I have a confession to make. If confessions embarrass you, please feel free to ignore what follows and leap right into the chapters. Book introductions are usually pretty dull anyway. I rarely read them—particularly those with a confessional element. I assume that if the writer—particularly a travel writer—lugs a backpack of guilts and hang-ups and phobias around, the burden will quickly become apparent, sometimes nauseatingly so, in the flow and flux of the writing.
Come to think of it, I have a number of confessions.
First: I am happily—very happily—married to Anne, and have been for twenty-five years (plus a little prematrimonial get-acquainted time). So—in my travels I’m not escaping from a broken love affair or a pending divorce; I’m not looking for a replacement wife or any other relationship “thing” that might otherwise permeate these pages with purple-prosed angst or feel-sorry-for-me diatribes. I’m just your average happy wanderer who misses his wife (and best friend) far too much during his adventuring, who finds solace from homesickness and occasional depression either in silence or overactive sociability, and who is one of the most reluctant postcard and letter writers I’ve ever known. Fortunately, my mate puts up with my long lapses in communication, prays for me regularly, and comforts me wholeheartedly when I return—wan, weary, and, more often than not, whacked out.
Second confession: I love traveling. And thus I dislike travel books written by authors whose catalogs of miseries, morose complaints, and know-it-all arrogances seem to demean the very concept of open-eyed, open-minded and open-ended travel.
To repeat: I love travel. I have loved its sear and serendipity since I first wandered away from home in Yorkshire, England, through the open gate of my grandparents’ garden and into the wild and unknown streets outside—at the age of three. Thanks for the timely intervention of a “bobby” I was restored to domestic disharmony (my father was temporarily in disgrace for leaving the gate unlatched), but not before I’d been pursued for blocks by a belligerent Scottish terrier, almost fallen down an open manhole, enjoyed the remnants of an ice-cream cone someone had kindly left stuck in a privet hedge, and attempted a little well-acted bribery at a corner shop by bawling my head off until I was given a free bag of licorice candies.
It was a relatively short journey by grown-up standards but in toddler terms I had entered a universe of delights and spine-tingling terrors. And I learned a few lessons that lasted. I learned that fear generates fear and aggressiveness (the more alarmed I was at the growling of the terrier, the more ferocious he became, until I banged him on the nose with a branch); I learned that danger can lurk in the most benign places (the open manhole in a very respectable suburban street of hedgebound homes); I learned that living off the land was both feasible and delightful (the discarded ice cream was the best I’d ever tasted); and I learned that drawing too much attention to myself could jeopardize my adventuring escapades (the shop owner who had donated the bag of candies also immediately called the police).
But I digress (another typical problem with introductions).
The lure and love of travel has been a prime component of my nature for as long as I can remember, despite all my efforts to live the straight and proper life (fifteen years as a city planner), to marry (much to the surprise of my family—and also my wife, I think), to become an avid consumer (far too many clapped-out cars) and even a social acolyte (a miserable boat trip with London’s toffee-nosed, stinking rich jet set at the Henley Regatta put an end to that brief experiment).
Then things changed. One near-death and other soul-jarring experiences made me, in common with many others, face the fact of my mortality and adopt more of an “only-one-life” policy. Without regurgitating all the round-robin arguments and rationalizations that plagued me for a while, I will simply say I eventually recognized the power and impetus of the child within, the child who had never lost his lust for things wild and undiscovered, for places and people that most of us only read about (in books like this, perhaps), for experiences that stretch the envelope of existence to the breaking point.
And so, hand in hand and heart in heart, Anne and I discarded much of the baggage of our overdirected and driven lives and learned to enjoy a simpler, less cluttered existence. We became explorers—starting small in a VW camper (just a plain green bus—no LSD-inspired graphics on this one), writing a little, sketching, and exploring America’s great wildernesses. Books began to emerge almost by accident. We were in our James Campbell stage, finding our own “bliss” and letting our souls lead us wherever they would. We had little money, no “security,” few possessions of any importance, no plans, and no unwanted ties—and we were ridiculously happy. We were—in the best sense of that overworked word—free. Free of the parts we had thought to be ourselves, only to realize that our true selves had been railroaded and ramrodded for years by forces and influences that were not of our choosing. For a while we became children again, children of the earth, delighting in its power and mystery and, in turn, the power and mystery of our own lives. We roamed; we rested on mountaintops and by quiet streams and lakes far from the churning confusions and clamor we had once accepted as life’s ransom; we talked and read and thought and sang (funny the things you find yourself doing when you “let go”), we wrote…and somehow more books emerged.
Now, that was all a long time ago. Since those early days Anne has experienced numerous challenges working with blind and visually impaired populations around the world and I, with a few interesting diversions along the way, have just completed this, my sixteenth illustrated travel book. Sometimes we travel together, sometimes we don’t. We’ve shared many strange and wonderful experiences; we’ve gained a considerable amount of knowledge and maybe even a little wisdom. Exploration—both inner and external—is still the driving force behind our lives. Travel has become an active metaphor of life itself—the celebration of uncertainty, curiosity, unpredictability, “luck,” fear, hope, and wonder—the wonder of places untouched and untrammeled, the double wonder of self-discovery and the discovery of the earth’s secret places and lost worlds, the wonder of being alone in lonely remote regions in an increasingly homogenized world that sometimes seems far too overdiscovered, the wonder of sharing experiences and insights with others….
Which leads to confession number three.
My own enthusiasm for travel and the inner exploration that comes from making oneself vulnerable and reliant upon one’s own resources continually increases my empathy for fellow travelers with similar attitudes. “World wanderers,” “Earth Gypsies”—call them what you will—seem to have the knack of tapping into their own rich seams of self-dependence, courage, and clear-mindedness. I listen, entranced as a child, to their tales; I share their fears and tribulations; I celebrate their endurance and their fascination in life as they hone down the cutting edges of their own perceptions and walk the razor’s edge of their own mortality.
Recently I talked with two friends, Michael and Marianne, both white-water enthusiasts, as they attempted to distill the essence of their experiences on some of the wildest rivers in the world. First understand that these two people are pure mainstream America. They pay all their worldly dues, they work long hours at regular jobs, they have a home with an irritatingly large mortgage, they mow their own lawn, they do their own home repairs, they pay their full share of taxes, life insurance, credit card and utility bills…they’re “normal.”
They just have this one little quirk. They enjoy playing on the edge of mortality; they have this thing about white-water adventuring…
MICHAEL:
“And so off we go, and the waves are crashing—you hit the waves, the waves hit the boat, you get thrown all over the place…you’re holding on to your paddle and you’re hanging over the side of the boat, water churning off rocks, huge waves everywhere, and you’re bouncing around like crazy…and then it’s over for a while and you say, ‘That was nothing.’ And you want to go on because you don’t know what’s going to happen next…but deep down inside you’re thinking: I hope we flip—I really hope we flip!
“It’s one of the greatest feelings to take on nature—to take on these rivers. The river gives you everything it’s got and you get through it—at the end of the day you get through it. I’m not suicidal—I’m not going to do a river where I know I’m going to die if I don’t know what I’m doing…. I’m not going to take on a challenge like that if I don’t feel I’m up to it…. I respect there are forces out there that are greater and better than I am and I have to learn to face them…I want to be a part of it…. I like the feeling of nature beating on me—giving me its best—facing it—looking at it right in the eye and coming through.
“The magic is you get to go to places that very few people have gone—you get to see the real country—you’re actually there, in this canyon, this gorge…you get to keep all the memories—the dangers, the feeling of being on the edge of things, being in these beautiful places with nature at its best, its wildest…and you’re part of it all.
“It leaves its mark. You’re stronger, you feel more confident…you feel you can face things better than before…it’s something you can always draw on…nothing has got anywhere close to what I had to face on those rivers…you feel so
…alive
!”
MARIANNE:
“I’m a perfectionist. I want things done right, I want results, I want things perfect…but when you’re on the river, it’s not perfect, you have to let go, stop controlling…. I suppose you learn to have faith that somehow you’ll be okay.
“I remember one time on the Moose. We were there for the snow runoff—real rough—beautiful—and I fell in on the worst rapids, boat flipped…what scared me most was that it was so cold that I couldn’t catch my breath. Then I got pinned under the boat—my head was banging on the keel…. I was trying to breathe in the air pocket…. I was panicking.
“Then it was slow-motion. Everything changed. After that first panic I just gave in to it…you’ve just got to go with it, don’t fight it…. Sometimes it seems like an eternity, so much longer when you’re pinned underneath…but somehow there’s that peace…you feel really free, just letting go like that…. The shock only hits you when you’re out of the rapids and you remember how cold you are. It doesn’t take long before you hit the shore, but it can seem like forever on that last stretch.
“But you survived—that’s the big thing. You give it your best shot and then you learn to have faith…. That sense of letting go is the best feeling you’ll ever have…you know you’re part of something so much greater than yourself and that you’ll be okay no matter what happens…. And you carry that feeling with you…. You become a true optimist.”
Which is a key fourth confession: I too am an incorrigible optimist, not just in terms of my own personal well-being, but also in the belief that our fragile planet will survive intact despite the enormous threats of overpopulation, disease, pollution, the destruction of the wild environment, and the mindless eradication of natural resources.
Optimists are not very fashionable species today in the aftermath of the 1992 Rio conference and the gory, pessimistic gloating of “Greens” in all their myriad forms and frenetic guises. Of course I’ve seen the destruction—driven by roaring greed and the lure of quick wealth. I’ve walked through the burned-out rain forests of Panama; I’ve seen the eroded slopes of southern Tasmania’s mountains after the clear-cutting of ancient forests; I’ve seen pollution in all its varied forms in India, Latin America, Africa, the South Pacific islands, the Mediterranean, and the United States. I know those threats are real and must be remedied. Regrettably the remedies are rarely simple. The issuing of eloquent eulogies, strict dictates, and hand-wringing homilies will do little to stem the tidal waves of human hopes, material expectations, and Western-inspired concepts of “progress.” My years as a city planner taught me the dangers of fast, slick solutions based on a naive obliviousness to the enormously complex and entangled forces that create, shape, and define the destiny of cities. Invariably, too little time is given to understanding the cause-and-effect whiplash effects of ill-shaped “solutions” to urban ills. In the United States in particular we seem to have a habit of pouring great caldrons of cash into the sinkholes of problems without ever seriously examining the endlessly porous nature of the bedrock. And there we stand on the edge—peering into the maw—asking ourselves, “Where did it all go? What happened to all our solutions?”
I remember my time in Panama, on the edges of the almost impenetrable Darien Gap jungle (see Chapter 5). I was talking with members of a campesino (peasant) family. In the distance the ancient rain forest was in flames. From another direction huge trucks were emerging from the deep darkness of the jungle laden with freshly felled trees.
“I thought the government had banned tree-felling in these forests,” I said.
“They have,” replied the wife.
“So why are these trucks here?”
Shrugs all around.
“And the burning,” I said. “I thought the government had banned the burning of the forest.”
“They did,” said the wife again.
“So why the burning?”
“To make a farm.”
“For whom?”
“For us—for our families. We have to make a living.”
“But in other parts of Panama, this hasn’t worked. The soil is no good for farming. After four or five years there’s no farm left.”
“Yes,” said the woman’s son, “but in four years we will have a video machine….”
A few days later, after an arduous journey through the Darien jungle by canoe and on foot through some of the hardest—and hottest—hiking territory on earth, I entered a small Cuna Indian community high in the mountains. I was far from the burning and logging frenzy to the north and sat talking with the chief’s son in the shade of huge forest trees. The Cuna are one of the last tribal groups in Latin America to withstand the scourge of conquistadors, colonialists, and modern-day capitalists in a relatively unscathed state. They have been labeled by anthropologists as the last original democracy on earth and still conduct their affairs in the heat of community debates. They resist progress in the Western sense and regard their rain forests as sacrosanct: