Don Paul
Mountain climber
Denver CO
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Topic Author's Original Post - Nov 16, 2017 - 07:35am PT
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Missing British explorer Benedict Allen spotted in Papua New Guinea
A rare breed these days, as the lonely planet has become mostly explored, and the advent of applications like Google Maps and Pokemon Go.
Up along the hostile mountains, where the hair-poised snowslide shivers—
Down and through the big fat marshes that the virgin ore-bed stains,
Till I heard the mile-wide mutterings of unimagined rivers,
And beyond the nameless timber saw illimitable plains!
’Plotted sites of future cities, traced the easy grades between ’em;
Watched unharnessed rapids wasting fifty thousand head an hour;
Counted leagues of water-frontage through the axe-ripe woods that screen ’em—
Saw the plant to feed a people—up and waiting for the power!
Well I know who’ll take the credit—all the clever chaps that followed—
Came, a dozen men together—never knew my desert-fears;
Tracked me by the camps I’d quitted, used the water-holes I’d hollowed.
They’ll go back and do the talking. They’ll be called the Pioneers!
~ from Rudyard Kipling, The Explorer
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