I filled a half dozen journals with notes—my primary focus was on what it “felt” like to be in the high Arctic.
But books about business creativity are far different from an adventure memoir. In the world of corporate innovation, my Eureka! Ranch team and I have had the honor of helping some of the world’s greatest companies grow their business—from Nike to Walt Disney to American Express. We’ve invented cat foods, candy bars, chips, colas, and caskets. In those books, I knew what I was doing. This time I was, to use an appropriate cliché, standing on thin ice. Still, as I paced in the wings, waiting for the curtain to rise and to meet all those eager faces in the audience, I knew I had stood on even thinner ice—at the North Pole.
A middle-aged guy with “no business” going on a North Pole expedition
On that expedition, I was a “tenderfoot,” as Admiral Peary called George Borup, George MacMillian, and Dr. John Goodsell, the Arctic rookies on his 1909 expedition. I was a first timer who, frankly, had no business going to the North Pole. I was forty pounds overweight and out of shape. If there were such a thing as an obese-o-meter, I would have registered somewhere beyond plump. Sure, I knew a textbook ton about exercise, but there is a vast difference between knowing about fitness and actually being fit. I was a forty-year-old man in a fifty-year-old body.
With the play, and with this book, I find myself in a similar role—the tenderfoot. My literary inspirations include George Plimpton’s classic Paper Lion and Bill Bryson’s A Walk In the Woods. Their adventures and misadventures inspired me to not let inexperience get in the way of participating in great adventures.
I do not presume that this book matches their literary genius. My goal simply is to show what it’s like for an ordinary, middle-aged, overweight guy to travel to the North Pole as Admiral Peary did. This is my story of the Aspirations! Expedition as I remember it. It’s filled with my perceptions, misconceptions, and delusions. I am sure that my expedition teammates have their own perceptions, misperceptions, and delusions.
Still pacing in the wings, I heard Erskin Smith, the artistic director of the Playhouse and the director of North Pole Tenderfoot, explain to the audience that there would be one intermission. He mentioned the Playhouse’s upcoming schedule, announcing that in a few weeks, they could see the world premiere of Anne and Gilbert, based on the writings of islander Lucy Maud Montgomery. It would be a professional musical that tells the story of Anne Shirley’s life after the events made famous in Anne of Green Gables.
He ended with my cue, “But first we travel to the top of the earth. Ladies and gentlemen, the Victoria Playhouse is proud to present the world premiere of North Pole Tenderfoot.”
I heard the opening strains of “I’m Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover,” as performed by my father’s Dixieland band, The Presumpscott River Bottom Boys. I’d selected it because it was a personal favorite and I figured four-leaf clovers were lucky.
The rookie took to the stage.
As the song came to an end, the lights came up and I sprang onto the stage reciting as Erskine had directed.
Tonight we’re going on an adventure to the North Pole—to the top of the earth, to the spot around which the whole earth spins. Leading our expedition will be Paul Schurke of Ely, Minnesota, a genuine adventure hero. My name is Doug Hall. By day I help the world’s leading companies invent big and bold innovations. On this trip I’m a rookie, a raw beginner, a tenderfoot, as Admiral Peary called rookies.
The purpose of our expedition is to recreate Admiral Peary’s last dash for the pole.
Tonight’s performance is like those performed in halls like this at the beginning of the century before last. It’s an adventure story told with slides and audio as Admiral Peary, Shakelton, Admunsen, and Nansen would have done to raise funds for their next adventure.
I’m not here to raise funds. I’m here to raise awareness for the need for parents and grandparents to help inspire children’s aspirations. To that end, as you entered the theater you received a free audio CD with a program designed to help you inspire your children.
As a special bonus, tonight on this stage I will reveal the answers to the three great mysteries of Robert Peary’s 1909 North Pole Expedition. Tonight you will learn the answers to three questions:
1 Why was Peary so silent upon his return to the ship?
2 Why did he take Henson instead of Bartlett to the pole?
3 Did he actually make it to the pole?
And that was how the story that became this book began…
Giving lectures was one of Peary’s primary sources of funding for his expeditions.
Chapter 1
Why Are You Going to the North Pole?
“WHY ARE YOU GOING TO THE NORTH POLE?”
It was the most common question from family and friends when I announced my plans to join a dogsled expedition to the North Pole.
It was a fair question, as the North and South poles are some of the most inaccessible and unpleasant places on the planet.
Apsley Cherry-Garrad, in his book The Worst Journey in the World, detailing the Scott expedition to the South Pole, described polar trips this way:
Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time that has yet been devised.
The plan involved traveling about two hundred miles to recreate Admiral Robert E. Peary’s “last dash” to the pole, from 88 degrees to 90 North.
The temperatures, with wind chill, ranged from minus 15 to minus 62 degrees Fahrenheit despite the endless sunlight of spring in the Arctic.
People thought I was crazy. Traveling to the North Pole is not an endeavor a person with complete possession of his marbles would undertake.
To risk understatement: It’s not a popular trip. At the time of our adventure in 1999, only thirty-four people had made the journey by dogsled, as Admiral Peary did. Contrast this with Mount Everest, where more than two thousand people have reached the summit.
Admiral Robert Peary, the North Pole iron man.
If there were a travel brochure for the trip, it would read like this:
On This Trip You’ll Enjoy: Minus 60 Degree Cold,
Blinding Whiteouts, Bouts of Diarrhea.
Frostbite Is a Certainty,
Loss of Fingers and Toes a Real Possibility.
Sounds grim. But at least it’s more optimistic than the ad Ernest Shackleton supposedly ran in London to find crew members for his South Pole expedition:
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.
The question of why are you going to the North Pole can be asked in two ways:
Why are you going
to the NORTH POLE?
In this case the emphasis was placed on why the North Pole. The place itself. However, it was most often asked with emphasis placed on the front of the