At the age of 24, Kira Salak trekked solo across Papua New Guinea. Her book about this endeavor, Four Corners: Into the Heart of New Guinea, One Woman’s Solo Journey, was selected in 2001 as a Notable Travel Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review.
I’d sure like to be able to tell my grandkids, if not the world (via a bestselling tome) that I made such an epic trip as a young ’un of 24. It could happen. I still have over three whole months before I turn 25. That’s over 90 days to plan, embark upon and complete my adventure. I just need to figure out where to go, get some time off of work, scrounge up some cash, get in shape to climb a mountain/kayak across an ocean/fight off guerillas and/or gorillas, plan an itinerary, book a plane ticket, rent a car/gondola/elephant and buy some sunscreen/Gore-Tex expedition gear.
And, considering the likelihood of success, write my last will and testament.
Truth is, I don’t think I’ll ever hike solo across Papua New Guinea or bike across Mongolia or kayak the length of the Amazon. Frankly, there’s only so much adventure I can handle, and my idea of an epic trip would be to spend a week sampling croissants in Paris. If I were to hike across an entire country, it would have to be Vatican City, or at least Gibraltar. (But I can’t cross Andorra by foot — that story’s been taken by Rolf Potts, in a recent World Hum article.)
There are few people in the world graced with the courage, confidence, survival instincts, physical strength and financial resources to be true adventurers. Kira Salak is one such person. I am most certainly not. If I won the lottery, that would take care of one of the above necessities, but I’d still be a good four short.
I once read somewhere that all good travel stories begin “No shit, there I was . . .” Salak and other true adventurers have it easy; they have massive personal stockpile of tales that merit such a beginning and the details of which keep readers rapt and astonished. There’s something about defying death, repeatedly, daily, that adds a certain compelling aspect to any narrative. Similarly, being the first person, or at least one of a very few, to have done something or seen a particularly spectacular landscape, makes the later accounting all the more impressive and astonishing. Most of us take trips; the adventurer goes on expeditions. I may have walked, even hiked, in multiple countries, but I don’t think I could possibly used the word “trekked” to describe any of my forays across sundry not-so-vast, not-so-wild wildernesses.
The fact is, I tend to stay solidly on the beaten path. Call me adventureless, not adventurous. My idea of a fun travel book to write — and don’t go stealing this idea — would be a volume titled Around the World in 80 Clichés, in which our less-than-fearless hero visits tourist-swarmed landmarks across the globe.
I have to find my “world’s first” claims and “No shit, there I was . . .” stories in more mundane locales.
For example, I recently visited the Green Parrot, a storied bar in Key West (motto: “Excess in moderation”) and a dive in the best sense of the word. There, at about 1 a.m., in the middle of a body-to-body dance floor, the air a haze of sweat, smoke and condensation of evaporating spilled beer . . . there, as I fought off overwhelming fumes and the chants of natives drunk on fermented barley-water, I did something no one has ever done there, in that enchanted land. I tap-danced. Specifically, I did a time-step, complete with phony grin and jazz hands. Stomp-hop-flap-flap-step-stomp-hop-flap-flap-step — pause to apologize for poking flying jazz hands into stranger’s back, smirk insouciantly at perplexed bartender, take a few swigs of Newcastle — stomp-hop-flap-flap-step-stomp.
I may not have been wearing tap shoes. I may not have had a cane or a fedora. My accompanying music, if you could hear it over the din of bad pickup lines and tourist small-talk, was “Travelin’ Blues,” a loud, rockin’ number, performed — quite well, for the record — by several large, sweaty men in shorts and t-shirts and shaggy hairdos. In short, this was not a Broadway-worthy, or even county fair runner-up-worthy, performance. But world’s-firsts are rarely accomplished under ideal conditions; indeed, it is often the conditions themselves that make such feats so difficult to accomplish.
A packed house of drunks would seem to preclude successful execution of anything more than a quick shuffle-ball-change, given a) the lack of space and b) the tendency of those who have had too much to drink and too little sleep (likely for several days straight) to not look kindly on those who poke them with jazz hands and then grin cheesily. You see? Awful conditions.
But my companions demanded that I dance, and after I attempted to weasel my way out of complying by stating that I could only tap dance, insisted that, in that case, I must tap dance, right then and there. Under the influence of peer pressure (and under the influence in the more traditional sense, I must confess), I caved. And in so doing, I staked a claim that Kira Salak and various other National Geographic-endorsed explorers will likely never challenge.
A few years ago, I took a travel writing class, for which the textbook was The Best American Travel Writing 2003. One of the featured articles was a piece by Lawrence Millman, who ventured to an obscure island in the Arctic in search of an “undiscovered” people called the Tunit. The title of the piece, “Lost in the Arctic,” pretty much sums up what happens. Despite all manner of warnings, signs and other indicators that this may not be a great idea, Millman embarks on his trip, only to become, well, lost. In the Arctic.
As one of the other students in the class put it during a discussion of the article, this was an “Uh, duh!” sort of story. You’re in a vast and vastly inhospitable environment, with few people around, no real sense of where you’re going or what you’re doing, and your mode of transportation (in this case, an old boat) is several notches below what might be called “reliable” . . . Uh, duh, of course you’re going to get lost. Of course you’re going to be miserable. Of course you’re going to fear, on several occasions if not for hours or days on end, that you’re going to become a human ice cube whose body, mummified by the cold, will be discovered by other adventurers a hundred years hence.
I prefer to avoid the “Uh, duh!” stories, as well as those that feature less-expected but just as easily preventable encounters with death. This is why I tend to avoid countries where the streets are named after dates, the top official is known as “Dear Leader” or “Benevolent Ruler” or “God,” or the official currency is arms, with bullets as the smallest unit and tanks as the largest. I try to stay away from locales that have not been named, or that have names that translate roughly to “Place of Death” or “Valley of Horrible Pain.” The road well-traveled isn’t the only road for me, but at least if it’s well-traveled that means it’s more or less safe, which I find is generally an attribute.
In short, while I’m perfectly happy to explore that which is new to me, and even to venture outside my comfort zone, I’ll find my adventures in benignly odd endeavors undertaken within the charted territories. You really don’t have to travel far to find a story, although, honestly, if I could add something to my tale such as “My feet were a blur of rhythmic motion, and the villagers stood captivated, their jaws dropping to reveal intricate tongue tattoos, before they pulled machetes out of their gourd-festooned loincloths and chased me to the river, where I fended off schools of piranha and an alligator before floating to safety” . . . well, that would probably make it a bit more interesting.
Doug Mack (doug@professoryeti.com) recently met Kira Salak and Lawrence Millman at the Key West Literary Seminar.