Wade Davis has spent his life following the threads of culture, story and human connection. What began as a childhood fascination with the world across the street became a career spent traveling into remote communities, listening deeply and sharing what he found with audiences around the globe. From his years as Explorer-in-Residence at National Geographic to his time teaching thousands of young students, Wade has carried one mission: to reveal the beauty, resilience and brilliance of human cultures. On Swan Hellenic voyages, he brings that spirit to sea. Read on as Wade reflects on serendipity, storytelling and the deep satisfaction of meeting curious travelers who want to understand the world rather than simply pass through it.
“Life is not linear. It’s full of serendipitous twists and turns, and you just have to keep your heart open when opportunities come along.”
Hi Wade! What first sparked your fascination with cultures and different ways of life?
Wade: Well, you know, I always say to young people that life is not linear. It’s full of serendipitous twists and turns, and what we really need to do is just have our hearts open when those opportunities come along. I grew up in Quebec at the time of the two solitudes when French and English really didn’t speak to each other. It got quite violent. There was martial law in 1970 and bombs and tanks in the streets. For Canada, it was exceptional. I grew up in an English suburb, plunked like a carbuncle on the back of an old French village that went back to at least the 18th century, and there was a boulevard that literally divided the English from the French community – Cartier Boulevard. My mother would send me to the little grocery owned by a Francophone couple, and from the age of four or five I would sit on the bench and look across the street and think: “Across the street is another language, another religion, a completely different way of life. Why am I not allowed to cross the street?” It wasn’t from my parents – it was from my society. In a way, I’ve been crossing that road ever since.
And what experiences deepened that curiosity and shaped the path you eventually followed?
Wade: Well, a second seminal moment was my mother insisting that Spanish was a language of the future. She worked all year to send me to Colombia when I was fourteen. The other Canadian boys there were homesick, but I felt I had finally found home. I was ecstatically happy. It was the intensity of the Colombian spirit, the understanding of the fragility of life, a quiet acceptance of the frailties of human beings. I’m almost 72 now, and I’m an honorary Colombian citizen. Colombia has remained part of my life since then.
When did anthropology first enter the picture for you?
Wade: That was also serendipity. I used to fight forest fires, and our fire camps were full of Vietnam draft dodgers. We were obedient Canadian lads, and they would tell our bosses to piss off – it was irresistibly charismatic. One of them had Life Magazine with the Harvard student strike on the cover, and in the way only adolescents think, I thought: “That must be the college you go to to become cool like these guys.” So I applied and got in. When I arrived in Boston at seventeen my dorm wasn’t open and I had no money, so a pastor put me up for a week. I got radicalized that year and spent most of it making trouble. The next day was declaration day, and I hadn’t thought about it. I walked out of the Museum of Ethnology and ran into a friend. I asked what he was choosing. “Anthropology,” he said. I asked what that was. He said you read about Indians, and like Forrest Gump I said, “That’ll do.”
What ultimately led you from the classroom to the Amazon?
Wade: After a year or two I wanted to live with Indigenous people, not just read about them. I went to see Richard Evans Schultes. I said I had saved money and wanted to go to the Amazon. He looked over a mound of plant specimens and said, “Well, son, when do you want to go?” Two weeks later I landed in Colombia destined for the Amazon.
An unexpected beginning
How did you move from anthropology into storytelling on a global scale?
Wade: I often describe myself as a storyteller. I wasn’t drawn to academic essays that no one read. The issues we were dealing with – biological diversity, loss of language, loss of culture – were too important to be left in the ivory tower. As a graduate student in Haiti, my funding dried up, so I went to a literary agent in London and got my first book contract. I wrote The Serpent and the Rainbow, and it sold almost half a million copies.
National Geographic became a major part of your life, didn’t it?
Wade: Yes. A magazine piece I wrote on endangered cultures and lost languages led them to recruit me. They wanted to show they not only reported science but generated it. They recruited seven Explorers-in-Residence: Jane Goodall, Sylvia Earle, Johann Reinhard and so on. I was fortunate to be the anthropologist. My mission – literally in my contract – was to change the way the world views and values culture in a decade.
So, what did that mission involve?
Wade: Storytellers change the world. We didn’t need more conferences. Politicians follow – they rarely lead. We wanted to show people the central lesson of anthropology: the world into which you were born is just one cultural model, and other peoples are not failed attempts at being modern. I embarked on journeys into the ethnosphere. I took audiences to Polynesia to sail with the wayfinders, into the high Arctic, into the Himalayas, into the Australian outback. When I wrote about endangered languages in 1998, linguists already knew half the world’s languages were not being taught to children, but no one said anything because of Noam Chomsky’s dominance. I had no stake in that world, so I could shout the obvious. That helped break the dam.
How did those years shape your work and the way you connect with people today?
Wade: Through those years I wrote many books, including In the Silence. I made about 40 films. I gave 50–60 lectures a year, and I’ve given well over 2,000 talks. Even as a professor, my job was to fill students’ eyes with wonder and infect them with the virus of tolerance. Students still write to me saying, “Remember when you told us to follow our heart? I’m walking around the world.” Another wrote, “I’ve been adopted by a clan – I’m not going home.” It is more gratifying than any literary prize. And I answer every email. Young people are not really asking for logistics. They are asking: “Am I somebody?” If you don’t answer, it’s a slap in the face.
How would you describe your approach to speaking with travelers on voyages like these?
Wade: My attitude is that in any audience there will always be some who want more and more, and others who want less and less. The ones who want less can either stop listening or walk out of the room without causing any offense, or not come to the lectures for that matter, but you have to speak to those who are on the trip because they really want to learn. Most people are keen, curious, and fascinating. It’s a connection.
The joy of storytelling
Do you still enjoy traveling to places you’ve never visited before?
Wade: Absolutely. I enjoy trips to locations I’ve never visited. On that first trip, I’d only visited one of the destinations before. This was pre-internet, so I had bags of books and research materials, and I would stay up all night responding to an interest of a passenger or something that had happened on the trip. For me it was a gift, it allowed me to really dig into whatever story I needed to tell the next day. Each of those lectures that I worked on became part of my long-term storytelling toolkit. I remember being in Botswana, finding a really good illustrated book about the San Bushmen. I read through the night and wrote a lecture that made it sound as if I’d spent my whole life studying them. Those passages ended up ten years later in one of my books.
What do you like most about being a guest lecturer at sea?
Wade: I enjoy the people I meet first and foremost. I enjoy hanging out, having fun, all of it. I also enjoy the challenge of distilling stories from wherever we’re going. I look for the wow points. If something makes me go wow, it will make the audience go wow. In my book, In the Silence, I wanted to distill what World War I meant for women, and I found one line from Lady Diana Manners: “By the end of 1916, every boy I had ever danced with was dead.” Once we sailed unexpectedly into Placentia Bay. The naturalists panicked and talked about bird species, but Placentia Bay is where Churchill met Roosevelt, so I told the story of World War II from that anchorage.
Why is connecting with travelers and students so meaningful for you?
Wade: If you can change one life, it’s worth it. When I was 18 in Washington, a friend said I should meet the secretary at the Smithsonian. I thought she meant a secretary. I turned up in jeans and a T-shirt, and suddenly I was in the office of Dylan Ripley. He treated me kindly and invited me to lunch. We walked into a hall full of Smithsonian scientists staring at him and at me, this kid. I floated on air. That meeting became one of their favorite family stories. Moments like that matter. They stay with you. That’s why I answer every email and give respect to everyone I meet.