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of anything that could kill me…like in Australia where it seems like all the plants
and animals can kill you (sorry Australia!), even by accident. The great group of
Malay students we were working with didn’t mention anything, and I remember
feeling oddly calm and secure trudging off alone into the dense coastal forest
(Fig. 10.13) planting flags as I went. After maybe an hour, my calmness deserted me
in an instant as I heard what sounded like a huge dinosaur, or perhaps Godzilla…
cracking branches out of sight but heading rapidly in my direction. I paused (scared
stiff) and tried to listen intently to figure out the beast’s direction and distance from
where I was standing. By the loudness of the branch snapping I pictured something
the size of a rhinoceros moving toward me in successive quick bursts. (I have been
told on occasion that I have quite an active imagination!) I decided to walk away as
quietly as one can over dead leaves, and a tangle of palms fronds and branches. But
the beast froze, so I froze. After a short while, it took a few steps, I stayed frozen.
Then I took a few steps and the beast paused. It was like the beast and I were playing
a live chess match, making moves, gauging each other’s tactics, all the while having
no clue of who or what we were playing against, and in the dense exotic (to me)
forest of coastal Malaysia, it was terrifying. We played this move-freeze-move game
for what felt like days but was likely closer to 20 min. At one point the beast splashed
through some water, and I ran ~20 m (60 feet) to the left thinking I was adding some
Fig. 10.12 Sampling
tsunami deposits at
Langkawi, northwest
peninsular Malaysia. The
red flags indicate sampling
stations. A transect like this
runs from the nearshore
hundreds of meters inland
to map tsunami runup and
inundation extent. (Image
by A.D. Hawkes)
10 Earthquake-Driven Coastal Change: Ghost Forests, Graveyards…
of anything that could kill me…like in Australia where it seems like all the plants
and animals can kill you (sorry Australia!), even by accident. The great group of
Malay students we were working with didn’t mention anything, and I remember
feeling oddly calm and secure trudging off alone into the dense coastal forest
(Fig. 10.13) planting flags as I went. After maybe an hour, my calmness deserted me
in an instant as I heard what sounded like a huge dinosaur, or perhaps Godzilla…
cracking branches out of sight but heading rapidly in my direction. I paused (scared
stiff) and tried to listen intently to figure out the beast’s direction and distance from
where I was standing. By the loudness of the branch snapping I pictured something
the size of a rhinoceros moving toward me in successive quick bursts. (I have been
told on occasion that I have quite an active imagination!) I decided to walk away as
quietly as one can over dead leaves, and a tangle of palms fronds and branches. But
the beast froze, so I froze. After a short while, it took a few steps, I stayed frozen.
Then I took a few steps and the beast paused. It was like the beast and I were playing
a live chess match, making moves, gauging each other’s tactics, all the while having
no clue of who or what we were playing against, and in the dense exotic (to me)
forest of coastal Malaysia, it was terrifying. We played this move-freeze-move game
for what felt like days but was likely closer to 20 min. At one point the beast splashed
through some water, and I ran ~20 m (60 feet) to the left thinking I was adding some
Fig. 10.12 Sampling
tsunami deposits at
Langkawi, northwest
peninsular Malaysia. The
red flags indicate sampling
stations. A transect like this
runs from the nearshore
hundreds of meters inland
to map tsunami runup and
inundation extent. (Image
by A.D. Hawkes)
10 Earthquake-Driven Coastal Change: Ghost Forests, Graveyards…