What does it mean to live wild? The ‘real Indiana Jones’ wrote the book on it
LOS ANGELES — Shaking hands with legendary adventurer Rick Ridgeway outside his serene Ojai home, I felt like I was meeting Indiana Jones — a comparison made by Rolling Stone — after he’d hung up the hat and whip.
Nothing about Ridgeway, in his comfy Ugg slippers, belied the extreme life he’d lived, from being part of the first American team to summit the towering peak of K2 to nearly dying from typhoid while trekking through the jungles of Borneo to experiencing the horrors of a Panamanian prison after a cockamamie get-rich scheme went south.
Ridgeway, 74, a former executive at Patagonia, seems to have carved out a relatively quiet life focused on conservation in the picturesque valley east of Santa Barbara. (Not to say he isn’t active; he trekked 100 miles across East Africa on foot last year.) He exuded calm, warmth and generosity. There was a glint of impish wisdom in his eye. He offered my partner and me tea. A Bernedoodle named Benny doted on him and he returned the affection.
