The Explorers Page #3

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considered

one of the most romantic

jobs on earth

Everybody wants to do it

But nobody sees it for

what it really is

being hot, insects

diseases

People see the glamour of

the finished product

or the glamour of the travel

and they want to do it

But they don't really want

to do it

Why do explorers subject

themselves to such hardship?

You've got to have something

that drives you

because you are getting

into the suffering

the hardships, being away

from home

So if you don't feel like

you've got a mission

I don't think you can put

those feet

in front of you when

the going gets tough

There's difficult cultures

difficult political

situations

difficult physical

circumstances

and no guarantee of

anything except that

there's gonna be

an endless number of hurdles

that you're gonna have to

pass over

to pull something out

and make it meaningful

And that is enough to

really deter any

but the most hardened

explorer

There's fleas that burrow

into your feet and lay eggs

You gotta deal with those

You may get 100 a night

that you gotta deal with

There's other animals that

go into your privates and

burrow away

Shuffling in the mud,

looking for animals

There was heat and there

is piranhas

and there is caimans and

there is crocodiles

and killer bees

Then there is the mosquitoes

that bite you

and cause all the different

kinds of malaria

Then there is flies biting

that cause blindness and

elephantitis

It's just endless

It's five a.m.

and I'm going out to

photograph in the fig tree

that [Neil] just rigged

a tree platform in

I'm trying to get pictures

of monkeys and birds

which are real elusive

I have no assurance that

they'll be there

I just hope so

I studied art as a young man

I was a painter and

I wasn't very good at it

As soon as I picked up

a camera

and took

my first photographs

when I was 18 in college

I decided at that moment

that's what I was gonna do

There's something in nature

that is out of our realm

of control

I'm not sure what it is

It's an essence

That's what I have been

looking for all my life

Who knows how to get

a frog to stand up?

It is this word "wild"

which means not controlled

What's behind that is

trying to

find an essence that

I can't define

but we all know what it is

We all know that there's

something edgy out there

that keeps us whole

because we come from

wildness, too

In 1997, when Nichols was

photographing tigers in India

his journey embodied

the new creed of exploration

Unlike earlier explorers

he is not driven by a desire

to return with animals

in cages or trophy heads...

but with pictures?

pictures he hopes will save

these animals from

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