November 3, 2005 - The Impossible and Improbable
The incredible things happen when someone’s enthusiasm and initiative prevent them from knowing the impossible or improbable.
Alejandro and I rolled into Banff yesterday. The surroundings were awe-inspiring. The last time I was in Banff over ten years ago. I experienced this area on a bus tour of the Canadian Rockies with my parents and fifty of their closest friends. I love my parents but anyone who knows me (and has heard me whining) understands that this is not how I like to travel. Back then, I promised that I would return and the mountains are just as majestic as when I left them.
The Banff Mountain Film Festival officially begins tonight. The Book Festival was just winding down. This is the Book Festival’s twelfth year. Mountaineers and adventure books outnumber my medical texts on my bookshelves but the number of each that I have read in the last decade in the reverse. When I do get a chance, these accounts of individual adventure in unforgiving but beautiful locations and situations is truly a way to escape. There is truth in the term “armchair mountaineer”.
We had the evening free so we caught the two presentations that evening. Two women who have lived life incredibly presented their recent books. Their dynamic but understated accounting of their experiences breathed such life into their texts.
Three Among the Wolves is Helen Thayer’s account of the time she spent with three different packs of wild wolves with her husband and “expedition leader” Charlie. Charlie is half wolf, half dog, and their pack’s alpha. Traveling and living on the Alaska tundra as well as the glaciers is a hostile undertaking. They called upon Charlie to be their protectors against polar bears as well as their bridge between the wolf packs and their own.
Without a doubt, one can sense the admiration for these animals that Thayer possesses. Her reasons to be with them are pure…to understand, learn from, and then to help protect them. She portrays the wolves as noble creatures. Thayer and her husband (with the help of Charlie) have shown that people can be noble creatures as well.
Arlene Blum is an extraordinary individual who grew up in the omni-flat Midwest but discovered her love of the mountains during the 1970’s while pursuing her Chemistry training. Her presentation of her recent book, Breaking Trail, chronicles her life. She is famous for leading the first all-female expedition to Annapurna, statistically the most deadly 8000 meter mountain in the World. She has accomplished a few other things such as earning her doctorate in Chemistry and having three carcinogenic chemicals properly banned from use in the U.S. She also has managed a few other feats such as a crossing of the entire Himalaya mountain range on foot over a ten month period, something that was improbable because of the scale of the physical task as well as the complexity of the political environment.
It seems to me that most of us are programmed to believe something to be impossible before even exploring the possibilities. I see this most often in my own field of Medicine where we err on the side of safety at all times. We so often still possess the attitude that we must “protect” and “nurture” our patients as if they are all children (well, I guess my patients really are children). No doubt, what fuels the conservatism is the prevalence of litigation against us when we make a mistake, or even when we do not. Still, whatever the cause, we too often limit the lives of patients by telling them they cannot do something…the same individuals we are devoted to help. It is so often that some individuals exceed our expectations and “beat the statistics”. And, perhaps, it is our duty to explore the impossible or improbable a little bit more.
In the end, I left the presentations with a goal to reassess those things in my life that I have written off as being too difficult. I left with more enthusiasm to climb in every aspect of life.
Alejandro and I rolled into Banff yesterday. The surroundings were awe-inspiring. The last time I was in Banff over ten years ago. I experienced this area on a bus tour of the Canadian Rockies with my parents and fifty of their closest friends. I love my parents but anyone who knows me (and has heard me whining) understands that this is not how I like to travel. Back then, I promised that I would return and the mountains are just as majestic as when I left them.
The Banff Mountain Film Festival officially begins tonight. The Book Festival was just winding down. This is the Book Festival’s twelfth year. Mountaineers and adventure books outnumber my medical texts on my bookshelves but the number of each that I have read in the last decade in the reverse. When I do get a chance, these accounts of individual adventure in unforgiving but beautiful locations and situations is truly a way to escape. There is truth in the term “armchair mountaineer”.
We had the evening free so we caught the two presentations that evening. Two women who have lived life incredibly presented their recent books. Their dynamic but understated accounting of their experiences breathed such life into their texts.
Three Among the Wolves is Helen Thayer’s account of the time she spent with three different packs of wild wolves with her husband and “expedition leader” Charlie. Charlie is half wolf, half dog, and their pack’s alpha. Traveling and living on the Alaska tundra as well as the glaciers is a hostile undertaking. They called upon Charlie to be their protectors against polar bears as well as their bridge between the wolf packs and their own.
Without a doubt, one can sense the admiration for these animals that Thayer possesses. Her reasons to be with them are pure…to understand, learn from, and then to help protect them. She portrays the wolves as noble creatures. Thayer and her husband (with the help of Charlie) have shown that people can be noble creatures as well.
Arlene Blum is an extraordinary individual who grew up in the omni-flat Midwest but discovered her love of the mountains during the 1970’s while pursuing her Chemistry training. Her presentation of her recent book, Breaking Trail, chronicles her life. She is famous for leading the first all-female expedition to Annapurna, statistically the most deadly 8000 meter mountain in the World. She has accomplished a few other things such as earning her doctorate in Chemistry and having three carcinogenic chemicals properly banned from use in the U.S. She also has managed a few other feats such as a crossing of the entire Himalaya mountain range on foot over a ten month period, something that was improbable because of the scale of the physical task as well as the complexity of the political environment.
It seems to me that most of us are programmed to believe something to be impossible before even exploring the possibilities. I see this most often in my own field of Medicine where we err on the side of safety at all times. We so often still possess the attitude that we must “protect” and “nurture” our patients as if they are all children (well, I guess my patients really are children). No doubt, what fuels the conservatism is the prevalence of litigation against us when we make a mistake, or even when we do not. Still, whatever the cause, we too often limit the lives of patients by telling them they cannot do something…the same individuals we are devoted to help. It is so often that some individuals exceed our expectations and “beat the statistics”. And, perhaps, it is our duty to explore the impossible or improbable a little bit more.
In the end, I left the presentations with a goal to reassess those things in my life that I have written off as being too difficult. I left with more enthusiasm to climb in every aspect of life.
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