Dialogue this Wednesday and synopsis of a book that might help you with life and death challenges

Here's a synopsis of a book that might be useful to you. Dialogue is this Wednesday November 13, starting 6 PM, at 1514 Seventh Street SW.

Arhur

Book: (Edward J Larson) To the Edges of the Earth: 1909, The Race for the Three Poles, and the Climax of the Age of Exploration (2018)

Why on earth would anyone be interested in explorers and mountaineers whose achievements made news a century ago? My answer began with my father’s interest. He had been to the North Pole and the South Pole, and when I saw this book in the airport on the way to visit him, it was a no-brainer: I had to read that book.

Then I discovered the real reason I had to read it. When he made his final push to reach the North Pole in 1909, Robert Peary was already more than 50 years of age and had lost eight of his ten toes to frostbite before that final epic journey began. This was his last chance to do the thing that would define his life. He had already dedicated years to efforts toward the goal. Peary’s quest was a concise answer to a question that faces every one of us: What defines your life? That was the real reason for reading this book.

Or I could say, with equal conviction, that the book had come to me just as old age was getting tough, as a metaphor for my own exploration of the edges of my existence. Each of us is an explorer. The exploration of old age has similarities to what Robert Perry experienced in 1909. “Old age ain’t no place for sissies,” as Bette Davis reportedly observed. As harsh as it may be, old age is a chance for the elderly person to write the final chapter of his or her life.

Arctic exploration had fascinated Europeans for generations. Mary Shelley had begun writing Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus in 1816. Published in 1818, it had an Arctic explorer encountering Dr. Frankenstein and his creature as the latter headed for the North Pole to end his life. This literary fascination with the ice-bound edges of the earth continued through the Victorian era, with artists and writers turning again and again to harsh conditions of weather and terrain for their inspiration.

For Europeans, then, and especially for those of British ancestry, the North Pole and the South Pole had a magnetic cultural influence as strong as the magnetic pull on the needle of a compass. For one of Peary’s presentations about his Arctic explorations, which was billed for the auditorium of the American Museum of Natural History (seating capacity 1,500), thirty thousand people tried to get in. The First World War (1914-1919) radically changed the European public’s focus of attention, yet that polar magnetism obviously persisted well into the lifetime of my father (born 1922) and is with us to this very day. If you’re interested, we can book a flight to the North Pole from Calgary. It’s about 13 hours.

The Third Pole referred to in the title of the book was the world’s highest mountains, located in the Himalayas (as was well known at the time). Mount Everest (elevation 29, 029 feet) was not available to European climbers in 1909 because Nepal and Tibet had closed their borders. However, there are more than fifty mountains in the Himalayan range that are more than 23,600 feet in elevation; whereas outside Asia the tallest mountain is 22,838 feet (located in the Andes).

One of those mountains in the Karakoram range of the western Himalayas, known as “K2” (28,250 feet), was the second tallest peak and was at least in principle available for anyone with the chutzpah to go for it. An Italian aristocrat, Prince Luigi Amedeo of Savoy, Duke of the Abruzzi (1873-1933) was already a celebrity. Not only had he set a “farthest north” record on his own Arctic expedition (April 1900, when he reached 86o 34’ north latitude); he was also considered Europe’s most eligible bachelor. “The year 1909 began,” the author informs us, “with the European and American press abuzz with rumors about a pending marriage” between the duke and “the Belle of America,” Katherine Elkins. He was 35, she was 22.

The love between them was apparently very real and abiding, but they never married. Notwithstanding his Arctic exploits and his romantic interest in Katherine, mountain climbing appears to have been the Italian aristocrat’s first passion. The duke and his team, including a brilliant photographer, set off for the Himalayas. They approached the remote and forbidding K2 from the east and south. They studied what they could see of it. They tried to identify a route they might use to reach the summit. No luck.

Instead, the team chose another goal in the Karakoram range, the Chogolisa with its twin peaks at 25,157 and 25,112 feet. On July 18, 1909, climbing with hands and feet up a ridge in fog and mist, with certain death if they slipped to either side, they reached 24,600 feet, a new altitude record that stood for 13 years. At that point the persistently bad weather stopped them 500 feet short of the summit and forced them to turn back.

In the Antarctic, there was a geographic South Pole as well as a magnetic South Pole. The team led by Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922) went for both in 1909, three of them heading for the magnetic pole and four going after the geographic pole. Both of those expeditions were death-defying. All seven of the men survived.

Shackleton had been born in Ireland, and the team he led in 1909 made their conquest for the Queen and planted the British flag. Shackleton’s party of four established a furthest south record (88o 23’ south latitude, 162’ east) but did not reach the geographic pole. His colleagues going for the magnetic pole were successful. Shackleton was considered a brilliant leader by almost everyone who risked their lives under his leadership. A contemporary said: “When disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.” Aside from his epochal leadership under extreme conditions, however, his life was lacklustre. He died in debt, of a heart attack, during another of his expeditions to the Antarctic. At his wife’s request, he was buried there.

Robert Peary (1856-1920) was an American of middle-class origins, imbued with nationalistic pride in America, who carried the stars and stripes to the North Pole on April 6, 1909. His father had died when Peary was four years old. Devoted to his mother, he would have wanted her to know, but she died before he reached the North Pole. His wife Jo bore him two daughters (sadly, one died in infancy) and was, to a surprising extent, a participant in his polar adventures. An Inuit mistress Allakasingwoh bore him a son. Peary was a friend of President Teddy Roosevelt, who shared his spirit of adventure. He named his ship the Roosevelt.

The author Edward Larson is a University Professor of history and holds a chair in law at Pepperdine University. Twice he’s won the National Outdoor Book Award, and he’s a past fellow of the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program.

This book is rich with narrative detail; my synopsis is only a faint shadow. It’s all about human endeavor in an era of pervasive racist and gender bias, as well as the horrific treatment of animals (sled dogs in the Arctic, Manchurian ponies in the Antarctic) on which the explorers relied to realize their dreams. You are of a different era, yet their stories may help you realize your own dreams, whatever they may be.