Field FAQs with Holly Morris Hiking Your Way to a Better Relationship

Holly Morris is a TV host (Treks in a Wild World, Globe Trekker), and the author of Adventure Divas. Post your travel questions here and they could get answered in the magazine.

Illustration by Tim Marrs

Q: My husband and I are avid climbers—only he sprints, and I meander. Minor bickering aside, this is fine for day trips, but we’re headed up Kilimanjaro soon, and I’m worried about our teamwork. Advice?

A. Dasher vs. Dawdler: a classic backcountry matchup. Trying to change each other will only lead to couples therapy, so I’ll spare you (and your insurance company) the expense by dispensing a trite but true adage: Walk a mile in each other’s crampons. In short, empathize and compromise—or quit climbing in tandem.

Dashers often miss that rare moustached green tinkerbird or vivid lichen hiding in plain sight. And Dawdlers—including myself—risk finding themselves huddled in a snow cave at sundown, a thousand feet shy of the summit. “You have to realize that time is limited and that, for safety’s sake, you need to be as efficient as possible,” says top American alpinist and 25-year Mount Rainier guide Ed Viesturs. “Meandering is fine while hiking, but in the mountains speed is safety.” Without guides like Viesturs rushing us across treacherous glaciers before the sun makes them slick or up slab routes to avoid rockfall dislodged by climbers above, we’d never get through unscathed, much less experience magnificent peaks. Then again, my dash up a big mountain in the Himalaya to view the five sacred peaks of Kanchenjunga was rewarded with cold, wet fog on the summit that, Murphy’s Law, cleared on our descent. Sprint and meander, then, as the situation requires. Just remember that on Kilimanjaro, as in life, the important thing is the journey—and a healthy relationship.

Field FAQs with Holly Morris Rafting the Grand Canyon is Safer Than Playing Golf

Holly Morris is a TV host (Treks in a Wild World, Globe Trekker), and the author of Adventure Divas. Post your travel questions here and they could get answered in the magazine.

Q: My girlfriend has booked us on a rafting trip through the Grand Canyon for my 40th birthday. I’m not much of a water person: When I was 12, I nearly drowned. I’m not exactly phobic, but how do I make sure I don’t turn into a nervous wreck?

A. First off, your right brain should know that this is probably the most scenic and magical river trip on Earth. Your left brain will appreciate that 22,000 people raft down the Grand Canyon each year, and according to Mark Grisham of the Grand Canyon River Outfitters Association, there hasn’t been a single commercial passenger death in his 12 years on the Colorado. It’s not uncommon for rafters to get dunked.
But your life vest will do its job by keeping you afloat, and your guides will do theirs by plucking you out downriver. Extreme whitewater can be frightening (see video of my antics on Utah’s Green River rapids—and listen for my bloodcurdling screams). But again, as river guide Grisham says, “statistically speaking, rafting the Grand Canyon is safer than playing golf.” Assuming you’ve never been hit by lightning on the putting green, this should be all the encouragement you need. And if by chance you find yourself shrieking every time the boat goes bump, do it with a smile: Your girlfriend will think you’re just enjoying the ride.

Field FAQs with Holly Morris Picking Bushpig Over Burger King...And Other Advice

Holly Morris is a TV host (Treks in a Wild World, Globe Trekker), and the author of Adventure Divas. Post your questions here and they could get answered in the magazine.

Some of my most vivid memories are of bad moments with good people around the world who I inadvertently managed to shock, confuse, or insult. And all the capsizings, camel snot, and intestinal parasites? I like to think I screwed things up so you wouldn’t have to—and you won’t, as long as you heed my golden rule of adventuring: Do as I say, not as I do.

Q: I’m taking my fast food–addicted sons down the Mekong River in Vietnam. What’s the best strategy for getting surly teens to experiment with the local cuisine?

A. Food is always one of the first things I mention if I’m speaking to young travelers. I’ve found it effective to describe in gory detail how, under the watchful eyes of my hosts, I once ate a barbecued rat—piece by piece—in the high mountains of Arunachal Pradesh (tasted like clam, by the way). I like to cap these lectures off with a recipe for reindeer penis I learned in Lapland.

Meals with a gruesome backstory are big hits in the schoolyard—and earn serious cred for those who have tasted and lived.
So rest assured that when the waiter sets down a bowl of nhong tam (a Vietnamese silkworm delicacy), or some equally outrageous comestible, you’ll have your sons’ rapt attention as you explain that the sharing of food is a vital social exchange the world over—and how this will make a great story to gross out their friends back home. And if all else fails, threaten to leave them at the next village unless they stop pushing those monkey brains around their plate and eat them.

I once took three suburban American teenagers to the hinterlands of Guyana, where they lived, worked, and ate like local Amerindian families. For the first two days, the kids twitched, whined, starved themselves, and begged abjectly and repeatedly for Skittles. By day four, there was less grousing as they participated in a hunt with the indigenous men. By day seven, they ate with a new appreciation, and the oldest told me, as he gnawed on a hunk of freshly slaughtered boar, that his time in Guyana had been “awesome.”

Full disclosure: In the course of researching my response, I called my mom, who in the 1970s loaded me, my three siblings, and our reluctant father into a van for a yearlong road trip behind the Iron Curtain. “In my travels,” she said, “I’ve found there are three things you can find anywhere: Snickers, Fanta, and Johnny Walker Red. It wouldn’t kill them to live on Snickers and Fanta for a few days. If that doesn’t work, try the Johnny Walker and let them sleep.”

I do not endorse her advice.

Illustration by Jessie Ford