Category: Blog Post

Hiking inside the Mammoth Cave

Posted on by Caroline Williams in Blog Post, Close to Nature, Info

Last summer, I visited Mammoth Cave in Kentucky with Fred, my husband. It was our first experience of hiking in a cave. My previous spelunking was inside a vertical cave in Indonesia. It was no hiking, but rappelling or descending deep underground. Fred has never been into a cave before. Both of us did not know what to expect, but we were excited to experience our new adventure.

In front of Mammoth Cave Visitor Center. Source: Caroline

The Size

Mammoth Cave was named for its “mammoth” or immense size of the cave’s chambers and avenues. Part of the cave, called Mammoth Dome is 192 feet high and the other one called Bottomless Pit is 105 feet deep.

The size of one to the Cave’s chambers compared to a person in white shirt, see bottom left. Source: Caroline

One of the chambers called Rotunda is about a quarter acre in size where two Great War Monuments are located. During the War of 1812, the cave was being mined on an industrial scale for potassium nitrate (saltpeter) for use in gunpowder.

The cave is also known as the world’s longest cave. In September 2021, the cave set a new record of its length to a whopping 420 miles (676 km), according to the National Park Service.

The History

Mammoth Cave was established as a national park on July 1, 1941, but public tours began some 200 years ago. Inside the cave, we can see graffiti written by visitors from the year of 1883.

One of the first explorer of the cave was an enslaved African Americans, Stephen Bishop who worked from 1838 to 1856. He was also known as a self-taught geologist who had a prodigious memory. Bishop was capable to drew a map from memory of the cave’s explored passageways.

Stephen Bishop. Source: nps.gov

The Tours

The Park offers many interesting tours guided by passionate, knowledgeable, and sometimes funny rangers who love to share jokes related to the cave.

My husband and I took five of ten tours they offered. The length of the tours varies from two to four hours. My favorite tours are the Violet City Lantern and Star Chamber tours. Both tours need lanterns as the only source of light inside the cave.

Rangers with lanterns for visitors inside the cave. Source: Caroline

During the tours, we can see many amazing rock and geology formations. We can also see artifacts and other signs left by Native Americans who first discovered the entrances to the cave. Another interesting thing to see is the old tuberculosis huts built in 1842-43 deep inside the cave to accommodate patients with tuberculosis.

Stalagmite and Stalactite formation. Source: Caroline
One of many interesting rock formations. Source: Caroline

The difficulty levels of the tours are varies. Some tours are sightseeing tours. Other ones require hiking, climbing, and descending very steep hills. There are also fun sections called Fat Man’s Misery followed by Tall Man’s Agony. The first one is a very narrow passageway that takes about 15 minutes to pass through. The last one requires tall people to bend constantly to navigate the passageway.

One Frequently Asked Question from visitors is about bats. We saw only one bat during our five tours. Turns out, there is a disease called White-Nose Syndrome which has killed millions of bats since its discovery in New York in 2006. To prevent spreading the disease, visitors are required to walk across a decontamination mat to clean our shoes when exiting the cave.

Decontamination mat to clean our shoes to prevent us from spreading the White-Nose Syndrome disease. Source: Caroline

Hiking inside the Mammoth Cave turns out to be a fun-filled experience. Fred loves the the temperature inside the cave. It is around 54°F year-round. I was grateful to realize how our eyes amazingly adapt to the darkness of the cave. The only downside of it, for me personally, is how hard it is to take good pictures inside the cave. Overall, I highly recommend anyone to visit the Mammoth Cave, one of great natural wonders in the U.S.

Green News from Indonesia

Posted on by Caroline Williams in Green Idea, Green Tech, News, Recycle, Waste Management

Green Mosque

A plastic recycle vending machine has been installed at Istiqlal Mosque, the largest mosque in Southeast Asia, located in Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia (click here for the virtual tour of the mosque).

A plastic recycle vending machine in Istiqlal Mosque

As reported by VOI, the collected plastic bottle waste can be exchanged into Plasticpay Points through an app which can later be converted into electronic money that widely used in the city, such as DANA, OVO, Gopay, LinkAja, and INACASH.

According to Antara News, the Istiqlal Mosque recently became the first mosque in the world to receive an Excellence in Design for Greater Efficiencies (EDGE) certificate, as a green place of worship, from the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

The certificate has been awarded to the mosque since the worship place has been renovated based on an environmentally friendly concept. It has increased the efficiency of water and energy usage of the building by applying energy-efficient roofs, outer walls, and lighting; installing smart energy meters; as well as using solar panels, which support more than 13 percent of the building’s electricity consumption.

Waste Bank

Another green news comes from Tanjung Burung Waste Bank – or “bank sampah” as they are called in Indonesian.

At the Waste Bank, customers deposit their household waste and receive money in their bank account based on the rates and weight of the waste. Customers separated the waste into two, inorganic and organic. Inorganic waste is recycled and turned into bricks. Organic one is processed into compost.

Composter to turn organic waste to compost
The flowchart of the process to turn organic waste into compost, it includes storage (gudang) and marketing (pemasaran)
Bricks made from plastics waste
Another alternative to recycle plastic waste to build a wall
Recycle plastic bottles used to build a decoration fence

Reported by Jimmy Kalempouw
CMGT Ambassador from Indonesia

What a Sad News!

Posted on by Caroline Williams in Close to Nature, Conservation, News

Monarch butterflies are now listed as endangered!

As reported by AP on July 21, The International Union for the Conservation of Nature added the migrating monarch butterfly for the first time to its “red list” of threatened species and categorized it as “endangered” — two steps from extinct.

Screenshot of monarch news on July 21, 2022

It means, the job is far from being done to prevent the monarch’s extinction.

In 2019, CMGT and Homes4Monachs hosted “Save Our Monarch” workshop at Downtown Islamic Center. At the workshop, participants learned how to harvest milkweed seeds and plant them. Milkweeds are the required host plants for caterpillars of the monarch butterfly and thus play a critical role in the monarch’s life cycle.

Thanks to the milkweed seeds shared at the event, Caroline from CMGT was motivated to grow milkweeds in her backyard. She was happy to see a monarch visited her milkweed plants in summer. She is also happy whenever she finds milkweed plants wherever she goes. For example, when she was at Forest Preserve Bemis Woods North to attend Hiking Leadership Training, she took a picture of milkweed plant there.

Caroline’s picture of Monarch visited her milkweed plant last Summer

In 2018, a documentary titled “The Guardians” was released to raise awareness about the incredible monarch migration in North America. It also shows how an indigenous community in Mexico fought illegal loggers who destroy their ancient forest, the home of the people and millions of monarchs.

Here is the trailer of the movie.

Anyone who are interested in protecting monarch can participate in many projects, for examples, Field Museum Monarch Community Science Project, Illinois Butterfly Monitoring Network, or use free resources developed by UIC Heritage Garden.

Private Car or Public Transportation?

Posted on by Caroline Williams in Blog Post, Info, Public Transportation

Last May, I went back to Jakarta, the capital city of my home country Indonesia for the first time in eleven years. I was surprised to see the amazing development of the newly integrated system of Jakarta’s public transportation. I don’t know how to drive. Therefore, I always depend on public transportation wherever I go.

Newly built train station close to my parents’ house in Jakarta, replacing the old ones that used to be dirty and unorganized

Compared to Chicago, I can say, I definitely choose public transportation over driving a private car in Jakarta. The integrated Busway and the commuter rail system can beat the traffic jam. That is the most important reason. Additionally, there are many options of public transportation there. We can choose two wheels (motorcyle taxi), three wheels (Bajaj), four wheels, small and big size of buses.

Another reason is, I enjoyed all the public facilities offered at many developed train stations. In a majority Muslims country, two public facilities that are needed the most are a clean bathroom and Mushalla, or small mosque for praying five times a day. It was great that we can find them easily at many Busway and train stations.

Public facilities in many train stations in Jakarta

Beyond that, we can also find cell phone charging stations, Nursery Room, and restrooms for disabled. In some stations, they even equipped with a small free library and a green space.

Green space in Jatinegara Station
Free library in Cikini Station

Back to Chicago, I am happy to know that the City is working on revitalizing public transportation under CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) as part of the 2022 Chicago Climate Action Plan (CAP). One of the actions to improve air quality is to increase CTA ridership 20% by 2030. Will that be possible?

Understandably, Chicago has more challenges than Jakarta in order to motivate people to use public transportation. One major challenge for me is the extreme weather in summer and winter.

Another challenge is how slow the buses are running because there are too many stops. In Chicago, with limited options of public transportation, it takes longer time to reach the destination by CTA than by a car.

However, there are of course many advantages of using public transportation. We don’t have to worry about parking, insurance, permits, tax, etc. I also learn more about a place when I travel with public transportation.

For example, I recently took Metra to take me to Bemis Wood North, in Westchester, IL to attend Hiking Leadership Training. I fell in love with Western Spring village because the Metra station there is so clean, neat, and beautiful. In front of the station, there is a museum that becomes my goal of destination to visit one day. It also inspires me to create a plan of weekend gateway to visit all Metra stations in Illinois.

Metra station at Western Spring, IL
Tower Museum in front of Metra Station

When I shared my experience on CMGT’s WhatsApp group, one of our community members, Amina Rahman also shared her experience without driving in the City. She wrote, “Where we lived in the city, we chose to have one car as a family. Alhamdulillah, I feel it was really great because it forced me to be more organized about food and other shopping. We mostly did that on the weekend except for occasional milk runs on the weekdays.”

As a mother, she would take the kids to activities, museums, millennium park, jumaa, and other places by stroller/walking and bus and trains. “It was great to get to know the layout of the city, get to know the neighborhoods/shops/people in different areas as you slow down instead of zooming past everything without paying attention. It also allowed us to explore things and stop along the way which we may not have done otherwise,” she said.

Her kids love riding the bus and train and even just looking around while they walk and ride the stroller. “As they got older, the bigger kids would bring scooters so they don’t get tired and the little ones rode in the double stroller. Having the double stroller helped to carry all the snacks, supplies and even the scooters when we went indoors. One of the best bonuses is the little ones would fall asleep at nap time and I could just when them into the house with the stroller without waking them to take them out of the car seat!” she added.

It’s a great story to share. I love to hear it!

Sometimes, it’s true that private car offers more comfort than public transportation, especially if you are not the driver. In a hot and humid Jakarta, many people prefer to be inside an Air Conditioned car all the time. It’s the same reason I prefer to be inside a warm car in a snow day, rather than waiting outside for the bus or train.

However, in the name of comfort we often sacrifice an opportunity to challenge ourselves, to learn new things about a place, to keep our options open to explore the world, and to contribute to a better air quality for the benefits of all .

Eco-friendly Eid Celebration

Posted on by Caroline Williams in Close to Nature, Green Idea, Info

Eid Mubarak!
Happy Eid!
Selamat Idul Fitri!

Eid al-Fitr is a major holiday in Indonesia, the largest Muslim-majority country in the world which is located in Southeast Asia.

Many Indonesians are still preparing the Idul Fitri festival in traditional and eco-friendly ways.

The main menu for the holiday is called Ketupat. It is a Javanese rice cake cooked inside a diamond-shaped container of woven palm leaf, an eco-friendly, compostable material.

Source: Twitter

Here is the diamond-shape container looks like:

Source: Twitter

This is the video how to make the Ketupat pouch:

The pouch will then filled with rice and boiled in water. Here is the traditional way to cook it with a big pot on top of wood stove:

Source: Twitter
Source: Twitter

Here is what they look like when they’re ready:

Source: Twitter

According to this Indonesian news, Ketupat was started to become an iconic meal on Eid in Indonesia since the 15th century.

Source: Detik

Ketupat can be eaten with other side dishes like chicken curry or Rendang.

Source: Twitter

Rendang is another iconic meal on Eid in Indonesia. It is a chunk of meat slow cooked and braised in coconut milk seasoned with more than 10-20 different herbs and spices.  

Source: The Jakarta Post

The traditional way to cook Rendang is using a big wok on a wood stove. Cooking rendang requires patience because it needs constant stirring to slow cook it for more than one hour until the meat is tender and coconut milk is caramelized. 

After Rendang is ready to be consumed, it can be stored for weeks without refrigeration. The herbs and spices used to make Rendang are the natural preservative agents.

Prior to refrigeration technology, this style of cooking enabled preservation of the large amount of meat. The cooking technique flourished because of its role in preserving meat in a tropical climate (see Wikipedia). Additionally, the taste of Rendang improves the more it’s reheated. 

Aside from preparing meals, there are more ways to celebrate Eid al-Fitr the eco-friendly ways. Here are some ideas for decorations from recycled materials from our families in Indonesia. Enjoy!