There be monsters and other wishlist travel
Over summer vacation my kids were addicted to RIVER MONSTERS, the extreme fishing adventure series on Animal Planet. Jeremy Wade’s silky British accent was the soundtrack of our rental house. Mysterious fish were killing kayakers on the Amazon, spearfishermen disappearing in Malaysia. Wade spoke of the murderous creatures with awe, almost affection. Early mornings before the beach and evenings while we fired up the grill, there was Wade, with his white hair and weather-beaten face, like a distant uncle who’d dropped in on our family vacation.
Early one morning before the rest of the family was up, I sat on the couch with my 8- and 9-year-olds.
“I’m in Argentina…. A 12-year-old girl was playing close to her village on one of the remote islands set in this huge river. She had entered the water countless times before, but this time it would be different. This time there was something waiting in the shallows.”
It’s easy to see why my boys were transfixed. The patterns of the rollout was irresistible. The thrill of the
predatory unknown. The cliffhanger commercial breaks with a thrash and swoosh of bloodied water. And then finally the creatures themselves, all jaws and teeth, menacing and otherworldly as bulky-headed aliens.
It was especially potent for my 9yo, old enough not to be terrified, and young enough to see the expedition life as something entirely possible. Earlier in the summer he’d built himself a boat out of empty Poland Springs bottles and hockey tape. No matter that the Malaysian spearfish would slash it into BPA confetti. For propulsion, he would use a leaf blower. If he needed a turbo surge, he’d attach shaken-up cans of seltzer.
It was potent for me, too, but for different reasons — the cinematography, the exotic locales, the wide expanses of ocean and ice. The freedom to pursue a curiosity, get up and follow it across the planet. In the morning he’d take me to Greenland in a dogsled, and by dinnertime, a volcano in Iceland. Episode after episode was a parade of places I’d never been, but in my parallel life might have gone.
When I was in my mid-20s I worked at a glossy travel magazine. I had more journalistic assignments than exotic features, but there was travel—places like Prague and Nevis, Phoenix and Whistler. There was one dicey experience skiing in Taos, and a risky but fascinating investigation of Caribbean islands following a hurricane. After I left New York (married, baby), I stayed on as a contributing editor and an occasional tv commentator. Which is how I found myself as a mother of a toddler with the unlikeliest opportunity: to host a travel documentary. The magazine was doing a series, and the editor asked if I would narrate the story behind the stories.
Looking back now it seems like a fever dream. The details weren’t fully fleshed out, but it would entail being on location somewhere for about a week each month. I don’t remember determining with my husband how this would make sense with our one-year-old, though he says we did. Shortly after I said I’d do it, I found out I was pregnant with our second child, and the fever broke.
Travel is simpler these days. Weddings and family reunions, college tours and summers around New 
England. But Airbnb.com is my late-night Netflix, and when I get itchy for new experiences, I curate wish lists of different kinds of adventures in the future: A lighthouse stay with my husband. A converted silo with a few of the kids, or farm stays with all of them. The writing getaways — an airstream in Montana, a treehouse in Bali, a whitewashed cave house on the Santorini cliffs. There’s a through-the-looking-glass quality to my life on AirBnB. Also, of a kid with her nose to the candy store window.
During a RIVER MONSTERS commercial break my son said, “I’m going to do this. This is going to be my job. ” And why not? He likes nature documentaries, loves fishing. I Googled Jeremy Wade’s background. He studied zoology. He was a teacher. “You could totally do this,” I agreed.
Clicking around a bit more, I found out the episode we were watching was actually the final one of the entire series. After nine seasons, it had just gone off the air. Goodbye Wade, goodbye zodiacs flitting among the ice floes.
My son was disappointed, and I was, too. I don’t watch much TV, but this was different than the shows I remembered. Wade spoke to the audience like colleagues, partners in his discovery. The plot unfurled slowly with intelligent suspense, a puzzle wrapped in an expedition. He met the local people and experienced their cultures, and invited the viewer in along the way. In the end, it was more about the journey than the big reveal.
My son wanted to know if he was going to do another series. I searched a bit but didn’t see anything concrete. Plans for more television work, but Wade also hoped to pursue writing. Most of the interviews were vague, but in one, Wade expressed curiosity about the more psychological aspect of travel and distant cultures, something about the passage of time, nature and aging. I envisioned something like Ann Patchett’s novel State of Wonder, if it were reimagined by the Discovery Channel. Oh, my.
But my son, he was lost at psychological. All he heard was blah blah blah, no monsters. “Oh well,” he said, and drifted off to the kitchen.
But I went back to Google and set an alert to mentions of Jeremy Wade. I want to keep an eye on what he might do next, this television traveler with his compass set to my kind of shores.
