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, ready to launch a stinger capable of inflicting paralysis - even demise - after which a bug zapper smashes down, and the insect splatters on a novel penned by its killer. KUROHIME, Japan - The suzumebachi has a giant yellow head with five eyes, a black thorax and gold and tan stripes on its abdomen. The world’s largest hornet extends its 4-inch wings, ready to launch a stinger capable of inflicting paralysis - even dying - and then a bug zapper smashes down, and the insect splatters on a novel penned by its killer. "My son-in-legislation virtually died from a sting," C.W. Nicol, the bushy-bearded explorer turned author, explained. With spears, bows and pronged ninja sais inside reach in his cluttered research, it’s shocking he didn’t use one on the hornet.

The office is also house to keepsakes from a vagabond life in the Arctic, Africa and these distant mountains. Late-Edo-interval scrolls and woodblock prints of English soldiers, a satan-horned Japanese spirit mask, a strip of bowhead whale scrimshaw, Zap Zone Defender books ranging from shipbuilding guides to his own writings, walrus ivory and soapstone carvings from Canada, coral fossils, a giant 4-foot-lengthy seashell combed from an Okinawan beach. His first novel was "Harpoon," and a real nineteenth-century one hangs on the mantel. "It’s junk that’s collected," he laughs. Nicol, 77, settled on this Japanese highland hamlet in Nagano in 1980 together with his wife, Mariko, a classical composer and Zap Zone Defender painter. Her big watercolor of dancing winter sparrows hangs in their residing room. Nicol, a shotokan karate professional and maker of nature specials, is most pleased with his Afan Woodland Trust, a dwelling collection and a legacy: a 150-acre forest that's his home and houses nearly a hundred and fifty varieties of timber, rare species that includes 45 sorts 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 brought back a dead forest," he says proudly. He did it without utilizing any heavy equipment past 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-yr-previous Antarctic ice. The man has always relished extremes: leaving his native Wales to join an Arctic expedition at 17, killing two polar bears in self-protection whereas wintering on Baffin Island, arresting 244 suspected poachers and bandits as Ethiopia’s first recreation warden. Now, Nicol hopes to persuade the government of the significance of protecting forests. These are edited excerpts from the dialog. A: The one which has the biggest story is that old 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 entire camp died. I was with an Inuit on the camp. He mentioned there have been ghosts there. But he told his dad and mom, who had family there, that I used to be praying. That impressed them and they requested me for tea and so they mentioned "it belonged to our ancestors. Would you like it? " They advised me it was over 1,000 years previous. Even damaged, they still used it for years, lashed together with seal leather. They let me have it, so I brought it dwelling. A: These are all from Cumberland Zap Zone Defender 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, Zap Zone Defender they issued a three-volume report in 1854. I bought one set for $1,000. There was one other set that had been broken, so I bought that, too, and that’s one of the photographs from it. A: Prince Charles got here in 2009. The following yr, I was invited to his place in Britain, Highgrove. A: Once i got here here I wanted to learn these mountains, not just as a mountain hiker, Zap Zone Defender but I wished to know the legends and where the bears hibernated and so forth. I acquired a Japanese gun license, Zap Zone Defender which is tough, and that i walked these mountains with the native hunters, learning the legends. During that time, I discovered a lot slicing of previous-growth forest by the federal government. So I determined, if I might leave behind even a small forest, Zap Zone Defender I’d do it. Copyright 2025 New York Times News Service.