Adventure

In the spring of 1969, I saw a movie that, for the first time in my life, inspired me.

It was called My Side of the Mountain, adapted from the adolescent novel of the same name. It is the story of a young boy living in a big city who ventures alone into the wilderness to see if he can make it on his own. He builds a home in the trunk of an old tree with his pet raccoon his constant companion. He fully embraces the solitary life as only Thoreau would want him to, and with spit and grit he learns to survive and thrive.

Week by week he grows into a remarkable young man, mature beyond his years. Having learned the spiritual insights only Nature can bring, he returns to his parents and his urban life that comes with the monotonous noise of machines, the skyscrapers that block the sun, and the endless concrete that ensures he’ll never touch the earth. However, now the young man is enlightened and equipped by that endearing mountain to live resiliently in an artificial, manmade world at odds with real living he experienced in the way out there.

I wasn’t drawn to the story because I had a love of Nature, or wanted to be a hermit or be an animal whisperer. I was gripped by the boy’s willingness to follow the road not taken, to grab independence like it was breath, and to grasp at the risks that come with freedom as though they were essential to finding meaning and worth. I was only 11 years old and instantly I wanted to run away, find myself, and take on the world.

The life of adventure was a long time coming. I had to finish grade school, junior high, and high school before I could venture out into any kind of wilderness. As I waited to age into that opportunity, I daydreamed about backpacking through the West while listening to John Denver’s Rocky Mountain High.

I was 17 and only three weeks out of high school when my best friend and I packed my dad’s Ford Torino with food and camping equipment to begin a month-long sojourn through twelve western states. A year later I was living in Galveston, Texas, and one year after that I went global.

Two friends and I landed in Frankfurt, Germany with the goal of traversing as much of Europe as possible in the five weeks in front of us. We had Eurail passes so we could sleep on the train at night and backpack on foot during the day. Youth hostels were always an option, too. Together, we saw Munich, Vienna, Bern, Amsterdam, London, Paris, Lausanne, Milan, Florence, and Rome. By the time we got to Rome, I was ready to strike out on my own.

I parted company with my friends and headed for Cyprus, a very small island nestled off the coasts of Turkey and Syria in the eastern Mediterranean. I took the train to the Italian coastal city of Brindisi, sailed through the night to the Greek city of Patras, and then bused to Athens. From Athens I flew to Cyprus where I traveled four hours to a mountainous United Nations outpost called Skouriotissa (which in Greek means Our Lady of the Slag Heap). Two thousand miles trekked alone, at just 19 years old, and I was on top of the world!

On the ship from Brindisi I couldn’t afford a bunk below deck so I had to settle for a simple chair exposed to the night air and swift sea breeze. I was the only passenger who slept top side that night. It was cold and damp and I had only a small blanket in my backpack. I couldn’t keep warm.

I arrived late at night in Athens and had nowhere to stay. I followed others to a youth hostel where I spent the hottest night of my life. It was unbearable; I got no sleep. In the morning I toured the Parthenon, then flew to Cyprus. When I got to my destination I was hot, sweaty, tired, and hungry, but fully satisfied with myself for the challenges I had overcome to get there.

Later that same month I had to fly back to Europe to catch my charter flight from Frankfurt to Chicago. My only problem was that I didn’t have enough money to get to Frankfurt. I had scraped together enough money from friends to fly from Cyprus to Athens. Around midnight I found a flight from Athens to Rome and I didn’t hesitate to get onboard. At least Rome was closer to Germany.

The Rome airline counters were closed at 3 am when I arrived, and by now I only had five dollars to my name. I had no idea how I was going to get from Rome to Frankfurt. A bomb threat in the airport lasted two hours and I was back inside by 5 am. A Singapore Air flight at 6 am looked like it was my best bet, and it was arriving in Germany a good thirty minutes before my charter flight left for America.

I walked up to the airline counter and inquired about the cost of the one-way flight. It was something in the range of $160 (about $736 today). I told the clerk I had no money but that I needed to get to Frankfurt and was willing to write an IOU to the airline. (I had called the US Embassy when I first arrived to see if there might be a US military plane on which I could hitch a ride, but I was told coldly that the embassy was not a travel agency.) Of course, the airline clerk refused to help and I sat back down to ask God for a miracle. It arrived about half an hour later.

With my head in my hands and my anxiety increasing by the minute, I glanced up at the main entrance to the terminal just as an Indonesian businessman entered. The inner voice of God said That man will give you the money you need. I struggled against the idea because I preferred to believe the voice was not God’s and the man would refuse to help me. Yet, the conviction to act on what I had heard grew and I approached the man. I explained my predicament and he said no.

I returned to my seat, closed my eyes, and put my head back into my hands to thank God for making a fool of myself. A few minutes later I sensed someone standing beside me. I looked up and it was the Indonesian with his hand extended, holding the money I needed to purchase the ticket. He had gone to the airline counter to find out how much I needed and changed his mind.

After a few weeks at home to get recharged and resupplied, I was back in Switzerland for a month and then on the road again through Yugoslavia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, and back to Cyprus for five months. While living in Cyprus I spent several weeks in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. One night on the road from Ammon to Damascus, my friends and I realized we were not going to arrive in the city before nightfall. With the military in control we didn’t want to take any chances with violating the curfew. So, we decided to spend the night under the stars in the Arabian Desert.

The dark night sky was astounding with a view of the Milky Way in all its grandeur. Yet, the real gift of this layover came at daybreak. Long before the sun was visible its rays painted the entire sky and desert floor with the most brilliant colors that stretched for hundreds of miles in every direction. Orange, blue, red, yellow, pink, purple – splashed like paint everywhere we looked. It was the most stunning sight I have ever witnessed in my life. Unexpectedly, the risks of my adventures faded as the dawn of that morning made an indelible memory in my soul. Then I was back in the States for a month before heading to Argentina for six months and the World Cup soccer championship games.

It was a hot, muggy, mosquito-infested summer night in Rosario, Argentina, and I couldn’t sleep. I decided to go outside and actually cool off. I grabbed my Bible and went to sit on the curb under a light. I hadn’t read far in the book of Romans when I glanced down the dark street and saw an army truck go past the intersection, back up, and then come barreling toward me. Its front tire nearly ran over my feet when it stopped in front of me. Within seconds several soldiers surrounded me and pointed their machine guns straight at my head.

At the time the country was being ruled by a military junta. From 1976 to 1983 it is estimated that 30,000 Argentinians just disappeared in what later became known as Argentina’s Dirty War. When I arrived in Buenos Aires both the capitol building and the presidential palace (La Casa Rosada, or The Pink House) were boarded up with rings of razor wire surrounding them.

So, I wasn’t surprised when I was surrounded by soldiers. They ordered me to stand so I could be frisked. The commander took my passport and questioned why I was outside so late at night. I told him and he asked me, as a test, to explain in more detail. I told him about the book of Romans and he seemed satisfied. Then, with a wink, he told me to be careful. (Was that a threat?) After the truck pulled away and left, several neighbors who had witnessed the entire event came out to talk to me. They told me they thought the soldiers were going to take me away and that they’d never see me again. (I would be stopped and questioned two more times before I left the country to come home.)

Emerson penned always do what you are afraid to do. That had been a motto of mine when I was a young man. There was no adventure without risk, and life without adventure didn’t hold much living. Sure, a life without hazards was safe, but it was also dull. That didn’t mean life had to be one cliff jump after another. It meant life couldn’t be exciting without pushing me to my boundary and nudging me to step beyond it.

Back then I loved the dare; to take the chance; to be placed into the power of the unforeseen. Today, I don’t get much chance to adventure my life. I have to settle for a far lower threshold of hazard, which most days seems nonexistent. When I compare my life at 20 with my life at 60 it’s hard to believe I’m the same guy who lived in both worlds. Then I was invincible, untouchable by disease, terror, or even death. I was in a state of absolute freedom, unattached to anyone or anything else. Back then every day was beautiful and tomorrow was better, and there didn’t seem to be a limit on what the future could hold.

It’s no surprise that the wilderness is for the young while what remains is for the rest of us who have aged out and moved on. For the young the frontier is an undefined fantasy that promises unbounded opportunity. Eventually the fantasy folds up to reveal reality. The frontier gets plowed and paved and the young are tamed and taught to domesticate their dreams.

What started when I was 17 ended at 20. After three years I was done with the high-octane wanderlust that had coaxed me to traverse the world to experience what only fearlessness can appreciate. At one point I envisioned backpacking across Africa and Asia before throttling down to commence a life more in keeping with the well-traveled road. Truthfully, that road has not been unfulfilling or uneventful. It has come with its own irreplaceable rewards that surpass the fleeting splendor of a desert dawning that faded within an hour. Yet, looking back to that much younger time, I can’t help but wonder where I found the naïve audacity to chase the wind across an endless horizon.