Dr. Lowman’s latest Nature’s Secrets column in newsobserver.com:
The Who’s Who of global exploration gathered in March, celebrating the 109th year of the Explorers Club. Eating exotic critters, sharing new limits to the endurance of the human spirit, and wearing indigenous dress, explorers swarmed the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. It’s a far cry from the rigors of Antarctic huts, Amazon forest canopies, Everest base camps and undersea submersibles.
The exploration theme for the 2013 annual meeting was “Sacred Places,” and the six who received awards reflected on their most sacred sites: outer space for John Glenn and Scott Carpenter; the bottom of the ocean for James Cameron; Himalayan peaks for Chhiring Dorje Sherpa; shipwrecks off the coast of North Carolina and caves in the Ukraine for Christos Nicola; oceans (circumnavigated primarily via rowboat) for Erden Eruc; and mountaintops for Monika Rogozinska.