Forging Every Stream

I saw Tom Crean, the one-man production by Aiden Dooley, at the Irish Rep Theater this week. He went on three unsuccessful Antarctic expeditions to the South Pole.

Adventurers have always been an inspiration to me. Not the kind of inspiration that would get me out climbing the highest heights and forging the widest streams but the kind that leave me awestruck at the incredible tenacity of the human spirit.

At the prospect of being lost on an iceberg, or stuck in a crevasse, I don’t know that I’d have the fortitude to get myself out, or even to try to wait it out. I think as soon as the illusion that I was warm and could lay down and go to sleep presented itself, I’d do just that. But given the actual circumstances, perhaps I would persevere.

I think that’s what I find the most fascinating. I don’t wonder why someone would set off on a trek to the remotest bounds – that sounds very appealing for a multitude of reasons. It’s the persistent effort to make one’s way home after going off-course or encountering extreme situations that perplexes me. What is it that keeps them going?

There’s an IMAX film about a mail pilot whose plane went down in the Andes. He keeps walking through the mountains for about seven days until he finally happens upon a road where someone finds him. It was the thought of his wife that kept him taking one step after another for a solid week.

Perhaps the type of people that set out on such adventures are wired to do anything to prove they are invincible. This has often gotten people killed, but it’s the same cloth that allows them to triumph over the harshest environments and terrains.

I’ll ponder this a little more as I traverse the concrete jungle of my habitat - Manhattan.