This has been for me, old home week - connecting with people with whom I worked on a great adventure so many years ago.
Geoff Somers, British team member on the 1990 International Trans-Antarctica Expedition, came through Minnesota a week ago just to say hello. In his honor, we held a gathering with expedition staff and volunteers to visit and catch up. All of us are older now and busy with our lives, but I was struck by both the passion - still evident - for our adventures then, and by the deep commitment all continue to exhibit now. Trans-Antarctica was a bold, ambitious venture that made an impact within the context of contemporary treaty negotiations and scientific discovery. The expedition's lessons and message mean still more now, as both Antarctica's ice and the optimistic world politics of 1990 begin to melt away. How lucky I feel to have this reminder just as my book on the subject, Think South, comes out on this, the expedition's twenty-fifth anniversary!
Next day I rode up to the shores of Lake Superior to visit with Jacqui Banaszynski, the journalist that covered the expedition twenty-five years ago and with Cynthia Muller, one of the project's key staffers. Both are prominent in my book. We have remained the best of friends and cherish our very occasional time together. Even after all these years, we have adventures to compare and share.. and we have laughs. Always, there are laughs.
I don't know when I will see Jacqui again, but I feel her warmth and good will always as I journey forward. I know that the next time we meet, we'll effortlessly pick up where we left off. There will be old stories and new, the laughter and passion our constant. I know this to be true as well of Geoff, Cynthia, Jennifer, and all of the Trans-Antarctica family.
Perhaps it is right that we recognize our lives' most important moments and people only in retrospect. Circumspection breeds clarity. Context comes with time. Twenty-five years ago we expected our work to open the door to many other adventures and accomplishments. And it did. The 1990 International Trans-Antarctica Expedition, for which I was the executive director, made careers for many of us who did the work. What we can only understand from a longer perspective is that, while the careers have been great, the heights we achieved in that project and the friendships that resulted were unique and should never be taken for granted. We thought the experience repeatable. But through the decades each of us has learned that such stars do not align often in a single lifetime: the prodigious talent, good will, inspired purpose and remarkable good fortune conspire rarely to such great effect. So when they do, I urge us all to recognize their worth and celebrate!