I Married Adventure Page 2

  In order to film exciting animal footage, Martin had to get close to wildlife. Sometimes, they even had to provoke the wildlife to charge. When they did, or when wildlife charged of its own volition, Osa was the sharpshooter. Martin openly admitted she was a better shot than he was, not afraid to praise her bravery and skill. For her part, Osa admitted to being squeamish about leeches and terrified by rhinos, but her words counter the good with the bad. In Borneo, she wrote:

  Nature seems full of strange tricks in this fantastic country, tricks designed to make miserable anyone entering it. The nanti-dulu (“wait-a-minute”) thorn, so called by the natives, grows in thousands on a bush with long flexible vine-like branches, and has the shape of a fish hook, which snags you as you pass. Martin swore they even reached out after us. In some instances, however, nature is kind. One case in point is the water-vine, a blessing to man and animal alike. Its stems, the thickness of a man’s arm, give out clear, cold, pure water when cut, and as much as a pint can be had from a piece less than two feet long.

  Adventure and exploration were not easy realms for women in the early twentieth century. A woman in the wild was a suspicious thing. In the words of an elite explorer of the day who preferred anonymity when interviewed for a newspaper: “One woman can cause more trouble on an exploring expedition…than a whole horde of elephants, a tribe of wild and blood-thirsty savages, or a dozen lions and tigers ready for food.” To all this Martin Johnson told the reporter, “You don’t know my wife.” She had, he continued, “showed the most remarkable courage of any person I have ever seen in the jungle.”

  Martin and Osa saw their lives as a partnership. The survival of their marriage despite perils, disease, work, and celebrity is quite astonishing. Many exploring couples did not last as long. “I wouldn’t think of going any place without Osa,” said Martin. “By taking my wife along, we can continue the companionship of our married life, even though we are not in the comforts and luxuries of civilization. We are pals and co-workers, and that is more than a lot of married people can say.”

  * * *

  —

  When I first came across Osa and Martin, I read their books and watched their films as a critical historian. I sought to understand what their images told the public about tropical forests—the place they called “the Jungle.” But their personalities kept popping through. I could not ignore their relationship or their uniqueness. So, I took off my academic blinders and looked deeper into their lives, their experiences, and their emotions.

  By the time I published my biography of the Johnsons, Osa and Martin: For the Love of Adventure, I was fortunate to go on my own African safari. At one remote lodge overlooking a rather fragrant hippo pool on the Serengeti, I met a New Zealand couple in their late 60s who were caretakers of the lodge. Their kids were grown and they had left professional careers for this home in the wild. The husband was a loquacious man entertaining guests with stories and sundowners, while the wife was Osa reincarnate. She sat with me at dinner and told me about a resident giraffe named Henry who had found refuge in the midst of the tented lodgings when being chased by a lion one day. The safety of the camp appealed to Henry and he stayed. They also had frequent visits from a civet cat, she warned, so don’t be alarmed if he jumps on my table. “He will only steal a roll or butter and go away,” she advised. Later that night I saw her feeding the civet from the back door of the dining room, but the wild cat wouldn’t take her offering. I asked her why and she explained the beef had been marinated. This was a rather finicky wild creature, I thought, just like Osa’s wild pets.

  A life out in the wild is one that is completely shared. As the Serengeti caretaker told me: “You have to be great friends for this life to work. Great friends.” Osa and Martin were such friends. Sure, they had spats and tempers. But they lived and worked cooperatively, breathing their love for their work, their lives, and each other into every film they made and every word they wrote. They should be remembered not for their heroism or grace, but for their authenticity—a word Martin used often. Martin and Osa strove to portray the places they traveled with authenticity—and their work today is inspiring because they were, on film, seemingly as authentic, as real, as the world they captured.

  Kelly Enright

  St. Augustine, FL, 2018

  NANCY LANDON KASSEBAUM

  KANSAS

  COMMITTEES:

  LABOR AND HUMAN RESOURCES

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  WASHINGTON, DC 20510–1602

  Foreword to the Globe Edition

  I Married Adventure is a story about two people whose married life was a saga of adventure. An unlikely place, some may think—Kansas—fostered the spirits of these two, Martin and Osa Johnson. However, this is the same home state claimed by other adventurer-heroes: Dwight D. Eisenhower, president of the United States; Amelia Earhart, pioneer aviator; two astronauts, Joe Engle and Steve Hawley; and a famed playwright, artist, author, and photographer, Gordon Parks. Dreams in the minds of youngsters everywhere, combined with courage, can produce bold visions full of risk. Such was the beginning of a life together for Osa and Martin Johnson, a life that truly contained all the elements of raw adventure.

  When Osa and Martin married, an indomitable partnership was forged. Martin’s dream to travel to remote parts of the world became Osa’s dream. Living through their first years of near-poverty was bearable to Osa because of her devotion to Martin and her deep belief in his future success. Adversity in fortunes, weather, and travel and living conditions could not dim their exhilaration for their chosen life. Seldom have we seen a finer example of an unselfish partnership.

  Martin’s dream was to travel to unexplored corners of the world, to learn the ways of primitive people, and to report, through photographs and movies, what he found to the audiences back home. Their treks to the Pacific South Seas and to deepest Africa provided outstanding films that told the story of those native societies to school children, to the public, and to renowned explorers’ clubs throughout the world. The public first saw the animals and people native to these remote islands and jungles in the Johnson films. The passion that prompted Osa and Martin to explore unknown places and to become acquainted with tribes having little or no contact with the outside world was passed on to generations of fans worldwide through these documentary films.

  For me, the essence of this story is that two people, very much in love, followed their dreams, living a life full of risks and far from the comforts of home. Yet this story of their adventures more than sixty years ago will thrill a reader of the 1990s and beyond every bit as much as when the first edition was published in 1940. While other studies of primitive tribes are available to us today, perhaps there is no greater example of private struggles, adversity along the trails, and triumph than Osa Johnson’s I Married Adventure.

  Nancy Landon Kassebaum

  January 1997

  Foreword

  Here, in a story about everywhere else in the world, is romantic Americana that will one day be history. These pages are themselves adventure. Here the watchmaker’s boy from Independence out in Kansas meets the Santa Fe engineeer’s daughter from Chanute, plain people from the prairies. Against that homespun background is woven a life and career filed with exotic color.

  Many a story is called a saga. This is one—in all the meaning of that word from the language of Martin Johnson’s Scandinavian forebears. Martin was as born to adventure road as Lief-the-Lucky, and when Osa married Martin she married his destiny, too. It was to be always a-going, always a-seeing. Home was to be a schooner in the South Seas, a raft in Borneo, a tent on safari, a hunt in the black Congo, sometimes a dash of Paris, interludes of an apartment on Fifth Avenue—but always a place to be going from.

  No matter where or how, through it all, the telling is no mere travelogue and picture album, but rather
the intimate tale of their two lives—boy and girl from Kansas, pushing their horizons into far places. The bigger story is of their life, sometimes to be read between the lines, and not quite so much of the world they went to see as of the hearts they took with them.

  The American Museum of Natural History with its great halls of exhibits and its laboratories has also a great invisible collection of careers in the lives of those who have been associated with its projects, intangibles of tradition. To this Martin and Osa have contributed richly. And this is set down by one who has broken bread with them by the campfires of safari.

  —F. TRUBEE DAVIS

  President, American Museum of Natural History New York

  January 1940

  Note to the Reader

  Osa Johnson’s popular autobiography I Married Adventure was the number one bestselling nonfiction book in 1940. It is a classic story of adventure, romance, and travel to then-exotic locations during a “golden age” of safaris. The Johnsons’ achievements continue to inspire individuals to explore the wonders and diversity of our cultural and natural world.

  This reedited edition contains minor, appropriate modifications made by staff at Kodansha USA and the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum. These include text changes and chronological adjustments for clarity, and different photographs to better complement the story. Significant advances have been made in documenting the full and continuing impact of the Johnsons’ work since its publication. Details about their lives and thoughtful analysis of their legacy can be found in several modern biographies and documentary programs. Additionally, a survey of nearly a thousand cans of Johnson film held by the Library of Congress reveals Martin and Osa to truly be groundbreaking pioneers in the important field of documentary filmmaking.

  The efforts of many museum trustees, staff, volunteers, members, supporters, businesses, local citizens, and Johnson fans worldwide continue to keep the spirit of Martin and Osa Johnson alive and the museum’s mission strong. We are sure you will enjoy this and other books written by Martin and Osa Johnson.

  Asante sana,

  Conrad G. Froehlich, Director

  Shirley Rogers-Naff, Financial Officer

  Jacquelyn L. Borgeson Zimmer, Curator Emeritus

  Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum

  Chanute, Kansas, USA

  Some of the political names for areas visited by the Johnsons have changed. The names used by Osa Johnson have remained in the text and on the maps, but the modern names are noted below with those known to Osa.

  Belgian Congo—Democratic Republic of the Congo

  British East Africa—Kenya

  British North Borneo—Sabah

  Lake Rudolf—Lake Turkana

  New Hebrides—Vanuatu

  Northern Rhodesia—Zambia

  Southern Rhodesia—Zimbabwe

  Ruanda—Rwanda

  Urundi—Burundi

  Lake Paradise, Northern Frontier

  November 30, 1924.

  Dear Mr. Bray:

  I suppose you have received my letter of three months ago by this time. You see we only get mail every three months and we can only send it out whenever we have some reason to send the men to Nairobi. We get in the habit of waiting until the last minute and then it is too late or we go on safari and get all our time filled with work.

  I have never worked so hard in all my life, neither has Osa. She is absolutely in love with our home and like me I don’t think she ever wants to leave. Personally I would like to remain here the rest of my life and never go past the Guasho Nyero river.

  We have straightened out kinks in our old trail, and cut new ones through the forest until we have a fairly good motor road to Nairobi. Our speedometers now show 432 miles to Nairobi. Of course we will never be able to defeat the sand-luggars on the desert. We have nearly forty of them to cross and they sometimes take us hours crossing as we have to dig sand from under the cars for several hundred yards at each luggar.

  But on the desert the going is great. We have one stretch of 44 miles that is better than any race track I have ever seen, but it is so hot that we can’t let the cars out full speed as the engines heat and the tires burn.

  But it is cold here at Lake Paradise, every morning we have to wear sweaters, and I have had to furnish many of my crew with over-coats. It never goes over seventy and sometimes as low as fifty-seven. The cool wind across the lake makes it feel colder than it is.

  The forests are beautiful now, the rains are on and everything very green. A rhino wallows just back of our house every night, buffalo can be seen along the lake every afternoon, but the elephants have all gone on the plains because they don’t like the drip from the trees.

  I now have the greatest elephant film ever made by anyone, and the nice thing is that we are getting the films without any danger. Once two big bull elephants came up with their ears back and in little goose steps looking for trouble, but we beat it into the bushes behind us and the movement frightened the elephants so they ran away.

  I am not getting any big herds, 33 is the most I have photographed in one herd so far. They are usually in herds of from five to ten and fifteen.

  Another time I heard elephants in a clearing about three hundred yards away. I took my Akeley camera and went back; as I passed the house Osa was sitting outside sewing on a dress, I told her to bring her gun and come along. We found the elephants at the edge of the clearing. I set up the camera and just then the wind shifted and a fine big female got our scent and came out with her trunk doubled under and in little goose steps as they always do when alarmed, she stood in a perfect light for a couple of minutes with her belly rumbling and looking like she might decide to come, but she went back in the forest and we heard the entire herd crash away. I got a great film and turned to Osa, she had her half-completed dress thrown over her shoulder, a thimble on one finger, the needle with the thread dangling hanging from her mouth, and her 405 Winchester all ready for action. It struck me as the most ridiculous thing I had ever seen, to see a dress-maker ready to shoot elephants.

  We leave here in a few days on safari over into the Ndoto mountains, we have a guide who knows this part of the world well, he has been telling me of waterholes where elephants and rhino, buffalo, lions, giraffe, and zebra and everything drink in the daytime at the same time. We are going over to see. We will be away about two months. Our first waterhole is five days away.

  We are both as healthy as dogs, so is Kilowatt.

  Give us about four months warning when you decide to visit us, and then bring all your valuable possessions with you for you will never want to leave, once you have looked upon LAKE PARADISE.

  I can’t send you any of my most valuable pictures now as the Museum does not want them to let out until they have been copyrighted, but sometime in the near future I will send you a fine set.

  Osa joins me in best wishes to you and Mrs. Bray

  Most sincerely,

  Martin Johnson.

  Lake Paradise, Northern Frontier,

  Marsabit District,

  British East Africa.

  February 17th, 1925.

  Dear Margaret and Clarence:-

  I feel ashamed of myself when I think back to the last letter I have written you…but work…and more work must be my excuse…here I have nearly a hundred natives on my staff, a herd of camels, many mules and donkeys, cattle and a big camp to keep up. You see our nearest neighbor is over two hundred miles away, and we have made a big permanent camp that requires lots of looking after.

  Then on safari I have all the picture work on my hands, the developing and cutting and assembling of films…and a hundred and one other jobs.. it seems I never have time to write anyone.

  But with all the work we are having a most wonderful time…living in the heart of the best big-game country in the world…with adventures and excitement around every trail.. our forests are full of elephants and rhino
and buffalo and leopards and hyena and a dozen varieties of bushbuck, the fine stately Greater Kudu, and baboons in herds of thousands, the forests are constantly ringing with their trumpets and grunts and cries, and every evening they come out on the lake shores, they come in our gardens and eat out vegetables, and leopards have even been on top of our houses. But we never shoot, for the past two years we have not fired a gun at Lake Paradise. We have proven that the game will leave us alone if we leave it alone, for they seem to get tamer every day.

  We are both healthy as dogs, and enjoying every minute of life.

  Osa is especially happy now, for we have just returned from the slopes of Mt.Kenya, where she caught the record trout of British East Africa, it weighed five and three quarters pounds and was two feet, two and a half inches in length.

  Yes dad wrote us about Clarence being ill, and we are glad he is in good shape again, he was mighty lucky, as I hear that few people ever get over paralysis.

  Here are a few pictures.. don’t let them get away from you, you see publication now, before our elephant film is on the market, would be bad for us.

  With all kinds of good wishes from us both, including Kalowatt, our ape, she is the only aggressive one at Lake Paradise.. she is constantly chasing baboons away from camp.

  Sincerely

  Letter from MJ to Explorers Club

  From Explorers Club Archives

  Lake Paradise, November 17th, 1926.

  Northern Frontier, British East Africa.

  Dear Mr. Kersting:-

  I wonder if I don’t owe you some dues? here is five dollars anyway.. please let me know how I stand.