So it was New Year's Day. I had some mixed emotions--a new year, a lot of exciting but hard creative challenges ahead, the usual New Year's Day sort of stuff. I decided to go for a swim at my neighborhood community center to clear my head and see if the path became more clear to me as a result. And there I was, alone in the hot tub when a woman named Faye joined me. We got to talking, as people do.
"The best hot tub I've been in was a year ago in Telluride, Colorado," she said. "Outdoors. Surrounded by snow while snow still fell. Christmas lights in the distance. The glow of the moon . . ."
"Why were you there?" I asked.
And then, boom. The story.
Faye was there to celebrate the 100th birthday of her friend, Norman Vaughan. Vaughan was the last surviving member of Admiral Byrd's expedition to Antartica in 1928, during which they became the first Americans to set foot in the interior of Antarctica and discover lands never before seen by humans.
Vaughan had left Harvard to join Byrd--a move that changed his life. Vaughan lived his whole life as an adventurer, bringing medical supplies by dogsled to isolated villages, leading rescue expeditions to save lost fighter squadrons, evacuating wounded soldiers by dogsled from the Battle of the Bulge, running his team of dogs in the Iditerod race in Alaska many times, being the first person to climb the mountain Byrd named after him, at the age of 88, and writing two books about his experiences, With Byrd at the Bottom of the World and My Life of Adventure.
Vaughan's motto? "Dream big and dare to fail."
Norman Vaughan died four days after his 100th birthday. Yet, he lives on. In conversations between strangers. In his books. In this message to you. And so, this year, 2007, how will you dream big? How will you dare to fail? How will you keep the spirit of Norman Vaughan--and of yourself--alive?
To find out more about Norman Vaughan, see www.normanvaughan.com.
Thanks, Faye!
0 comments:
Post a Comment