Media Person: Rocks in the Head

Deep in the tropical rain forest only a few steps from our luxury hotel, the senses are nearly overpowered by the perfumed profusion of orchids, bougainvillea and frangipani, the raucous squawk of macaws and the brilliant flash of fairylike hummingbirds darting through the green canopy of towering zingilia trees overhead. We step gingerly through the sinuous maruga vines and the colorful dedefouden seeds carpeting the forest floor, wary of treading on a sleeping giant anaconda, lest it fling its terrible coils about us and crush the life out of our suddenly fear-paralyzed body before cramming us feet-first into its powerful hinged jaws and swallowing us whole at a hideously deliberate tempo, then lumping off to a dank cave littered with the shoes, hotel keys and belt buckles of previous tourist victims for a leisurely week of digestion and meditation.
Don't you adore travel writing? Media Person does and that is why once each year he devotes this space to his Annual Travel, Leisure & Vacation Column, which in fact, this is. Ah, the sensual joy-and the sheer relief!-of perusing thick, sumptuous glossies packed with thrilling travel adventures that you do not have to suffer through yourself because some poor freelance bastard did it for you. That's living.
Sadly, this year finds the normally serene and upbeat travel-magazine community in something of a tizzy. A famous travel author who's starting a new downscale magazine-Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel-blasted the competition as "elitist, haughty and high society . . . a public scandal, a disgrace." Frommer says 90 percent of the populace can't afford the kind of ritzy vacations these magazines are always writing about.
OK, everybody . . . all together now in four-part harmony: Duh!
Mags like Conde Nast Traveler and Travel & Leisure were deeply wounded by Frommer's shocking proclamation of the obvious, but Media Person suspects that once the initial pain wears off, they may come to accept that adjustments should be made. It wouldn't hurt to pay attention to the needs of less affluent travelers and run service articles such as "Stowing Away on Luxury Caribbean Cruises" and "How to Pass Yourself Off As a Travel Writer and Score Freebies in Exotic Vacation Spots." They might even consider a photo spread titled, "Escape to Beautiful Secaucus, the Forgotten Eden of New Jersey."
Of course Media Person has never been partial to the upscale fantasies exemplified by pieces such as "By Royal Appointment" in the May issue of Conde Nast Traveler, which lovingly describes how cash-strapped Portuguese aristocrats are throwing open their treasure-packed palaces to well-heeled foreigners for bedding and breakfasting. "When the Count of Calheiros tosses his dark, Byronic locks and excuses himself from a dinner table set with his family-monogrammed Limoges porcelain, saying "The King is on the phone,' somehow you know he is not joking," it gushes. Yes, and somehow you also know you'll need a loan from the King to pay the dark, Byronic bill the Count is going to hand you when that exquisite early morning light that one finds only on the Iberian peninsula trickles down upon your well-fed countenance. No thanks; Media Person is into adventure, man. No sissy porcelain will convey his power protein bars mouthward from his (rainproof, Ripstop, GoreTex and CoolMax) backpack. Media Person craves rugged, manly, neo-Hemingwayesque writing where dauntless maniacs in kayaks plunge down foaming rapids in scenic gorges pursued by enraged Kodiak bears, and there is neither Hilton nor Marriott within 100 miles. If you're going to live vicariously, you may as well go for the cheap thrills.
So you can imagine how excited Media Person was to discover the premiere issue of National Geographic Adventure scaling a sheer wall of magazines at his local newsstand recently. On the cover was a guy in shorts clinging to an impossibly angled rock outcropping so elevated that he's taking in a panoramic view seemingly comprising half the earth's surface. Inside, intrepid quest mavens discussed the sculptural beauty of rock, the joys of underwater exploration and the legendary Everett Ruess, a 20-year-old artist who in 1934 "walked into Utah's Escalante Desert with two burros and a week's worth of supplies" and was never heard from again. That's Media Person's kind of tourist. No Limoges in his knapsack.
MP's favorite piece in the debut issue was "Greenland Rocks!" wherein "a team of Wyoming cowboys" assaults an unassailable, not to mention unpronounceable, glacier named Ulamertorsuaq. These dudes are so athletically pious they spurn artificial climbing aids such as ropes or spikes (except for fall protection)-nothing permitted but bare fingernails desperately clutching at microscopic fissures in the rock as they cling hundreds of feet above, well, more rock. Finally achieving the summit, the heroic ascenders are at last rewarded with the stirring sight of horizontal rock.
Media Person doesn't know how Arthur Frommer can beat that. Maybe an article on five accountants from Queens racing for the Times Square shuttle during rush hour. OK, it's not as thrilling as Ulamertorsuaq but think how much money you save not flying to Greenland and buying all that climbing gear. ƒ