The Swellesley Report

The Tishman Commons at Wellesley College filled with community members on Monday morning for World of Wellesley’s 26th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day program. This year’s gathering explored Dr. King’s legacy through the wilderness adventures of J.R. Harris, an 81-year-old explorer with six decades of solo expeditions across remote landscapes that have taught him lessons about endurance and moral clarity.

Harris, author of “Way Out There: Adventures of a Wilderness Trekker,” named one of Backpacker magazine’s 50 best hiking books of all time, began with his story in Queens. A reluctant trip to a Boy Scout mountain camp sparked his interest in wilderness.

What followed during his keynote was a visual journey (through a recorded video) of his decades of exploration through diverse mountains and regions. The underlying message was of courage: “If you want it badly enough, whatever it is, you can do it.”

The presentation took a serious turn when Harris described what he called “a bad day or a good day” in Tasmania’s remote Southwest Arthur range. Nature, indifferent to his experience, nearly killed him. “You can’t [b-s-] alone,” he reflected. “It’s just you, whether you come home or not.” He learned humility is as important as courage.

However, it was his engagement with Indigenous cultures that affected him most. His studies of Inuit traditions were more than reading; Harris went there and learned firsthand how communities navigate their relationship with harsh environments.

He lived his dreams for six decades, almost always unsupported and alone. But exploration, he explained, became more than adventure; it became “a lens to understand” broader human struggles.

The connection to Dr. King’s legacy emerged through Harris’s later work. As the first African American on the board of directors of the Explorers Club and chair of their diversity, equity, and inclusion committee, he has worked to preserve what he calls “the instinct to explore.” As one participant later observed, “Young people need to know that there are so many ways to be in the world and be an example.”

His central insight landed with quiet force: “Mother Nature doesn’t care who you are, it doesn’t discriminate, it’s for everyone and treats everyone the same.” In the wilderness, Harris found a space where worth is measured not by social position but by character and preparation, themes reflected in Dr. King’s vision of a society judged “by the content of character rather than the color of skin.”

Connecting wilderness ideas, contemporary challenges

After the keynote, attendees participated in table discussions guided by questions designed to connect Harris’s wilderness ideas with contemporary challenges. One table discussed courage without recognition. A participant shared stories from Minneapolis, where people “step forward anonymously with great courage to bring food” to residents afraid to leave their homes. Others discussed priests in Mexico preparing meals for migrants riding trains north, and undocumented workers who “dare to still go out and work” despite the constant threat of arrest.

World of Wellesley President Rama K. Ramaswamy said the focus on real-life experience was intentional. The organization chose Harris “to broaden our keynote voices to include resilience, patience, and moral courage,” key to Dr. King’s vision of lasting change. The discussion questions were meant “to encourage depth rather than coverage,” prompting participants to see how Dr. King’s values “show up in everyday choices — how to live them in the here and now, not just remember them as history.” After more than 20 years with the group, Ramaswamy said MLK Day programs work best when they focus on honest reflection and shared responsibility, not “one-day performances.”

The conversation turned to the experience of people who grow up in tight-knit survival communities, develop bonds shaped by shared struggle, but face isolation when moving into professional environments. “They sometimes lose the support of their local community,” one participant explained. “And that takes some courage to thrive without the support of very close friends and community.”

Another table tackled the challenge of sustained commitment in a culture that prioritizes quick wins and visible results. A member of the Wellesley Select Board shared their group’s conclusion: “It looks like commitment to something…being willing to have disagreements but being respectful in the conversation…developing courage to accept backsliding and opposition and tackling difficult questions, but meeting people where they are. Don’t lose heart, or you’re going to get stuck.”

The discussion questions themselves revealed the program’s sophistication. Attendees considered how solitude sharpens moral clarity while community refines it through accountability, and where these “two ways of knowing need each other.” They examined what happens when progress feels incremental and how to maintain commitment over the long term.

Laura Van Zandt, treasurer of World of Wellesley, explained that the organization brings in different speakers each year, and this year’s choice reflected outreach. The MLK Day program, which has shifted from breakfast to lunch over the years, consistently uses keynote addresses with facilitated discussions. “Other times you end up at a table with people you don’t know, and you talk about, you know, what might be difficult things,” Van Zandt noted.

As the program concluded, attendees learned about upcoming World of Wellesley initiatives: the 2026 Community Book Read featuring “Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen” by Jose Antonio Vargas, and a Feb. 1 reading of Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” The continuity suggested an organization committed to what one speaker called the long work, the kind that happens when speed and visibility aren’t the measures of progress.

That restlessness and willingness to explore new places or social spaces reflects Dr. King’s legacy, not only on his holiday, but in ongoing discussions about progress.

Interested in sponsoring Swellesley interns? Let us know: theswellesleyreport@gmail.com