A Native Is Restless

"I figured I'd devote the first half of my life to Uncle Sam and the other half to myself," he says. He returned to the U.S. and settled in Oklahoma City, working in the oil business there through 1995. He was a mile away when the bomb that destroyed the Murrah Federal Building went off. Six months later he was back in Denver.

He doesn't like what he sees. He says Colorado has "become a big disappointment. Too many 'no trespassing' signs, too much privately owned property. Too many businesspeople. It's not the wilderness I knew as a kid. Everyone has a utility vehicle."

Lancy has changed over the years, says Romberger. His wanderlust has been tempered by age. "He's gone through stuff in the meantime--marital stuff, stuff that comes to you in midlife," says Romberger. "I imagine there's some of that [behind the Kon-Tiki proposal]. I don't think it's unfair or mean to speculate about that."

Lancy doesn't want to talk about his marital troubles, but he is clearly eager to get away from here. He talks of one day working in a mission in Calcutta. And he talks, of course, about Kon-Tiki. His plan calls for trying to drum up interest wherever he can find it. He hopes to attract supporters, be they environmentalists (he plans to contact Greenpeace in Norway and France), scientists (would National Geographic be interested?) or simply entertainers (a big-screen IMAX movie, perhaps?).

It's possible that someone will bite. But according to Bob Knox, the associate director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, it's not likely.

"It's conceivable that someone would have some nifty idea the raft could do, but I would be surprised," says Knox. "It would be a very modest increase to discoveries that are already under way. [A raft voyage] is not quite as workable as sailing a research vessel. It's hard to mount some of the more interesting scientific sensors." Any research that might be conducted aboard the raft, Knox adds--say a study of changes in sea surface temperatures--"would be an interesting footnote, not a major news event."

Perhaps Lancy suspects as much himself. But the dream that's nourished him since boyhood won't relinquish its hold quite so easily. And for the moment, he has found peace in its grasp. Says Lancy, "I'm freer now than I've ever been.