ATA-4 Brenda E Smith

This is Author to Author. I'm Tim Trott, and this is the channel where I introduce you to interesting authors like Brenda E. Smith. Brenda E. Smith is an author whose real-life story could be its own adventure novel. In fact, two so far. The story begins with an accountant keeping the gears turning behind the scenes of an adventure travel company. Then, like Jimmy Buffett says, changes in attitudes, changes in latitudes. The story reads like Ben Wyatt meets Lara Croft with a passport and a pen. In a moment, we'll meet Brenda E. Smith and let her account for her adventures in her own words. Author to Author is supported by Cybershoot Hosting. Tired of cookie-cutter websites and robot support? At Cybershoot Hosting, we build custom WordPress sites. No locked-in platforms, no frustrating bots, just your vision brought to life. For 25 years, we've paired human expertise with total flexibility. Need us to handle everything?

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Explain to me Spellbound by Wanderlust.

Well, Spellbound by Wanderlust really refers to a condition, a wanderlust condition that one finds oneself in when they step outside their comfort zone. For me, when I stepped outside my comfort zone, I started to discover all these amazing things in the world that I didn't know existed. And each one of those wondrous places or people or things that I saw were like candy, and it became almost addictive. I wanted more. I wanted to see more. And when one finds themselves in that condition, you have contracted wanderlust.

Which is probably why an accountant found herself as a tour guide.

I had been very shy when I was a child and was not that much interested in exploring the world or seeing new things or doing new things. Numbers were safety. Um, I got to be very proficient as an accountant, but there was a part of me that still wondered about what was out there. And so I basically took a trip in the Grand Canyon that changed my life. Um, I had a lot of people around me, including other guides who I looked up to almost as gods. They were They were beautiful physically, you know, muscular people, brilliant minds, understood how to survive, understood how to live in the world. And that was very attractive to me. I, I kind of worshiped them. I kind of thought how wonderful it would be to be like that.

You were challenged by changes in attitudes and changes in latitudes, if I can borrow something from a certain songwriter that we know well.

Yes, yes, Jimmy Buffett. Um, and I loved that song.

It happened to be a song that a lot of the river guides were playing at that time, and I just thought, God, you know, I, I want to get out, I want to see things, I want to explore. But I still was really, really kind of timid and shy, but One of the river guides that I went with on this Grand Canyon River trip actually ended up asking me to consider coming out to work for the company that was running the trip, Ours Incorporated. I didn't believe that he had, you know, I didn't believe he was really going to follow through with telling the owner of the company that he met somebody who should really come out and work with him, but he did. And so I went out and I interviewed, and before I knew it, I had left a very prestigious job with a public accounting firm in Boston to go to California, the foothills of California, to manage this little whitewater rafting company and to get trained as a whitewater river guide.

And how does that lead into a book called Becoming Fearless?

So I discovered once I had made the move to California that I was not only working for the whitewater rafting company that had taken me on the Grand Canyon trip, which was OARS Incorporated, but that the owner of OARS also had an interest of 1/3 interest in a very small fledgling company called Sobek Expeditions. And I found out that I actually got hired to work for Sobek as well. I never met the president of the company until he came back from a wilderness trip in the far-flung corner of the earth to say, oh, it's nice to meet you. Glad you're working for SOVEC. They didn't have a lot of extra money. So the way they compensated me was to offer me to go on one of their trips anywhere in the world once a year. And for me, that was okay as long as it was inside the United States. But the president said no, he, he wouldn't allow me to do one of their Alaska trips, which I really wanted to do. He decided I was going to go to Tanzania and go with him and 6 other river guides, taking a group of about 15 people on an exploratory trip through the largest uninhabited game reserve in Africa. That was back in 1981. Think about that. No cell phones, no way of communication with the outside world. And we were going to float through for 170 miles. We were going to float on a river system filled with hippos and crocodiles and miles and days of walking to get to the nearest civilization. In short, I was terrified. I really didn't want to do the trip. I really didn't. But I was too afraid to tell my boss, no, you know, I really don't want to do this. I was afraid because I thought they wouldn't respect me. They'd see me as a coward. And so I went. I just went. And I was terrified. I gave myself 50/50 chances of surviving the trip. And I did survive with some amazing experiences along the river. And also discovering things about myself that I never knew. So by the time I was done that trip, I was fully affected by wanderlust. I had, I had caught the condition and I just wanted to continue to explore the world. And so my first book that I wrote was Becoming Fearless, and it's all about that river trip through Tanzania. And we also climbed the backside of Mount Kilimanjaro on that trip as well. A lot of adventuring in that story.

You said at one point that the daredevil gene was missing from your DNA. So what drove you to leap from accountant to adventure guide?

Gene splicing, perhaps?

No, it was just basically fear of being branded a coward by my peers, by my boss. I mean, all the other people around me would have given their souls to do a trip with Sobek. It was what every guide aspired to do. And so I thought to myself, if everybody else really dreams of doing this and I'm the one that has the opportunity to do it, how How do I say no even though I'm scared to death? So yeah, I think on that trip I kind of underwent a gene mutation and my, my timidness turned into a little bit of fearlessness.

From becoming fearless and finding courage in the African wilderness, you went on to discovering the world with eyes wide open in a book called Becoming Amazed.

That's right, because once I was through with the trip in Tanzania, I knew I wanted more. I was like a junkie who I just needed to get more adventure, more exploration. And it didn't take long. I went back to California where SOBAC's headquarters were, resumed my job as the manager for OARS and SOBAC. But about 8 months later, there was a trip in Ethiopia, a 30-day-long river trip in Ethiopia that needed a guide. And Richard came to me. My boss Richard came to me again and said, would you like to do this trip in Ethiopia? And I was like, are you kidding me? Yes, of course I would. Well, the reason I got to go is because they, the experienced guides who usually did the Omo River trip, were doing a brand new exploratory on the Zambezi River in Zambia, the river that splits Zambia from Zimbabwe. So all the senior guides were going to go do that exploratory, which opened up this opportunity for me to do the trip in Ethiopia. And I loved that trip. We met very remote tribal people that just were not used to seeing white people, let alone even other Ethiopian people. And from that point on, I just— every opportunity that I had, I, I chose adventure over, you know, being safe. And I had— I've got myself into a few you know, tough situations. But mostly I have learned so much about our world, and I really wish everybody had that opportunity to see the whole of our world, not just this country of America that we live in, because the whole world is really amazing.

Was there a defining moment when you realized that you wanted to write memoirs about your experience?

Uh, yes, that, that moment when I decided that I needed to write these stories came primarily as a result of, of coming down with a very exceptionally rare condition called Stiff Person Syndrome. It was an incurable and progressive disease that really started to take my mobility away. So, um, as I found myself unable to use my legs, um, and found myself sitting in a chair a lot more than I spent walking, it occurred to me, rather than to consider it as this lemon, you know, thing that had happened to me, I was going to turn it into lemonade. And I thought, you know, I can't go adventuring anymore. Well, then I am going to write about the adventures I've had and share with the world the different things that I've learned about the world. So I sat and I didn't quite know where to begin, but I jumped into it the way I would jump into any adventure. And I started writing and with the support of, um, other folks on this author's journey, I was able to produce the first book, Becoming Fearless. Then the second book was a natural extension of that. Well, I've started telling my stories, might as well keep going. And so it was a little over a year later that Becoming Amazed: Discovering the World with Eyes Wide Open came out. And that's still only about one decade of my adventures. And I have more than a few decades of adventuring behind me. So expect more.

I'm still going to keep writing. How has writing these books changed the way you look upon your own past? Have you changed your perspective?

Writing the books has let me have the freedom of looking back on the things that I've seen and learned. And the biggest difference, or the biggest impact it's had on me, is to see how much our world has changed in the last 40 years. Places that were pure wilderness, untouched by human beings, are now being developed into hydroelectric power dams. They're being developed for accommodating growing populations. Wildlife that I had the opportunity to see has been being just really decimated in the 4 decades. So in writing these books, I've actually seen both the— how the world has progressed, but I've also seen how that progression has had some really devastating impacts on our world.

Is there one adventure that did not make it into the book but still lives rent-free in your mind?

There are lots of adventures that I haven't written about yet, but In that era of becoming amazed, I had another story about meeting a very interesting character called the Nawab of Kalibagh in Pakistan and getting to know him and being invited to spend time at his amazing palace on the Indus River in Pakistan. That led me to wanting to do a rafting trip down the Indus River, which we planned, but actually was given thumbs down by our ambassador in Pakistan at the time. But not to be deterred, I decided that the people that wanted to go with me, that we would actually go to the river crossing in Abbottabad and rent a wooden Indus River boat guided by, you know, local guides. And we did a trip down the Indus River for 3 days. Pretty remarkable.

You covered in your— in the space of, of, in the space of time, you covered 40 different countries. Were there any close calls or any moments like, what was I thinking moments like maybe a near-death experience?

Um, I think I've had plenty of close-call moments. I think when you're young, you don't realize sometimes the situations you're getting yourself into. Um, but certainly that first trip in Tanzania, we had so many close calls with wild animals. None of which, none of which really— there was no actual— how do I say this? Nobody was actually hurt by any of these encounters, but they made— they gave you pause to go, wait a minute, you know, a hippo's tooth is a foot long, and do I really want that going through my chest? There were other close call moments I talk about in Becoming Amazed. When I was traveling from my home base of Islamabad, Pakistan to Bangladesh. And on the day I was supposed to return, the Americans bombed Libya. And I was really terrified of getting on a plane and flying back to Islamabad because 3 years before I was stationed there, students staged a protest against Americans conflict with Islamic people and burned the American embassy to the ground. And so I was pretty, you know, torn about trying to fly back to Pakistan in the middle of what was a worldwide exposure of what the Americans attacking Libya. I did fly back, and as it turned out, the students were in the middle of their exams and In Asia, there's such a high premium put on education that even something as blatant as the news that was being splashed across the television screens showing the bombing of Libya wouldn't deter the students from, you know, getting their exams taken. So, um, you never quite know exactly what you're going to run into. So if you're an adventurer, you have to kind of be vigilant all the time. You know, look at what your situations, what situations you're walking into, um, and play it by ear. That's, that's what I learned from the most experienced river guides is that if something doesn't work exactly the way you expect it, there's another way to get around it. And if that doesn't work, there's another way to get around it. So very, very resourceful in overcoming obstacles or challenges.

On the practical side, how do you remember it all? Do you keep a journal?

No, actually, a lot of people have asked me that. Well, how, how do you, how can you write such detailed descriptions of these places you've been 40 years ago? Um, I've actually taught a class called The Story of Story, and I, what I teach my students about is how the brain works. Our human brains exist to keep us alive. And so when you go into any new situation, your brain is actually collecting data just like a sponge and storing it because it might be helpful sometime in, in helping you to survive. And so the very first time you encounter something new, your brain goes into overdrive. And for me and my adventuring, all of it was new. And so my brain actually retained so much information about this first trip to Tanzania that I still, 40 years later, have very vivid recall of much of what happened on that river trip. Interestingly enough, when I went back to Ethiopia and did the 30-day-long river trip, I don't have the same amount of recall because it's not— it was no longer something new and different or strange. So yeah, I tend to not really keep journals, but I do have a really good memory. And it's interesting that, you know, your brain will absorb so much information whenever you're encountering a new sort of situation. And of course, as I traveled around the world, each time I put myself into an adventure in a different place, my brain really remembered a lot of it. So that's, that's my secret.

It had a big impact on you. So based on that, what advice would you have for someone who feels stuck in a desk job but dreams of a more adventurous life? What cautions and, and what advice would you give?

My advice is, and it always has been, your body is at its best when it's young. And if you can, you need to get out and see the world while you still have a really well-functioning body, even if it means, you know, not staying in fancy hotels, but maybe doing some backpacking or hosteling. Also, the wilderness part of the world is vanishing with such speed. It's almost incredible to me. So my advice to young people is to go out and travel as much as you can. When you're young. And if you're older, don't, don't put it off, you know, start to schedule your vacations to the places that you really want to go that you dreamed of seeing. Just do it. It may not be there that much longer. You may not be there that much longer. So I encourage— I always, I almost wish that life worked the other way around. I almost wish that once you got through college, you didn't have to work for, say, like 10 years. And during those 10 years, you know, in my mind, the government would give you a stipend and you could go travel around the world and see whatever you wanted to. But then after the end of the 10 years, you would go to work and you would work basically until you died. But that's, that's kind of an extreme way of looking at it. But it's, it's what I, I wish that all young people had an opportunity to travel a lot more because with that comes understanding of the world and other people and the responsibility for sharing the resources of our world in an equitable way.

Thank you so much for being with us. I really appreciate you being with us on Author to Author.

Well, thank you for inviting me, and I really think it's important to get out and travel, see the world while you can. And if this is any little bit of what I've said can, you know, stir an inkling in you to do it, then just go do it.

Thank you.

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