The greatest traveler you've never heard of...
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J.R. Harris is one of the most prolific solo hikers the world has ever seen. But he’d never tell you that himself.
It was the new summer of 1966, and 22-year-old J.R. Harris sat in a nondescript classroom and put down his pencil. After four years as a student at Queens College—where he majored in psychology, ran track, played tennis, worked as an instructor with the Queens College Outward Bound Program helping inner-city high school students, all while driving a taxi to finance his education—he was done. Done with this final exam; the last thing between him and a higher education degree, making him the first in his family to receive one. “I knew every answer,” he says. “And I thought, ‘I gotta get out of here.’”
Here, for all intents and purposes, was the bleat and scurry of New York City, where J.R. had spent a majority of his life in the Pomonok housing project in Queens. At 22, he was preparing to embark on his first solo trip. But where to go? And without much money? Flying, for this reason, was out of the question, so J.R. decided on a road trip with his recently purchased, used, light brown 40-horsepower VW Beetle he had christened “the Dub.” At home in his family’s apartment, he pulled an atlas off the shelf and flipped through it. He read, and read some more. In time, he realized the northernmost road on the continent was 120 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska, in a town called Circle. A pop and crackle of an idea: “I said to myself, if I was to drive to the very end of that road, every vehicle—every car, truck, taxicab, motorcycle—would be behind me. And there will be no vehicle between me and the North Pole. And for that reason, I did it.”
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To date, J.R. has circled the world some 13 times. He has taken more than 50 multi-week trips in many of the most pristine places on the planet: the Andes, the Amazon, the Adirondacks, Alaska’s Yukon, Greenland, the Arctic Circle, Tasmania, you name it. Wherever he goes—however he can—he embeds with the local population, bunking in homes that will have him and breaking bread in a language not his own. Otherwise, he is almost always alone. It is no stretch to call him one of the world’s most prolific living solo explorers.
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https://www.afar.com/magazine/solo-t...e-of-adventure