Readings for the Road

An Interview with Bruce Northam,
Co-Editor of
In Search of Adventure- A Wild Anthology

by Jeff Booth

Imagine a book of one hundred tales that pulls you in like an underwater current and spits you back out 436 pages later, gasping for air. Imagine a book, where upon finishing it, you feel reborn and baptised in the rush of globetrotting. You're ready to dive in yourself. In Search of Adventure - A Wild Anthology by Bruce Northam and Brad Olsen is such a book.

Hatched as an idea between two veteran travelers, Northam and Olsen, while crossing a bridge in Salzburg, Austria, this collection of travel stories spans the extremely odd (Northam's story of naked frisbee in Papau, New Guinea) to the truly scary (chased by elephants in Africa), with every nuance of laughter and revelation in between. The stories are wonderfully democratic - youthful backpackers on a budget and high rollers with packs full of travelers checks each weave tales of insanity and beauty on the road.

Bruce Northam, age 37, is also the author of The Frugal Globetrotter. Northam's journeys include shepherding in Morocco, being a stuntman in Chinese films, and now makes traveling and storytelling not only his passion but his livelihood. In a recent phone interview, Northam spoke about the stories in this anthology and the traveling life while he was spending a few days in a cabin in upstate New York.

Student World Traveler: What was the motivation for the anthology?
Bruce Northam: I wanted to get a 100 people to write the story they would tell if they were around a campfire with all their best friends and they were asked to tell their best story. That's the vibe I went after.

SWT: I wanted to ask about the title, In Search of Adventure. If I go bungee jumping is that an adventure? If I go walking through Paris? What does adventure mean?
BN: One definition that's been thrown around is: "adventures happen when the plan screws up." As far as bungee jumping and jumping out of a plane on a surfboard or ice climbing, that's extreme adventure. That's something I shy away from in my writing and my lecturing. Although I'm athletic and I used to risk my life frequently daredeviling, I try to talk to the common people about things anybody could do if they have some "chutzpah." My main thing is getting to a region where you don't know anybody and picking a direction to walk in all day. If you look in the book, my story "Travel Canons" (one of my four stories in the book), is essentially the crux of what I'm telling to college America. One suggestion is about what we're talking about, getting on the roof of the place you're staying in, looking in a 360 degree angle and figuring the best direction to walk in. Meeting the locals and seeing them while they work even, not being afraid to step into their "factory." Adventure, to me, is not about bungee jumping. Those are tourist inventions.

SWT: I had a question about one of the travel canons. You wrote: "the 'I was really off the beaten path, they'd never seen white people before' rap is getting rather old." What did you mean by that?
BN: I mean it's also borrowing from that extreme adventure model that we all live by. We've all got to be the most rugged, the most dangerous, the highest, the farthest that anyone's ever been. That's more about ego, about trying to prove something. For me adventure's not about trying to prove anything. Sure, it's great to be where there have been no other westerners or just a trickle - that's a mind blower. But that shouldn't just be the ultimate goal. ... It's not a competition to the highest, lowest, deepest or farthest edge of civilization... What I'm trying to point out is that adventure travel is not a competition. It's not about developing the most rugged story to tell your friends, it should be about being in the moment, being content with whatever unfolds.

SWT: Do you have a favorite story in here?
BN: One of my favorite stories is "The Doctor," the second story, about someone having their head examined by a Chinese witch doctor. I'm also fond of a story called "In Search of Connection," which is about a daughter after her father's death retracing his steps in a French village where he'd come in as a paratrooper and he was hidden and protected by a French family from German troops.

SWT: I know that when I was travelling, I generally seemed to come across younger people. and that has to do a lot with they way I traveled, backpacking. A lot of these stories are in that style. What is the difference in experiences between backpack budget travel and high-end, more luxury travel? Is there a difference?
BN: Absolutely.

SWT: Is one or the other a better way to travel?
BN: It depends on your level of freedom and timing. Two of the most polar trips of my travel career were last month. I had a $10,000 cruise down the inside passage of Alaska, as a travel writer, so it wasn't my dime. Then I went into a wilderness survival school in western New Jersey, run by Tom Brown. I'm much more comfortable around the backpacking set. But as your level of expenditure increases, you can afford certain luxuries that make life nice, like having a guide, and learning more. So your learning curve can soar, you can afford to have the right guides. Also, when you start having the money to have others do the nitty-gritty things for you, you can enlist a proficient outfitter, who can smooth out the potential problems of getting permits, dealing with obstacles, planning to encounter various festivals, having back-up plans when things go wrong.

SWT: Did you ever have a worst experience on the road? These stories in the book tend to be pretty positive, though some are rougher.
BN: There are some stories though, like Jeff Greenwald's story about begging and social responsibility, and a story about getting mugged in Istanbul but yes, in general, the book is more of a feel-good book than a "here's my worst nightmare story." My own worst travel experience was when a buddy of mine and I were hitchhiking in Australia. The guys went off road and pulled knives on us to steal our packs, which were in the trunk. I got out of it when I said, "Listen, I'm trained in martial arts and no matter what you guys do, one of you will either have your eyeball smashed in or your throat ripped out, even if you stab us. One of you will lose your throat or your eyeball." I'm not trained in martial arts, but that got our packs back.

SWT: They just backed off?
BN: They backed off, threw our packs on the ground, and drove off. That's when my pack was everything; it'd be easier to separate with now.

SWT: I have another question about your travel canons listed in the anthology. One that struck me is when you beg the reader not to go to Europe first.
BN: I should have rephrased that to say, "If you plan to see the entire world, save Europe for later." If people are gong to be content to come out of college, do two months of travel, then sign up with the boss, then yeah, Europe is great. Great starter kit. But when you're young and healthy, if you do want to be a world traveler, take on the more demanding countries first. Plus Europe's expensive. If economics are a concern, and you have a vision of globetrotting everywhere, then that canon works. So now that we've spoken, one thing that I've learned from this interview is that canon needs to be modified.

SWT: Is that your dad's piece about John Muir in there?
BN: Yes.

SWT: How did that come about?
BN: My dad's a great writer and he's pretty selfless. He could have written about one of his adventures, but he saw it more fit to write about one of his heroes. I think it's pretty evident that my dad's interest in Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau and John Muir, those were his heroes, those were the visionaries that he followed, and he passed on their sense of "wildness" to his sons.

SWT: Final thoughts?
BN: There's one canon in my list that should really be the first canon: "The first thing you pack is yourself." That would be a tip. Hopefully it's an open positive, compassionate person.

Bruce delivers multimedia lectures to colleges and businesses about world travel. For information on having Bruce present at your school, call Bill Paquin, Greater Talent Network, Inc (212) 647-6316.

In Search of Adventure - (800) 356-9315
The Frugal Globetrotter - (800) 992-2908