Everything we do in life comes at some cost, even if it’s just watching PBS instead of renting a movie. My economics 101 class called it an opportunity cost, and it is a true maxim of the universe that there is no free lunch. This is really plain to see if you start daydreaming about wandering the continents and exploring exotic points on the map. I was very fortunate that I had a month free to go trekking in Nepal and I had a great time. Most people in this world can’t see clear to take all that time out of their busy lives. It is unimaginable to break away from paying bills, jumping through hoops at work, and missing so many episodes of [insert name of insipid but addictive TV show here]. The kind of people who do break away for a month or longer from the rest of the world usually quit their jobs and move into a wooden shack in Montana or they brazenly set off to conquer some magnificent natural monument (with a one-way plane ticket). There’s a lot to gain personally by taking that time away, and most people find great clarity of perspective as they meet adverse conditions or enjoy the serenity of hiking in solitude. This can be a priceless revelation that most of us can never seem to afford.

For thousands of years of mankind’s recorded history we have tales of tales of daring exploration into uncharted and often hostile territory. It seems it was relatively easy to send map makers ahead to chart the Americas, to cross the South Pole, and even to map the back side of the moon and the planets in our solar system. It was a great accomplishment to climb Mount Everest (and make it back down alive) in the mid 20th century, but on planet earth it seems we’ve run out of places to uncover. That is true unless you consider that the land we’ve explored makes up only a third of the surface area of our world. We have a vast realm left to explore beneath the oceans and with a little innovation we could gain just as much as discovering new continent on land. Jules Verne had the right idea in the 19th century with his voyage under the seas. For the interest of trekkers and expeditioners there’s great potential for challenging and very rewarding excursions among some magnificent mountain ranges and infernal chasms underwater in remote destinations. I already know what you may be thinking though, because the thought of jumping out of a perfectly good ocean vessel in the middle of nowhere, thousands of miles from dry land, sounds bleak and perilous. It sounds like almost certain death being crushed with the forces of an unspeakable depth, but then that sounds a lot like getting past the Khumbu Icefall on the way up to the summit of Mt. Everest.