Month: April 2021

An Ode to the Ambitious Traveler

On By Neal MooreIn Freedom, Literary Reverie, Wanderlust2 Comments

By Neal Moore

The one and only Trips magazine

I picked up my first copy of TRIPS magazine at a “safari & travel” Banana Republic store of yesteryear. I was a kid, it was the late 1980s, and I can say – as oddball as this might sound – that I’ve spun the globe with it ever since. Its mantra of what travel can (and should) look and feel and taste like, open-mindedness-wise, sense-of-curiosity-wise, and being-alive-wise – “to get as deep inside a culture as constraints of language and understanding will allow” – has helped form my take, my very own spin on this world.

There was only ever one issue produced – so the Spring 1988 edition serves as both the debut and finale edition. I lost my original copy a long time back and have since given away many more, so I try to snag one every chance I get (thanks eBay). I like to think of TRIPS as a bible of adventure, a relic of expedition, and an unadulterated view into the “safari & travel” vision of Mel & Patricia Ziegler, founders of the long-abandoned (original) Banana Republic. 

Tara Sendelback of GPF in the Travel Books section of Banana Republic (March, 1988) – Photo by Richard Lee, Detroit Free Press.

The Zieglers, both retired journalists with the San Francisco Chronicle, hired their friends, established ink-slingers to write the magazine’s copy. It was clearly a labor of love.

Flip the pages, and the articles will transport you in search of the soul of Hawaii with National Geographic journalist Marguerite Del Giudice; hurl you into Apartheid-era South Africa with Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, and Esquire writer Mark Jacobson; bike alongside His Majesty, the King of Tonga with screenwriter, actor and novelist Charlie Haas; and Ride to the Back of Beyond (of Australia) with photographs by Hakan Ludwigsson and text by Newsweek’s Tony Clifton.

Mel Ziegler, Banana Republic founder and editor-in-chief of TRIPS magazine on a trip to Burma (in 1988). Photo credit: Patricia Ziegler.

The magazine was likely the first to introduce The Thorn Tree Forum into print, an idea picked up and popularized by Lonely Planet eight years later in 1996.  “…It was, effectively, Kenya’s first postal system,” explains the Zieglers, referring to an old thorn tree in the courtyard of the New Stanley Hotel in Nairobi where travelers used to pin their urgent, cryptic messages. “We borrowed the name for this column. Items will be culled from letters, news clippings, documents, anything concise and interesting that crosses our desk. Travelers’ tales, tips, observations, complaints, and cultural artifacts are welcome.”  

To get the oddball rolling, first-hand travel tips from veteran travelers were offered – from “How to turn a golf ball into a drain plug for overseas bathtub,” to “Create a travel journal as you go: Mail postcards to yourself!”

I love them all – the sketches, the travelogues, the photos, the irony, the off-the-beaten-track discoveries. One of my favorite travel tales, penned by Sports Illustrated/human interest writer Gary Smith, whisks the reader onto a Portugal-bound train chockablock with banana and fish smugglers.

Patricia Ziegler, Banana Republic’s founder, on camelback in the Australian Outback (in 1988). Photo Credit: Mel Ziegler.

I’ve hiked with TRIPS across Tigray, Ethiopia, adventured with it into the dusty dorps of the Klein and Groot Karoo of Southern Africa, listened to the call to prayer through wooden shutters with it in Islamic West Luxor, and gotten lost with it in the back alleys of Bangkok, Hong Kong and Taipei — some of the places I’ve called home. These days, I find myself canoeing with this tried and trusty and true companion across America, most days carefully stowed away in my dry bags, and on days like today, taken out to peruse and inspire.

After all this time, the magazine remains a jolt to the system. It hurls one back to a now-bygone era when travel was fun – to the late 1980s, to be precise, before Banana Republic was taken over by the Gap – when the company had a climate desk “so that no matter which way the wind blows, you’ll arrive becalmed,” along with a travel bookstore, “to attract the ambitious adventurer – with or without armchair.”

Neal Moore’s Two-Year Canoe Journey Across America and Into the Light

On By Neal MooreIn Americana, Freedom, Identity, In the News, Literary Reverie, Wanderlust4 Comments

Fourteen months ago in Astoria, Oregon, Neal Moore shoved off in his 16-foot Old Town canoe, bound for the Statue of Liberty, some two years and 7,500 miles ahead. The 49-year-old had come home after nearly 30 years abroad to rediscover America and share the stories of its people in a style of journalism all his own, “slow and low down from the view of a canoe.” …

You can read Jeff’s entire expedition interview at Adventure Journal here.

Larger than a cover band and smaller than Elvis

On By Neal MooreIn Americana2 Comments

Off old Highway 12 in rural eastern Mississippi, I was invited to take in an out-of-doors socially-distanced “barn” concert with Tupelo-based Paul Thorn and the folk duo Ordinary Elephant. My Columbus-based host, the photographer Birney Imes, is old friends with Thorn (he shot his latest album cover) so when Thorn got to telling his trademark stories between songs about trailer parks and old flames and preachers that just might be wrong, he referenced my journey. He explained I’d paddled a canoe 5,000 miles out of 7,500, and then, after a dramatic pause, after all the oohs and aahs from the crowd, he quipped, “Neal must have a downright terrible home life. … Or maybe he just really likes to be in a canoe.” I’ve been looking forward to live music on this journey, and these guys, the whole night was just awesome.

Singer-songwriter Paul Thorn sings to an out-of-doors small gathering at “The Barn” in rural eastern Mississippi. Photo by Neal Moore.

Making the news

On By Neal MooreIn Americana, In the News, Small Business Success1 Comment

A misbehaving minister and a crazy canoeist share a recent Sunday front page of The Dispatch in Columbus, Miss. Thanks to Slim Smith for the interview, Birney Imes for the photo (and awesome digs above the historic Dispatch offices), along with the ever-talented Tom Hudson for introducing me to the press. They do it old school here in Columbus, Miss., a fourth-generation family newspaper business with a 1950s printing press. She spits out an impressive 200 papers a minute, and once loaded onto trucks, a whopping 14,000+ copies will travel to six counties by morning.

A proof-copy of The Dispatch, Sunday, April 11, 2021

Discovering America in reverse

On By Neal MooreIn In the News1 Comment

Moore’s cross-country canoe trip makes stop in Columbus

By Slim Smith

THE DISPATCH

Long-distance canoeist Neal Moore stands next to his 16-foot Old Town canoe after an outing on the Buttahatchee Thursday afternoon near Caledonia. Moore is paddling from Oregon to New York City via a network of 22 rivers, and is taking a break in Columbus after paddling up the Tenn-Tom Waterway from Mobile. He plans to continue north to the Tennessee River and on to the Ohio. He expects to conclude his 7,500-mile journey in December. Courtesy photo/Birney Imes

Neal Moore admits he’s going about this all backwards.

Two hundred years ago, Lewis and Clark made their way west across the North American continent on a  well-supplied expedition of discovery.

Moore is doing it backwards — from west to east —  with only a canoe and the supplies he can fit inside it. The 7,500-mile trek began on Feb. 9, [2020] when Moore, 49, paddled out into the Columbia River in Astoria, Oregon. He expects to complete the journey in December at the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

Now, on the third and final leg of his journey, Moore stopped to rest and explore in Columbus this week before resuming his journey up the Tennessee-Tombigbee River and on up through the Great Lakes and the Hudson River.

Moore, who is writing a book about his cross-country adventure, makes notes in his journal. Courtesy photo/Birney Imes

Moore’s journey follows a circuitous route including 22 rivers, which he has chosen as the name of his journey and the book he plans to write about the experience.

He may have started two years ago, but he’s been an adventurer since his teens, when to satisfy his mother’s deathbed wish Moore went on a Mormon mission — a rite of passage for young Mormon males.

Moore arrived in South Africa as a missionary, but while his religious work ended quickly, his love of roaming the world has remained.

“I’m sort of a nomad,” Moore said. “I move back and forth between Taipei and Capetown, but I generally use them as a springboard to other places.”

Yet for all his world-traveling, Moore began to be drawn back to his home country about 12 years ago when he ran across a book called “Mississippi Solo,” by Eddy Harris, just as the Great Recession was beginning.

A freelance journalist, Moore saw how the media was reporting the recession and was convinced it was the wrong approach.

“They were going to the great financial centers, going to expensive restaurants and talking to people and saying, ‘This is what’s happening,’” Moore said. “I said to myself, ‘That’s not the story. The story is in middle America.’”

Inspired by Harris’ book, Moore made his own expedition down the Mississippi River, using the stories of the people he met along the way to frame the story of the recession.

“Part of the idea for the trip I’m on now is that the most incredible adventure of one’s life can be in one’s own backyard,” Moore said. “Having spent nearly a lifetime abroad, looking for adventure and going from culture to culture and continent to continent to find it (inspired me) to come back to my home county and really experience it raw and up close and real. It’s a unique way to reconnect with a part of who I am.”

Neal Moore, an expatriate American who calls Taipei his home, has returned to the U.S. to take a 7,500-mile canoe trip spanning 22 rivers. Now on the last leg of a journey that began in Oregon and will end at the Statue of Liberty in December, Moore stopped to rest for a few days on his journey up the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. Courtesy photo/Patrick Tenny

Planting the seed

It was on that 2009 canoe trip down the Mississippi that Moore encountered someone who would plant the seed for Moore’s current adventure, a man whose life as a river traveler also included a stop in Columbus.

Dick Conant, a colorful canoeist who became an almost mythological figure among river travelers, is believed to have died in 2014 in North Carolina. Conant met New Yorker magazine writer Ben McGrath, who decided to turn Conant’s story into a book, which is set to be published this fall.

“I met Dick at the Brainard Portage on the upper Mississippi,” Moore said. “He was on the greatest adventure of his life. When I asked him what his plans were, he said he was connecting rivers to travel all over the country. My jaw just hit the floor when he told me that. I didn’t know it was possible. All those years, that idea was in my head like a mantra, that you can string these rivers together, that they connect, that it’s absolutely doable.”

COVID-19, which arrived about the time More was beginning his odyssey, has limited his visits with friends along his routes, but he’s been able to tap into a loose network of kindred spirits on his journey, breaking up the isolation of the travel.

“You make connections along the way through what’s called river talk,” he said. “If you’re a jerk upriver, people hear about it downriver. But it works the other way, too. If you’re nice and genuine, people hear about that. So there is a long-distance traveling community that I’m pretty well tied into. People have really opened their arms. But at other times, it’s the stumble-upons, people and stories that you encounter. As a storyteller, I love those.”

As he grows closer to the end of his long journey, Moore said he’s come to realize that it’s as much a story about the past as it is the present.

“You touch base with the immigrant experience, the Chinese in the Northwest, the African American experience in the Delta,” Moore said.

Moore said an encounter with a Native American near the beginning of the journey, gave him a perspective that has traveled with him.

“He said, ‘You’re going the wrong way, but doing it this way will allow you to document the destruction caused by the white man, sort of in reverse. Two hundred years ago, Lewis and Clark came right through here and my people helped them. There is a first people on every single one of these waterways you will travel.’”

Moore said that conversation convinced him the journey isn’t just west to east, but across the American eras.

“Part of this for me is that you sort of see where we’ve come from, how far we’ve come and who we have become,” he said.

Neal Moore’s cross-country canoe trip has helped him realize that “the most incredible adventure of one’s life can be in one’s own backyard.” Courtesy photo/Byron Lannoye