The Blessings of a Good Thick Skirt. Mary Russell
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of the traveller appears as incomprehensible as it is intriguing. Here are people who have succumbed to the treacherous seduction of the unknown, who actually choose to put their lives at risk by climbing the sheer and icy face of an avalanche-ridden mountain; who sail alone in frail craft through towering seas; who will eat maggots and river insects if nothing more palatable is on offer and who can live, day and night for months on end, in the shadow, and the promise, of the unknown.
It is easy to dismiss such people as oddities – as indeed they are – to be relegated to the bedlam of flat-earthers, freefall divers or indeed writers. That they exist cannot be denied, but the strange, uncomfortable world they occupy lies well outside our everyday experience and can be dismissed, we tell ourselves, as an irrelevancy. We can shrug our shoulders and return thankfully to the twentieth-century world of microwave food and answerphones, glad that the only risks to our own health are the predictable ones of smoking, eating hydrolyzed animal protein or making a kamikaze dash across a city street.
Yet turning away is not enough. There is a residual, nagging curiosity, an invisible thread that pulls us back to seek an explanation. Travellers consciously choose a life of discomfort and danger and somehow their choice of lifestyle is a challenge to our own. We may even harbour the uneasy thought that in so choosing they have acted with more freedom than the rest of us who remain in bondage to the comforts of materialism.
For Ann Davison and her husband Frank, their fatal attempt to cross the Atlantic was a matter of expediency rather than choice, for the wolf, in bailiff’s clothing, was at the door. Though pressed unwillingly into this last desperate step, it was a logical result of the precarious lifestyle they had chosen. Almost from the start, they were dogged by financial problems.
They had met when she was a commercial pilot, flying planes in and out of the small aerodrome which he at that time owned. Later, they tried to set up a hill farm and when this ran into difficulties they devised the plan of sailing across the Atlantic and capitalizing on what would undoubtedly have been a great adventure. Before they had time to plan it, however, they found that the bailiffs were intending to impound their boat and, in desperation, they fled, leaving home and debts behind. It was a gamble that failed to come off, but there was no other option – the die had been cast a long time ago. They were both adventurous people who could never be content with a nine-to-five existence devoid of challenge. In the air, at sea or out on a lonely, inhospitable hillside, they set themselves tasks the achievement of which took them far beyond the goals aimed at, let alone won, by most people.
The reasons why men and women set themselves the challenge of going beyond the limits of everyday endurance are numerous, complex and mysterious. Few can articulate their motives and fewer still feel it necessary so to do. Their actions speak for themselves. It is usually only after the journey has been completed that travellers will allow themselves the luxury of attempting an analysis, constructing a package of reasons which seem rational and can be presented to the questioner as a sort of peace-offering.
Most, however, are in thrall to a driving force within them which pushes them onward – a force which they seem powerless to resist. The force has no name but its function is to explore the potential of the human species to adapt to conditions that are both challenging and dangerous. By so doing, it increases our potential for survival. One could argue that a few individuals – sailors, fliers, travellers or mountaineers – while appearing needlessly to expose themselves to danger and death may, in fact, be unconsciously serving the interests of us all.
There are, of course, many more mundane reasons why travellers and explorers set out into the unknown, pitting their wits against the elements, testing their physical and mental endurance, and exposing themselves to unforeseen perils.
Commercial interests, religion, and personal satisfaction have all been strong motivating forces. So too has been the craving for adventure, the complicated need for approval and acclaim. All these factors contribute towards that complex spirit known as the explorer, and standing apart from these reasons is the insatiable, intellectual need to know the unknown, to grasp the mercurial mystery of life itself.
And where do women fit in to this? It seems a contradiction and denial of their sex that women should risk the very thing which only they can nurture and sustain, namely life itself. Yet despite being hemmed in by society’s barriers, their vision obscured by fixed horizons, their growth stunted and their potential to develop forced into the narrow channels leading to marriage and motherhood, women throughout the centuries have managed to transcend their condition and reach out for the world. The reason is clear. If they are to do more than simply give life – if they are to enrich it as well – then the journey must be made which takes them beyond the physical and mental confines set by society. That women are capable of grasping this aspect of their destiny has been ably demonstrated by those pioneers who, valuing freedom more than conformity, have walked out into the world and taken possession of it.
This book, however, is less concerned with theories than with the reasons offered by women themselves as to why they soar off into the dawn skies, trudge across deserts, sail into uncharted waters or cling perilously to the peaks of snowbound mountains. And these reasons are myriad: to escape from domesticity or the drudgery of a routine job; to recover from a broken love affair; to experience the thrill of danger; to demonstrate that woman’s name is definitely not frailty; to bring the Bible to China; to study plant life or unknown peoples; to delve into the past; to expiate a private guilt; to honour a dead partner; to glorify their country; to find something interesting to write about – or simply to have fun.
That some set out with no motive other than to enjoy themselves is clear – and to me this is the best reason of all. Our stern society, however, requires reasons for such extraordinary behaviour, reasons which the good-humoured traveller is usually prepared to give. ‘I know in my heart of hearts that it is a most excellent reason to do things merely because one likes the doing of them. However, I would advise all those who wish to see un wrinkled brows at passport offices to start out ready labelled as entomologists, anthropologists or whatever other ology they think suitable and propitious.’ If a scholar as emminent as Freya Stark advises travellers to don a cloak of respectability then we can safely assume that many of the ‘reasons’ offered are nothing more than protective clothing.
Whatever the reality may be, we would be unwise to ignore the reasons which women travellers themselves offer, for they provide us with a real insight into their minds, backgrounds and attitudes. Nor can we ignore the likelihood that of all the reasons offered, there may be no single one which predominates over all others. Like any spirited individual, each traveller is a conundrum, a tapestry of experiences whose pattern is so complex as to defy the simple definition.
Naomi Mitchison is an energetic and forthright traveller now in her eighties. She has witnessed, over the years, an enormous change in the fortunes of women and has herself been instrumental in that change. Born at the turn of the century into an academic family in Oxford, she grew up during the pre-war years when there was neither the time nor the opportunity for the sort of excitement a spirited young girl such as she might have enjoyed. Instead, marriage at sixteen followed by a large family left her with a yearning for something more than the daily domestic and social round, and with an aplomb that some career-minded mothers today might envy, she left her family – the youngest was only two – in the care of a team of servants and set sail from the Thames for Leningrad, bearing greetings to Russian writers. Later, in America during the 1930s, she travelled to the southern cotton fields, lending support to striking farmers. ‘Pitch it strong, sister,’ they told her. Domesticity could hold little attraction from then on and travelling became not merely an escape, but an essential part of her life.
While a dislike of domestic routine may have prompted some women to travel abroad, others, though not many, left to forget a lost love. In 1810 Hester Stanhope, grieving over the death at Corunna of the man she loved – Sir John Moore – left England on a journey which she hoped would help her forget. She was never to return. Gertrude Bell, forbidden by a possessive father to marry the man she loved, sought solace by immersing herself in study and set out to embark on a lifetime of travel throughout the ageless deserts of Arabia. More recently, Christina Dodwell, explorer and fearless whitewater canoeist, set off on her first trek through Africa as a result of a broken love affair; her heart however,