Uncharted.

I am always willing to pay the piper when I have a good dance; and every now and then I like to drink the wine of life spiked with brandy in it." These words, spoken by Theodore Roosevelt, summed up his attitude toward what he called the "strenuous life." It was a style of living he favored, both before and after serving as president of the United States. During a Brazilian jungle expedition in 1913, with his political life behind him, Roosevelt came quite close to paying "the piper" the ultimate tax -- his own life. Roosevelt came face to face with his own mortality while traversing the previously uncharted Rio da Duvida, the River of Doubt.

Read the rest here.

I received Candice Miller's The River of Doubt for Christmas. It is an account of Teddy Roosevelt's 1912 expedition to South America to chart the treacherous tributary of the Amazon for which the book is titled. As I was doing some research on the topic I came across some footage of the journey.

Part 1



Part 2