Outdoor Explorer, June 2000

Lasting Memories

"What an amazing job that must be," is the common response when I tell people I'm an outdoors writer. "Sometimes," I say, "but it's not nearly as glamorous as you might think." What job is? Movie stars frequently rise before dawn to do the same scene over and over again. To stay trim, models confront a slew of eating disorders. Baseball stars spend much of the season away from home, desperately missing their young families. And writers, even the outdoor scribes, spend half their lives alone in their cubby holes, pounding away at their keys. When the writing flows, it can be an exhilarating ride down the rapids of a serpentine river. When words appear on the screen slower than a retreating glacier, frustration and insecurities loom large, and the dangers of alcoholism that consumed the careers of so many Hemingways and Hammets feel alarmingly attractive.

Then there are the misadventures that occur in the field. Sure, the highlights have been numerous. The luxury of venturing deep in the wilderness for another session of solace is a gift I try not to take for granted. There was a twilight walk around a pond of hippos and crocodiles in South Africa's Kruger National Park. Canoeing Maine's Allagash River in early fall as the leaves turned a shade crimson and the normally mute moose, in heat, was as talkative as Bullwinkle. A hike in Chile's Torres del Paine National Park, where a twisted mass of monoliths and hoodoos rose some 10,000 feet from the dry Patagonian steppe, seemingly piercing the clouds overhead. An elephant trek and bamboo raft ride through the verdant Hill Tribes country of northern Thailand. A dive on Fiji's multi-hued Rainbow Reef where I suddenly found myself surrounded by hammerhead sharks, turtles, manta rays, and schools of fluorescent fish.

These were all thrilling adventures that jump-started the ole adrenaline and increased the pulse. Yet, there were mishaps or not-so-glamorous moments on every one of these jaunts that, somewhat ironically, stay with me far longer than the images of scenery or wildlife sightings. When I returned from my little stroll at Kruger, I was covered from head to toe with ticks. Only a shower of turpentine would remove the little critters. Sleeping on the shores of the Allagash one night, I awoke in the middle of the night to a loud "MOOOO-AAAAAAHHH" that reverberated through the woods like a Chinese gong. I crawled out of my tent moments before two large moose took over my sleeping area to fornicate. In Torres del Paine, I found myself in a fetal position, hugging a rock for dear life as sixty-mile-per-hour winds pelted sand across my face. I felt like Lawrence of Arabia negotiating the Sahara in a sandstorm. Perhaps I shouldn't have gregariously shared beetroot with the indigenous tribes of Thailand. Hours later, I ended up with a grueling case of dysentery despite a rural doctor's assistance. Worst of all was Fiji. By the nature of the sport, scuba diving can only take up 3 to 4 hours of the day. The rest of my trip was spent on an absurdly small Fijian island where five honeymooning couples engaged in the only other activity. Time passed as I stared at a palm tree trying to remember where I left my reading materials.

Until lately, few of these items ever appeared in a published article. Whenever I attempted to reveal anything in the least bit negative about a location, editors were quick to cut those paragraphs, emphasizing only the sleek veneer. Perhaps, they were scared of losing huge advertising revenue from that particular country, or, more realistically, they wanted to paint a perfect picture of a place to better entice and excite readers. Humans aren't quite so gullible. Indeed, they empathize with adversity. Re-read the fables from your childhood, with their happy endings, and you'll always find the protagonist overcoming some degree of uncertainty. After all, how could you root for Cinderella if there was no wicked stepmother? Where would Robin Hood be without that tyrant King John and his lackey, the Sheriff of Nottingham?

No jaunt in the outdoors that lasts more than four days is going to be sublime every moment. Sure, there is always that ideal day when the sun beats brightly and you have the whole mountain to yourself. The rare sightings of moose, shark, or hippos that leave your heart racing for hours. Then there are days when you're portaging a canoe for a mile in the Adirondacks and your only wildlife encounter is a swarm of feasting mosquitoes buzzing around your head, a la Raiders of the Lost Ark. A steep five-hour hike up to the summit of New England highest peak, Mount Washington, only to be accosted by a cigar-chomping fool who drove up the mountain on the auto road. "Hey, how long did it take ya?" he says between puffs. Or the bonefishing trip to Eleuthera, Bahamas, where you fail to hook one bonefish, but caught a really nice sunburn.

This is why we crave the outdoors. Not for some cookie-cutter experience where the skies are always blue, the rivers glide effortlessly, and the hiking route is perfectly groomed. This skewed version of reality doesn't incorporate any sense of spontaneity or accomplishment. It's far more rewarding and thus far more memorable to clamber up the final rocks to the summit under a deluge of rain; to be caught with your mountain bike in a bog, mud up to your thighs; to have your canoe stuck on the bed of a shallow stream and to step into the frigid waters to drag it along. Far from the staid environment of work, you meet the unexpected in a foreign place, and you somehow managed to push onward. As Julius Caesar said of his own battles, "Veni, vedi, veci." I came, I saw, I conquered.

Arguably, outdoor writers are far more adept at dealing with Mother Nature and her myriad of moods. We've had more practice. Plus, many of us have drifted from profession to profession, not quite sure where our career is going or if we have one at all. No one grows up wanting to be an outdoors writer-as far as I know. We just cling to our desires, hoping one day to make a living that integrates our passion for the wilderness. Along the way, we take all sorts of odd jobs, from chemical engineering to leading tours to waiting tables, adapting to every fork in the road. This translates well in the wilds where the only constant is change.

Unpredictability is the name of the game in the publishing world as well. Unlike the past, when publications weaved rhapsodic tales about a place, not caring about a writer's woes, many outdoor magazines are now going to the opposite extreme, focusing solely on the writer's struggle with little regard to place. This I call the Krakauer factor, a new trend that rides the coattails of Jon Krakauer's hugely successful book, Into Thin Air. To sell magazines, publications want to emulate Krakauer's experience of standing atop the world's tallest peak while others in his party, including two experienced Everest guides, perished. This concept of risking your life to truly savor an adventure is tragic.

For a while, I got sucked into this nonsense. Two summers ago, I took an assignment to whitewater raft with a local outfitter down a previously uncharted river in the thick of British Columbia. On the second day, we came upon two Class V+ (most dangerous) drops. At the first drop, we all wisely walked around. On the second rapid, high levels of testosterone obscure our better judgment. We fly over the falls and almost instantaneously find ourselves being sucked underneath it. The self-bailing raft starts to fill up as we slowly sink further into a hole underneath the spray of water. We're on the edge of a toilet bowl that never stops flushing. I can barely move under the weight of the rising water and the 235-pound guy to my left, who now sits on top of me. Seconds before I'm about to jump ship (and most likely, be flushed down the toilet forever), we spot people on a nearby spit of land and wisely throw one of our lines to them. They pull us out of the hole and we continue on our exploratory venture.

Upon my return home the following week, I took my young son on a short walk in the woods. We hear bullfrogs trilling, find turtles sunning on upturned logs, and look upward to see how high the spruces soar. On the return trip, it starts to rain and I follow my son as he yells and runs zigzag back to the car. One doesn't need to be an outdoors writer on a seductive assignment to find adventure in the wilderness nor do you have to risk death. All you need is the will to step outside and face the unknown.