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- To be from Laramie.

John Haines write is to leave it.

Only then does Laramie become clearer which brings you back home.

His book 'Never Leaving Laramie' covers two decades of world adventures with his Laramie friends.

Yet we later feel Haines pain and confusion when he steps off a train in the Czech Republic and wakes up a quadriplegic.

Author John Haines next on Wyoming Chronicle.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] This program was funded in part by Grant for Newmans Own Foundation.

Working to nourish the common good by donating all profits from Newmans Own food and beverage products to charitable organizations that seek to make the world a better place.

More information is available at NewmansOwnFoundation.org.

- Funding for this program is made possible in part by the Wyoming Humanities Council.

Helping Wyoming take a closer look at life through the humanities.

Thinkwhy.org and by the members of the WyomingPBS Foundation.

Thank you for your support.

- And I wanna welcome our viewers to this Wyoming Chronicle with author John Haines.

John, first of all welcome and thank you for taking the time to visit with us.

- Thank you, Craig my pleasure.

- Usually John, when we have someone on our show, we can distill down their title to one thing like artist or legislator or author.

And I was thinking about you and I thought, okay, banker, baker, adventurist, advocate and the list goes on and on.

If I were to describe you, John how would you describe yourself to me?

And then we're gonna get very much into why we're here today and that's to talk about your book 'Never Leaving Laramie Travels in a Restless World'.

but let's start with, how would you describe yourself, John?

Let's start there.

- That's a fair question.

I think I mentioned to somebody recently that I got a degree at University of Wyoming in five years undecided take it a lot of courses that were off the graduate track in anthropology.

and we had great professors a number of areas that I've kind of made kid that curiosity and shifting gears is something that I'm happy to do work-wise but today my chief title is as a executive director of this project I created called the Community Investment Trust which is putting a wealth building strategy and 100 cities and a million people over the next five to 10 years.

That's my day job.

- Well, you've had a life, John that's just been filled with adventure and I guess it all started in Laramie and we're gonna get to many, many of those unbelievable to me adventurous, but it started in the early on the back streets of Laramie and exploring Washington park as a kid.

Didn't didn't they?

- That's all right.

It's, I'm glad we had a good park Craig, right across the street.

'Cause it was my playground for sure.

- And your dad was a banker in Laramie?

- He was that guy that young kid started two banks in Mountain View and in Evanston and my grandfather ran those.

And then my father became a banker independently of those banks and in Laramie for his whole career.

- You write in your book initially that like many high school kids in Laramie a lot of summer nights when the right rain wasn't coming down too hard the thunderstorms are staying away.

You spend it at viva with friends.

- Viva was as soon as we could drive, we were up at beautiful rock climbing or hiking Creek and Bear.

So yeah, we were Laramie is blessed with being proximate to some really beautiful places.

- John, if you would I've asked you to read a little bit about that.

That's in you talk about in your book at a couple of different times and if you wouldn't mind you're on the Niger River and we're gonna talk about that adventure in great detail here in just a little bit, but you come back to really why you decided to leave Laramie.

And if you wouldn't mind starting the pair reading the couple of paragraphs that we talked about I'd really appreciate it.

- Okay, I will let me do a quick preface because I've mentioned a name in this paragraph, Mungo Park.

So Mungo Park just quick background was a Scottish explorer who was sent into the interior of Africa after several of his people had been sent in and never seen again or died.

So they found this young Scottish doctor and send him in to find this great river that they didn't know.

They knew existed, but didn't know its direction and didn't know much about it.

But they perceived that there was great wealth from the interior of Africa in the late 1700s.

So that's Mungo Park and that's who I refer to here.

We were following for a chunk of the river, big portion of the Niger River and Mali his route.

So we understood Park's restlessness.

And in Democrats of the young in Laramie as to leave.

Laramie is more than enough for a kid until it is not.

Getting out of Laramie by road led to places by playing thousands of miles and months away.

We would eventually leave town and keep going.

And we did it over and over.

It didn't matter how far from home we were.

Once you pass the city's limit, you have left, gone.

When you leave Laramie, you trust that you will return to the same place, the bright sunlight, the university's tall trees and old buildings at the heart of town.

The sound of trains rolling through the night.

Familiar names, family names on retail businesses.

It makes leaping easy knowing that it will be there when you return.

It makes returning home as predictable as the morning sun rising over the Sherman Hills, East of town.

- And hence begins your writings.

When you start to recall your leaving Laramie.

John, tell me about your first desire to go on a serious adventure with maybe some of the friends that you had met in high school and with not a lot of money with not the assistance of a GPS or Google Earth or even Google at the time yet you were ready to ready to go.

And boy, did you ever?

- Actually the first time I left with three friends, three Laramie High School friends And at age 19 we went to Europe for the summer.

And those guys I was painting houses and mowing lawns and making money and with separate doing that.

And they bought or they reserved my plane ticket because they know I'd eventually want to go.

So a couple of weeks before they were set to go we were meeting and I said, "boy I wish I was going with you guys."

And they said, "well, we were in Syracuse ticket already."

So we all went to Europe, which in retrospect was a huge adventure for us at age 19 to be roaming around Europe on the cheap, sleeping in parks, largely.

But that was the first overseas trip for me.

- And then it kept going.

You write about travels to Japan, to Tibet a couple of times.

The greatest adventures in your book in my eyes are riding your popsicle to Everest Base Camp.

And then certainly the book as you describe it within a book of your time on the Niger River.

Tell us more about some of your early adventures before we get to the larger adventures that you write about.

- Okay, Southeast Asia was a real draw for a lot of us in Laramie.

At that time were working in restaurants and doing things and seed was planted by a couple older guys, a few years older.

Five years older is a big distance when you're a kid but so they'd come back with stories and it incubated kind of a wave of us going oftentimes not connect our plan to Southeast Asia particularly in Nepal and Thailand.

And at that time, this was 1984.

Tibet had just opened up for independent travelers.

And when you're in Nepal at about 4,000 feet and going up to 18 or so tracking, you know these mountains on the other side, you realize there's a step or a plateau there that goes from roughly, 11-12,000 feet to 1819 on the backside of the Himalayas.

So it's an immediate draw, an influence of the Tibetans to the Sherpa culture.

And all of Nepal is so pronounced that, that just becomes a magnet.

So after traveling for a number of months with a girlfriend from Laramie, she went back to school in Eugene, Oregon, it happens.

And then I kept traveling.

I need to make money.

So I went to Japan and I bailed out of that kind of immediately because I was just too drawn to Tibet moving and going into China and Tibet in the winter of 1985.

That ended up materializing into what I wrote about in a couple chapters about the sky burial situation and discovering that which is really a unique phenomenon of how they deal with the dead in a really interesting humane way with raptors.

And then I took the Trans-Siberian, finally ended up back home and then left a few months later with a group of friends.

- And you would come back to Laramie then and in simplistic terms, hatch your next adventure.

You refer to that often in your book you would meet with friends.

How how did these come up?

How these, you're not talking about adventurous to Montana here?

- Well we ran into each other a number of us in Tibet or China during 1984, 1985.

So we had an idea that we could bicycle from Lhasa to Katmandu.

North Everest Base Camp wasn't in the plan then but a couple of us shifted off and went there.

just because it was towering above us and it was just so appealing.

When we were gonna be there again to get that close.

But, between Ivinson Street, between a couple of places where you've worked and the Buckhorn Bar a lot of ideas get percolated.

And there's always somebody that wants to do it.

And handful would say, they wouldn't do it in a million years, but maybe next year, I don't know.

It's just that, I think it's an adventurous spirit that existed at the time.

- You write John, in how you're laying the book out, how you lay it out as a timeline.

And you talk about the book within a book which is essentially your incredible journey.

First of all, finding the very headwaters of the Niger River and then navigating through its whole course, mostly are oftentimes on a canoe or a kayak.

You carry it in on your back.

Who was the first in your.

Who was your first to hatch that idea and tell us how you ended up then hiking to find the Niger source?

- This came about, I think originally around the kitchen table, I was in Eugene, Oregon.

Well actually Portland at the time and living and working.

And Laramie friends one of whom had done the bike track with me.

We were good friends and a couple other friends had hatched it I think at a dinner table at somebody's house.

And they perceived that it was gonna be like the last great interior African river last great, first descent.

And I had a good job.

I had just got an advancement.

I was disinclined to jump into something but I just couldn't get it out of my head.

I went to the library and Powell's Bookstore in Portland got a couple of books.

I just, I couldn't sleep.

I was so excited about the prospect of doing it.

So we literally put that trip together and a month and left because we wanted to catch the high water of the river as it flows through Mali and into Niger and then ended up Nigeria.

But the river dissipates into inland delta in Central Mali.

And that can be dwindled down to just branded channels and is it really moveable for a portion of the year.

So we needed to move quickly and left I think in late very end of September.

And we ended up going, two of us end up going for 19 weeks, five months.

- How could you have known the scale of this adventure that you were embarking upon?

- No, we didn't know.

I mean, we knew that we're hippo, but zero experience except for maybe a zoo.

And I don't even remember seeing one in the zoo, but, we didn't have much information.

In fact, we couldn't get maps.

I found a defense mapping agency out of Santa Barbara at some Ventura somewhere there and got some maps that half the maps were said and these are defense mapping maps.

So obviously don't Google Earth or GPS.

And they said undocumented area.

So the maps were essentially worthless until we got to Bamako which is about 500 miles down the river out of Guinea.

And we found an old cartography shop, a French one and we could get some maps for a few sections of Mali.

But you know after that, when we got to the end of Mali around Gao, we found a road map, a Michelin road map.

And we used that for just to Mark where we camped when we got through Nigeria.

But by Nigeria you just go on with the river.

It's pretty easy but the headwaters were completely hiking adventure.

I think we ended up hiking around 95 miles before we found the headwaters and then got to a point where it was widen up to kayak.

And we had sea kayaks, folding sea kayaks from a company in Vancouver.

- You met people along the way and you met humanity along the way, living perhaps in a way that they've lived for hundreds of years and you interacted with them.

How could that possibly have gone?

How did that work for you?

- It was all the way through Guinea where it was really remote and there weren't roads.

They thought maybe we were bringing roads and they hadn't, there's no peace corps up there.

Anybody, I mean you have to hike miles to get into these places.

The people were remarkably embracing and friendly.

There's also always protocol with the chief, meeting the chief.

They'd give us chicken very often and have a chicken.

And they had melons and oranges were grown.

A lot to eat but it was dense rainforest and isolated hamlets.

When I go on Google Earth now and I can see these places, they all have roads to them now but this was in 1991 and 92.

And you know people were remarkably friendly the entire route.

- How did you communicate John?

- Well, there were very often not in the headlands but further down in Mali, my travel partner Rick could speak some French and then we learned some Bambara to be able to do basic, really basic, just protocol conversations of polite and that's, but by and large, you know it's a lot of Panama and sharing things and laughing and getting by the best he can, because obviously we didn't have these Bambara or Malinke languages.

By the time we got to Nigeria there's plenty of people that speak English.

They're basically equatorial days roughly so 12 hours.

And we would paddle 10, 11 hours a day.

And stop in villages when we had the energy because it was always fascinating to stop in a village and meet people.

But we needed to give as much as we were taking, so we very often knew that we were gonna be the circle of attention and people are gonna gather around and it would take some time to share, our headlamps or our kayak paddles or a chief would want to actually try to paddle our boats which we always let them do.

It took some energy, but as long as we were curious with them, as they were with us and we were, it was, it always worked out great.

And I had done one thing that I've completely forgotten now, but, I thoughtfully having been in more remote places before I knew that you can always find a piece of paper or I could tear one out of my journal.

And I learned to make like a box out of paper at origami and then a swan or a bird.

So very often I would make a few of those and give them out to kids.

And you know that was a good door opener for just friendly exchange.

- John later you encountered, I guess some tragedy in your life.

And I wanna talk about that briefly and then talk about what brought you to writing this book?

This was somewhat after your adventure on the Niger River.

You were overseas in the Czech Republic on a train, went to get some coffee and your life certainly changed again.

You're a quadriplegic as we speak today?

- I'm what you'd refer to as a lucky quad because it's, they it's judged by where your injury is.

And I fractured a C7 vertebrae in my neck, but what my friends in wheelchairs call a lucky quad because I didn't separate my spinal cord.

So I've got function below, no walking, but I've got strong enough hands.

This one's weak that I can kayak as long as I've got a couple friends to put me in my kayak and push me out.

But, it was the quick story I was back in the Czech Republic.

I'd worked there for two years out of Prague and was back on a vacation and wanted to go to Berlin.

And I'd never gone up to Berlin the time I was in Prague but I'd been through Berlin earlier.

So I was just like, let's at the last minute, instead of staying in Prague let's take a couple of nights in Berlin.

And we stopped in at a town in Northern Czech Republic a town called Ústí nad Labem, Ústí nad Labem river.

And I knew I could get a cup of coffee in this town.

It was a German train and their coffee was expensive and not a very good but I knew exactly where the coffee was in Usti.

So all I remember was racing up the train with money but not my passport or anything.

And that's the last thing I remember - John, you made a decision to write a book.

What percolated in you to want to put this down in prose?

- Well, I had written the Africa book in 1994.

I'd finished it and I had a New York City Editor, Big Shot.

I was living in Princeton, working in Trenton, New Jersey and she took it under her wing and said "I know I can sell this so let's go."

And I got rejections from some of the big publishers and she said, "let's, retool it and get it to this other group of publishers."

And honestly, I was coached at the time to write a book about young guy, quits his job and goes to a crazy adventure.

And it really wasn't the book I wanted write.

I wanted to write more about nature and the people.

So, you know what?

I never went in and talked with her again.

And I just said, I'm kind of done with Africa but I'd written it already, at least that version.

So I had content and I'd written magazine articles about all the other trips, kind of to survive in between travels.

So I had content and really it became its own adventure string a book together.

And I'm not biking, hiking, skiing, climbing.

So I've got some extra time when I'm not watching Wyoming football or the Bronx or Josh Allen now.

I wish he was still going, but, at times so it became its own kind of adventure and project is to string these stories.

- What do you hope readers feel, John?

I mean, you wrote this for your reasons someone like me picks it up and reads it.

What are you hoping I take from the book?

- Well, number one, I hope that people feel the authenticity of the stories and that they learned something and they have fun with it.

And to the extent that it kindles a sense of adventure, however big or small that is that's cool, but more than anything I just want people to enjoy.

I'd like, during COVID it's perfectly good time to take a vicarious adventure but even after COVID, I think there's places and times when you can see places that you can't see now Mali for instance is incredibly dangerous now.

And anything we would have done on the river you just simply cannot do safely now because of Boko Haram, Al-Qaeda, village turning on villages much like the Balkans where it's just, it's sad to think that you can't go back to these places and you can't go there now.

So to learn about these fascinating cultures is something I wanted to share.

- Any more writing coming from you, John?

- Right now, my work is so intense with creating this real estate investment for low income people around the country that I mostly write Grants and work with cities, but I've got some off bald short stories and I'm working on a series of essays that just come to mind as I think of them in there.

That's how I kind of get my head out of a workaholic tendency is to write some essays.

So there'll be something else coming, I think.

I'm pretty compelled to write a second book whether it's fiction or essays or combination, I don't know.

- What are you reading these days?

- Wow, that's a, I've been reading a lot until football season came on, but.. - Interrupts all of our reading time, doesn't it?

- Because of thee book, I reached out to some people at the University of Wyoming writers program and I discovered how remarkably powerful that, that program has become.

And we had a great writer when I was in college.

John Edgar Wideman was there for a number of years.

And I've been rereading his work but also some of the writers, Jeff Jeffrey Lockwood and a guy that died last summer when I was back home.

A guy named Brad Watson, I'm reading his book.

And so some of the writers that are at the University of Wyoming writers program are interesting, right?

The other one that's sitting here that I'll mention is this one's called 'Your Sister and the Gospel'.

And this was written by a friend of mine a former board chair mercy court's daughter who was teaching at University of Wyoming in the religious studies department.

This was published by Oxford Press.

And it's called 'Your Sister in the Gospel'.

It's the life of Jane Manning James.

A 19th century black Mormon who left slavery got oriented towards this new church by a guy named Joseph Smith, migrated with him and when he was murdered, she ended up following with Brigham Young to Salt Lake City.

So it's a story of post slavery, migration to West and the Mormon culture with a black woman that's just, it's fascinating.

It's written by Quincy Newell who moved from Wyoming to a Liberal Arts College in Massachusetts.

- John, I must wonder COVID has impacted all of us.

I'm guessing it's likely impacted you too?

- It's been tough just seeing Portland the city and the nation wrestle with it.

The deaths obviously some close to home with people I know.

And so, it's been difficult in terms of isolation though.

I go to a wetland every day went up to read and get some sets of nature.

But, it's been hard for everybody.

it's been hard for everybody.

of the people that I'm not as personally impacted other than isolation, but I've been fine at the same time Covid has exposed kind of the underbelly of problems in the nation with respect to wealth gap and vulnerability.

And the work that I'm doing with this community investment trust nationally has just taken off.

So I'm on the phone with 15 cities now regularly, coaching them on creating their own a real estate project that's in community ownership.

- Well John, I can't thank you enough for spending time with us and sharing your sense of adventure for someone like me, who never in his life would be willing to consider adventurous like you have lived.

It was just a fascinating read with Wyoming roots.

Thank you so much for joining on Wyoming Chronicle.

- Thank you very much.

It's a great pleasure and opportunity for me to spread the word about the book.

So thank you.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] This program was funded in part by a Grant for Newmans Own Foundation.

Working to nourish the common good by donating all profits from Newmans Own food and beverage products to charitable organizations that seek to make the world a better place.

More information is available at NewmansOwnFoundation.org.

Funding for this program is made possible in part by the Wyoming Humanities Council.

Helping Wyoming take a closer look at life through the humanities.

Thinkwhy.org and by the members of the WyomingPBS Foundation.

Thank you for your support.