Relative Something

I was reading an article in National Geographic last night, and came to the conclusion that I am not a man. Not compared to the men who lived in years gone by. I am a lawn ornament, maybe. Or, a flower. Admittedly, the modern conveniences that we have come to accept as normal, make me feel like a softie, when comparing to anyone who lived in centuries before us, but stories of the explorers of the time boggle my mind.

The story was written by David Roberts, describing the experience of thirty year old Australian, Douglas Mawson, exploring Antarctica in 1912.

I’ll just highlight a few examples from the description, each one sounding like it would be my demise, that have me measuring life today with a fresh perspective.

• Living through winter for years in a place with wind gusts of 200 mph.
• Getting 300 miles away from the base after 35 days, with a 3-man team, and then losing a man and the team’s most valuable gear, including their three-man tent, the six best huskies, all the food for the dogs, and nearly all the men’s food, to a crevasse.
• Trying to dash back 300 miles with remaining dogs, having them all die, one by one, in the first two weeks, and needing to eat them to survive.
• Forced to pull the sledge themselves, and having it repeatedly capsize, exhausting them, and forcing the dumping of remaining gear.
• Teammate gets sick, risking both their survival, but not being able to leave him.
• Burying dead teammate, and choosing to go on, even though the food was almost gone, and his own physical state was deplorable, with open sores on his nose, lips, and scrotum; his hair coming out in clumps; and skin peeling off his legs. And he still had a hundred miles to go. “I am afraid it has cooked my chances altogether,” Mawson wrote in his diary.
• Discovering, three days later, that the soles of his feet had completely detached from the skin beneath them, which spurted pus and blood. He taped the dead soles to his feet, and put on six pairs of wool socks. Every step thereafter was an agony.

Okay, that right there is enough for me. I’m done. Bury me back by my teammate. As if I would have made it that far. But the story goes on to describe that he eventually falls in a crevasse, hanging from the sledge above by rope, expecting the sledge to come down on top of him any moment. When it doesn’t, he climbs, hand over hand, back up the rope. That is something that would be hard to do when healthy. Douglas was far from healthy.

When he gets to the top, trying to climb over the edge of the crevasse, it gives away and he falls back down to the end of that rope. I would have lost the mental battle there, for sure.

It does describe that he considered cutting the rope and falling to his death, but then recalled a verse from his favorite poet, and somehow rallied to climb that rope again. He passed out at the top, then woke later to find his body covered with a dusting of new fallen snow. It says he was now convinced he had no chance to survive, but wanted to get to a place where someone would find their diaries to learn the story of their experience.

I think the most mentally grueling aspect of his feat was a window of time that he had been up against. He needed to get back to base camp before the expedition’s relief ship was scheduled to leave for Australia. Even though he somehow makes it back, after coming upon a food cache left by expedition members searching for his team, he can see the ship out at sea. He missed it by a mere five hours. He has to spend another 10 months there, with 6 men deputized to stay and search for his party, waiting for the next ship.

It is too much for me to fully grasp. Douglas Mawson was a man. All I know is, I do not compare.