Endurance

MEN WANTED: FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY. SMALL WAGES, BITTER COLD, LONG MONTHS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS, CONSTANT DANGER, SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOUR AND RECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS.

- SIR ERNEST SHACKLETON

The third season arrived about 2 weeks ago. Immediately after surgery, I was trapped in a hospital bed with nutrition, pain and waste managed through medical tubes.  For a couple of days, there was no need to leave the bed. By Day Three, the "self-serve" dilaudid was replaced with oxycodone (probably a good idea). On Day Five, I went home. Like Shackleton's ship, I am trapped in Subarctic ice.

Forward progress is blocked. The pressure of unforgiving circumstances forces cracks in a normally sea-worthy hull. I would prefer to do nothing. But, knowing that inaction will lead to disaster, I force myself to do the things that assure my survival -- move, drink, eat, sleep, take meds, make music, interact with others.

I watch videos on Youtube that show how others cope with ileostomies. I joined an "ostomates" social network. I see and read how others normalize their existence while wearing a pouch. The more I see, the less I want to be a member of their club. Shackleton and his crew voluntarily sailed into the Antarctic -- I had less choice about my journey. Still, I willingly head in the direction of a warmer future.

Shackleton and his crew had to leave the ship behind as it was swallowed by the thawing pack ice.

"Thus, after a year's incessant battle with the ice, we had returned........to almost the same latitude we had left with such high hopes and aspirations twelve months previously; but under what different conditions now! Our ship crushed and lost and we ourselves drifting on a piece of ice at the mercy of the winds"

Shackleton, On New Year's Eve 1915

Some of the crew undertook a momentous journey, battling frigid temperatures and a raging sea, while the others waited on Elephant Island. Shackleton returned 105 days later to rescue the survivors, who were all well.

"..... we had entered a year and a half before with well-found ship, full equipment, and high hopes. We had 'suffered, starved and triumphed, groveled down yet grasped at glory, grown bigger in the bigness of the whole.' We had seen God in His splendours, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man"

The naked soul of man. I, too, feel stripped of the daily masks I wear to appear hale and hearty to my shipmates on this voyage. Underneath lies uncertainty, sadness and inertia. Yet, as the captain of my own ship, I must sight the stars when possible and, when impossible, proceed by dead reckoning. Seasons change, pack ice melts, storms calm. I will set a sail and mind the tiller. I will catch the same wind that churns the sea and navigate out of this inhospitable region.

The name of Shackleton's ship? The Endurance.