Oh, the places I would visit had I the money, the physical strength and the time! Certain words conjure up visions of adventure in exotic places: the Taj Mahal, Tahiti, Timbuktu, the Matterhorn, Bora Bora, Everest, the Valley of the Kings, Stonehenge, Lake Titicaca, Galapagos, the Adirondacks, Easter Island, Katmandu, Machu Pichu, Mount Kilimanjaro . . .
I’ve seen Stonehenge and the Adirondacks, but not the other places. However, I can use my imagination and vicariously enjoy the adventures of others. Also, Bill and I have shared many experiences such as backpacking in the Tetons and hiking to the bottom of Bryce Canyon that I can always access by visiting my internal store of memories.
Sometimes someone’s comment, a movie or even a sentence in a book can fire our imaginations with the desire to see a place. I might never have had any interest in Kilimanjaro — oh what a delicious name! — if I hadn’t read Ernest Hemingway’s fine short story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” Hemingway was a sportsman who loved fishing, boxing, skiing and hunting. He based his stories about Africa on his experiences there when he went on safaris. “Safari” is another word that produces thoughts of African adventures and the great animals.
Times have changed since I was a girl. Other than soldiers, relatively few Americans went to Europe, let alone Africa. My father never even saw the ocean. He and my mother had to be content with armchair adventures such as Richard Halliburton’s tales of derring-do. Haliburton was a professional adventurer who earned his living from books and lectures. He was arrested at Gibraltar, swam the Panama Canal and climbed the Matterhorn with inadequate preparation, experience and equipment. His last adventure at age 39 ended in his being lost at sea during a hurricane during an attempt to sail in a junk from Hong Kong to California.
Nowadays people think nothing of hopping on a jet that whisks them off to places that my parents could only dream of seeing. One of my physicians, Dr. David Stuhldreher, mentioned to me that he and his family had climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. “We like to go on adventures.” “Oh!” I said. “I always wanted to go there. Are you familiar with Hemingway’s story?” “Yes,” he replied. “I’d love to hear about your experience.” People ask where the ideas for my columns come from. Many come from random experiences and comments.
I reread “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” before starting this. Hemingway’s writing appears to be straightforward, but much is left to the reader to figure out. I can’t find evidence that Hemingway actually went to the top of Kilimanjaro, but he saw it during a safari.
He mentions the mountain only a couple of times. It is a metaphor I think, for Hemingway’s own life, relationships, failures and fears. The protagonist is an author who is dying of gangrene caused by a untreated scratch from a thorn. Aware of his impending death, he remembers snows that he has seen and experiences that he never wrote about — and now, sadly, he never will.
The highest point in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro is over 19,000 feet high. It is scientifically described as a sky island because it rises up from lowlands of a dramatically different environment. Dr. Stuhldreher and I aren’t the only ones fascinated by Kilimanjaro. I encountered a blog on the Internet with a photo of a cute young woman sticking her thumb out like a hitchhiker. She’s soliciting funds to go to Kilimanjaro. Perhaps I’ll send a tiny donation to help her do what I cannot.
Dr. Stuhldreher described how lovely it was when they were above the clouds and could see by the light of the full moon. I think that all of us have similar experiences that are distilled into snapshots in our internal photograph albums. More to come: the trek to the top of the sky island.
wclarke@comcast.net