Adventurers

I recently posted some photos of a kayaking trip I took off the coast of Washington (San Juan Islands). Someone responded that she wished she was an adventurer like me. I said that I didn’t put myself in that category and she replied that she hadn’t meant like a Sir Edmund Hillary or Jacques Cousteau, but up there, for an amateur.

I’m not even sure I would consider them the epitome of the genre. If my yardstick was living on the edge, millions of dollars in sponsored equipment and ample time on the champagne lecture circuit wouldn’t do it. I have met the real adventurers and they don’t have sponsors. They don’t even have addresses. They are the guides of the out-there variety.

I first encountered a diluted version of the breed when I started rafting the West Virginia whitewater rivers. I talked with some guides and learned that they summered there as raft guides and wintered on ski patrols in Colorado. At the time, that seemed footloose to me.

I was beginning a family then and this struck me as a radically nomadic life. But, Aspen and a relatively short drive to Pittsburgh aren’t exactly the far corners of the earth. I had yet to meet the truly free spirits.

The first one might’ve been Chewy. I nicknamed him that because he resembled Chewbacca from “Star Wars.” He was the assistant guide on a week-long kayak trip I took in Glen Canyon (UT).

Toward the end of the week, I commented to the lead guide that I had thought I knew how to pack light, but had learned something from Chewy. He wore the same things all week, as far as I could tell. “Those are his clothes,” was the reply.

“I know they’re his. Or, at least I assumed that.”

“No, those are his clothes. His only clothes.”

That was pretty accurate. Aside from what he wore on that trip, he owned a parka. During warm and moderate weather, that resided in the trunk of a friend’s car.

The guided trips and Chewie were based in Page, AZ, which is 300 miles from either Phoenix or Las Vegas. Which is to say, in the high desert and the middle of nowhere. Between trips, which supplied meals and a tent to Chewie, there was maybe a day in Page to clean and restock equipment. On those occasions, Chewie slept in the barn with the kayaks.

Chewy declined to talk about himself. The other guide said that the young man had been part of a strict Mormon family up north and it became too much for him. Chewie was essentially hiding out.

He had no house or apartment, no car, no anything. Everything he owned, he wore. He might’ve had a toothbrush. I know he didn’t own a razor. That’s life on the edge. The closest I came was when I went off to college and carried all my possessions in a laundry bag.

Francisco was a more sophisticated version. He was the guide I had on a kayak trip on the Sea of Cortez off Baja Mexico. He was an extremely personable Chilean and had been a lawyer, TV news anchor and a few other glamorous things he told us about in entertaining fashion.

Ten months a year, he lived out of the kayaks on the tours. There, he cultivated the guests for the other two months when he would travel the world from one to another, availing himself of their hospitality. He was a charmer and few could resist.

The true nomads strike me as the ultimate adventurers. But, I’ve always been too dug in to see myself living that way. Maybe now that I’m coming up on retirement. Nah.