I have always said I was born 200 years too late because I would like to have been an explorer who could find new rivers, new mountains, new oceans. But I was stuck. The explorers had already done all that. In fact,there are very few places where I've been where I could believe in my heart that I was the first person ever seeing that scene.

That was true in the Canadian Arctic right after World War II when the Defense Department was establishing satellite weather stations so that we would know where the weather is coming from in advance of its arrival. The Air Force had been surprised again and again during World War II by storms that just appeared. The Navy provided icebreakers. We went everywhere, even up to 86 degrees north, which is quite a few degrees north of the northernmost land. At that time, no ship had been that far north under its own power. Ships that had deliberately frozen in the ice had drifted right across the north pole, but our ship was the first to go so far under its own power.

At the weather stations that they set up, the weather people were there for a year, in the case of U. S. citizens or for two years in the case of Canadians. They had their own things and ways of passing their time and they didn't want to go wandering over the tundra, where surely they wouldn't be able to find their way back. So I always went alone. To make it less dangerous, I never went for more than three days at a time, so they wouldn't have to search so far in case I didn't come back.

Anyway, on some occasions I really was confident that I was seeing new scenes when I looked over the top of a ridge. I always wanted to go to the top of the next ridge to see what was on the other side. I saw sights that I'm sure no person had seen. Now I use mammals, bats in particular, as a way of exploring. I can't find new lands but I can find new bats. So, basically I'm an explorer.

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