AUGUST 28, 2022 – (Cont.) Apparently the doctor’s kibosh on my future downhill skiing hadn’t infiltrated my subconsciousness. Last night’s dreams found me filling out an application for a season pass at a high Alpine ski resort. As I awoke, of course, the Swiss scenery faded, but I dwelt in the image as long as I could. With the morning light I was compelled to face the day, its tasks, its “mileage.”
If the marathon is an apt analogy to my body’s current “mission,” I can think of myriad other challenges with metaphorical resemblance to my circumstances. The problem is, I don’t know if they help or hinder; obscure or intensify, the thoughts and feelings that track through my head and body.
I divide the analogies and metaphors into two groups: 1.Voluntary; and 2. Involuntary. In the first camp are the ski and running marathons; the hare-brained decision to sail a 10-foot sailboat—alone—across the Atlantic, as local hero, Gerry Spies of White Bear Lake, MN did in 1979—or across the Pacific alone as he did two years later. An example of the “involuntary” would be survival at sea after being torpedoed by an Imperial Japanese submarine during WW II or crash landing in the desert or staying alive in as a political prisoner serving a 15-year sentence inside Camp #457 of the old Soviet Gulag.
I try to work on both sides of this divide. To keep my nose to the grindstone—hydration, medication, mouth rinse, caloric intake, other measures—I tend to focus on the “marathon”; incremental steps, each carrying me closer to the goal of emergence back into the world I occupied previously. Right now I’m at mile nine of the Boston Marathon or less than a third of my way across the Atlantic. In either case, I’ve put myself there. I signed up. I got myself to the starting line and now with the cheering behind me, I’m swept up in a supreme test of endurance from which no rest can be contemplated until the feat is accomplished. In the marathon, it’s one step after another. There’s no other way. On the tiny boat that’s nothing more than a bobber with a sail, I’m at the mercy of wind and current, hoping that my water, food supplies, and other essential equipment will cover the distance. As in a long race, the method is momentum—unceasing momentum fueled by mind and body and mind over body.
On the involuntary side of analogies, I try to contrast my immediate challenges against the far greater hardships that other people have had to endure in external adversity. Imagine, for example, a nighttime torpedo that breaks my vessel in half. Amidst the horrific bedlam, I dive into the oily waters before the ship explodes, then scramble to pull myself aboard some flotsam before the ship goes down, sucking with it, everything close. I think of what I’d need and want: flares, a jug of water, three candy bars,. Against the moonlight breaking through the storm clouds, I see silhouetted shark fins splitting the surface around me.
What could be worse?
A routine flight from Timbuktu to Algiers, the six-seater, twin-engine aircraft I’m piloting develops engine trouble, then failure. I’m losing altitude fast, with no familiar landmarks in sight. “M’aidez! M’aidez!” (“Mayday, Mayday!”) I call, but now my fate rests on the physics of glide and the reality of geology. Can I coax the plane down gently at the foot of a dune, or will I crash into rocky promontory? There’s little time for the emergency checklist. The ground rises up to meet me way too fast—a violent jolt, another, then metal scraping across rock, a series of jolts, a somersault, then . . . silence. Blood from a sliced scalp drips into my left eye, as I establish my orientation, then unharness myself. I smell the odor of fuel. The cabin door is jammed, and with adrenalated effort, I smash the windshield and barely squeeze out, falling onto the sand. Miraculously, my legs aren’t broken, though my right arm hurts like hell. I drag from the wreckage but not fast enough. The blast of exploding fuel hurls me across the sand, and I land like a lump—unconscious until . . . I’m not—minutes, an hour later? And I’ve merely reached the starting point.
What could be worse?
Waking up in a camp of the gulag in eastern Siberian in the dead of winter. The gong goes off, and one by one we prisoners are yanked from our bunks and ordered to assemble (we sleep in our dirt-caked clothes and coats) for the morning “meal”: a chunk of black bread too hard for teeth, a half-ladle of thin, maggot-infested gruel, and half-a-cup of root-chai. The place stinks to low hell, from prisoners having relieved themselves inside the night before—the wind-chill outside having been too severe for survival after less than a minute of exposure. Yet within a half hour, we’ll be ordered, shivering violently against the cold, into line for the daily march to the mine. For many of us, this is our first winter in the camp. Just one out of a 15-year sentence.
Except, it’s never quite that bad. In the marathon, aid stations line the course. In the solo voyage across the sea, every single day, a support ship marked, “MERCY CLINIC” appears alongside my little vessel. Even in shark-infested waters or in the Sahara or at Camp #457, there’s a line, a link, a voice that knows my exact location and predicament. Help is on the way.
Until the rescue, however, time seems to stop. This is the hardest part—being locked in time, which paradoxically, for every single one of us, is all too fleeting.
Depending on the immediate circumstances, I find it useful to touch each side of the metaphorical divide continually. Hydration is critical in the marathon, so drink! Patience and perseverance are important in the “predicament” setting, so endure! Know that others facing endurance tests have conquered the challenge—and in some measure, so have I. So to self, “Grit thy teeth. Control what thy can, and let the angel’s wing—the loving, caring human hand—pull you through!”
(Remember to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.)
© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
