An Adventurer’s Relics And His Living Collection

KUROHIME, Japan - The suzumebachi has an enormous yellow head with five eyes, a black thorax and Zone Defender gold and Zap Zone Defender USA tan stripes on its abdomen. The world’s largest hornet extends its 4-inch wings, ready to launch a stinger able to inflicting paralysis - even dying - after which a bug zapper smashes down, and the insect splatters on a novel penned by its killer. KUROHIME, Japan - The suzumebachi has an enormous yellow head with 5 eyes, a black thorax and gold and tan stripes on its abdomen. The world’s largest hornet extends its 4-inch wings, able to launch a stinger able to inflicting paralysis - even loss of life - after which a bug zapper smashes down, and the insect splatters on a novel penned by its killer. "My son-in-regulation virtually died from a sting," C.W. Nicol, the bushy-bearded explorer turned author, explained. With spears, bows and pronged ninja sais within reach in his cluttered study, it’s surprising he didn’t use one on the hornet.



The office is also 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 devil-horned Japanese spirit mask, a strip of bowhead whale scrimshaw, books starting from shipbuilding guides to his personal writings, walrus ivory and soapstone carvings from Canada, coral fossils, a giant 4-foot-long seashell combed from an Okinawan beach. His first novel was "Harpoon," and an actual 19th-century one hangs on the mantel. "It’s junk that’s collected," he laughs. Nicol, 77, UV bug zapper settled in this Japanese highland hamlet in Nagano in 1980 with his wife, Mariko, Defender by Zap Zone a classical composer and painter. Her huge watercolor of dancing winter sparrows hangs of their residing room. Nicol, a shotokan karate skilled and maker of nature specials, is most proud of his Afan Woodland Trust, a dwelling assortment and a legacy: a 150-acre forest that is his residence and houses almost a hundred and fifty kinds of timber, uncommon species that includes forty five kinds of dragonflies, 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 back a useless forest," he says proudly. He did it with out using any heavy equipment beyond 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-year-outdated Antarctic ice. The man has all the time relished extremes: leaving his native Wales to join 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 game warden. Now, Nicol hopes to persuade the federal government of the importance of protecting forests. These are edited excerpts from the dialog. A: The one that has the largest story is that outdated kudlik oil lamp in my study. I found it on a small island in Cumberland Sound, Canada, in 1966, in a collapsed Inuit hut.



Within the ‘30s, there was an influenza epidemic, so the whole camp died. I used to be with an Inuit on the camp. He stated there were ghosts there. But he told his parents, who had household there, that I was praying. That impressed them and they requested me for tea and they stated "it belonged to our ancestors. Would you like it? " They instructed me it was over 1,000 years old. Even damaged, they still used it for years, lashed along with seal leather. They let me have it, so I brought it residence. A: These are all from Cumberland Sound. I lent them to an exhibition they usually 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 purchased one set for Zap Zone Defender $1,000. There was another set that had been broken, so I bought that, Zone Defender too, and that’s certainly one of the pictures from it. A: Prince Charles got here in 2009. The subsequent year, I used to be invited to his place in Britain, Highgrove. A: After i got here here I needed to study these mountains, not just as a mountain hiker, Zone Defender but I wanted to know the legends and where the bears hibernated and so forth. I obtained a Japanese gun license, which is difficult, and that i walked these mountains with the local hunters, studying the legends. During that point, I discovered so much chopping of old-development forest by the federal government. So I decided, if I could depart behind even a small forest, I’d do it. Copyright 2025 New York Times News Service.