"We live in a world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open."
​                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    ​Jawaharlal Nehru​
The Harvard Travellers Club is an organization that has provided a venue for adventurous travelers to gather and socialize since 1902.  

The club meets 8 times each year, holding over 875 meetings since inception. Our speakers include many legendary explorers, scientists, mountaineers and adventurers. 

An affiliation with Harvard University is not required for membership.
NOTE: The Club's Council is monitoring COVID-19 developments to determine when meetings can safely be resumed. Updates will be posted here when available. 
Club meetings are held in the Massachusetts Room of the Harvard Club  on Commonwealth Avenue. Cocktails (cash bar) will be served at 6:00 PM, dinner ($71) at 6:45 and the presentation will commence at 8:00. Club meetings are attended by members and their guests. If you are not currently a member of the Harvard Travellers Club, but would like to attend this meeting as a guest, or would simply like more information about the Club, please contact Ted Wendell, tedw@HarvardTravellersClub.org.  

The dress code for our meetings is business casual.
The 2019-2020 Season at a Glance​​
Click date for details.​
Speaker
Subject
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Bears Ears and Beyond
David Roberts
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​We are very fortunate to have as our first speaker of the season our very own David Roberts, Club member, Club Medalist, intrepid explorer and author of 30 books about mountaineering, adventure, archaeology and history.
In December 2016, the Bears Ears National Monument was created, setting aside 1.3 million acres of semi-wilderness in southeast Utah, including the richest region in the contiguous United States for prehistoric archaeological sites.
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The monument was unique in American history in having been first proposed and championed by a coalition of Native American groups ranging from Navajo to Ute to Hopi and Zuni. 

The book David is currently writing is about the Bears Ears, particularly the human history of this extraordinary region. During the last 25 years, he has made scores of trips to the Bears Ears and its crown jewel, the 1,200-square-mile plateau of Cedar Mesa, which has replaced the mountains of Alaska as his favorite place on earth.

​He has hiked, camped, and backpacked all through the region—not only on Cedar Mesa, but on Elk Ridge, in Beef Basin, across the Dark Canyon wilderness, and along Comb Ridge, the first complete traverse of which he accomplished with two buddies during eighteen days in 2004.

The focus of his trips has always been to discover little-known ruins and rock art panels in the canyons and basins—the legacy of the Anasazi, geniuses of the vertical. Even during the last three years, after cancer severely curtailed what he could do in the outdoors, he has returned to Cedar Mesa every fall and spring. David will recount his best adventures there complemented by a gallery of images of this unique cultural landscape. This is a meeting not to be missed.

David Roberts

Bears Ears and Beyond
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Michael Dosmann
​Rare Plant Hunting Through Japan and China
Michael Dosmann, PhD, is Keeper of the Living Collections at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University – one of Earth’s most celebrated temperate woody plant collections. Among his many roles as Keeper is that of a plant explorer, studying species in the wild and making acquisitions to cultivate at the Arboretum for conservation, research, and educational purposes. He has conducted numerous expeditions throughout East Asia and North America, and this lecture will focus upon his collecting experiences in China and Japan.
Michael is an ardent curation and collections advocate in museums and gardens, lecturing about these and related topics often, and serves on the Board of Directors of the American Public Gardens Association.

Michael Dosmann

Rare Plant Hunting Through Japan and China
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An American Astronaut: Travel in Space
​Tony Antonelli
Tony is a retired Navy Captain and former NASA Astronaut who has accumulated over 4,700 flight hours in over 40 different kinds of aircraft and served as the pilot for two Space Shuttle missions: STS-119 and STS-132. While serving at NASA, Tony’s leadership roles within the Astronaut Office included the Space Launch System, Commercial Crew, Capsule Communicator (CAPCOM), and Space Shuttle Propulsion.
Tony has been honored with numerous awards, including a Defense Superior Service Medal, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, two NASA Space Flight medals, a Navy Meritorious Service Medal, NASA Exceptional Service Medal, and the NASA Return-to-Flight Award.
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He is currently the Artemis 2 Mission Director for the Orion Program within the Commercial Civil Space line of business for Lockheed Martin Space. In this role, he is responsible for helping expedite human exploration strategy through the development and integration of both science objectives and human exploration goals. His efforts contribute to shaping a definitive path for sustainable human missions to Mars.

Tony Antonelli

​An American Astronaut: Travel in Space
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Culture and Adventure in Uzbekistan
​Nancy Berliner
Beyond the delicious sights of turquoise-tiled domes, the myriad variety of geometric designs  and aromatic spice bazaars of Uzbekistan is a rich, diverse and complex region. Arrivals, invasions and immigrations of peoples from the east, west and south over the past two thousand years contributed to the culture and manners of this landlocked country. Buddhism from India, fabrics from Persia, Islam from Mecca, Jews from Babylonia, Soviets from Russia, more Jews from eastern Europe and today pipelines from China, together create a palimpsest very palpable in Uzbekistan today. 
As part of a larger project researching the Jews of Asia, this exploration of Uzbekistan included an extra deeper look at the impact of the Uzbek culture on the local Jews and the impact of Jews on Uzbeki life over the centuries.
Nancy Berliner, PhD., is a historian of Chinese art and architecture and the Wu Tung Senior Curator of Chinese Art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.  Until 2012, she was the Curator of Chinese Art at the Peabody Essex Museum, spearheading and curating the relocated Yin Yu Tang, a 200-year old rural Chinese house, and authoring Yin Yu Tang, the Daily Life and Architecture of a Chinese House, selected as a Notable Book of 2003 by the New York Times.  She serves as an interpretive and curatorial advisor to the World Monuments Fund on the Qianlong Garden, Forbidden City, conservation project in Beijing.
Nancy completed her undergraduate and graduate studies at Harvard University, and she did additional studies at the Central Academy of Art in Beijing.

Nancy Berliner

Culture and Adventure in Uzbekistan
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February 11
Lindsay Pearce Cowan, Marilyn Stempler and Barbara Chrenko tempt you with stories about living next to drug smugglers in the Bahamas, being inspired by Ethiopia, and adventuring into the restricted and remote Skeleton Coast of Namibia.

Members Night

​Adventures in the Bahamas, Namibia's Skeleton Coast, and Ethiopia
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 Stories from Antarctica
​Carolyn Beeler


​Carolyn Beeler spent two months embedded on a research vessel in Antarctica with scientists racing to understand how fast Thwaites Glacier, the linchpin of the West Antarctic ice sheet, might collapse. 
She lived with researchers on an icebreaker as they studied the glacier's past to try to predict its future. Tonight she shares her experiences, both on and off the ship, and some of their findings.

​Carolyn covers the environment for The World, where she focuses on stories about people and places impacted by climate change. She has reported from all seven continents, most recently during a two-month research expedition to Antarctica, and won national and regional awards for her breaking news and in-depth feature reporting. Before joining The World she helped launch the weekly health and science show The Pulse at WHYY in Philadelphia, and reported from Berlin for a year as a Robert Bosch Foundation fellow. She got her start in radio as a Kroc fellow at NPR.

 Meeting Cancelled because of COVID-19 Pandemic
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Alaska’s Grizzly Bears: A Day in the Life​
Eric Rock
Join Erik Rock as he shares stories and insights into the ecology and behavior of the often misunderstood grizzly bear, gained through his experience leading nature walks and bear-watching trips as a wilderness nature and photography guide in remote locations such as Mongolia, Greenland, Alaska and Montana.
Tonight's presentation focuses largely on Alaska’s Katmai National Park, Lake Clark and Denali, with some photos from the Bella Coola Valley in Coastal British Columbia.

Eric is a leading travel and nature photographer who discovered his passion for photography early in life. At the age of sixteen he purchased his first camera and began to explore the natural world. While studying wildlife biology at the University of Alaska, he used that passion to expand his skills while working as an assignment photographer and teaching assistant in the School of Journalism.

Eric began his guiding career as the head naturalist at Kantishna Roadhouse in Alaska’s Denali National Park—a perfect location to explore nature with a camera. From there, his travels have taken him around the globe while utilizing his knowledge of nature and photography to enhance his clients’ experiences through focused and personalized instruction. 

Eric’s expertise as a photographer and his insights as a naturalist are invaluable for revealing precise moments for the ultimate image captures. He is also recognized the world over for his laugh! Eric lives in Bozeman, Montana.

 Meeting Cancelled because of COVID-19 Pandemic
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Silence and Ice: Recreating the 1883 Greely Arctic Expedition with His Great-Great-Grandson
James Shedd

The Lady Franklin Bay Expedition of 1881 - 1884, lead by Adolphus Greely, was meant to collect astronomical data and establish an observation station in the Canadian Arctic for the First International Polar Year.
Of the 26 men that started, only six returned. 
James Shedd, Greely's great-great-grandson, was tapped to help re-create the expedition - minus the depressing return rate - for a documentary. Join James as he tells his own story about this 250-mile, 5 week kayak expedition along the narrow sea between Canada and Greenland, near the North Pole. 

He writes: "I learned about silence, courage, persistence, and redemption.  The trip's challenges were unlike anything I'd ever faced, and continue to influence me to this day."

 Meeting Cancelled because of COVID-19 Pandemic