What exploring means to Franco Michieli
How do you plan an adventure? What are the very first steps? How do you get inspired?
Most chances are you go online, maybe on Instagram, check what your favourite explorers have posted. Or maybe look into adventures magazines. At least once you go on YouTube to watch those incredible aerial shots, 4K footage of mountains, oceans or infinite desert. Your imagination is flying at this point. You dream to be there, with all the information you’ve acquired you almost feel you’re there.
But truth is: you’re not!
Your senses have experienced sounds and images of these places, but something key is missing: is the all physicality of the experience and nothing can replace that.
The feeling of being present somewhere, immersed in air or water, cannot be reproduced by any digital devices. You can only experience it by being there.
I feel sorry for saying all this because I’m contributing to add digital contents to the world wide web. I capture what I see in the real world with my camera, modify it through editing softwares and finally share it online. I do this to inspire others to spend more time outdoors, or at least that’s my hope, but while doing that I’m probably ruining the real experience for those watching. I’m taking away the most important part of my adventures: the process of discovering a place.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary the word explore means “to travel to a new place, to learn about it or become familiar with it” or “to try, to discover”.
It’s the self understanding of something new that lives outside our knowledge.
explore (v.)
Origins from the 1580s, “to investigate, examine,” a back-formation from exploration, or else from French explorer (16c.), from Latin explorare “investigate, search out, examine, explore,” said to be originally a hunters’ term meaning “set up a loud cry,” from ex “out” (see ex-) + plorare “to weep, cry.” Second element also is explained as “to make to flow,” from pluere “to flow.” Meaning “to go to a country or place in quest of discoveries” is first attested 1610s.
Maybe we all got so excited about the progress technology made in recent years to forget about the importance of adventure in exploration.
The good news is that there are still people who remember that. One of them is the explorer and writer Franco Michieli.
From his earlier trips Franco felt the desire to go deeper into nature, cancelling any possible barriers between himself and the wilderness. Eventually this connection was established by limiting expedition gears to the bare minimum and refusing any technological help.
During his life he crossed mountains and frozen lands without any kind of maps or compass, letting nature show him where to go. His orientation was soon made by almost invisible tracks: observing the direction of where plants grow, how wind blows or land is shaped. Definitely rather unusual experiences for today’s standards where expeditions and technology go hand in hand. If we look at this historically it is understandable to see why exploring the world in a certain way needed all the technology available: humans didn’t just want to discover the world, they wanted to dominate it. The wilderness was scary, something to be changed and put under our control.
But then we changed. We evolved from that inadequate sense of “pretending to control” nature to the need of living as close to it as possible to it.
Today we want to be immersed in the wilderness to understand the world better. Technology and maps can ruin this experience. That’s why Michieli’s choice of freedom from tools it’s so liberating. It opens a new level of understanding nature as we seem to be finally ready to listen to it.
Franco probably realised all this already in his teen years, specifically during daily hikes in the Alps. At the end of every day (when leaving the mountain) he felt like leaving a world that was just starting speaking to him: the contact with nature, patiently established through a long day, was gone just after reaching the car and coming back to “the modern world”.
That’s why at 19 years old he left for a three months trip across the Alps: from sea to sea, starting in Ventimiglia, in the Italian coast near the French Riviera, to Duino, near Trieste on the Adriatic Sea. He left with only a sleeping bag, not even carrying a tent. He wanted to be as immersed in nature as possible, being in contact with it all the time.
I’ve always struggled with the use of technology during my trips. For example on finding the right moment to film or photograph the landscape I’m crossing. It’s so hard to stop while cycling or hiking to take out my camera. Usually I don’t want to break what I’m experiencing just to film it.
When I’m in nature I’m perfectly tuned with the surroundings and by introducing an external object it’s easy to lose that connection. My mind switches into “capturing mode” instead of living the present moment. Even my vision changes: suddenly what matters are colors, light sources and my camera’s battery life. I forget about myself or what I was enjoying out there. I start focusing on what I can take there for future purposes (as showing to friends, family, colleagues). I’m basically doing exactly the opposite thing when, checking incredible videos on YouTube, I let my mind dream and forget about the present moment.
Again, I think Michieli knows all this. And that’s why he doesn’t allow anything else to dictate his routes. He follows the path he sees, maybe sometimes he only senses, certainly not those printed on maps. His experience is pure. His understanding of the space grows in his head and so he learns about rivers, hills shapes, tree movements that otherwise would have been ignored.
I want to do the same, or at least try.
I’ve decided to follow Michieli’s example. On my next trip I’ll go out without maps.
What’s important is knowing how to find food, water and a shelter, eventually. Also, I’ll not be experiencing the Norway wilderness but the gently English countryside.
If you know a bit of Italian or want to take this chance to practice it, you can check some of Michieli’s books.
If you are keen to know more about the subject but you are not familiar with Italian I have another explorer that can satisfy your appetite for adventure in the wilderness.
His name is Tristan Gooley. A writer, navigator and explorer who has led expeditions on five continents, spent time with the Tuareg, Bedouin and Dayak in some of the remotest places on Earth and pioneered a renaissance in the rare art of natural navigation.
Tristan is the only living person to have both flown solo and sailed single-handed across the Atlantic. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Institute of Navigation and Vice Chairman of the UK’s largest independent travel company, Trailfinders. He lives in West Sussex.
