Confessions of an Explorers Club Member

You asked.

Groucho Marx once famously said, “I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.” It was his characteristically witty response to the president of the Friar’s Club when Marx submitted his resignation as a member. By now the quote has been used so often that its original context is seldom remembered. I for one always figured it was a rebuke of an offer to join a club, when in fact it was upon his quitting of one.

I can sympathize with Groucho Marx. I’m not really a club kind of person. I’m quite introverted, prefer solitary challenges, sports, and pursuits, and have largely avoided team sports, weekly card games, local watch nerd meetups, and group activities. It’s not to say I’m misanthropic, but I simply prefer small gatherings, one on one conversations, or time by myself. This makes me a pretty poor club member.

I do belong to one though: The Explorers Club. People have asked me over the years about it, and how I got accepted as a member, including a few of you after my recent Q&A post. It definitely is an enigmatic organization, open to much misconception, rumor, and wild exaggeration. I remember years ago hearing about this “secret society” and wondering what it took to join its ranks. Was there some sort of blood ritual, or ayahuasca ceremony involved? Secret handshakes or rings? Do members qualify only after discovering a lost jungle city or sunken wreck, or have climbed a new mountain peak? I’m afraid the answers are far less scintillating than that.