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Digital Archive: AfricaBib
Mary Kingsley, African explorer, ca 1890 For me, graduate school was a happy time, of long days in the archives and long afternoons in the Ratskeller. To be fair though there were also moments of...
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The Gertrude Bell Archive
Gertrude Bell and Sir Percy Cox, Mesopotamia, 1917 My students are usually pretty good at the why questions of history. Why did the French revolt against their King? Answers include “Peasant...
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Lessons of the Free Solo
Steph Davis free soloing The Diamond, Longs Peak, Colorado As a student of exploration, it would be fun to tell you that my eureka moments come at the end of long days of dog-sledding, bear-wrestling,...
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The Smudgy Window of History
Stephen Dobyns It is sunny, cold, and quiet here in Hartford. No one is out. Everyone, it seems, is waiting for the big storm that will roll through this afternoon. It seemed a good opportunity to sit...
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Call Me Starbuck
Guy Waterman On February 6 2000, Guy Waterman drove his Subaru Impreza to Franconia Notch in New Hampshire, hiked up Mt Lafayette, and in the windy -16 degree night, let himself die of exposure....
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Interview with Steph Davis
Davis on El Capitan Steph Davis climbs such outrageously steep things that one wonders whether sorcery is involved, that perhaps her gifts extend beyond climbing to include the manipulation of physics....
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Where No ENFP Has Gone Before, Part I
Myers-Briggs personality assessments are sprouting up everywhere on Facebook this week. For those who don’t know what this is, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is the most widely used...
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First, Fastest, Youngest
Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay on Mt Everest, 1953 Firsts have always been important in exploration. This seems rather straightforward, even tautological, to say since being first is woven into the...
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The Myth of Pure Experience
The Hero’s Journey The hero’s journey is a story common to all human cultures. While this story varies from from place to place and era to era, there are deep structural similarities among its forms....
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Remembering the Race to the South Pole 100 Years Ago
British Antarctica expedition at South Pole in 1912 standing near Roald Amundsen's tent. From left to right: Robert Scott, Titus Oates, Edward Wilson, and Edgar Evans. Credit: The Australian. One...
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