Unshackled

Have you ever felt like you were stranded on a sheet of floating ice with nothing to eat but seal blubber and nothing to sleep in but a damp, rotting reindeer skin? Me too. It happens.

Christmas break found me holed up in the safari-themed guest room of my MIL's house reading a book about Sir Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic expedition gone wrong. It was probably the best metaphor that I could have read for THIS POINT in my life, THIS POINT being the point that follows a miscarriage and a failed IVF attempt seven months apart. 

There is a reason Santa lives at the North Pole. It's because the South Pole totally blows. It's the most hostile environment this side of the moon. A continent made of glaciers two miles deep, Antarctica hits temps as low as -100 F, winds up to 200 mph, and ocean waves up to 100 feet high. When winter arrives, the ocean freezes at two square miles per minute. Antarctica's frozen ocean is twice as big as the United States. In 1915, a British crew of 28 men was stranded there for 18 months—with no ship and no way to contact the outside world—and they all survived.

There is no way to summarize the feat, but these are the things that stood out to me:

Shackleton's wooden ship was originally called Polaris, but he changed it to Endurance because his family motto was BY ENDURANCE WE CONQUER. Lesson: My own family does not have a motto. We need one. And maybe a coat of arms.

Shackleton and his 27 men sailed out of England with the blessing of the Queen and Winston Churchill just as WWI was erupting. The crew was more than sailors. It included surgeons, artists, geologists, biologists, motor specialists, photographers, cooks, carpenters, meteorologists, physicists and even two firemen. (Firemen? In the land of ice? Really?) Lesson: Surround yourself with all sorts of people. Variety really is the spice of life and it's nice to learn from others. Plus, you never know what kind of person you'll need in a jam.

The Endurance sailed south until it got stuck in the frozen Weddell Sea. The ship remained locked in ice for months on end while the men remained on board. They swallowed delicious food, celebrated holidays, played soccer, read novels, listened to the gramophone, and pet the sled dog puppies. Lesson: Sometimes being stuck is not as bad as it seems.

The ice swelled. The ship shattered. The delicious food ran low. The men had to evacuate to an ice floe (a giant sheet of floating ice the size of several football fields) and haul the three lifeboats behind them in case they ever came to open water. For months on end they slept on slush and recorded that they could feel whales hitting the ice underneath them. The southern hemisphere's version of the northern lights, aurora australis, were beyond ethereal. Lesson: Sometimes it's way worse than you planned, but even then you can experience uniquely awesome things because of where you are.

Once the food ran out they survived on raw seal meat, blubber, penguins, and three sugar cubes a day. (One day they killed over 600 baby penguins for food. Penguins have no land predators, so they are not afraid of man, the poor things. They killed baby penguins because they tasted like chicken. The adults were tough and chewy. I'm not joking. The book said this.) When there was an absence of penguins or seals flapping around, they were forced to shoot their sled dogs and eat them. Fortuitously, a giant leopard seal leaped up on their ice and when the men cut it open it revealed fifty undigested fish, which were gobbled up along with the 1,000 pounds of meat.  Lesson: We are being watched over, especially in hard times. The Lord might ask us to endure an icy shipwreck for a time, but He will also toss in a seal full of fish when we really need it. And, I don't think my fight-or-flight would ever kick in enough for me to kill an innocent, fuzzy-faced baby penguin or a dog. Ever. I think I'd just have to starve. This is why I'm a graphic designer and not an explorer.

Despite the permanent misery, there were a few unshakeable men that remained optimistic and buoyant. Other men crumpled to the ground, sobbing, asking to be left behind to die. Shackleton somehow always cheered his men up and convinced them to fight just one more day. Lesson: You can always make it one more day. It's probably easier if you're one of the happy people. If you're happy long enough you become unshakeable.

By some miracle, Shackleton got his men to Elephant Island. He then took the best boat, the best navigator, and the man with the best attitude, and left the remaining 25 on the rocky shore in their wet clothes with no shelter and little food. He navigated that 24-foot boat 800 miles to South Georgia Island, an island populated with a whaling station and civilization. The only hiccup was that he landed on the opposite side of the island's habitation, so 29 miles of Antarctic alps had to be traversed to finally reach help. Four months after leaving his crew, Shackleton returned and rescued them all.

The rescued 25 later said that every morning of the 100+ abandoned mornings they would wake up, roll up their beds, and get their work done because today might be the day they'd be rescued. And one dreary day, just like all the dreary days before it, they rolled up their beds and did their chores and a rescue boat appeared on the horizon. Lesson: Your ship being crushed was just the beginning. You have no idea how many rounds there are in your fight. Just keep fighting. Eventually it ends. At some point you are saved.

Shackleton was happy he saved his men, but sad that his expedition was a failure for the second time. The initial expedition was his attempt to be the first man to reach the South Pole. He got within 97 miles but had to turn back due to bad weather. Then a Norwegian beat him to it. Dang Norwegians. On the second expedition he wanted to be the first man to traverse the continent. Instead, his ship got crushed and he led his team to survive the worst 18-month shipwreck in history. He was a hero the rest of his life even though he never reached his personal goals. Lesson: I know something about two failed expeditions and I don't even know any Norwegians. It is not always about winning. Sometimes it's not even about reaching your goals. Sometimes it's just about surviving.

I am not giving up on a baby. I will do whatever it takes (except killing a baby penguin) to get there. Crush me, starve me, freeze me, trick me that I am abandoned. None of it will work. I will get there. I will conquer this with my husband by my side and my God at the helm.

BY ENDURANCE WE CONQUER.

*Icy photo taken of the Zermatt Ice Castle, Midway, Utah, the same day we explored Soldier Hollow in snow clothes and lost Chris Powell's Jeep keys on the Heber Creeper's railroad tracks. Good times.