(March 2011) WRITING ABOUT ADVENTURE – whether the adventure is climbing a mountain, fighting a war or flying a small airplane across the country – is something of a challenge. Not because the source material is lacking. To the contrary. But there’s a reason explorers and generals who cared about recording their battles for history brought along professional writers to document their exploits. It’s because the explorers and generals were too busy with the adventure itself to have the time, energy, mental perspective or focus to write about it.
So, OK. It’s also possible that Magellan wasn’t much of a writer. But Anne Morrow Lindbergh, an extremely talented writer who accompanied her husband on a number of his flights charting new routes across remote stretches of the Earth for the fledgling airlines in the 1930s, found herself in the same predicament. In the moment, she said, all she had the energy and time to do was to take a few scattered notes about what had transpired. She had to piece together her tales from memory after the fact, once she was back home and had the time and energy to write.
