“WHATEVER YOU CAN DO, OR DREAM YOU CAN, BEGIN IT. BOLDNESS HAS GENIUS, POWER, AND MAGIC IN IT.”
VON GOETHE
DREAM BIG AND DARE TO FAIL
Those explorers who seek the ultimate test of their abilities against the extremes of nature know better than most that there is no success without risking failure. Colonel Norman Vaughn, the veteran polar explorers’ motto: “Dream big and dare to fail.” The Norwegian polar explorer Borge Ousland thinks along the same lines.
“If you want to be better, you have to give yourself another chance, take the chance of making another failure,” he says. “In order to win, you have to risk losing. That is part of it.”
Ousland knows all about risk-taking and confronting failure. He has done both. In fact, his expeditions revel in risk. Two words tend to feature in any Ousland expedition: solo and unsupported.
The first of his expeditions in this line came in 1991; a solo trek to the North Pole, hard on the heels of a joint unsupported ski trek to the same place, which itself was a first. It made the exploration community sit up and listen to the Norwegian, who was soon receiving considerable publicity. “I’ve started to feel the layers of civilization peeling away; it takes weeks to find your animal self,” he wrote in National Geographic during the pioneering expedition. “I wake up, grunt at the sun, perform the day’s chores, sniff the north wind, and automatically pick out the best route and the safest campsites – all without thought. I’ve found the rhythm. I think I can do this.” Fifty-two grueling days after setting off from Cape Arktichesky, he did. He still considers it his greatest moment out in the field. “Not many believed I would make it, I was not really sure myself.”
Born in Oslo I 1962, Ousland went on to train as a diver after leaving school and for a decade from the mid-1980s worked in the North Sea as a saturation diver. In 1986, he dipped his toes into the exploration world, skiing across Greenland with friends, travelling 500 miles in 37 days in an expedition which recalled the exploits of his fellow countryman Fritjof Nansen a century earlier.
Though he finds it hard to define exactly, Ousland is in no doubt about why he has chosen the path of adventure and exploration. “I think there is this restlessness in me, this urge to do it. I really feel great when I do these expeditions and I love it. I think you have to really love it to do these hard trips. You can’t do hard trips for money or for glory or any of those kinds of reasons. It’s really the true and joyful memories of being out there and being so close to you and close to nature. That’s why I do it.”
He regards exploration as an intensely individual experience.
“Exploration is very personal. It doesn’t have to be the North Pole or the South Pole. I think the most important aspect of exploration is that you start on a personal level; you have to start at some level you are comfortable with and work from there. For me it is seeking out what is beyond the next horizon, it’s about following your dreams. I don’t do it for exercise, I do not do it to set a rulebook but for adventure.”
From 1989 until 1991, Ousland donned uniform, serving out his military service with the Norwegian Special Naval Forces. He followed the trailblazing solo unsupported trek to the North Pole with its mirror image – only longer – at the other end of the world, an attempt to trek solo and unsupported across Antarctica from coast to coast via the South Pole in 1995. That time he had to abort but, unable to countenance defeat, he crossed the continent again in 1996-1997, travelling 1,778 miles in 64 days, enduring temperatures as low as minus 56 degrees Celsius. In 2001, Ousland became the first to cross the Arctic solo – inevitably – from Siberia to Canada via the North Pole. That epic journey took him 82 days. Oustland’s relentless preference for solo travel is borne out in the titles of his books, Alone to the North Pole, Alone Across Antarctica, and Alone Across the North Pole.
“Out there on the ice where there is no grass or trees, there is nothing, it is a very desolate place so I long for the woods where every square centimeter is full of life and trees and birds and everything.”
From the poles, Ousland turned to dabble in mountains, climbing Cho Oyu in 1999 and reaching the south summit of Everest in 2003 before returning to the ice by making the first unsupported trek across the Patagonian Ice Field, the third largest glacier in the world, in the same year.
He understands he is an inspirational figure for untold numbers of young adventurers and throws himself into his role as a motivational speaker with the same sort of intensity that characterizes his extreme expeditions. His message to them is straightforward and uncompromising.
“I do have a motto and that is, follow your dream, never stop. I think it is our own responsibility to make people understand and respect nature because only by using nature we will learn to take care of it. I think everyone needs an anchor and that’s the most important thing we can give our kids. So in that respect I hope I can be an inspiration to others through my expeditions, pictures and other work”
We as hikers, explorers, and adventurers have the absolute duty to respect and protect our Wildernesses. Nobody else will do it for us. Take ownership!
The End.
Safe Hiking.
References and Acknowledgements
From the book: Faces of Exploration – Joanna Vestey
Photos: ©Willem Pelser
Compiled by: Willem Pelser
