IN MY SHOES: What It’s Like To Be An Adventure Writer
In the opening paragraphs of a profile of Aussie Paul Raffaele, 63, The Washington Post presents a meandering story about how "the last of the great old-fashioned adventure writers" nearly got killed the week before in Kenya by a charging bull elephant:
"He puts his ears back and you could see murder in his eyes. I knew he was going to charge. It's a strange, eerie feeling." …
[H]e travels the world hunting true tales of wild animals and primitive tribes, preferably those that eat humans. He's in Washington to powwow with his editors at Smithsonian magazine, which has published his stories on Indonesian cannibals, killer jellyfish and, in the August issue, on modern pirates. …
"We're used to Asian elephants, those dainty little dumbos, but this bugger was huge!" he says. "He came straight at us and I thought, 'How are we going to get out of this one?' "
He interrupts his story to talk about his other near-death experiences, like the time he was captured by Khmer Rouge soldiers in Cambodia or the time he was caught in the middle of a riot in Bangkok and a drunken rioter put a gun to his head.
"The thing about being in danger is … [i]t's only afterward that it really hits you. So I was calm. … I'm thinking, 'This is really interesting,' and the driver put [the car] into reverse and then he tried to go forward and the wheels started to spin and the bloody elephant's coming at us."
He interrupts the story to explain why he wasn't driving the car. …
Okay, fine, but what about the elephant?
He apologizes for the digressions. "I'm jet-lagged … I flew from Kenya two days ago. The plane was packed. It was like a flying refugee camp. I've flown 500 of them over the years. Every time, I say … ‘I'm finished! I'm never going on the road again!' And then you get home and you finish the story and you say, 'I can't wait to go out again!' "
Right, right. But what about the charging elephant and the spinning wheels?
"Finally, the wheels gripped … and we turned and drove away."
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