I spent a portion of my afternoon watching a little documentary on a fascinating would-be polar expedition that never made it to Antarctica. Instead they got frozen into the chunky ice flow right off shore. They were stuck there for an Antarctic winter, and then their ship was crushed by ice. They abandoned and then spent like another 7 months (after the 7 months stuck on it) trying to get rescued facing every terrible freezing cold odd that you can imagine. Their ship, by the way, was called the Endurance as was the movie. It was amazing.
The human body and spirit has such incredible survival capacity that it blows my mind. We here in the advanced world tax it in almost no way. My cousin the Ultimate Fighter pushes it a little, as does my brother the extreme climber, but really the rest of us have no idea what our physical beings are capable of. Just contemplating how easy life is in comparison to any other time in history begins to bring it into perspective. Even one hundred years ago, life was much physically harder. Oh, this expedition happened in 1914-1916 when they had like wool sleeping bags for cover. Wool, just wool (some people had fur but not everyone).
Now I am watching a discovery channel show about climbing Mt. Everest, and Sherpas are freaking badasses. They are amazing. The rest of us whiteys who climb Everest are freaking pansies in comparison. Wow.
Tonight I will sleep pondering the amazing capacity of the human.
Where's Beebo?! There she is!!!
11 years ago
5 comments:
I know exactly what you mean. I can't tell you how many boxes at work are marked "team lift" and I lift them on my own. It's amazing. I only made myself sick once.
Brrr. I'm going to go get a blanket.
i watched that same documentary. it was freaking awesome.
jim probably gets "Doesn't Lift Well With Others" on his quarterly work evaluations.
That's good. I'm going to use that with others. I'll mutter softly a credit line to you afterwards.
We have a simple life, we're lucky.
Post a Comment