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 Lorie Karnath MI'89
Karnath joined The Explorers Club in 1989 and is an International Member (MI).
CLAY: Do you remember when you first heard of the Explorers Club? KARNATH: Yes. I was working on Wall Street and I knew a member, he was on the board of directors of The Explorers Club, and he told me he was quitting the Club because they were going to allow women in. This was in the 1980s. I actually became a member in '89. That man, before quitting, was one of my sponsors into the Club. But he was quitting because people like me were coming to the Club! He didn't think women were of the same caliber as men for exploration, and he thought it was going to ruin the spirit of the Club. CLAY: And how did he explain sponsoring you? KARNATH: Because he still wanted people like me to have a chance to become a member and continue our exploration, it just wasn't going to be his caliber any more! CLAY: You can explorer without being a member of the Club. Why did you choose to join? KARNATH: Well, I had already been on many expeditions. When I was growing up, I lived all over the world, so I had sort of hit the main tourist cities. By age fifteen, I was already doing things like mountain climbing and jungle treks. And so later, coming to New York City, this was the first time in a city environment that I was able to meet a lot of people who were like me in the things that they did. CLAY: What was it about exploring different places that captivated you? KARNATH: I think for me, more than anything else, it was just to see the things that you can't see by any other means. It's not that I enjoy so much living in the jungle and having leaches all over my body and being exhausted and having my tent run over by elephants. But you get to see things in a way that no one else can. It's so pristine and beautiful. And it's sometimes hard to get to those places. When I landed in Antarctica for the first time--it was very hard to get there, it took me several tries--when I got out of the plane, it was minus fifty-nine degrees Fahrenheit. But the first few minutes, I just looked around me and I said, this was definitely worth it. Several weeks later, I was thinking maybe it was time to go home! CLAY: And what were you doing there for those weeks? KARNATH: I was actually there with several members of The Explorers Club. We were mainly there to just get to the South Pole. But there were also some Club members that were doing a study for NASA on meteorites and extreme life forms. And so, to a certain extent, we were involved with what they were doing just by being there. We had already been to the North Pole. I actually carried flag to the North Pole for The Explorers Club. I put together a trip that was commemorating Frederick Cook's 90th anniversary of going to the North Pole. We were trying to follow his route to see if it was possible to make it within the time frame, and so on, that he did. And so I put together a group with several Explorers Club members and carried the flag. CLAY: What does an explorer need and expect from an Explorers Club? KARNATH: I have to tell you, I didn't come to this club expecting anything. But the Club gives much more than you would expect from any club, even if you had high expectations. I've met members of a lot of different clubs--including several scientific organizations. At The Explorers Club, everyone is so friendly and so willing to help. And even though I'm not here so often because I live in Europe, always when I come here they remember me. And wherever you are, you feel a bond with these people immediately because you know they've gone through several similar experiences to what you've gone through. Unless you've had some of these challenges, which often times can be pretty brutal, you really don't understand what that means. To us it's completely routine, but when other people hear it, they just think it's crazy. Many times when we're on these trips, we experience extreme hardship. You're supposed to be, obviously, prepared, but you never know what can go wrong. One time when I was climbing Mount Kinabalu, I was going up with an army captain who was supposedly helping me get up the mountain. But he suffered chest pains, and I ended up carrying his supplies and my supplies (all of which we were bringing to a group that was exploring a new face of the mountain), plus bringing him 3,000 feet up the mountain. And we hit a monsoon on a granite face. You test your resources in a way that you just can't even imagine. Here I was, a woman coming from Wall Street without so much mountain training, dragging up the experienced mountain climber and about eighty pounds of supplies. So you can maybe equate it to times when people experience horrible events in their lives like an extreme illness: All of a sudden you're facing it all in a completely different way. Because when you live your life in a place like New York City, you can be so distant from what the actual world really is. But this puts you very quickly in touch. And often times when you're on these expeditions, you're in pain the entire time. But when you go home, you don't remember that part; you just remember the beauty and the excitement and the challenge. And you're so happy and proud you made it. When we finally got down from that trip on Mount Kinabalu, we had blood all over our faces. It was pouring through our shoes. We had sunburn, our clothes were ripped. We got down to the bottom where there were Japanese tourists taking photos of the waterfalls, and it was just like a completely different world. They caught us on film and I've often wondered what they've done with those pictures. It was an amazing experience to come from the mountain back to the world of digital cameras and everything else. Many times when people ask me if I've traveled, and if it's not somebody from The Explorers Club or something like The Explorers Club, I just sort of brush it off and say, I've been to a few places. But if you sit down at a cocktail party and you say, I've been to the North Pole, South Pole, I've lived in the Borneo jungle, have gone along the China-Mongolian border, crossed deserts--people just think something's very wrong with you. CLAY: What else do Club members provide for each other? KARNATH: Well, it's a huge network, and one that you can rely on. Whenever I plan an expedition, I'll first go to Explorers Club members to see if they're willing to participate. And more often than not, they are. And even if I couldn't among my friends at The Explorers Club find people to fill an expedition, the Club will help you find people. And there are some projects here that I've worked on—media projects—and for those immediately you know that if you need somebody who's a lawyer or a film person or a book writer or whatever, they're all here. It's an incredible resource. And, like I said, it's a type of bond that you don't really get, say, for an organization that's just for lawyers or for a specific business group, because this is so different; we all have our careers, but we also have this other facet. It’s an extra dimension that you wouldn't find among most people. CLAY: Would you say there was anyone pivotal moment or pivotal experience in your life that led you on the path to exploration? KARNATH: I grew up with parents who had a very favorable attitude towards travel. Early on I met a lot of explorers through them. So I grew up with stories of jungles and mountains and even places like the moon and beyond, and it was all fascinating to me. And in school I had a strong background in science, as well as other things, but the science led me more and more to biology and rain forests and on and on. CLAY: Is there anyone who especially inspired you? KARNATH: Definitely. I lived in Hong Kong for several years and I was one of the founding members of the Royal Geographical Society chapter over there. I don't look at the Royal Geographical Society as being so different from The Explorers Club. Although I think The Explorers Club has more hands-on people than the Royal Geographical Society. So, all the time, all the famous explorers were coming through Hong Kong, and we had some amazing talks and speeches. People like John Hare, the man who discovered the wild Bactrian camel in China. The way I met John Hare, before he came and spoke in Hong Kong, was that I had an apartment in New York, and somebody said, Oh, he's going to be in New York, could he use your apartment? I wasn't there, so he came, he stayed, he left me all sorts of material and introduced me to some people at the American Museum of Natural History. So we had a whole network of mutual friends before I ever met him, before he came to speak in Hong Kong. And then the other one who really impressed me was Bertrand Piccard, because I met him--I think it was four years ago--at The Explorers Club when he just descended from the Breitling Orbiter balloon expedition. It was still fresh, so fresh, and I just loved meeting him. And then, of course, Sir Edmund Hillary is, I think, everyone's hero. Also, when I went to the South Pole, I was there with some of the astronauts. Jim Lovell was there and Owen Garriett. I didn't know so much about them. But on the way out of the South Pole, we couldn't get out because the weather was so bad, and there was a Russian camp nearby that didn't care so much about the weather, and they brought in their Aleutian jet with the KGB on board. And I just knew I was getting on that jet. Jim Lovell and Owen Garriett knew nothing about it; they didn't know a Russian plane was coming. But I told them, Listen, there are two extra seats on this thing, do you want to come? And without even hesitating, they said yes. I thought, for me, it was a good insurance policy in case we ended up in Moscow. CLAY: Among your many expeditions, what would you say has been your defining expedition? KARNATH: I would certainly say parts of the Borneo jungles. At one point we were 100 miles into the jungles, having carved a pathway for scientists coming to do research. Just to be that immersed in a place where it is unlikely any human had ever been, because the growth was so thick--it was an amazing feeling. And I have to say, also, the first time when I touched ground on Antarctica. When you first get there, there's no color really. The sky is the same color as the ground; one shimmers a bit more. And those first few minutes when you first see nothing but blinding white, and then you start all of a sudden seeing reds and blues and purples and pinks. And it becomes a whole range of colors within that initial dearth of color. I can tell you, when I got back to New York City from that trip, and the next morning I walked out of my apartment and I was walking down the street, I was seeing red raincoats and yellow street lights, and I was in complete shock. CLAY: What have been some of the more important results of your expeditions? KARNATH: I did a lot of programs with this group called Operation Raleigh, which is an English group that was started by Prince Charles, a four-year adventure around the world, which has actually continued on and has chapters all over the world now. And I was one of the early participants and helped with the logistics of fundraising. So part of it is that this program has continued now for a long time, twenty years or so. And I did programs down in the Turks and Caicos Islands. We built a youth center and helped to establish the salt industry there. The main industry at the time was drug running, and we were trying to help re-establish an industry that they could sustain. In Malaysia, we worked on a flora and fauna study. We introduced new forms of food into some of the native villages because many were suffering from protein deficiencies. We came over with See International, the eye surgeons, and we brought locals out of the rain forest to be operated on because many had cataracts and were blind. So to see them all of a sudden be able to see was an amazing experience, too. CLAY: And the villages where you've provided additional food resources, was that a matter of finding foods that grew in that area but that simply weren't being utilized? KARNATH: That was some of it. But we actually introduced some new crops that were easy for them to grow. And also, in certain circumstances, introduced some animal life, like rabbits, to show them how they could breed rabbits and have meat and help with their diet that way. CLAY: That's a whole new part of what exploration is about, isn't it? Not only doing scientific research, but also actively assisting local communities? KARNATH: Right, I think that's true. What I work on mostly now is much more on the science side. I still go on these travels but my real focus is earth sustainability now. And having seen most of the world, you know where it needs a lot of help. One of the programs I work with is the Dahlem Konferenzen, a scientific think tank in Berlin. It started out thirty years ago with some of the Nobel laureates. The focus was and still is--although they look at every area of science--our sustainability. And a huge global project has been launched out of some of the programs they did. MIT Press publishes the report on every workshop. One of the founders is Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, who discovered the ozone hole and now he travels around the world working on fixing this hole. And he may do that in our lifetime. Projects like that are extremely gratifying. And that's why I think exploration, used in a very scientific manner, can look at the problems that we have and look at the same things we may have seen every day, but in a different light. CLAY: Do you see much overlap in membership between The Explorers Club and Dahlem? KARNATH: No, I don't. One of the things I see here is that people are much more focused on the physical exploration. Some of that's changing. I saw last night at the Centennial Explorers Club Annual Dinner that there were a few more scientifically oriented talks. Scientists today are like the pioneers of yesteryear. They're the Sir Edmund Hillary's, the people that are willing to reach the unknown. The novelty of some of the things they are working on is scary. They have to fight established concepts and theories, just the way the old explorers did. Christopher Columbus and those guys: they had to fight the idea that the world is flat. These guys have to fight too. You know, DNA fifty years ago was looked at as rubbish. Nobody wanted to deal with DNA. Some of the top scientists in the world said, Don't even touch that stuff. Some of the worst scientists got involved in it because nobody wanted to get near it. Oftentimes exploration does require traveling, especially for projects like this ozone hole. But many times from inside the laboratory you're doing far greater research and exploration that you could ever imagine in any part of the Borneo jungle. CLAY: Here at the Club there is an emphasis on field exploration. KARNATH: Right. But I think there should be more of a combination. I’m working on another project with the Nobel Foundation in Lindau and the Smithsonian Institution and Deutsches Museum. And I'm writing a book on the Nobel laureates. For the past three years I've been traveling around the world interviewing the laureates--not all, but most. The book will include something like 220 out of the 240 laureates alive today. Many of those people could offer so much to this club. And I think, to a certain extent, vice versa. And that's one thing--especially when I open The Explorers Club chapter in Germany--I'd like to bring those people closer on both sides. I'm going to involve some of the Nobel laureates. And I think it could maybe further, first of all, a better understanding between Germany and America. But also provide some really interesting stimulus as well. You know, you live on this world for not such a long time and so you don't always have time to meet everyone. And knowing that someone won a Nobel Prize is a good first screener. Because last night I was thinking, if you had somebody like Paul Crutzen give a talk about the ozone hole, how he discovered it, what it means, what are the ways we can work to fix it, it would be fascinating for people. There's a man I work with named Sir Harry Kroto who is a Nobel Laureate in chemistry. He discovered a molecule called C-60, which they refer to as the Buckyball because it looks like a minuscule soccer ball. He has put together something called the Vega Trust, which I'm helping with, too. We go around the world interviewing the top minds of the world, and we're keeping them in this trust where you can see them on film via the internet, to preserve these ideas, not just for our generation but for future generations. And, you know, science and exploration are becoming increasingly interdisciplinary. And that's an important part of The Explorers Club. We have so many people from different backgrounds. Last night I was talking to the people who are part of The Explorers Journal. And I was telling them a little bit about my Nobel book project. And I said, when that's finished, I'd like to write a condensed version for The Explorers Journal. That might be a good way to start. CLAY: There seems to be an ongoing debate at the Club about what qualifies as exploration. Is it being the first to do something in a new and different way? Or is it bringing back results that constitute a scientific discovery? KARNATH: They're both incredibly important things. I mean, if you think about it, you need the celebrities of the exploration world because, from the early times, that's what has fueled the imagination of people and kept people's minds open and expansive. And that's important for anything you do. If you compare it to science, it's a little bit like the eureka moment, like the person who doesn't necessarily have all the background but figures out something that's an incredible breakthrough. And those people, the ones who accomplish some kind of “first”, they are risking their lives and they are creating a personal challenge. And these people are willing to try and overcome the challenges. And yet the field research, again, gives us the data that indeed changes our world. But we need to further theoretic research to go the next step and the next step and the next. I mean, you don't fix the problems in the rain forest simply by traversing it or studying the flora and fauna. You have to look at what really are the factors. You have to go there to see the problem, but then you have to fix it somehow. CLAY: And that’s how science progresses, isn’t it? Through the interplay of the theoretical and the empirical? KARNATH: Right. And it's the same with exploration. And, you know, in a way the most amazing explorers in the world were the people that just sat in one place and imagined and thought and created. That's exploration, too. They really are the explorers of today. CLAY: I have heard some debate about that in the Club. Some members would like to bring in geneticists and people who are doing groundbreaking theoretic or laboratory work. KARNATH: Just last night at the Annual Dinner they were talking a lot about different animals that are potentially become extinct. Our whole history has been the extinction of different types of animals for all sorts of different reasons, some environmental, some not. But if this became a problem that we were extremely worried about, then speaking to a geneticist would certainly help because regardless of how you feel about cloning, there's no animal that has to be extinct any more, theoretically. So it's not necessarily that I'm advocating that approach, but it's a different way to think about it, a different way to view the problem. There are different solutions; that's the point. CLAY: Are there some particular things on the horizon that you'd like to do? KARNATH: I've done most of the things I really wanted to. But there's always something new. I've traveled most of the Silk Road, but I'd like to travel the whole Silk Road. And I also have some things planned for Mongolia.
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