“Because it’s there”

Knowing my love of adventure, a friend recently sent me a newspaper article about a twenty-nine-year-old family friend named Eli Andersen who had circumnavigated Graham Island standing atop and paddling a large surfboard. I’d never heard of Graham Island, but thanks to Google maps, I found out, and I was even more impressed by the feat.

      Graham comprises about half of the landmass of the Queen Charlotte Islands, BC, north of Vancouver Island, south of the Alaskan panhandle. It took Eli six weeks to paddle around Graham.

      The notion of a wild adventure like that appeals to something deep in me and I was fascinated. I think that this young man touched on what appealed to me when he said, “I like to lie down in my sleeping bag at night after I have made camp. I congratulate myself on a long paddle, or finding the ideal campsite, or had made good decisions. I pat myself on the back and say 'good job Eli, you did it.' I enjoy that feeling.”

      I know that feeling, too. It's an ineffable sense of accomplishment. It’s reaching well beyond what you believe you are capable of doing and then doing it. It's deep fatigue, that feeling of tired, aching muscles telling you how difficult it was, and the comforting knowledge that you did it, a truth that no one can take away, proven by the fact of where you are at that moment.

      It’s crazy, isn’t it, to engage in such dangerous ventures as paddling solo around an island in the northern Pacific Ocean. Why do we do it? As a college kid, much to my mother's horror, I hitchhiked and freight-hopped my way from Salem, OR, to the Grand Canyon, a distance of about 1,500 miles. And when I got there, I hiked to the bottom of the canyon.

      Over the years, I’ve camped out under the stars in a remote corner of the Isle of Skye in Scotland; trained for and run six marathons; climbed Mt. Hood; nearly drowned while canoeing the St. Croix River in Maine overflowing its banks due to spring floods; climbed vertical rock walls; and hiked into the High Sierras numerous times. They were all tough, physically trying and sometimes-dangerous experiences, some more so than others. But, as we press to the edge of our own abilities and strengths, we gain confidence and a better understanding of our personal limits.

      Why do I do it? In the case of the High Sierras, it’s because when you can camp out at 11,000 feet, you get unbroken vistas of a hundred miles; a night sky full of trillions of bright stars; cold glacial melt water to drink; crisp, clean air to breathe; complete silence, save any wind; utter solitude; and the harsh beauty of sheer granite cliffs and high altitude, aquamarine lakes. You congratulate yourself in the knowledge of your accomplishment, how hard you worked to be able to see and experience it all, knowing that you are among the few people up to it.

Photo: Bill LeMenager

      Mountaineers always respond to the “Why?” question by saying, “Because it's there.” Seems as good a reason as any. In fact, what that answer says is that they can imagine themselves atop a particular mountain, just as Eli could imagine himself circumnavigating Graham Island alone. To picture one’s self doing something is tantamount to doing it. It’s throwing down the gauntlet and daring one’s self to do it. Failing is one thing, but failing to try is not acceptable.

      That’s the nub. Not trying is unacceptable.

      Pres. Theodore Roosevelt, himself an avid and fearless adventurer, understood this truth. He once said:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Another president, John F. Kennedy, challenged the nation to go to the moon, at the time a tremendously and unthinkably difficult test. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade,” he said, “not because [it is] easy, but because [it is] hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win. . ."

      That statement, in a nutshell, defined for an era who we were as a nation, what our goals were; that we were fully aware of the risks of the mission, in the context of our confidence in our ability to do it. But to fail to try was not acceptable to the American spirit, and the nation as one eagerly rose to the president’s challenge.

      One's mountain needn't be a moon mission or an Alpine peak to conquer, or an island to paddle around. It can be something as close to home as a painting to conceive of and finish, a gourmet meal to plan, cook and serve, or a book to write and publish. And, it might be overcoming a job-related challenge.

      Tales of adventures are merely internal human struggles writ large, and literally played out on a real life canvas. Edward Whymper, a late-nineteenth century English mountaineer and explorer, answered the “Why?” question with remarkable clarity:

“We who go mountain-scrambling have constantly set before us the superiority of fixed purposes or perseverance to brute force. . . [W]e know where there's a will there's a way; and we come back to our daily occupations better fitted to fight the battle of life, and to overcome the impediments which obstruct our paths, strengthened and cheered by the recollection of past labours, and by the memories of victories gained in other fields.”

In the overly formal language of the Victorian era, those words neatly sum up what I’ve long struggled to verbalize succinctly. After those exertions spent overcoming uniquely difficult obstacles, after stressing our bodies to the limit, after testing our will against the challenges we put before ourselves, we return to “fight the battle” of everyday life. The barriers and difficulties we confront there can seem so paltry in comparison as we recall our “past labours.” We can picture ourselves similarly overcoming our everyday battles.

      We are well prepared for life’s daily tests, because we know ourselves so much better than had we not confronted the “superiority of fixed purposes, or the perseverance of brute force.”