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Call of the world
By MARINA BROWN ST. PETERSBURG -- All right, she concedes, she has felt fear. But it was just one time. Jill Athey, tiny, lean and 67, says that single moment of trepidation in nearly three decades of adventurous travel came while she was on horseback in a remote, undeveloped country. "I was on a horse near Tash Rabat in Kyrgyzstan," Athey says. "We were stumbling and slipping along a rocky cliff inches from a drop of thousands of feet to the valley.
"I know as much about horses as (about) deep-sea diving, but despite being caught in a thunderstorm, plunging through rushing streams . . . and clinging to the horse like a new best friend, I guess I just had to see that snow-covered mountain pass." Athey is a grandmother and is organized and deliberate in speech, as perhaps befits a 32-year employee of the Social Security Administration. But, in a moment of personal poetry, she says that the strenuous travels undertaken with her husband, Jack, have been in pursuit of "the other side of beyond."
Jack and Jill Athey, married 49 years, have undertaken at least two exotic trips a year since 1975. On a limited budget but motivated by dreams she has nurtured from childhood, Jill says she has become addicted to travel. Though health issues and world politics have recently complicated things, the couple have no plans to curtail their trips. "It's just that after a few weeks at home, I feel this need to start planning for the next journey. I can't help myself," she says, laughing.
Jack Athey, 72 and semiretired from his antiques business, says he goes, without argument, wherever Jill says they should. But he has his favorite destinations: "I love Peru and Nepal," he says. "The people are absolutely fantastic: honest, helpful, friendly." Jill also enjoys Nepal. "I am always astonished by the beauty of the Himalayas," she says. Their choices typically require courage and stamina to reach. Sitting in their St. Petersburg home recently, after returning from Bhutan, Jack thumbs through his current passport. It is stamped and overstamped with locations that read like a National Geographic article index: Morocco, Tibet, India, Spain, Bhutan, China, Ecuador, Argentina, Nepal, Egypt, Uzbekistan. The Atheys have visited 33 countries on five continents (Jill is not intrigued by Antarctica or Australia). But, she says, "I've just put new ones on the (to-visit) list: Belize, Kamchatka (in Russia) and Baffin Island, Norway." Coming from the HeartlandWith annoyance, she says that foreign affairs recently caused her to cancel a trip to Yemen, and that Ethiopia and Djibouti are on permanent hold. "It appears that some of the most interesting places in the world are going to be barred forever to Americans, with all the anti-U.S. sentiment. Joining the military may be my only way," she says drily. The wanderlust the couple shares is probably best explained by their descriptions of themselves as "dreamers" and "romantics" who were touched early on by the fantasy of escaping the mundane.
"And then, I was just plain ornery," Jack says, chuckling. Growing up as an only child in Wellsville, Ohio (pop. 4,500), Jack says that he thought of himself as a loner and "a lover of adventure" who was likely to take any dare. The road from Wellsville started calling early: He first ran away from home at age 12. He ran away eight more times, leaving three times as he tried to get to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Each time he left, he was taken home by the police. Finally he joined the Navy, worked as a crane operator and eventually let his eye for trading and swapping antiques develop into a full-time job. He operated the Cobweb Corner in downtown St. Petersburg for a number of years, but "never, never did I have to punch a time clock," he says. By contrast, his wife-to-be was a studious single child of a single parent. She lived in the next town over, East Liverpool, Ohio (pop. 5,600). She studied piano and organ, and read Dickens, Bronte, Longfellow and Frost. But she also was fascinated by travel books and National Geographic magazines, often spending Saturdays at the library. There she read Lowell Thomas' travel books and from them compiled lists of places she wanted to visit someday. She was lonely, she remembers, until the day she met Jack, at a social club dance. She was 18, he was 22, and they had known each other little more than a month when he "impulsively" proposed, he says. What's more, he wanted to elope. She agreed. Hopping on a Greyhound bus, the pair began married life in Washington, D.C. Nearly a half-century later, Jack says he has never again felt the need to run away. At least, not without Jill. Though she cut out travel pieces from the St. Petersburg Times and prowled the travel sections of bookstores, the Atheys' limited budget, full-time jobs and rearing of their daughter and son permitted only short trips -- Miami, the New York World's Fair -- for most of the next 20 years. An exception was one month with their teenage children in Mexico. But Jill says that planning has always been part of the fun, and though the wait was long, the couple's dreams became reality in 1975. Helping hands -- and legs"Some of the adventures we've had," says Jack, immediately recounting one: "We were climbing the Inca Trail (in Peru) with too-heavy packs filled with food and sleeping bags, and we were gasping in the high altitude. Suddenly, behind us we heard a noise that turned out to be a healthy-looking Indian, his young son and a donkey! "I begged and offered him $100 to use that donkey until we reached the top. Repeatedly, the Indian said "No" and moved on. "Exhausted, we sat down to cook our breakfast and to rest. In just moments, the Indian returned without the child or the donkey. Barefoot, but with a big smile, he picked up our packs, turned and took off, practically running up the mountain! "Jill was sure we'd just been robbed, but we could only continue on. But at the end of the day's ascent, imagine our surprise when we found the Indian had set up our camp under a protective boulder, laid out our sleeping bags on straw and started a welcoming fire! "He had known that that the way was too treacherous for a donkey and that (traveling with) the boy would have slowed him down." The man had left the boy and donkey at a nearby village, then returned to the trail to meet the Atheys and take their packs. At the campsite the native set up, "We all shared a warm meal, but he would only accept a tiny mirror and a light jacket" for all his work. Jill recalled another honest soul, one from the Russian steppes, who returned the videocamera the Atheys had forgotten in a yurt. The camera arrived "parcel post from Uzbekistan," she says. A world of possibilitiesJill chooses their destinations based on several things: "Places I've had on my list forever" and that tend to be well-known, seemingly romantic and often written or sung about. They include "the pyramids and the Nile"; the Alhambra in Spain; Jordan's "rose city," Petra, and Cappadocia in eastern Turkey.
Places that boast specific lures: "camel riding, dog sledding, the aurora borealis, sunrise over the Himalayas." The culture of a place: "flamenco and El Greco in Spain, the tango in Buenos Aires." Wherever there are mountains. But sometimes, "it's just a sentence in a travel book" that provides the attraction. "Like the Kalash tribe in northern Pakistan: I'd read that they have blond hair and blue eyes, look nothing like the other indigenous people and perhaps are descended from the Greek armies of Alexander the Great," she says. "In order to find them, we had to travel by Jeep on horrendous roads, close to Nanga Parbat, Trichmir and Rakaposhi, around mountains over 25,000 feet, and into the Kalash Valley. But it was like magic, with beautiful women in black, embroidered robes, flashing blue eyes, and the sound of thunderous waterfalls filling the valley." The couple's home is filled with scores of albums; framed photos and souvenirs crowd every space. Among Jack's favorites: carved wood skulls from Ecuador, temple door handles from the Himalayan region, cane swords from Argentina, turquoise from Tibet. Obstacles in their pathNot only are world events creating problems for the Atheys' travels, but also the price of their trips is ever increasing. "In 1979 or '80, a trip for two might cost $2,000," Jill says. "Now, it's more like $8,000" to tour a similar destination. She estimates the price of their most recent trip, two weeks in Bhutan, at between $7,000 and $8,000. Air fare is the bulk of the price. The couple prefer to travel by themselves, the better to connect with local people, they say. But, "when we need to get a visa to get into a country, it's often easier to do it by booking with a tour operator (and joining) a small group, never more than six," she says. The Atheys typically choose cheap hotels and have paid as little as $2 a night, in Peru, and up to $70, in Vietnam and Cambodia. "We don't really mind being uncomfortable," Jill says. . "Sleeping bags, bedbugs . . . no showers, no toilet, less than savory food -- all go with the territory. "That line from the old song, 'faraway places with strange-sounding names,' when they call out to you, you can expect . . . a little hardship. But if you really want to be in a place, you can stand anything for a few weeks." They save money for their travels as they have since 1975: "We put a certain portion of our income away every week, and we never use it for anything but travel." How about all the research and preparation? Jill makes it sound easy: "All you have to do is decide on the place, book the airline flights (four months in advance), do the research and actual planning for the trip, and put up a photo of the place you're going where you can see it every day" to reinforce saving for the trip. After all this, she says, "First thing you know, your trip will just happen." No matter the destination, some things are standard. For instance, the Atheys always take a washcloth and a flashlight. And they say that, like the majority of travelers, they always pack too much.
Jack had quadruple bypass surgery several years ago and has since curtailed his part of travel by allowing his wife to climb to the summits of the mountains she loves while he bargains in the nearest bazaar. Both of them realize there is risk in long, difficult journeys with his heart condition. "But we have no plans to stop," Jack says. "The joy of venturing on is just too much in our blood now." Says Jill: "Sometimes when I'm in a place, lying beneath a starry sky in the Tunisian desert, or overlooking Machu Picchu, I feel as if I've lived there before, as if I've come home. "That's why I don't want to stop. It's as if I keep finding parts of myself all over the world." -- Marina Brown is a freelance writer who lives in Treasure Island.
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From the Times Travel page
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