The Blog

A blazing summer afternoon yesterday found me on the side of a road in Sunnyvale, California.  I had too much luggage – it’s been a long week of travel for me – plus the viola in its big black case.  I was unreasonably happy because one of those sites for which the Internets are famous had given me five ways to go by public transportation between San Francisco and my Sunnyvale hotel, and as the big bus drew up next to me I knew that the plan – published to me via my phone – was going to work.

I struggled up the steps, found two wrinkled dollar bills in my pocket, and settled down for a ten-minute ride to my destination. I had managed to locate the right bus.  Unbelievable.

Compare, though, Theodore Roosevelt’s 1914 Brazilian adventure.  If you have time for a paperback this summer, make it “Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey: The River of Doubt“.  It’s hard to come up with a word other than “gripping,” so I’ll use that for now.  The expedition was hopelessly under-equipped: far from enough food (although trunkfuls of condiments), and no boats by the time they reached the head of the completely unexplored River of Doubt.  (They ended up using 2500lb dugout canoes that couldn’t be manuvered in the water or easily portaged across land.)  They had far too much luggage – tons of it – that they had to simply abandon without knowing what useful supplies were in it.

The jungle was teeming with predators, both animal and human, and the nights screamed with terrifying noises.  The river was impossible to predict, full of deadly rapids and alligators and biting fish, and no one knew where it led.  They faced almost certain starvation, disease, and misery, in addition to the obvious mortal danger of the twisting river and its rapids overhung by matted trees and swarms of blood-sucking insects.  They couldn’t retrace their steps once they’d started down the river.  Their only choice was to go ever onward and hope to emerge at the other end someday.  And they had to make measurements, slowly, hundreds of times a day – because they were mapping the river for the very first time.

At the end of my 10-minute bus ride yesterday afternoon, I lumped the suitcase and viola down the steep steps of the bus and walked, oh, 100 yards to the front of the hotel.  We had a pleasant dinner last night at an Indian restaurant – featuring many of the condiments TR had left behind as he plunged down the rapids of the River of Doubt.  On the way back to the hotel the GPS led us astray, sending us up and over a freeway underpass in what seemed to be a long circular route. There was a little grumbling about this.

As always with Roosevelt, I can only imagine what he’d think of us these days.