“Mina Benson Hubbard was a rare bird, a woman explorer in 1905,” explained Judith Niemi, founder of Women in the Wilderness, an outfitter that specializes in adventure travel for women.
Niemi knows a host of stories. Hubbard’s is one among many that she will relate when she speaks on “A Century of Adventurous Women: Wild Women Explorers of the Tundra, Rainforest and Mountains: 1894-1994” Saturday at the International Adventure Travel Show at the Rosemont Convention Center.
Niemi said that Hubbard accomplished something her husband Leonidas could not. Two years after Leonidas died while exploring Labrador, Mina successfully retraced his route, Niemi said. What the wife did differently is that “she listened to her Indian guide and he didn’t,” she explained.
Niemi, inspired by Hubbard’s adventurous spirit, retraced the route herself with six other women from Minnesota two years ago.
Her lecture at the Adventure Travel Show will describe both historic and recent adventurers, said Niemi, who lives in St. Paul, Minn. Her objective is to motivate women of all ages to embark on adventures.
Fear is a factor in some women’s reluctance to head up a mountain path or down a rolling rapids, Neimi said.
“As I have studied (women who enjoy adventure travel) over the years,” she said, “I find they don’t fake it where fear is concerned. When they’re nervous about something, they come right out and say it. They don’t let their egos get in the way of reality.”
There are two kinds of fear that must be faced, Niemi said. There’s an abstract type, based on social conditioning, “that washes over everything and tells you, `You shouldn’t be doing this.’ The other type acknowledges, `This is a dangerous place.”‘
With the second type, she said, “You can ask yourself what could really happen and consider the consequences, then make provisions for the possibilities. I can look at a rapids and say, `That’s too big for me,’ and walk around it.”
It helps women who experience abstract fears to compare the dangers of wilderness travel with those of contemporary urban life, Niemi said: “(Travel’s) not as dangerous as entering a parking ramp at night in the city might be, for example. This helps bring women to the point of seeing the wilderness as benign. Even in Peru, where there are poisonous snakes, I know that they want to get away from me as much as I want to get away from them.”
Niemi’s lecture begins at 6 p.m. Saturday in Room 13, Rosemont Convention Center, 5555 N. River Rd., Rosemont. Hours of the 300-exhibit show are 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Friday; 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday; 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. next Sunday. Admission to the show is $7 adults; $4 children 5 through 12; children under 5 free. For information, call 708-295-4444.
