Honorary Chair
Sir Edmund Hillary 1919-2008
President
Daniel A. Bennett
Honorary President
Don Walsh, Ph.D.
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Honorary Chair Sir Edmund Hillary 1919-2008 |
President Daniel A. Bennett |
Honorary President Don Walsh, Ph.D. |
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PROJECTS
INTERVIEW with Capt. Robert "Rio" Hahn FN'86
Hahn joined The Explorers Club in 1986 and is a Fellow National (FN).
CLAY: Do you remember when you first heard of The Explorers Club? Tell me a little about that. HAHN: Let's see. I become a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society [RGS] in 1983, after my Amazon expedition. And then I became a Fellow of The Explorers Club in 1986. And I may have heard about it in years before. But Carol Beckwith, the photographer, who's an associate and friend of mine, in '86 we traded nominations. She was one of the first female members of The Explorers Club. I was a member of the RGS when the application process was a lot more challenging, or similar to the Explorers Club today. And so I nominated her for membership in the RGS, and she nominated me for membership in The Explorers Club. CLAY: There surely are plenty of explorers out there who are not members of the Club. Why did you choose to join? HAHN: Well, it was an honor, I felt, to be nominated for membership. I thought it was a type of recognition of the work that I had done. And I saw benefits. I think first and foremost—and I still feel like that holds today—the opportunity to interact and network with other explorers, other field scientists, to share ideas, obviously to come in contact with resources that you wouldn't perhaps find on your own. I found resources in terms of people, in terms of history, in terms of information. I think that was also perhaps another motivation, the fact that we have a very good archive in our Research Collections. And that it would be a path to other archives, if you will. It kind of gets you into that field of exploration, into resources that you might not know how to contact on your own. And I do believe that explorers need the interaction with other explorers. You need that type of dialogue to be able to flesh out and more solidly formulate the concepts for exploration, because you need to know what's gone before, you need to know what the unanswered questions were and are, and you need to know what areas are virgin, that haven't been covered yet. To me, it's become a source of real richness in my life, just to have the opportunity to interact with these people and to come to a place where there is an interdisciplinary open forum. That's something I think is very rare today. And, I guess I feel that it is extremely important to keep alive the spirit of exploration, and I feel that is one of the duties of The Explorers Club. CLAY: Do you find that happens a lot, those spontaneous moments where members are together at a function or event, and conversation leads to new ideas and inspirations? HAHN: Absolutely. In fact, I'll give you a very current example from my own life. The expedition that really solidly got me into The Explorers Club was a three-and-a-third year circumnavigation expedition that I did aboard the research vessel, Periclides, that my friends and I built in the mid-'70s, which was a multi-disciplinary expedition. It mainly focused on the study of cultures. I made a film series from the work we did during that expedition, of different cultures that have lived in harmony with their ecosystems over many years. It was called the "Around the Tropic World Expedition". Now, 20 some years later—because that expedition ran from February of '83 until June of '86, from San Juan to San Juan—I've had in my mind an idea to revisit all of those locations that we visited and filmed, and to film again today and to study what the environment looks like today, what the cultures look like today, and see basically the changes that have occurred in one generation. And so, at the centennial celebration that we had in January, Alicia Stevens, head of Discovery Tours for the American Museum of Natural History, and I began talking. She got interested in the idea. We've been on contact on it. We had a meeting before ECAD [the Explorers Club Annual Dinner]. At ECAD, Johan Reinhart, whom I originally came in contact with when I was doing my Amazon expedition in 1980, and I were talking during some part of the dinner last night, and he got very excited also about the idea and said, "Let me introduce you to the people that I know at National Geographic, we have them here for the dinner". Later, during the after-party, Sylvia Earle expressed interest in it. Alicia spoke to some other people during the evening last night who have expressed interest as well. So the idea is beginning to form. Just while I was preparing to come to the Club this morning, I began to formulate more solidly a concept for the expedition. And it all came out of these interactions that really were the result of being here at The Explorers Club. CLAY: Something else you pointed to is that joining one institution opens doors to other institutions. HAHN: Yes, yes. CLAY: Can you say just a little more about that? HAHN: Well, I'll give you another example. During my tenure as chairman of the San Diego Chapter of The Explorers Club, which lasted five years, I co-organized a joint Explorers Club–San Diego Museum of Natural History expedition to the Baja to look at some of the ancient rock art. And so I think The Explorers Club, because of its tremendous history and name, gives one—if one takes that opportunity—the ability to interface and put together joint efforts with other organizations. I think our 2003 Bioblitz was a wonderful example of that. In the end, you know, The Explorers Club is an organization composed of individuals, and for each individual they get out of it what they put into it. But actually, I'll change that—At The Explorers Club I think you can get more out of it than you put into it because there's a synergetic effect that occurs. And that's one of the things that makes it a great institution. CLAY: Was there a pivotal moment that really led you on the path of exploration and science? HAHN: Well, it's an interesting question. I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. Born and raised there. Probably the furthest point you can get to from any ocean in the United States. And there was always a joke on my father's wall in his office: He had an appointment in the great Navy of the Midwest. We started out when I was very young going on fishing trips. And the big one was when I was 11, with two buddies of mine and my father and mother, the father of one of the guys, and an Indian guide. We did a 250-mile canoe trip, starting at Hudson's Bay in Canada and coming down some of the major rivers there. We had two canoes; we had to portage, carrying them to various places. And I think that really whetted my appetite for exploration. Then when I was 15, I went off for the summer to Europe to study German with a group of people my age, and spent that time traveling all over on the weekends. And, obviously, there had to be some natural inclination, I think. I always had an interest in science. In junior high school I was always doing science projects. I remember myself and my science teacher being roundly criticized because I set up a weather station on the roof and they were afraid I was going to fall off. In college, I studied biochemistry and then moved on to the Annenberg School for Communication, at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. I next studied as an apprentice in residence with Minor White, who was then a professor of photography at MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology]. I lived in his house, taught some of his courses, and am now actually working on a book of projects that we were working on together. He died in '76, so these ideas have never been put out there. CLAY: What would you say stand out as some of the most meaningful results of your expeditions? HAHN: We collected perhaps a couple of thousand voucher specimens of plants when we did the Amazon expedition. I made, I think, approximately 130 roto-vapor extracts of plant material in the laboratory that we installed on board the ship, so that they could be further analyzed later. During the Around the Tropic World Expedition, we did the first collection of marine microorganisms in the Indian Ocean. We made, of course, the cultural studies. And whether it's a rumor or not, I don't know, but the Chinese, at one point, sailed their junks around the world. Our ship, the Periclides, is based on a Chinese junk and has gone around the world. But also what's grown out of it, on a different side, I would say, is what I call a philosophy of exploration. And that I call "the explorers sword". My concept is that this is a two-edged sword: one edge of the blade is in contact with the outer world, which is typically considered the realm of exploration. And the other is in contact with the explorer's inner world. And the tip is the aim or objective of your expedition. I believe that true exploration is both an exploration of the outer world and an exploration of yourself, of the explorer. It's a philosophy that I've developed over the years; that really you begin to know yourself through exploring. You find out what your limits are, what your powers and abilities you may not have been aware of. You see how you interact with the world, how the world interacts with you. And you hone your own personal interests and insights through that process. CLAY: And how has that philosophy affected your approach to exploration? HAHN: I'll give you an example. I did some research on the plant, datura, studying with a Hindu swami in Nepal. It was written up in the Explorers Journal, I think last year, and also published elsewhere. It's now being published in German. I became particularly interested in his use of it, which is very much contrary to the conventional assumptions about it. It's a very dangerous plant, deadly in some cases. And he took it at least eight times a day, since he was about 16. Part of that research included my own personal experience, at his hands, of being given doses of the substance to study my own reaction. I was filmed during part of it. I spoke during part of it. And have written about it since. So I didn't keep myself as the classic Western objective observer. But I brought my subjective self into the exploration as well. CLAY: Is there an explorer who especially has inspired you? HAHN: One would be Shackleton. When I led my Around the Tropic World expedition, I was both expedition chief (for part of it, anyway) and captain. I had a minimum of 7 crew to a maximum of 19, and over 100 people in total who participated in the expedition. And I was particularly proud, and still am, of the fact that I didn't lose anyone. There have been much lesser expeditions that have lost many people. And I felt a real resonance, as I later studied some of Shackleton's history, with Shackleton's commitment and attention to his crew. An expedition is going to succeed or fail on its crew. They put their lives in your hands, and there's a very real responsibility there, that I think any true expedition leader has to recognize and take to heart. Another great mentor of mine, whom I had the great honor and privilege to work with, was Professor Richard Schultes, who was head of the Harvard Botanical Museum, who is now deceased. He was my mentor for the Amazon expedition. I guess one that always comes to mind somehow for me is Sir Richard Francis Burton [the nineteenth-century British explorer]. Because he had such an ability to penetrate and integrate with other cultures, aside from whatever other field of exploration he was doing. He exemplifies, for me, this philosophy that I have, the explorer's sword, in that exploration is both an inner and an outer activity.
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