I saw Sylvia Earle speak a few years back at a day long science and exploration gathering of Wings Worldquest and their gala awardees. The gala was the next day, so it was a room full of people talking about what these women had done.

These women were astonishing, all of them, and almost none I had heard of, even though I hang out in explorer-y circles and read all manners of relevant publications. I’ll come back to that.

The gathering took place in The Explorer’s Club in NYC and even though it was open to the public, in a room of a hundred or so people, there were perhaps six men, most partners or children of the women there.

The current president of the club introduced the day by saying, “Women have always been part of exploring our planet! You stayed home and kept our houses and raised our children while we trekked off to the ends of the earth. We could never have done it without you.”  The room was silent. He was serious. Soon enough we got past that, as we do, because what else is there to do? And later, Sylvia Earle stood up and asked a series of questions:

“What,” she asked, “can women not do today? What can we not do that we once could do? What have we never been able to do? What don’t we even consider?”

She left us with that, but I wrote these questions down, (as well as the opening speech, almost word for word, which got even worse than my quote above). They are interesting questions. Lately, it feels like we can do less and less. We are portrayed as less and less — Look at Katharine Hepburn movies such as Deskset. She had SPINE. Women don’t do that in movies anymore.  Look at Mae West. It’s not the same.

I’ve been thinking about Sylvia Earle’s questions, without remembering she had asked them, in a different context, of late, about writing, and what we write, especially when it comes to travel or nature or psychogeography. How we may be limited, if, and what I want to say about it, do about it.  Sylvia’s questions were good, in a room with some of the most impressive women I’ve ever met, we didn’t have a lot of answers that made us feel better.