Dr. Mireya Mayor has written a very engaging book with a title that captures her unique, successful and uncompromising way of contributing to and enjoying science. If you like pink boots, wear them with confidence- the lemurs won't mind and neither should your colleagues. It's essential however, to know how to use that machete expertly (and to understand scientific rigor) and Mireya does.
The books moves quickly and effortlessly as she describes her quests to learn more about the poorly understood and often endangered primates (and other animals) that Mireya loves passionately. The challenges (and frequent miseries) of tracking through rainforest are accurately and entertainingly described. Her determination to make a difference in the conservation of these wonderful animals is emphatic.
But Pink Boots and a Machete is WAY more than an explorer's guide to field biology. Between the covers are two very important life lessons. One is that when an encounter at the fax machine leads to the self realization that an office job is not for you, ACT ON IT. And secondly, when a class in college or watching a movie unexpectedly unleashes I you a hidden passion EMBRACE IT. Everyone's life has these moments but it takes courage to seize the opportunity these moments present. Mireya seized them more effectively than most of us can imagine.
She was able to do this because she was curious about the natural world and confident of the rewards her curiosity would bring. If you are curious, every day provides the opportunity for exploration and discovery. Mireya and her heroine Jane Goodall (who wrote the forward to the book), both describe how as children they spent hours exploring a favorite tree in their yards. While Mireya has certainly travelled to more exotic places than most of us ever will, I bet you anything that it was the innate explorer in her that made those childhood bus rides in Miami with her grandmother so enjoyable.
Mireya describes extraordinarily well how immensely thrilling and powerfully rewarding capturing the world's smallest primate a new species of mouse lemur was. This is the kind of moment of discovery all scientists hope for and some experience. I believe that there is a strong underlying message in the book: we can all be explorers and make our own discoveries about our world and about ourselves. We may not discover a new species of lemur but through our own curiosity we can see our daily lives from other more appealing, adventurous perspectives. And if you do happen to spend more time at the fax machine than makes you happy, then there is always the bus ride home to look forward to.
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