-captive orangutans who shared their lives with me, I realize they were not merely teaching me about their species. They were guiding me back to something in my own.

They reminded me that being human does not require being hurried. That our worth is not measured by speed or productivity but in our capacity to attend—deeply, quietly, lovingly—to the world around us.

In the forest, with the orangutans, I learned to breathe again.

To listen.

To be patient.

To be present.

To be whole.

And that, perhaps, is the greatest meditation of all.

Honor the Echo

 

There’s a moment after any meaningful learning—whether a class, a field training, or a life-changing encounter—when the world feels newly tuned. You walk differently. You listen differently. You notice what you never noticed before. The teaching still hums inside you, not as loud as it did when the lesson was fresh, but as an echo.

And if we’re lucky, we learn to honor that echo before it fades.

I’ve come to think of these echoes the same way I think about orangutans moving through the forest canopy. Their presence lingers long after they’ve crossed from one tree to the next: a slight sway of branches, a few falling leaves, the soft memory of movement. The forest remembers, even as it grows quiet again.

So do we.

The Echo After the Training Ends

Many of us have had moments of deep attentiveness—workshops, retreats, field courses, meditation trainings, mentorships—that sharpened us. In the days that followed, we applied the new habits with zeal. We were more aware, more grounded, more patient, more focused.

And then life happened.

Tasks piled up. Old patterns returned. New urgencies replaced old intentions. What was once clear became background noise.

But here’s the truth: the echo is still there.
Even if faint, even if buried under the busyness of living—it remains.

My Own Echoes From the Forest

I think back to my earliest days at Camp Leakey in the late 1970s, when the forest was both classroom and teacher. Every lesson was embodied: patience, stillness, observation, trust. The orangutans taught me more than any university lecture ever could.

Rinnie’s slow, deliberate movements.
Princess’ careful stare before choosing to interact.
Siswoyo’s way of pausing—really pausing—before acting.

Each encounter shaped me.

There were routines I learned then—ways of watching, listening, breathing—that made sense only in a peat swamp forest where every decision is calibrated for energy and purpose. When I left the forest and returned to the rush of the human world, the attentiveness didn’t vanish. It softened into an echo.

And I’ve spent much of my life gently tuning myself back to it.

Why We Need to Revisit Our Echoes

The echo of a training is not a demand—it’s an invitation.
A reminder.
A call back to our better selves.

In my conservation work, in building the Orang Utan Republik Foundation, in guiding students, in writing books, in navigating the complexities of life with people and institutions alike—those old forest echoes have surfaced again and again.

When I rush, something inside me whispers: slow down.
When I get caught in the noise, something urges: listen.
When I face challenge or conflict, something steadies me: be deliberate.

These are not new lessons. They’re remembered ones.

Learning to Listen Again

Honoring the echo doesn’t mean returning to the past.
It means letting the past steady your future.

Maybe you took a mindfulness course.
Maybe you sat through a leadership retreat.
Maybe you had a teacher, mentor, guide, or even an animal who shaped the way you move through the world.

The echo is the remnant positive feeling of that experience—a resonance inside you waiting to be acknowledged. And the more often we pause to notice it, the louder it becomes.

A Simple Practice: Echo Retrieval

Here is something I do—born of the forest, but usable anywhere:

1. Pause. One breath in. One breath out.
   Just enough to become aware again.

2. Ask yourself:
   What was the last training, lesson, or experience that truly shifted me?

3. Listen for the echo of how you felt then:
   Clearer?
   Calmer?
   More purposeful?
   More alive?

4. Let that echo guide one small choice today.
   Just one.

That’s how we honor the echo:
not by recreating the whole training,
but by living one moment shaped by it.

The Echo Is Evidence of Growth

I’ve learned over 50 years in the canopy, in classrooms, in boardrooms, and in communities across Indonesia:
we are always becoming.

Training, education, and insight aren’t temporary events.
They’re seeds.

And the echo is the sound of the seed still growing.

So if you feel that you’ve drifted from the attentiveness you once had—don’t be discouraged. It only means you’ve been busy living. The echo is still in you.

Honor it.
Return to it.
Let it help you move forward with greater clarity, presence, and compassion.

Because the quiet lessons—often the oldest ones—are the ones that stay with us the longest.

Jane Goodall and Me

 A Personal Journey With the Woman Who Changed the World

Most people meet their heroes on the page. I met mine at the Sacramento airport.

It was 1970 or ’71, and I was a young marine-biology/pre‐med student at Sierra College, still wandering toward the path I would eventually follow. Because I happened to be dating the vice-president’s daughter at the time, the administration building was familiar territory. One afternoon someone asked if I might be available to pick up a visiting speaker—Jane Goodall—for an evening lecture on chimpanzees.

I had read about her work in National Geographic, but I didn’t yet grasp the magnitude of the woman I was being entrusted to escort. At that moment, I probably would have been more star-struck by Jacques Cousteau. But I agreed, unaware that I was about to cross paths with a person who would shape the rest of my life.

I met her at the airport, drove her to the hotel, and ended up perched awkwardly on the edge of her bed while she phoned R. Allen and Beatrix Gardner—the pioneering scientists who had taught the chimpanzee Washoe to use sign language. Jane, fascinated by their work, invited them to join her talk. They drove that evening across the Sierra Nevadas from Reno to the college campus in Rocklin, California. I sat with them in the front row as Jane stepped onstage and spoke with that quiet authority that would become her global hallmark—about the Gombe chimpanzees, their social lives, their emotions, the tender and complex ways they navigated their world.

I didn’t know it yet, but that evening stitched threads that would later become part of my own tapestry: Jane would become my “academic aunt,” the Gardners my academic grandparents, and I would enter the forest of Tanjung Puting at roughly the same age she had entered Gombe.

Embracing Great Ape Kinship as the Antidote to the Political Weaponization of Tribalism

In every corner of the world, we are witnessing a troubling resurgence of tribalism. Whether it takes the form of nationalism, racism, religious extremism, or ideological polarization, the pattern is the same: people dividing into “us” and “them.” Once weaponized, this ancient instinct — once useful for group survival — becomes toxic. It blinds us to our shared humanity and fractures the cooperative spirit that made our species thrive.

Yet, perhaps the antidote to this fragmentation lies not in looking further into our differences, but deeper into our shared roots — even beyond the boundaries of our species. To embrace our great ape kinship is to remember where we came from, and to recognize the biological and emotional continuity that binds us to all life.

A Mirror to Ourselves

When I first taught sign language to orangutans in Borneo, I discovered something humbling. These beings — with their calm presence, patience, and depth of feeling — reflected something profoundly human, yet also something profoundly better than human. Orangutans, our red-haired cousins of the forest, exhibit empathy, foresight, and a gentle dignity that contrast sharply with the aggression often found in our own political and social arenas.

Watching them build nests high in the canopy, I often wondered: how can a creature so peaceful and self-contained share 97% of our DNA, while we, the “wise apes,” turn our intelligence toward division and domination? The orangutan does not draw lines of exclusion. Its survival depends on coexistence — with the forest, with other species, and with the rhythms of nature itself.

Tribal Instincts, Political Tools

Our tribal instincts evolved for a reason. They helped small groups of early humans survive in harsh conditions, building trust within the clan. But in the modern era, these same instincts are being manipulated. Political and media forces exploit them — amplifying fear, resentment, and identity-based conflict to consolidate power. The result is a world where belonging is defined not by shared humanity, but by opposition.

And yet, neuroscience and evolutionary biology tell us that cooperation, not competition, was the true driver of our success as a species. Compassion and empathy are not modern inventions — they are ancient survival tools. The problem is that our social and political systems have learned to hijack these instincts, rewarding outrage instead of understanding.

Reclaiming Kinship

To counter this, we must broaden the circle of kinship — to remember that we are not just members of political parties, nations, or tribes. We are members of the family of life. We share the planet with beings who laugh, grieve, love, and care for one another — sometimes with greater grace than we do.

Embracing great ape kinship means acknowledging that orangutans, gorillas, bonobos, and chimpanzees are not “things” or “resources.” They are persons of the forest — sentient, emotional, self-aware beings who remind us of the moral continuum that extends far beyond our species. When we see them as kin rather than curiosities, we begin to dissolve the illusion of separation that fuels tribalism.

It also means applying this awareness to human relations. The same compassion that guides conservation — the belief that every individual life matters — can guide our politics. When we expand empathy beyond the in-group, we erode the psychological foundations of hatred.

From Forest Wisdom to Human Renewal

The orangutan’s life offers a lesson for our time. Solitary but deeply connected, peaceful yet aware, contemplative rather than combative — the orangutan embodies a balance that humanity desperately needs. In their quiet, deliberate movements through the forest canopy lies a model for mindfulness and coexistence.

If we can learn from them — if we can remember our shared lineage — perhaps we can build societies that value connection over conquest, understanding over division, and stewardship over exploitation.

Because in the end, the real battle is not between political parties or tribes. It is between the expansive spirit of kinship and the contracting fear of “otherness.” The future depends on which side of our evolutionary inheritance we choose to nurture.

Let us choose kinship.