Travels with Walter, by Tanya Atwater
Some-time in the 1990’s, I discovered that Walter had not been to any of the iconic western National Parks—Yosemite, Grand Canyon, etc. I laid it on him: “and you claim to be a geo-scientist??” So we set out to fill this gap in his education. It was especially good timing for me, since my sister and I had been exploring the west, camping with cars full of our kids and their cousins and friends, but the young ones had grown up and moved on. Walter never lost the wonderful enthusiasm of a child discovering the world, so exploring with him took on all the delights and few of the challenges of those earlier trips.
Every summer, we took a two-to-three week trip around the west. One year, it was the Southwest and “Indian country.” Another was the magnificent Canadian Rockies and dinosaur fossils on the high plains. We followed the path of the Missoula Floods from Montana to the Pacific coast. We drove the “loneliest road in America” across Nevada. We poked around the desert faults of Southern California. He gave me a new, fresh appreciation of the western wonders, both for their sheer, spectacular beauty and for the grand geological tales that they tell. One year, crossing west from Colorado, we found ourselves staring down one after another of very high cliffs and discovered that we were both acrophobic (e.g., the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Yikes!). Once we had to excavate our vehicle out of the deep sand, two old folks many miles from anywhere, laughing as we invented our self-rescue.
Walter was the ideal travel companion, excited yet mellow, eager yet patient, always full of curiosity and humor, content to be in the present. We would plan the start and end dates for a trip, leaving almost everything else to evolve one day at a time, picking motels out of the AAA books as it became clear where we might be at the end of the day. (He refused to camp, which I admit was a relief.) If we especially liked a place, we stayed on a while. Why not? He was open to almost any adventure (well, except fast food {except once when we were VERY hungry and without options [Oops, I promised not to tell!]}).
Walter loved people and was charmed by the human condition in all its forms. Everywhere we stopped, he became friends with the waitperson in the restaurant, the motel desk clerk, the kids on the trail, the Navaho tour guide, then, back on the road, speculated long about their lives and how the world must seem to them. His apartment became my New York hotel, and my house, his California beach retreat. He loved to walk, and he soon knew all sorts of things about the people he met along the way—about the New York sidewalk poet, rhyming for coins on the city streets, about the Santa Barbara homeless fellow, living in his decorated vehicle by the beach.
Walter loved to tell a good story. It was great treat to be around him after something unexpected happened and watch him develop the story, true to the event but more elaborate and humorous (and incisive!) with each telling. His science was the same, true to the data but always wonderfully crafted to tell the story well.
Oh Walter, what a privilege it was to have you as a mentor, a fellow explorer, a deep friend.