Finish your summer book list? Mine included Ibn Battuta: Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-1354, translated by H. A. R. Gibb; The Voyage of the Beagle, by Charles Darwin; and a pair of books by Boston's most enduring couple, Brad and Barbara Washburn (The Accidental Adventurer: Memoir of the First Woman to Climb Mt. McKinley, by Barbara with Lew Freedman; and Exploring the Unknown: Historic Diaries of Bradford Washburn's Alaska/Yukon Expeditions, edited by Lew Freedman).

This may seem odd. For the last decade, I've schlepped around the world, visiting all 50 states, about half the world's countries and every continent but Antarctica. One might think I'd long for homey books by Bob Vila or Martha Stewart. Instead, I am following the footsteps of many other curiosity seekers. And since science is essentially a curiosity-seeking business, it isn't surprising that so many scientists have wandered out of the laboratory and into faraway places. The jarring experiences you get on an ambitious trip are a spur for new ideas. Many a creative work, whether in science or the arts, begins with a boondoggle.

Alexander Graham Bell was an early president of the National Geographic Society. Yale professor Hiram Bingham used to salivate over the blank spots in the map (there still were some in the 1920s). He could have been the real-life model of Indiana Jones: on one typical quest in 1911 into the jungles of Peru he stumbled upon the lost city of Machu Picchu. Nobel physicist Richard Feynman fixated on Tannu Tuva. Murray Gell-Mann, another Nobel physicist, seems to have been everywhere. Ask him about Bhutan. He may reply in Dzongka.