What is an Explorer?

Explorers are men and women who have the courage to test existing boundaries. Explorers are men and women who aspire for something more out of life than what currently exists. Explorers are men and women who are willing to chart the unknown at a cost to their own comfort and security. It can be argued that explorers possess the ten characteristics of the “achieving” personality type:

• Focus
• Preparedness
• Conviction
• Perseverance
• Creativity
• Curiosity
• Resilience
• Risk taking
• Independence
• A sense of higher purpose

Motivation of Explorers

What motivates explorers? The earliest explorers traveled for the purpose of discovery and adventure. Many of the early explorers mentioned conquest, acquisition of wealth, and territorial acquisition as their reasons for exploring.

Backgrounds of Explorers

Explorers come from all walks of life. Marco Polo was a merchant; Robert Louis Stevenson was a novelist; and Mary Kingsley was a well-born Englishwoman. Noted explorers included conquistadors, lawyers, naturalists, priests, and surgeons. No station in life is immune from the “fever.”

The itch, the fever, the urge-whatever one chooses to call it-is recurrent, if not constant. Once they have gone off, they go again and again. . . .Often the fever manifests itself in childhood . . . and sometimes it stops only with death, violent death.

There are many examples of individuals who had the fever. Three such examples are Christopher Columbus, George Rogers Clark, and Delia Denning Akeley

Christopher Columbus

Columbus is recognized as one of the earliest noteworthy explorers. On his first voyage Columbus landed on the Bahamas, then Cuba, and Haiti (1492-93). At the time of his explorations, “No other sailor had the persistence, the knowledge, and the sheer guts to sail thousands of miles into the unknown ocean until he found land.” Columbus’ explorations whittled away at the unknown.

George Rogers Clark

Clark was an American frontiersman explorer during the last half of the eighteenth century. Like many frontiersmen who are driven to explore by their need for wide open spaces, Clark explored vast areas of wilderness. According to Havinghurst, Clark’s name is “synonymous with the settlement of the Ohio, adventure in the Kentucky wilderness, conquest of the frontier lands of Illinois and the winning of the West for a new nation.” Clark’s explorations brought new options for people.

Delia Denning Akeley

Akeley explored Equatorial Africa, collecting specimens of Africa’s wild animals for American natural history museums (1905-1929). Armed with little more than courage and an empathetic understanding of the Africans, she proved that a woman could travel in a dangerous country at a dangerous time. Akeley’s explorations brought a new knowledge to the American people.

Everyone Explorers

Not everyone will have the urge to explore as these noted explorers did, but everyone has a little bit of an exploring nature. It may not be the urge to explore for glory or discovery; it may simply be an urge to travel to an area that the individual has not yet visited. The urge may be in the form of exploring a book, museum, or Web site to expand one’s knowledge. Or it may be exploring educational and career options. Regardless of the type of exploration done, all explorers are changed by their explorations. Their horizons become much broader.