Beyond the evening news or the morning paper, there is something going on in the world that I barely know how to report. In an earlier century, Herman Melville wrote about a whale lurking in the sea. Consider it the dark side of the environmental movement. Suddenly there are best-sellers in the bookstores about winter's wrath. It takes money to get to the top of Mount Everest.
Today there are accountants and doctors and advertising executives willing to pay.
The base camp of Mount Everest is filled with Japanese and Germans, as well as Americans. They bring along cell phones and fax machines. The line separating the athlete from the adventurer has traditionally been financial. Think of the very rich today who fly their hot-air balloons across the sky, only to be rescued, at taxpayer expense, when their adventure deflates. More importantly, what separates the adventurer from the athlete is the element of risk, the danger.