Meet Gregg and Deia - February 22, 2009

This past weekend I attended the Adventure Travel Expo in DC. Although our hearty tree-embracing buddies fom NOLS and AMC were in attendance the majority of vendors seemed to be pitching "luxurious" travel packages to "exotic locales," oh that most irritating of oxymorons: "upscale adventure" (see "Outside Go"). I'm sure ziplining through the rainforest from the window of a five star hotel and traversing the Alaskan backcountry in an RV has its own particular magic to it but I Chinatown bussed on down to DC for something bigger. Well, primarily I wanted to hang out with my wonderful mom before she heads back to the Philippines but I also went to listen with keen intensity to Gregg and Deia's story.

Across the Andes

Deia Schlosberg, 28, and Gregg Treinish, 26, were the first people to thru-hike the entire 7,800 mile (+/-) length of the Andes along its skyscraping spine. Deia was also the first woman to walk South America. It isn't simply the scale of the task that is so epic, it was their style and purpose in doing it that makes the feat all the more affecting. For much of the journey they were without adequate topography maps and GPS. Through one section of Peru the only maps they had to go by were the scale generally found on classroom walls. By their own estimate they bushwacked half of the distance, often through nearly impenetrable vegetation, ice cold glacial waterways and deep muddy bogs. They regularly endured typhoid fever, stomach virii and other severe ailments. They set off on their "7,800 mile trek toward understanding" with the intention of learning from the experience of peoples who've used a variety of sustainable methods of living for centuries and in some cases have only heard tales of gringos. It was heartening to hear how genuinely warm, giving, funny and curious people they came across were (and how often they pointed Deia and Gregg in the wrong direction). One photo displayed a mountaintop adobe brick hut house attached with a solar panel, a striking marriage of traditional and modern methods. Another slide showed the devastating environmental and social consequences of ubiquitous copper mining in Chile. In one moment I found particularly moving Gregg shared his surprise when he discovered a conservation effort he once admired had actually displaced people in Patagonia. Their odyssey even contained a worthy romantic subplot: Gregg proposed to Deia at the lighthouse at the end of the continent. (She accepted.)

In person Gregg had an infectious humility and smile. I was glad to get to share with him how thinking of their trials helped me push through my own, microscopic by comparison. If heroines and heroes are simply ordinary people that do extraordinary things in service of a calling much larger than themselves, well then my netdwelling friends, meet Gregg and Deia.

(Photos from AcrossTheAndes.com)