Exploration and Adventure

I recently joined a writer's group called the Explorers Club. It was a natural for me - I am an adventure writer, after all. But there is a subtle difference between exploration and adventure.

Exploration is the search for something. I was going to say something new and unique, but that's not quite right. In my former career, I was a geologist exploring for oil and natural gas, which is not something new. I suppose you could argue that the discovery of a new oil deposit is, in fact, something new, but that's splitting hairs. The traditional, behind a desk, search is not new. Lots of geologist do it.

But take yourself back to the early days of the oil business, say the early 1900's. Imagine a young American geologist, dressed in Indiana Jones khaki's, with a holstered pistol on one hip, a rock hammer on the other, shouldering a heavy canvas back pack. He's just walked down the gangplank of a rusty steamer and into a maelstrom of dark-skinned, bare-backed locals unloading the ship's cargo. It is hot and humid in the port of Cartagena, and his shirt is already wet from the sweat of apprehension as much as from the stifling heat.

The young man is about to set off to the middle of the Colombian jungle in search of black gold. He will go where no white man has gone before - perhaps where no human has gone before - in search of that oil. He is an explorer and he is already experiencing an adventure. He stands a very good chance of experiencing many more during his travels in those tropical forests.

Exploration opens the door to adventure. It is not the only way to experience adventures, but it is definitely one of the coolest ones, especially to readers. That's why most of my characters are explorers, of one sort or another. They do what they do precisely because they will have adventures. They force them to happen. They are addicted to them. They are members of the Explorers Club.