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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Aryeh was 5 at the time of the trip, and Tziporah was 2. Weren't you worried about traveling with them?
Actually, I wasn't worried about the Sea of Cortez. The stuff we'd done in Alaska had been a lot worse. I did the toughest mountain bike trip I've ever done when Aryeh was 2, with him strapped in the back seat on my bike on a really rough trail. It was an 11-hour ride, I was falling off the bike and getting bruised and cut up and swearing, and he kept saying, "That's OK, Mommy; good job, good job."
Aryeh was always gifted and challenging, and he was the most challenging when he was at home -- when he was not challenged enough. The shock to me was finding out that when we were on a sea kayaking trip in Alaska -- in frighteningly cold water -- or hiking or camping in bear territory, or mountain biking, his behavior was always better.
Why do you think that was?
He knew we were a team, and he was excited by that, and he was enchanted by the animals and plants around him. Those were really good family times -- there were no tantrums in the wilderness.
Then Tziporah came along, and I thought, "We can't keep this up much longer." But I had signed on to do another book just before we learned we were pregnant. I tried to back out, because I knew we were going to have to do 50 pretty difficult trips, but the publisher wouldn't let me out of the contract. So we proceeded. Tziporah was born in April, and that whole summer we were visiting remote public cabins in Alaska.
I was mostly terrified when we were portaging a kayak in Kodiak bear country; she was just a tiny little bean in a front carrier. But as a woman, I haven't wanted my life to end with each pregnancy. And you find out that you can do it, and it's more fun with the kids, because they notice more, and they really get into it.
Do you do anything special to prepare them?
Our preparation for this trip was considerable. We did a biographical research trip down to Monterey [Calif.], and we were poring through marine invertebrate textbooks for months. But children don't need any special preparation. They're infinitely more flexible and adaptable than we are -- they just dive right in and start noticing things.
As any parent knows, when you have little kids, it's really hard to leave the house. That's a real challenge. But getting from preparing the diaper bag to get out of the house, to going halfway around the world to go kayaking really isn't that big a jump. It's just more stuff.
What do you think they got out of it?
They live in the present. So they got one phenomenal day after another. Part of what the book was about was all of us trying to appreciate this place, and trying to have a purer sense of wonder. They had it from the beginning. Most of the trip was Brian and I trying to catch up with them.
They're very much a part of the book.
I had actually thought that I'd have to downplay my family. Most of the famous travel writers today are men -- they're traveling alone, and doing physical tasks, and you don't read about their spouses or their children. Even Steinbeck was very opinionated about it: He wrote his own wife, Carol, out of the book. I thought I'd have to make the same choice, so I wasn't distracting the reader with annoying, potentially cute anecdotes about my children. But I found their reactions to things were an essential part of my story.
