Smithsonian.com

King Juan Carlos, at right, stands with his guide from Rann Safaris as his dead Botswanan elephant lies propped against a tree.

The king of Spain visited Botswana recently, and on the famous savanna, teeming with animals familiar from the picture books we read as youths, King Juan Carlos shot and killed an elephant.

When I heard about the king’s outing, I decided to learn a little more about Botswana’s laws governing the protection—or lack thereof—of Africa’s most famous creatures. It turns out that many of them can be lawfully killed for those who buy the privilege. According to the website of Rann Safaris, the hunting outfit that guided King Carlos (who happens to be the honorary president of the Spanish branch of the World Wildlife Fund) it takes $6,000 to shoot a leopard. For $1,200, you can shoot a crocodile. For the pleasure of killing a hyena, you must turn over only $500. For a rhino, sorry, you’ll have to visit South Africa. But if you’re content to shoot an ostrich, stay on in Botswana, where the permits will run you $550. Short on cash? Then there’s always baboons, which go for a paltry $200 a pop. And to shoot the greatest land animal on the planet, the one that lives in matriarchal herds and mourns somberly when a family member dies, the one that’s been targeted by tusk-seeking machine gunners for decades and which you’d think should be a protected species—to shoot an African elephant, you’ll need to pay $19,000. It’s a princely sum, but nothing for a king.

The world is full of opportunities to shoot at its mightiest creatures, whether they’re good to eat or not, and here are just several animals that some of us would love to see and photograph—and that some people just want on the rec room wall.

Sharks. There’s nothing politically correct about shark fin soup, but an annual killing contest goes on in Martha’s Vineyard, where hundreds of sport fishermen gather every July to compete in the Annual Oak Bluffs Monster Shark Tournament. The event’s website states that 98 percent of sharks caught in the derby are released (a change from prior years), but there are prize incentives to bring the largest fish in to the dock, where crowds gather expectantly to see dead and bloody “monsters” hoisted at the weigh station. Last year, the biggest sharks landed and killed included 630-pound and 538-pound thresher sharks, a 495-pound porbeagle and a 278-pound mako. In 2005 a fisherman took a tiger shark weighing 1,191 pounds.

Big cats. The African lion has declined in numbers from possibly 100,000 in the early 1990s to a current population estimated to be as low as 16,000 individuals. Yet hunting of this vulnerable species is legal in parts of Africa. By some reports, in fact, the number of lions killed by licensed trophy hunters each year is on the rise. In California, cougar hunting was banned in 1990—so when a member of the state’s Fish and Game Commission got the urge to kill one this January, he went to Idaho, where hunting the cats is legal. The hunter, Dan Richards, posed gleefully with the cougar in his arms, sparking an explosion of anger among animal rights activists and trophy hunting critics. The controversy centered on the question of whether a man charged with, among other things, protecting cougars in one state should go and hunt them in another. Richards pointed out that he and his friends ate cougar the evening after the hunt—an excuse often voiced by trophy hunters. If you want to put food on the table, shoot a rabbit or a deer—but please, not a top predator.

Dan Richards, of the California Fish and Game Commission, went out of state to shoot this Idaho mountain lion.

Bears. They reportedly taste vile if they’ve been feeding on salmon or marine mammals, but that doesn’t stop Alaskan hunters from killing brown bears. In fact, these animals usually aren’t eaten—just skinned and beheaded, as Alaska state law requires. Alaskan black bears, too, are often killed only for wall mounts. The state, to its credit, prohibits one from using the meat of a game animal for purposes other than human consumption, yet exceptions are generously granted to bear hunters, who can at certain times of the year (like during salmon runs) use a black bear’s flesh as pet food, fertilizer or bait. (For wolves and wolverines, the meat does not need to be used at all.) Elsewhere in the world, bear hunters sometimes participate in controversial “canned hunts“—such as the one in 2006 in which King Juan Carlos, our mighty elephant hunter, shot a tame, drunk Russian brown bear named Mitrofan, who was fed honey and vodka prior to being prodded into an open field, where the crowned noble had an easy shot. Even imperiled polar bears are still legally hunted for trophies.

Baboons. I’m almost reluctant to discuss this one, so similar are the animals to us and so grisly the nature of this hunt, but the fact that men and women shoot baboons for kicks needs recognition. Landowners consider baboons pests in some places and welcome trophy hunters, who often use bows to kill the primates. The animals are known to react dramatically when hit, and—much like a human might—a baboon will scream and holler as it tussles with the shaft protruding from its torso. Even hardened hunters reportedly grow queasy at the sight of a skewered baboon panicked with fear. If you have the stomach for it, look through this Google gallery of “baboon hunting” images, showing proud hunters with their trophy kills, or for some less graphic insight into the minds of the people who would kill baboons for the joy of it, read through this baboon hunting discussion. Here is a sample from the conversation: “Seems kinda twisted but given the chance I’d shoot one. Cool trophy.” And: “Good Luck, Hope ya get one. My next time back I’d like to kill one as well.” Someone get me a bucket.

Wolves. While this top predator reproduces relatively rapidly and can be naturally resilient to some level of persecution, sport hunting the gray wolf still stinks. To justify the hunt, wolf hunters describe the animals as having negative effects on deer and elk herds. In the Rocky Mountain states, where wolves were reintroduced in the 1990s, they are already being hunted again. Some wolves are baited into shooting range, others pursued via snowmobile, and in a few places wolves are shot from airplanes—like on the Kenai Peninsula, where a government predator control program is drawing fire from wolf allies. Wolf pelts, not the flesh, are the goal of the game, though cast members of the film The Grey reportedly ate wolf stew in order to prepare for a scene in which the actors, including Liam Neeson, would pretend to dine on wolf meat. Most of the cast vomited during their meal, donated by a local wolf trapper, though Neeson returned for seconds.

More top targets of the trophy hunter’s hit list:

Billfish. Anglers may eat sailfish sashimi or braised marlin, but let’s keep things real: These fish die for their swords.

And crocodiles for their hides.

And walrus for their tusks.

And hippopotamus for … honestly, I really can’t imagine.

This just in: King Juan Carlos has publicly apologized for killing his elephant. “I am very sorry,” he told the press on April 18. “I made a mistake. It won’t happen again.” Sure, now that he’s got his tusks.

David Baggett, famed among noodlers, explodes from the water with a giant catfish in his hands. Photo courtesy of Bradley Beesley.

Cypress boughs dangle over the still, mocha-muddy waters of an Oklahoma swamp as a gaggle of drawling Southern country boys walks waist deep through the sleepy current. The men, shirtless and tanned, feel their way with their feet, exploring for stumps or root tangles—and when a foot strikes a submerged structure, the man kneels, almost disappearing, and examines the underwater snag with his reaching arms. As his friends gather around to watch, the man grins, takes a deep breath, gives a sly wink and disappears. The brown water settles as the circle of men stand by, and the seconds tick past. No: This is not some strange baptism of the swamp country, or a rendition of Marco Polo, or a college fraternity initiation ritual. Just watch.

After 15 seconds, the top of the submerged man’s head appears again, and the water around him begins to swirl. It seems he’s struggling underwater, and after several more seconds, he bursts out of the river with a wild yeehaw howl as his friends whoop and cheer. The man’s arms are reluctant to follow, however, for he is hauling something up to the surface—a living creature, it seems—and in another moment, it explodes from the water, thrashing like a bobcat, three-feet head to tail, mustached like Rollie Fingers and with a mouth like a toad clamped on the man’s hands.

The animal is a flathead catfish, the number-one target in a game of unarmed man against fish called “noodling.” In this peculiar sport of the Deep South, barehanded men (and a few women) shove their hands into the lairs of catfish and goad the animals into biting. Catfish lack large teeth, and as a fish clomps down the noodler grabs back, and once he or she has firmly gripped the lower jaw of the fish, it only takes some muscle work to remove it from its hole. But here’s the most controversial part: Noodling takes place in June and July, precisely when large male catfish sit on nests of eggs, aggressively guarding the fertile clumps from predators. The big fish, which may weigh more than 70 pounds but usually go less than 20, will bite at almost anything that meets them at the door to their lairs—whether bass, bird or hand of a hillbilly. If the catfish are kept to be eaten or if the flustered animals fail to return to their nests even if they are released, the future brood is doomed.

Noodling, which may have originated in the pre-Columbian era, began going mainstream about a decade ago when a filmmaker named Bradley Beesley, an Oklahoma native, took an interest in the sport. In 2001, Beesley released an hour-long documentary called Okie Noodling in which he follows a group of noodlers doing their thing—laughing, splashing, screaming expletives as huge cats chomp their hands, and erupting from the water in glorious slow motion with 50-pound flatheads latched to their fists. Beesley was so enthralled by the activity and the surrounding culture that he became a noodler himself in the course of his work. In 2008, Beesley released a sequel to the first film, and just two weeks ago a miniseries called “Mudcats” wrapped up, but viewers can still catch reruns. Or you might also go to Oklahoma for the 13th Okie Noodling Tournament, which arrives on June 23. The event, which Beesley helped launch in part to promote his first film, includes live music and a catfish eating contest.

In an interview last week, Beesley described for me the thrills of noodling.

“It’s the most exhilarating thing I’ve ever done,” Beesley said. It is also, he added, “the fairest way to combat these beasts.” Beesley says the sensation of having a catfish the size of a bulldog bite one’s bare hand is a particularly thrilling one. “It hurts,” Beesley conceded. “It’s painful, like a rat trap with sand paper. The fish start spinning and thrashing. You don’t get any deep cuts, but they turn your hand into hamburger meat.” But many noodlers, Beesley said, choose not to wear gloves to better experience the direct skin-to-fish contact.

Beesley is quick to explain that noodling rarely injures the catfish—except for those that get battered and fried, which may be the majority of the landed cats. Though Beesley says many noodlers let their quarry go (and that the fish go straight back to their nests), other sources, like Texas fishing guide Chad Ferguson, quoted last year in a Texas Tribune article, seem to believe that most cats caught by noodlers are destined for the kitchen. Most online videos of noodlers at work show the hand-fishers tossing their catfish into boats or clipping them to stringers, and many states prohibit noodling precisely due to uncertainty about the negative effects of removing the largest breeding catfish from a population. Only seven states, it seems, allow noodling, with Texas having legalized the sport just last year.

But killing the largest breeding catfish of a population isn’t the only concern of anti-noodling conservationists, rod-and-reel fishermen and authorities; the other is the common noodler technique of tossing junk, like large pipes and furniture, into lakes to provide catfish with nesting structure and themselves with an advantage in finding the fish when the nesting season comes.

A young noodler shows off his still-alive flathead catfish at the 2006 Okie Noodling Tournament. Photo by Alan Novey.

At last year’s noodling tournament in Pauls Valley, which drew more than 10,000 spectators, 183 people participated in the hunt for catfish. Among these competitors, 37 landed fish. The biggest was a 60-pound flathead wrested from its den by Mark Rowan, who took $1,000 for the prize and also won $400 more for having the heaviest stringer of catfish—150 pounds, to be exact. The top female noodler was Brandy Sparks, who caught a 45-pounder, and the winner of the kids’ division was Dakota Garrett, who took a 42-pound flathead.

The blue catfish is another resident of American swamp and slough country, and readers of Mark Twain may remember that Huckleberry Finn and Jim caught a catfish as large as a man. That, without doubt, would have been a blue. Noodlers certainly take blue catfish, though in some states blues, if not necessarily flatheads, are protected from the harassment.

Just how many men, women and children shove their hands into catfish lairs in America is uncertain, though officials in Missouri, where noodling is illegal, estimate that 2,000 people hand-fish for cats. Meanwhile, the game is catching on abroad. In the great rivers of Europe, for instance, hands are appearing at the den doors of the legendary wels catfish, which may weigh as much as a bear and which, like catfish in America, get ornery during nesting season.

Noodling has its risks, and every year newspaper reports tell of noodlers drowned when their hands or feet or heads become stuck below the surface, or when surprise currents drag them into deeper waters. Beesley guesses that in Oklahoma, “one or two” people drown each year while hand-hunting for catfish. But alligators and water moccasins are not the threats that the media sometimes makes them out to be. “That’s been sensationalized,” Beesley said. In his 13 years of documenting noodlers at work in Oklahoma, he once saw a man surface with a non-poisonous snake on his arm, and once with a snapping turtle.

“And there was one guy who was bitten by a beaver,” Beesley said.

Finding catfish is not always easy. It takes knowledge of the swamp and its underwater geography, and it takes some luck, too—and many a noodling excursion becomes, in the end, just a walk in the woods, under cypress and sun, waist deep in the big muddy.

The European wels catfish, shown here, has become the target of Old World noodlers. Photo courtesy of Flickr user helti.

Participants in a MovNat course carry logs and perform other backwoods workout drills with the goal of retraining their bodies to a level of fitness that our species forgot long ago. Photo courtesy of MovNat.

Erwan Le Corre doesn’t care for treadmills or pumping iron. He gave up karate long ago and lost interest in playing soccer. Nor does yoga, yin to the yang of the weight room, hold much appeal for the 40-year-old Frenchman. Yet Le Corre is built like a track star and can climb a tree as quickly as cat. He is also is adept at carrying logs, tossing rocks, scaling cliffs, slogging through mud pits and wrestling.

In short, Le Corre is a master of his outdoor environment, and he has taught this seemingly bizarre set of skills to thousands of people. Le Corre is the brain behind an alternative fitness program, launched in 2009, that eschews the boring symmetry of weight machines and the vanity of commercial gyms and aims to teach participants the lost art and latent instincts of moving naturally. Called MovNat, Le Corre’s program consists of one-day to week-long outdoor courses around the world. During these camps, Le Corre himself sleeps, eats and plays alongside his students while teaching them the nutrition and the bodily motions that our species utilized in the Paleolithic era and, he says, has since forgotten.

Underlying the fun and games of MovNat is the notion that humans evolved as hunter-gatherers in an environment of dangers, obstacles and elusive foods—an environment that in modern times has all but vanished, replaced by asphalt, supermarkets, automobility and idleness. And though our world may have gone awry in recent centuries, we humans, Le Corre assures, have not changed at all.

“Deep inside of us, we’re still the same animal, and our bodies and minds still expect us to move like we did throughout our evolution,” Le Corre said during a phone interview. “We need to respect our biology, how we eat and sleep, who we are and how we move.”

MovNat’s calendar of programs includes two week-long sessions in Thailand (in January and February), three five-day summer sessions at Summersville Lake, in West Virginia, and one-day weekend workshops throughout the year in cities across North America and Europe. Lodging is provided at the multi-day camps. So are meals, in which nothing passes the lips that did not exist in the human diet prior to the advent of agriculture. This is what is popularly called the “Paleo diet,” though Le Corre prefers not to label his eating regimen in a way that suggests its relevance has come and gone. “I’m on a natural diet,” he explained. “The way I move and eat is not Paleolithic. It’s natural.” Alcohol, sugar, processed foods and snacking are firmly discouraged during MovNat camps, though meals, according to the MovNat website, are “copious.” In other words, it’s days of hard labor, hours of famine and then feasts to sate a caveman three times a day.

Le Corre, though an eccentric by some measures, seems to have struck a chord in many people. His program has become a great success among followers who, as Le Corre says, “are hungry for nature.” And so they pay up to nearly $3,000 to spend a week performing trail-running drills, log hopping, rock climbing, wrestling, swimming and tree climbing. Even crawling and rolling down grassy hillsides are components of a full-body MovNat workout.

Once called "the world's fittest man," exercise instructor Erwan Le Corre explains to students the Paleo principles behind his MovNat program and lifestyle. Photo courtesy of MovNat.

Dubious? Then just take a look at Le Corre, who has posed in magazines and been called “the world’s fittest man.” He didn’t gain that honor through a membership at the gym, which Le Corre notes is one of the only venues in Western society in which adults are encouraged anymore to exercise their bodies. Playgrounds and outdoor jungle gyms even forbid adults (other than parents) from engaging, and a typical job is one of day-long idleness.

“There are societal restrictions on how we move,” Le Corre told me. “It’s unhealthy. Look at kids around the world. They move the same way. They chase each other, jump, play. Why do adults become entirely sedentary so that we have to force ourselves to exercise on machines?”

Le Corre, of course, has much to gain by convincing the world to cancel gym memberships and come out to play in the sun, yet it’s hard to argue with his staid opinion of what he calls “commercialized fitness.” “(It’s) about repetitions and sets, and it’s very mathematical,” he said. “People find it boring.”

Even Yoga, says Le Corre, is too ingrained in tradition and religion to be fully aligned with human instincts and our natural movements. Plus, beyond the clouds of incense smoke, saluting the sun or posing like a warrior may be as useless as curling dumbbells is outside the weight room.

MovNat exercises, though, are about functionality, Le Corre says. They are supposed to be practical. No, not for running down antelope or fighting off scavenging hyenas. Those days are over. But occasions still arise when it pays to be fit—functionally fit, that is: We have buses to chase down and people to sometimes pull from flaming buildings. We may even need to carry a 200-pound log the length of a football field, or leap over a high fence, or climb swiftly up a tree, or jump off a rooftop and land unhurt. Sure, most of us could breeze by without much more than clicking a computer mouse—but I get Le Corre’s point, and I’m pretty much sold: We’ve graduated from the Paleolithic age, yet our world remains an obstacle course. Why not get used to it?

Tapping the Paleo Revoltion

MovNat is not the only trend of backstepping away from commercialized fitness and nutrition, and toward our Paleo beginnings. Trail running with bare feet (or with those funny-looking “toe socks“) may never have been more popular, largely due to the hit book Born to Run, in which author Christopher McDougall tells how human hunters evolved as barefooted trail runners before putting on shoes and becoming farmers.

In urban settings, outdoor fitness classes and boot camps seem to be on the rise, like the Urban Gym program developed by Rat Race Adventure in London.

More and more joggers and cyclists, it now seems by my own observations, are using outdoor pull-up and sit-up stations.

And the increasingly popular Paleo diet is a strong indicator that people are craving the supposedly gluten-free days before agriculture, when we moved as nomads, hunting for meat and foraging for plants.

Erwan Le Corre demonstrates a drill in "water training" at a five-day MovNat course in West Virginia. Photo courtesy of MovNat.

These Northern California abalone divers have bagged their limits and are out of the water again safely. On some "ab" dives, tragic accidents happen. Photo courtesy of Flickr user ingridtaylar.

They’re clammy. They’re rubbery. They’re often deep-fried in vegetable oil. And though the red abalone of California was once a staple of dirt-cheap seafood shacks, this big slippery sea snail is today one of the most prized seafoods in the world.

Abalone is also the goal of one of the most dangerous recreational games in America. Abalone diving season kicked off in Northern California on April 1, and though no fatalities have yet been reported, well, let’s just knock on wood. Because since 1993, at least 54 people have lost their lives while pursuing abalone, including eight in 2008 and seven in 2007, and rare is the season in which at least one diver doesn’t perish in the cold and rough waters of the North Coast. Yet so fervent is the urge to get in the water and bag one’s daily limit of three abalone that many divers who have driven hours to get to their favorite spot only to find the sea surging and violent just brave the waves anyway. Sometimes they die. Kelp may be the greatest of hazards to the diver, who are prohibited from using SCUBA gear. This spectacular seaweed, so gentle in appearance and symbolic of the California coast, occurs in nasty thickets in many locations. Kelp may grow more than a foot per day, and in the summer sun during calm periods, kelp forests can burgeon seemingly out of control until the fronds layer the surface like a carpet. Underwater, the long, cord-like stipes hang ceiling to seafloor. Among the rocks at their base is where the abalone dwell. Some divers wait until a large storm rips these kelp plants from the seafloor, clearing the water, while most just deal with it—the sensation of long, rubbery cords of kelp sliding over one’s legs is familiar to any abalone diver. Many carry knives strapped to their lower leg to cut through the kelp should they become entangled. Ironically, divers have drowned when their knives become snagged on the kelp.

Other divers die of exhaustion or heart attacks, sometimes collapsing on the rocks after a particularly strenuous dive. Among the least of dangers is the great white shark—though the fear of being eaten is one of the most persistent and haunting. In 2004, a well-known diver in Mendocino County was decapitated by a shark in one swift attack. Though dozens of abalone hunters have died from other causes since, Randy Fry remains a name that Northern California divers speak with a tone of regret and unmistakable dread. Today, many divers, as well as kayakers and surfers, wear “Shark Shields,” a relatively new device that emits an electric field that may deter sharks as large as great whites.

So, what is all the fuss and excitement about? For many people, abalone means nothing more than an excuse to get wet in one of the world’s most beautiful underwater settings. For some divers, it’s a treasure hunt—all about locating the big snails and prying them out of their crevices and holes. For a few divers, eating abalone isn’t even the point—collecting them is. After sacking their limits an driving home, they hand out the snails to their friends. (I recently joked with one such diver that she might just hunt for rocks instead and leave the abalone, which may be decades old, to their peaceful business.)

For others, abalone hunting is an obsessive game of numbers. These dedicated trophy hunters will take nothing but “tens,” that is, abalone at least 10 inches wide. (The minimum legal size is seven inches.) So particular are “ten divers” about this hallowed but arbitrary dimension that they usually measure and record their catches down to the hundredth of an inch, with the difference between a 10.64- or 10.47-inch abalone being a worthy distinction. The shells they polish and display on walls, and there is even a website dedicated to the hunt for huge abalone called Abalone Ten. Large abs, as divers often call their quarry, often occupy dark crevices 20 feet or more beneath the surface, and one may wonder as shivers creep up the spine how many divers have drowned with their heads stuck in an underwater cave.

A red abalone in its natural habitat—unwittingly being pursued by some 35,000 divers. Photo courtesy of Flickr user NOAA Photo Library.

The snails, meanwhile, keep meekly minding their business. They slide slowly across the seafloor, seeking kelp scraps, their chief food source, by day and returning to cracks and caves by night, and little do they know of the storm that their existence stirs—a storm of economic activity, weekends spent camping, poaching busts and car chases, photo ops, celebrations and family feasts … and funerals.

By the numbers:

Of about 35,000 licensed abalone hunters in California, more than 50 have died in the past 20 years.

Of about 300,000 licensed hunters in California, 27 died in accidents from 1994 to 2009.

20: Fatal mountain lion attacks in North America since 1890, including 6 people in California.

934: Commercial fishermen killed in America between 1992 and 2007.

6,000 to 8,000: Estimated total number of mountain climber deaths on Mont Blanc.

A farmer in the Congo harvests jackfruit, the largest tree fruit in the world. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Scamperdale.

In faraway lands, a walk through the village street market is a sure bet for zeroing in on the best of a region’s edible fruits. And in spite of museums, adrenaline sports, helicopter tours, golf courses and all the other offerings cut out and polished for commercial tourism, I’ve often found the local bazaars and farmers markets to be the most exciting of exotic cultural experiences. New sights, smells and tastes meet you at each visit, and as you near the equator, the diversity of available local edibles increases until you may discover new fruits at every market stall. Watch for mamey sapotes in Cuba, blackberry jam fruits in Brazil, peanut butter fruits in Columbia, the lucuma in Peru, Sycamore figs in Yemen, mangosteens in Thailand—and that’s just the beginning of the long, long list. Following are a few suggestions, continuing from last week, of fruits (and one fruit wine) worth a journey to see and taste.

Jackfruit, South Asia. When a falling apple bonked the brain of Isaac Newton, the theory of gravity is said to have been born. But falling jackfruit can kill. This huge fruit, kin to the dainty mulberry, can weigh more than 100 pounds. Should you find yourself in the tropics on a sweltering day, hang your hammock in the shade of a guava tree, by all means—but beware of the jackfruit. The trees are common as cows in much of South Asia, and the oblong, green fruits are covered with a thick reptilian hide that exudes a sticky latex-like sap. Knives and hands should be greased with cooking oil before butchering a jackfruit. Inside are the edible parts—yellow rubbery arils that taste of banana, pineapple and bubblegum. The fruit is loved by millions, though the wood of the tree has value, and in Sri Lanka more than 11,000 acres of jackfruit trees are grown for lumber. The species occurs throughout the tropics today. In Brazil, where it was introduced in the late 1700s, it has become a favorite fruit as well as a problematic invasive species. Asian communities elsewhere around the world import jackfruits, many of which are grown in Mexico.

White Sapote, Mexico. A green-skinned apple lookalike with creamy, white flesh as juicy as a peach and as gratifying as a banana, the white sapote may be one of the most outstanding tree fruits in the New World. Though native to Mexico and Central America, it can be grown in temperate regions—as far north, even, as the foggy San Francisco Bay Area. I first met this fruit while cycling through Malibu, California, when I discovered hundreds of apple-sized orbs spilling from a pair of trees outside a driveway along Highway 1. I picked one up, found the fruit as soft and pliable as an avocado, and couldn’t resist taking a bite. I was stunned by the flavor and equally surprised that I had never seen this creature before, and I crawled into the culvert to salvage the fallen beauties. I packed about 20 pounds of bruised and oozing white sapotes into my saddlebags and, with a heavy heart, left perhaps 100 pounds more to spoil. That was in October 2004, and I suppose that the trees are still there. (If you go, harvest only the fallen fruit.) Just months later, I was walking through the desert mountains north of Cabo San Lucas on a dirt road that crosses the Baja Peninsula from El Pescadero on the Pacific coast eastward before the road connects with the main highway. Just before that intersection, I met a local ranch family who told me that in a nearby canyon was a semi-wild white sapote orchard. They spoke reverently of the trees and their fruit—but said I had just missed the season.

Fig, Greece and Turkey. A perfectly ripened fresh fig is soft and sweet as jam, making this Old World native essentially unable to withstand the rigors of long-distance travel or long-term storage. In effect, the fig is one of the very last fruits that is mostly unavailable outside the season and place where it is grown. Although Spanish missionaries tenderly packed fig cuttings with their guns and cannons and planted the lucrative food source throughout the New World, and although British explorers introduced the fig to the Pacific Islands and Australia, nowhere in the world do figs occur in such abundance as along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Portugal to Israel, Egypt to Morocco, and throughout the region’s islands, fig trees grow like weeds. Ravenous goats, worthless rock soils and never-ending drought, all in combination, cannot stop the miraculous fig, and the trees take over abandoned villages. They bust apart the cobblestones of bridges and castles, and they drop their fruits upon the world below. Esteemed cultivars grow in gardens and dangle over village fences. Wild seedlings and forgotten heirlooms grow in vacant lots and abandoned groves. In high season—August to October—sidewalks vanish as falling fruit accumulates like jam on the ground. Picking sacks full of figs is a sure bet in nearly every village below 3,000 feet. Greece and coastal Turkey are ground zero, but hundreds of varieties and millions of trees grow in Spain, Croatia, Italy, Portugal, France and Georgia—nearly anywhere in the region. Want to skip the high season and still get your fig kick? Then go to the island of Cyprus, where several local varieties ripen as late as December. Can’t travel until February? April? June? On parts of the Big Island of Hawaii, fig trees produce fruit year round.

Throughout the Mediterranean and Middle East, village sidewalks disappear under splattered fruit during the height of fig season. This scene was photographed by the author in southern Turkey in late September 2010.

Pawpaw, Appalachia. This is one fruit you may not find in your average farmers market. It’s been nicknamed “poor man’s banana” and described as “America’s forgotten fruit”—but why and how did we ever forget the pawpaw? It’s got the fetching qualities (as well as the DNA) of a tropical fruit, but this cold-tolerant species is as American as the Great Lakes, the swamps of Florida and the backwoods of the Appalachians. Abundant in places, it even occurs naturally in southern Ontario. Lewis and Clark encountered this relative of the cherimoya and were pleased by its creamy, custard-like flesh, and many people in the Eastern states are familiar with the pawpaw fruit, which may weigh five pounds and is the largest native edible fruit in America. On the shores of the Potomac River, pawpaw trees grow wild. Indeed, foraging may be the only way to taste this oddity. For whatever reason, pawpaws are scarcely cultivated and even more rarely sold in markets. So pack a machete and a fruit bowl and get thee to Kentucky. Take note: Kiwis call papayas pawpaws. That is, the “pawpaws” you see in New Zealand supermarkets are simply mislabeled papayas.

Cashew wine, Belize. I first described this specialty product of Belize two weeks ago. Cashew wine is not currently imported into or sold in the United States (or if it is, I haven’t heard about it) and short of having a friend pack a few bottles home on their next trek to Central America there may be no way other way than visiting Belize to have a taste (well, you can order it online, but that’s no fun). But it so happens that I was lucky enough to sample a bottle kindly sent to me last week by Travellers Liquors, the Belize-based maker of Mr. P’s Genuine Cashew Wine. Made from the fleshy cashew apple, Mr. P’s is tawny colored, like whiskey, on the sweet side and very aromatic. It smells and tastes like a lively stew of sour pineapple, molasses and maple syrup, with a strange and elusive hint of WD40—an exciting change of pace from the fermented juice of the grape. And here’s a morsel of jungle lore: Belizeans told me in 2002, as I traveled there for a month, that cashew wine will make a person drunk twice—once while drinking it, and again the next day if you should fall asleep in the sun.

I’ve surely missed a thousand other good fruits. More suggestions,  anyone?