End Pavement

I finally got around to reading the Jules Verne article at the Museum of Unnatural History website, located here. I’d had the tab open in Firefox for a week now.

Here’s the beginning of the article, which struck my fancy, both as an outdoors guy and writer:

On the 31st of January, 1863, a small volume began appearing in bookstores all over France. It was the adventure of three travelers, led by a Dr. Fergusson, who dared to penetrate the interior of darkest Africa using a balloon. The brave explorers in the story risk angry, spear-carrying natives, ferocious baboons, and slow death by dehydration during their trip. Readers found themselves puzzled by this account. Was it fact or fiction? It read like an authentic travel diary, including detailed descriptions of natural phenomena that was seen and notes taken on the longitude and latitudes as the travelers moved, but the adventures seemed fantastic!

In the Paris daily Le Figaro a review read, “Is Dr. Fergusson’s journey a reality or is it not? All we can say is that it is bewitching as a novel and as instructive as a book of science. Never have the serious discoveries of celebrated travelers been summed up as well.“

The title of this amazing work was Five Weeks in a Balloon and its first-time author was a man named Jules Verne.

(Project Gutenberg has Five Weeks in a Balloon available in plain text and audiobook formats.)

Man vs Wild

Late last week, Denyse and I got to see a couple of new (to us) episodes of “Man vs Wild” on Discovery Channel, hosted by Bear Grylls. Also two episodes of “Survivorman” with Les Stroud. Some amazing guys, and some of my favorite shows. Sort of like real-life Jules Verne characters.

There is a certainly an artificiality to their predicaments, but their lessons and adventures are very real. And their lives have some pretty amazing real stories to rival those of Victorian scientific romances.

Ordinary and extra

This is from Bear’s website:

“The difference between ordinary and extra-ordinary is so often just simply that little word - extra. And for me, I had always grown up with the belief that if someone succeeds it is because they are brilliant or talented or just better than me…and the more of these words I heard the smaller I always felt! But the truth is often very different…and for me to learn that ordinary me can achieve something extra-ordinary by giving that little bit extra, when everyone else gives up, meant the world to me and I really clung to it…“

This from a former special forces member and all-around adventurer.

Extraordinary things can be accomplished by doing a series of little things everyday — like the old story about moving a mountain one spoonful at a time.

19th Century Adventure vs 21st Century Adventure

The last episode of “Man vs Wild” that we saw — where Bear parachuted into an African savannah from a hot-air balloon (while his voiceover reminisced about the jump he had made in Africa that broke his back in three places) and set off toward a mountain in the distance — made me think both how much adventure has changed since the days of Five Weeks in a Balloon, and how much it hasn’t. The bull hippos will still try to kill you if you get too close, dehydration is still a constant threat, and making it to The Mountain is still a going concern.

Nowadays, though, we can parachute in, have a camera crew capture everything for later broadcast to millions of people around the world, and write about it on a worldwide communications system.

Out Doors

The irony about the “realism” of Jules Verne’s travel is that he apparently did relatively little of it, and none in Africa before writing Five Weeks. His wide reading and efforts at getting the science correct went a long way to realizing the details. I imagine that would be tough to pull off these days, where the entire globe can be virtually explored (from above, at least) on your laptop.

I’m writing this after a long period of seeming inability to get outdoors much, despite some beautiful SoCal weather. For whatever reason, it’s been all but impossible to will myself out the door. Times like this, when I need most to get out on a trail, is when it’s hardest to do. This feeds on itself and just gets worse with time.

There’s a handy metaphor there to accompany the literal problem: getting out of the house paralleling getting out of your own head.

How to solve this?

Children of Jules Verne

Ray Bradbury wrote about being children of Jules Verne.

As a member of the Television Generation, I guess we’re also children of Jacques Cousteau and Marlin Perkins, not to mention Jeff Corwin and Bear Grylls (and Alton Brown, but that’s a different blog ;).

Even if your hikes aren’t up Everest and your cycling trips aren’t the Tour de France, there is still something profound about stepping outside for a few hours. (After millennia of hardscrabble human existence, being under a roof and inside walls is still a magical thing.)

If you’re like me and get into phases where What You Most Need also becomes What Is Hardest To Do, I think there’s a bit of reprogramming that needs to happen. At least for me, where it becomes the first instinct again to grab the poodle and a leash and go on a walk, rather than grabbing the laptop and remote control for the afternoon.

With the habit re-formed, I’ll have those familiar moments about 10-15 minutes into the hike or ride when the sighs of satisfaction kick in, and I start shaking my head. Somehow, I always forget that feeling.

And it just takes a step out the door. A little bit every day.

Like that old story about moving a mountain one spoonful at a time.

Know what I mean?

I wanted to point to three writers I’ve been enjoying, all of whom coincidentally are posting about the Far East.

First up is a trio of posts that blogger Modern Hiker’s has put up recently about his trip to Tokyo last year. Great descriptions and photos:

• Hiking in Japan: Takao-San
• Hiking in Japan: Kamakura Pt. 1
• Hiking in Japan: Kamakura Pt. 2

The most recent from Kamakura seems to encapsulate what I imagine life to be like in Japan with the modern and ancient intertwined, from the organized games at an elementary school, to being caught in the wonder of a giant bamboo grove, to doing the tourist duty at a 13th-Century statue of Buddha.

As we continued our unscheduled surprise hike through the wilderness of Kamakura, we came upon many of the same sorts of things we saw while walking through Takao-san: rugged, rocky trails; dense forests; elderly, fit hikers; and shrines hidden and carved just about everywhere you could think of putting one.

The second writer is one well-familiar to hiking bloggers as someone who posts both evocative stories and gorgeous photographs — living in Japan, Bastish.net has posted about playing host to his parents of late. Back a couple of weeks, check out these posts: “Shitami” and “Going for Water”, while short, are wonderful. And since he’s been posting since the year 2000, there’s lots to check out.

The third writer is 80 Days or Bust, a travel blog being posted on the Condé Nast Traveler website by Mark Schatzker. Here’s the description:

One man sets off to re-discover the world the old-fashioned way, traveling no faster than 100 mph and taking the time to see, eat, drink, and blog about his experiences.

He started in California and took a cruise ship across the Pacific — the current posts are about traveling across Mongolia on horseback and in a Russian-made UVZ van. Schatzker has a good sense of humor that comes through in his writing, and the informal nature of the blog makes for a fun read. For an example, check out “My Sorry Attempt at Fly Fishing in Mongolia”.

Thanks to Commute by Bike for pointing to an article and new guide on the Guardian website.

“The world’s greatest invention” is a lovely article by Matt Seaton on one of the greatest gifts of the 19th Century to the 21st.

It seems a paradox in the age of consumer electronics and ever more gorgeously refined designer “black goods”, but it’s this sturdy piece of Victorian technology - the good old bike - that we love most. But why does the bicycle occupy this special place in our affections?

Writers such as Henry Miller and Iris Murdoch preach the joy of cycling, as much a symbol of freedom as a means of transportation.

This is just one introductory article in the Guardian’s impressive Cycling Guide, most of which is applicable outside the UK, and just got bookmarked by me for lots of later reading. That will be the limit of my cycling-related activities until my shoulder heals enough.