Explorer of the Month: Fish Tales

     So I have been itching for spring to get here so it can finally warm up and I can start fishing. In honor of the arrival of my excitement for fishing I am nominating my favorite fisherman for Explorer of the Month. Fishing isn't usually the first thing that pops into mind when one thinks of exploring. I admit that it wasn't on my radar either until one man convinced me. His name is Jeremy Wade, host of the Animal Planet program River Monsters. Mr. Wade is a biologist by trade, but is also a renown "extreme angler". On his TV show he travels the world in search of over sized fish that may explain local legends and lore about man eating monsters in the the world's river systems. It is not only the travel to exotic, or some times rather mundane locales that makes him an explorer. Just by viewing the show, one can tell that Wade has the utmost interest in not only his quarry, but the stories and people involved.
     One of the most intriguing episodes takes place in Africa where he is fishing for the Goliath Tiger Fish. During this particular adventure, he becomes involved with a local tribe, learns about fishing gangs, hears a story about marauding hippos and handles some of mankind's very first fishing implements. If that does scream exploring, I don't know what does.
    Recently, I had the joy of reading his book "River Monsters: True Stories of the Ones that Didn't get Away". While at first glance, the book appears to simply be a rehash of the first couple seasons of the show. However, the stories he tells are filled with interesting asides and misadventures that Mr. Wade has gone through from his time as a young hopeful obsessed with fishing to the man he is today. We are talking plane crashes, encounters with Natives, and being arrested for espionage. These are things, that while mentioned on the show, are retold in great detail that makes the book interesting on many levels.
     It obvious from the words on the pages that Jeremy Wade had a deep caring for the these giants "monsters" and greatly laments that they are disappearing from the planet and that he may in fact be one of the last people to witness some of these giants. Jeremy Wade is a man, while I do not know him personally, that I look up to. His genuine interest in the world around him and the people within it alone makes him worthy of Explorer of the Month. If you haven't seen the show check it out on Amazon Instant Video, all of the seasons are free to stream with Amazon Prime. Also the book is a great buy for those interested in biology, fishing, or travel writing. It is complete with full color photos of some of his most awesome catches and adventures.

 www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_4_13?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=river+monsters+book&sprefix=river+monster%2Caps%2C341

P.S. Sorry I haven't been posting much content, my very last undergraduate semester is finally coming to a close and I have been quite busy. However, I have several items in the works as well as some guest writers. Stay tuned and hang in there with me! Thanks guys!

Explorer of the Month for December, 2012: Tyson Meyers

     I wanted to start off my first Explorer of the Month post with someone that is not in text books or Wikipedia pages and who had also had great influence on me and my sense of adventure. This man I speak of is named Tyson Meyers. Tyson and I met as wayward baristas in a lonely coffee shop on Tucson's Broadway boulevard. He is a giant of a man with a sense of humor and a love for beer. We immediately hit it off. He is the progeny of two very friendly rocket scientists (really, that's a real thing) and very talented with computers. We hung out and talked about treasure, archaeology and places to go for awhile and eventually we settled on our first real foray into the wilderness. There is a fairly popular cave on the soft backside of the Catalina Mountain Range in near Tucson, AZ named Peppersauce Cave. It is said that the there was once an old prospector out in the Catalinas searching for gold who had settled down to eat dinner at his camp fire in front of the wide cave mouth. He had a prized bottle of hot sauce that he had bought from a old Indian woman that he used at every meal. He had set it on the rocky ground next to his pack and mule and went to relieve himself in bushes. Upon his return the pepper sauce was no where to be found.
     The cave was very dark and the inside humidity kept the rocks covered in a thin layer of water and muddy dust. The entrance is large but rapidly narrows, a squeeze that I struggled with due to the size of all the gear I had, Tyson, ever fearless dove in and forced himself through. The next section of the cave opened up into a large dome with a rock slide that led to a level below, and if we happened to miss the small hop at the end of the slide there was the ever welcoming blackness below. We climbed through various tunnels and up and down boulders until we arrived at the first of a series of underground lakes. In the 90's a couple of divers from California came to explore the tunnels and lakes and see if what the uncharted regions of the cave system had to offer. They discovered in a second underground lake and small row boat tied to a rock and a ladder propped up against the side of the cave showing that at one time the water had to have been much lower. These couple of artifacts must have been there since at least the end of the 1800's, the last time the water level was recorded that low.
     Tyson is also a connoisseur of the abandoned; an avid urban explorer. Urban Exploration is somewhat of a subculture of people who live to see what they aren't supposed to; be it subway tunnels, abandoned factories or drainage systems. These are all places built by man and eventually forgotten or roped off from prying eyes for whatever reason. In my youth I had a similar hobby of exploring abandoned houses in the Nebraska countryside. For the sake of not incriminating anyone and maintaining the sort of secrecy that the Urban Explorer community prefers I will not go into any details of where we had gone or what we had seen. While these places are not the product of nature like what I usually write about, they are prime examples of the roads less traveled, the real point of my blog. I have seen Tyson pouring over maps, floor plans, blue prints, diagrams and planning trips so he could dare see what others did not choose to see. This is an individual that embodies all that the explorer truly is, a drive to see and to do, to go where others haven't dared, and for this I would like to deem him honorary Blank Spaces Explorer of the Month. In a world where the easiest paths are heavily trodden, when no one cares to see what lies beneath their feet, here is a man that is truly an explorer like those of old, in mind and spirit. I raise a glass to you my friend, for boldly going where none have gone before.