Trailblazer
A semi-retired Chelan attorney, paralyzed in a ski accident in 1972, embarks on a world travel experience that he hopes to turn into a book for the disabled.

To see if he could travel successfully, Stan Morse visited Australia and New Zealand earlier this year. He poses in front of a booster sign for Martina Hingis at the Australian Open in Melbourne.

By DEE RIGGS, World Accent editor

CHELAN -- Stan Morse hopes it won't be too hard to find a wheelchair accessible toilet in the sands of the Sahara.

And he hopes he doesn't run into muggers on a dark and stormy night in Singapore.

"I can't run away and I'm not going to be able to win a knife fight," he said. "All they have to do is knock my wheelchair over and I'm just a worm on the pavement."

Morse, 43, and a semi-retired attorney headed off this week on a six-month trip around the world. He hopes to gather information for a book on traveling alone in a wheelchair.

"I'd like to show people how to be safe away from that nice, cuddly environment that we all build around ourselves -- the familiar place you go for coffee, your doctor, dentist and friends," he said. "There is a range of acceptable risk that a traveler needs in order to be happy. I hope to write about being in a wheelchair and still finding that zone of safety."

Every week or so, Morse will update his adventures with a short story and photos, using his digital camera. Readers can follow his travels through The Wenatchee World's web site at www.wenworld.com

Morse was raised in Chelan and graduated from Chelan High School in 1972. The Morse building and the old Ford garage in downtown Chelan were built by his grandfather, Lester Morse, in 1947.

During his senior year in high school, Stan Morse broke his back in a skiing accident, which left him paralyzed from the waist down. Morse went on to graduate from Southern Illinois University Law School, which he chose for its flat landscape and moderate climate. Later, he practiced law in Redmond until moving back to Chelan in 1996. He specialized civil and business law and personal injury law.

Morse has written a suspense thriller about a computer program that roams the Internet and collects data for its creator, which is hopes to have published, and he hopes to find a publisher for the book he plans to write about his world travels.

Morse is no novice to travel. In 1990, he visited New Zealand for three weeks. Concerned about wheelchair accessibility, he carefully planned out various places to stay, then ended up staying the whole time at one hotel where the friendly people made him feel at home.

Last winter, he spent three and a half months in Australia.

"That was my experiment to see if traveling would work for me," Morse said. "It worked better than I thought it possibly could."

Again, he planned out where he intended to stay but found a spot he liked and stayed there for two months, making that home base for exploring the country. He took in the Australian Open, one of the four major events in tennis. He rode 1,000 miles roundtrip on a train and wrote another novel, this one about about a 14-year-old boy who comes to age on a backpacking trip.

He learned that, even in a wheelchair, spontaneity is not only workable but desirable.

"To have a true adventure, you need to let your mind be open to see opportunities as they come along," he said. "If you try to do everything precisely, you destroy creativity."

So Morse left plenty of room for that as he headed out for Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Egypt, Italy, France, Spain, Belgium, England and Scotland. In Singapore, he plans to visit Italian friends that he met in Australia.

Morse expects his trip to be successful by drawing on his strengths.

"Everybody looks at the 10 percent I can't do and forgets the 90 percent that can be done," he said.

Take Egypt, for example. He might not do so well with his wheelchair in the sand, so if a trek to the pyramids won't work, he plans to see different stone creations via a boat down the Nile River.

Still, he knows his limitations. "I'm cautious about encountering that one individual who doesn't care about me or that I'm in a wheelchair and they want money, credit cards and I'm an easy target for them so I might not go out and party in a club at 1 o'clock in the morning," he said.

And to be on the safe side, Morse has gotten numerous inoculations and is taking "every antibiotic my doctor would let me take."

At the end of the trip, Morse plans to return to Chelan but he has no plans to return to law. Again, he's counting on spontaneity.

"For the first time in my life, I don't have any significant plans beyond early summer of next year but I have wonderful possibilities," he said. "I'm treating my life the same way as my trip. I know something will happen, and it will probably be something that I didn't even think might happen."