An Adventurer’s Relics And His Living Collection

KUROHIME, Japan - The suzumebachi has a giant yellow head with five eyes, a black thorax and gold and tan stripes on its abdomen. The world’s largest hornet extends its 4-inch wings, ready to launch a stinger capable of inflicting paralysis - even demise - and then a bug zapper smashes down, and the patio insect zapper splatters on a novel penned by its killer. KUROHIME, Japan - The suzumebachi has an enormous yellow head with five eyes, a black thorax and gold and tan stripes on its abdomen. The world’s largest hornet extends its 4-inch wings, ready to launch a stinger capable of inflicting paralysis - even demise - after which a bug zapper smashes down, and the insect splatters on a novel penned by its killer. "My son-in-regulation nearly died from a sting," C.W. Nicol, the bushy-bearded explorer turned writer, defined. With spears, bows and pronged ninja sais inside attain in his cluttered examine, it’s stunning he didn’t use one on the hornet.



The office can also be home to keepsakes from a vagabond life in the Arctic, Africa and these remote mountains. Late-Edo-period scrolls and woodblock prints of English soldiers, a satan-horned Japanese spirit mask, a strip of bowhead whale scrimshaw, books ranging from shipbuilding guides to his personal writings, walrus ivory and soapstone carvings from Canada, coral fossils, an enormous 4-foot-long seashell combed from an Okinawan seaside. His first novel was "Harpoon," and an actual nineteenth-century one hangs on the mantel. "It’s junk that’s collected," he laughs. Nicol, 77, settled on this Japanese highland hamlet in Nagano in 1980 with his wife, Mariko, a classical composer and painter. Her large watercolor of dancing winter sparrows hangs in their living room. Nicol, a shotokan karate expert and maker of nature specials, is most happy with his Afan Woodland Trust, a dwelling assortment and a legacy: a 150-acre forest that is his residence and houses practically a hundred and fifty sorts of bushes, rare species that includes forty five sorts of dragonflies, patio insect zapper work horses and a stable made from reclaimed birch designed by architect Nobuaki Furuya.



Some furnishings - and the firewood - are made from false acacia culled from the forest. "We introduced again a useless forest," he says proudly. He did it without utilizing any heavy equipment past two horses and elbow grease, he says, pouring a gin infused with sansho berries from his yard and chilled with what he swears is 10,000-12 months-outdated Antarctic ice. The man has always relished extremes: leaving his native Wales to hitch an Arctic expedition at 17, killing two polar bears in self-defense while wintering on Baffin Island, arresting 244 suspected poachers and bandits as Ethiopia’s first recreation warden. Now, Nicol hopes to convince the government of the importance of protecting forests. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. A: The one that has the most important story is that old kudlik oil lamp in my examine. I found it on a small island in Cumberland Sound, Canada, in 1966, in a collapsed Inuit hut.



In the ‘30s, there was an influenza epidemic, so the whole camp died. I was with an Inuit at the camp. He mentioned there were ghosts there. But he advised his parents, who had household there, that I was praying. That impressed them they usually requested me for tea and so they said "it belonged to our ancestors. Do you want it? " They instructed me it was over 1,000 years outdated. Even broken, they nonetheless used it for years, lashed together with seal leather. They let me have it, so I brought it home. A: These are all from Cumberland Sound. I lent them to an exhibition and they misplaced the tusks. They’re all from Nunavut. A: When Perry’s black ships got here, they issued a 3-volume report in 1854. I bought one set for $1,000. There was another set that had been broken, so I purchased that, too, and that’s considered one of the pictures from it. A: Prince Charles got here in 2009. The next yr, I used to be invited to his place in Britain, Highgrove. A: After i came right here I wanted to be taught these mountains, not simply as a mountain hiker, however I wanted to know the legends and the place the bears hibernated and so forth. I obtained a Japanese gun license, which is troublesome, and i walked these mountains with the native hunters, studying the legends. During that time, I found a lot chopping of outdated-progress forest by the federal government. So I determined, if I could depart behind even a small forest, I’d do it. Copyright 2025 New York Times News Service.