An Award In Honor Of The Risk Taker

"THERE IS ALWAYS a certain risk in being alive, and if you are more alive there is more risk." Those words by Henrik Ibsen describe a spirit that has helped motivate Dartmouth and its people from the beginning. Few people have embodied it better than John Ledyard, class of 1776, a theater lover who left Dartmouth to explore the world. To celebrate that spirit, the editors of this magazine proposed an annual award that recognizes those who undertake some meaningful risk in their lives—physical, intellectual, or spiritual. The first recipient is Flagg Miller '91 who—in order to gain more understanding derstanding for an undergraduate thesis on the nineteenth- century British explorers of the Middle East—rode a camel across the Sahara. His account of the trek begins on page 24. Ledyard and Miller were clearly seeking something more than adventure, but what? A sense of accomplishment? A testing of their own limits? An experience of freedom? Of mystery? The motive must vary from individual to individual, but these explorers of open and private spaces clearly have one goal in common: they sought the most of life itself. —Ed.

"Voyaging is victory,"says an old Arabproverb. But the realityof the trip held deepermeanings for Miller.