I’ve spent enough mornings knee-deep in mud, waiting for my detector to stop chattering, to know this: adventure isn’t about fighting the elements. It’s about letting them lead. Fridtjof Nansen figured that out a century before I ever swung a coil. Picture it: August 1893, the Arctic Ocean. The Fram’s oak hull groans as the ice … Read more
April 28, 1947. I’m standing on the dock in Callao, Peru, boots sinking into the balsa logs lashed together beneath me. The Pacific breeze smells like salt and adventure, and Thor Heyerdahl—wild-eyed, sunburned, grinning like he’s about to pull off the best prank ever—shouts, “Cut the ropes!” The Kon-Tiki lurches. Nine balsa logs, lashed with … Read more
January 23, 1960. I’m strapped to a metal bench, shoulder-to-shoulder with Don Walsh, in a steel sphere the size of a closet. The Trieste’s hull creaks like an old detector coil under pressure. Outside, the Pacific Ocean swallows us whole—dark, cold, pressing in with a force that could crush a tank. Jacques Piccard, our Swiss … Read more
March 1925. The Amazon sun blazes through the canopy, turning the river to liquid gold. Percy Fawcett stands at the canoe’s prow, pith helmet tilted back, his son Jack (12, grinning like he’s won the lottery) at his side. “Six weeks,” Fawcett says, tapping the map tucked in his shirt. “We find Z, then home.” … Read more
July 14, 1897. The ice cracks under me like a rusted detector coil. I’m flat on my back, shoulder screaming, watching the Örnen—our balloon, the Eagle—tatter into the wind. Silk shreds whip past my face, and I taste frost. “Salomon!” Knut yells, hauling me up. His goggles are frosted, breath coming in white puffs. Nils … Read more
I still wake up tasting ash. Not the soft kind from a campfire, but the sharp, sulfurous stuff that clings to your teeth—like biting into a handful of obsidian. It was 1524, and we were marching south, Pedro de Alvarado at the front, his armor clinking like a loose detector coil. “Keep up,” he barked, … Read more
I was knee-deep in wet sand somewhere off the Mississippi Gulf Coast, swinging my multi-frequency detector through a patch of beach I’d gridded off like a man possessed, when De Soto wandered into my mind again. Don’t ask me why. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe the way the salty wind rolled across the bay, … Read more
You ever been out in subzero wind, swinging a detector so cold it squeaks when you twist the shaft? That’s how I ended up thinking about Ernest Shackleton—not in a history book, but while standing ankle-deep in snowmelt on a glacial moraine in Alaska, cussing at my “smart detector” like it was personally mocking me. … Read more
You know, I’ve dug up some strange things in my time—Spanish silver in an Arkansas cow pasture, a brass harmonica reed in a swamp, a wedding band lost fifty years ago on a snowy ridge—but nothing compares to that trip I took chasing a whisper in the African jungle. It wasn’t supposed to be anything … Read more
You ever stand on a windswept beach or icy field, coil buried inches beneath frost-hardened ground, wondering if anything’s there? That’s where my mind drifted during a brutal hunt last winter—thoughts of Franklin’s doomed expedition crept in. Two ships trapped in ice. Men buried in white. All chasing a dream that swallowed them whole. Felt … Read more