Born to Explore: How to Be a Backyard Adventurer

Born to Explore is filled with skills, projects, and essential knowledge for the budding adventurer

Explorer extraordinaire Richard Wiese's more than one hundred excellent projects show how to have fun with science and nature, how to not always take the most walked path, and how to learn to "read" the natural world. Discovery does not occur just in the Amazon or deep in the ocean. It happens everywhere around us:

Navigate by the stars,
Tell time without a watch,
Start a fire without a match,
Make an igloo,
Build your own canoe,
And be prepared for any challenge.

Born to Explore is filled with skills, projects, and essential knowledge for the budding adventurer

Explorer extraordinaire Richard Wiese's more than one hundred excellent projects show how to have fun with science and nature, how to not always take the most walked path, and how to learn to "read" the natural world. Discovery does not occur just in the Amazon or deep in the ocean. It happens everywhere around us:

Navigate by the stars,
Tell time without a watch,
Start a fire without a match,
Make an igloo,
Build your own canoe,
And be prepared for any challenge.

The Barnes & Noble Review

Say you're going on a wilderness expedition and can take with you only what will fit into one compact Altoids tin: What would you take? That's just one of many thought-provoking survival questions addressed by Richard Wiese in Born to Explore: How to Be a Backyard Adventurer. Wiese, who has served as the Explorers Club's youngest president and hosted a syndicated TV show, also fills in readers on how to: build their own canoe; start a fire without a match; make an igloo; cook "Road Kill Stew" (no, that's not a euphemism); survive a moose attack; bake bread in a plastic bag; catch fish with a Coke bottle; chop down a tree; fashion a compass out of a sewing needle, a magnet, and a glass of water; and, well, a host of other useful things to know. In eight lively, amply illustrated chapters, accessible enough for the whole family to enjoy (included are many experiments and activities suitable for teens and up -- or even for parents to attempt with their kids), Wiese incites our curiosity not only about the faraway lands to which he has traveled ("Several years ago, while cross-country skiing to the North Pole." is the sort of line he tosses off in passing) but also about the flora and fauna in our own backyards. "I hope Born to Explore inspires both the nature enthusiast and the nature-impaired and provides information on the tools needed to discover and love the outdoors," he writes. Mission accomplished.and pass the (curiously strong) mints. --Amy Reiter

In 2002, Richard Wiese became the youngest president in The Explorers Club's one hundred-year history. He has tagged jaguars in the YucatÁn jungles, captured crocodiles, and handled venomous snakes in Australia; achieved the first ascent of an unclimbed mountain in Alaska; discovered twenty-nine new life forms on Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa; and cross-country skied to the North Pole.