This Journey We're On

From the Mental Resilience Desk

It was an unremarkable winter weekend near Reno, Nevada, in the late 1970s when my father, Chuck Shull, got a wild hair to go on an adventure with his son… (that would be me) with the aim of going into the Sierra Nevada Mountains for just a quick trip into the snow. We would maybe shoot a couple of his guns, or simply enjoy the winter wonderland drive- who knows? I was in single-digit years, endlessly bored, and it was something to do.

He threw a few things into the light blue truck (that he had painted himself), and soon enough Nana, my grandmother, got wind of the activity and volunteered herself to go too. All of this shoot-from-the-hip decision making happened at my uncle Ron’s house, one of the epicenters for Shull family activity during this wonderful early period of my life. Nana, a product of the Pacific Northwest, was often up for a good adventure too, and she insisted on coming along.

We didn’t pack very much, but Nana brought some snacks because she was a good Nana. We had jackets and not much more, though I don’t even think my father brought much of a jacket. Jackets for my dad were often denim jackets with thermal liners or something he could work a rugged job in, or ride his Harley with. I don’t think you would ever find my father in a jacket that you would buy at REI or anything with any kind of emergent warmth tech. That just wasn’t him. With his denim jacket and his ubiquitous dark brown cowboy hat, my old man was ready for anything that the world would throw at him. So, with little more than an idea, some snacks, and our jackets, we were off… me, my father, and Nana in the light blue pickup that my dad painted himself.

I was quite young, and my delicate web of memories is definitely corruptible now that I’m in my 50s. The travel time was probably over an hour, but I don’t remember. Either way, we were soon in the Sierra Nevada Mountains driving up snowy roads like we owned the place… I dug it. My father seemed invincible back then, that memory remains clear. There was no risk assessment matrix in my father’s lifestyle protocol, it was just do it… and live with the consequences. This was the person who used to put me on his shoulders and do flips off the diving board into my grandparents’ pool. Definitely a safety seventh type of guy.

Miles and miles into increasing snow depth and my old man didn’t show any sign of letting up. Nana may have said something, but if she did it didn’t change his actions. For all I know he may have been looking for a smart place to turn around, but any sane person can predict what happened next. You know what happened next!

A lull in momentum, and then the wheels were spinning, kicking up snow, burying the truck deeper in. Dad got out and tried to dig us out. Reversal attempts failed. Branches under the tires failed. Four-wheel drive failed. Dad worked on it for 45 minutes while Nana and I hoped for the best and ate snacks. Nothing worked, and as the shadows became longer on that mountain, the light blue pickup truck that my dad had painted himself was locked in solid… like an almond in a bar of chocolate.

Almonds… chocolate… did I mention we had snacks?

Sierra Medley, CA 2013

One of my favorite real life stories epitomizes the “almond-in-a-bar-of-chocolate” scenario, according to the historical researcher and writer Alfred Lansing (he penned that term). It’s about Ernest Shackleton, perhaps one of the greatest survival minds of all time. He began an ambitious expedition to Antarctica in August 1914 with less than optimum funding just as World War I was lighting off its initial mobilization phase. The world was unknowingly on the brink of devolving into madness. That’s when Ernest Shackleton sailed with his robust crew of 28 men, a hefty amount of gear, and multiple dog sled teams into the Weddell Sea en route to Antarctica aboard the Endurance, a ship name that became a prophecy.

Despite the timeframe, the crew of the Endurance had a state-of-the-art vessel for their time. It was capable in the ice, but everything has its limits. In January of 1915 the Endurance became trapped in pack ice floes of the Weddell Sea, irreparably locked in, far away from civilization or anyone who could render assistance. They tried everything to get it free from the ice, but were forced to abandon the idea and wait. They thought they would simply wait until spring, Endurance would break free, and they would be on their merry way. But life was about to get very raw for them for a really long time.

Balclutha mast and rigging, San Francisco, CA 2012

For Nana and I, the snacks were finished over the next hour while we waited in the light blue pickup. My father had abandoned the idea of getting the truck free from the snow entanglement that he had driven us into and had decided to go out on foot in order to scout the area. The sun was going down and it was past sunset. I, as a young child, was worried about what we were going to do with ourselves, and it was taking my father a long while to return. Nana and I remained in the pickup, our Endurance.

Nana and I were understandably frigid when my father returned to the blue pickup, and I was somewhere in the realm of scared about the situation but faithful that my old man would solve this. Into the night we walked, cold, and wondering what we were going to do. My dad didn’t as much as have a flashlight, he had a lighter. It’s amazing how bright a lighter can be when your retinal rods have become adjusted to darkness.

We may have only walked for 30 to 45 minutes, but for me it was an eternity of cold, snow, darkness, and frightening uncertainty. My dad was strategic with his lighter. He settled on the dark-adjusted eyeball technique throughout the impromptu hike, which was actually very wise of him. Years later, I would appreciate this lesson as a pilot and survival school instructor… let your rods do the work at night.

On one of my father’s intermittent lighter flicks, we saw the faintest reflective glimmer in the distance. I remember this with vivid clarity. The windows of a small building reflected the flicker back to us. A cabin came into view. It was dark, uninhabited, and we approached the porch with my dad’s lighter to illuminate the front door.

Port side, Balclutha, San Francisco, CA 2012

For Shackleton’s crew aboard the Endurance, they patiently waited for spring. They lived aboard the Endurance, locked solidly in the ice floes, for just over nine months. They hunted penguins and seals for food, rationed their supplies, and used the fat of seals as a fuel source. Shackleton very intuitively enforced routines, exercise, games, and music. He keenly knew that psychological survival was every bit as important as physical survival. They waited… but the spring release of the ship from the ice never materialized.

Ice began crushing the hull of the Endurance, and Shackleton ordered his men to evacuate and set up camp on the ice floe itself in October of 1915. It was at this point that Shackleton ordered the culling of most of the dogs. They couldn’t continue to feed them and they were a tragically obvious food source. With a few of the dogs as crew favorites, this was emotionally devastating for many of his men who became attached to them, as well as the puppy broods that had come along. Throughout these impossible odds, Shackleton absolutely had to be a mission-focused singularity himself. You might call it destination fixation. He had to get all of his men home, and there were some brutally dark decisions he had to make. In November of 1915, the amazingly capable Endurance broke into pieces from the ever-tightening and relentless vice grip of the ice, and sank.

The crew of the Endurance were now stuck on an ice floe, drifting further out to sea and farther away from land. All they could do was wait as they went further away from the continent of Antarctica that they once wished to conquer. Shackleton enforced regular meals, work details, entertainment, and get this… strict optimism. No talk of despair was tolerated. During April 1916, they had been on the ice floe for approximately 14 months. That’s when the floe they were on began to break apart.

Trees and Snow, Lassen NP, California, 2012

My dad and Nana surveyed the building. Seeing that nobody was there and that it was some sort of U.S. Department of Forestry cabin, my dad, with just one kick, busted the door open leaving the door frame in pieces. We were in, but we weren’t going to be enjoying an all-inclusive night at a magical cabin resort in the Sierras. This place was cleaned out for the season, spartan and minimal. Despite our snacks prior, we were starving. A cursory scan in the dinette area produced what had to have been U.S. Army World War II era C-rations. Canned peanut butter, canned jelly, and that’s about it. We didn’t bring any dogs, so we choked down a few C-rats that my dad hacked open with his knife.

There were bunk beds throughout the cabin, and musty old mattresses. It was still quite cold inside. There were no blankets, no electricity, or any other utilities hooked up, and no turn-down service. My dad and Nana decided to make a James sandwich with me between them on a lower bunk. We placed a mattress directly on top of us as our blanket, and a mattress below. I fell instantly into one of the soundest sleeps I ever remember.

On 9 April 1916, the ice floe that Shackleton and his men were on abruptly broke apart, fracturing their camp and nearly causing the loss of critical gear and tents. Remaining on the ever-shrinking ice became clearly unsustainable. As Shackleton had visualized, he knew this would happen in time, but he had a plan. They had kept the lifeboats from the Endurance, and there was a place called Elephant Island that they could feasibly get to. He ordered them to abandon the ice floe and they went to sea in their lifeboats.

On 15 April, after six days of continual hypothermia, seasickness, dehydration, frostbite, and deadly polar wet exposure, the crew of the Endurance made it to Elephant Island. The first solid land that they had stepped foot on in 497 days. But Elephant Island was completely uninhabited, barren, and outside shipping lanes. The crew of the Endurance were still isolated in an all-but-forgotten pocket of the world where nobody went. They were still in survival mode, with meager gear and supplies.

When morning came for my father, Nana, and I in the cabin, we discovered a pressurized gas container outside. We probably could have heated the place had we turned it on the night before, but we didn’t know it was there. We choked down another C-rat or two, and I seem to remember Nana leaving an apologetic but anonymous note to whoever was the cabin caretaker explaining our plight the night before. We departed our temporary sanctuary and went back toward the light blue pickup truck that was still stuck in the snow on some random logging road in the Sierras in winter. But we did diversify our efforts in a smart way. Nana and I found what seemed to be a slightly more traveled intersection and we waited there, just in case anyone else as crazy as us decided to pass by, while my dad went back to the pickup and attempted a more robust effort at digging it out.

On 24 April 1916, Shackleton departed in a modified lifeboat with just five of his men for a maritime gamble to reach South Georgia Island, an 800-mile voyage. There was a whaling station there that could potentially affect a rescue of the rest of the group waiting on Elephant Island. For 16 days straight the fractional crew faced wet and freezing polar storms, structural icing that threatened to capsize their boat, not to mention emaciating hunger and exhaustion. Amid nearly continual cloud cover, their navigator took sextant readings with just seconds to spare whenever they were afforded even the briefest opening of clouds.

Main Sail and Jib, Potomac River, VA 2009

On 10 May 1916, Shackleton and his crew of five made the western shore of South Georgia Island, but they had not yet reached salvation. The whaling station was on the opposite eastern side of the island, and there was a glacier-covered mountain range between them and it. Just Shackleton himself, Frank Worsley (the Endurance captain), and Thomas Crean (the Irish seaman and workhorse) made the trek over the crevasse-filled, glacier-covered mountain range. They had no map, no climbing gear or ropes, no tent, and minimal food. For 36 hours beginning on 19 May, the team of three hiked, climbed, descended unknown glaciers and crevasses, and slid down slopes until they reached the Stromness whaling station to the aghast horror of the Norwegian whalers who were stationed there. It was 20 May 1916. They looked like hairy emaciated aliens.

It wasn’t until 30 August of that same year that the rest of the Endurance crew, still surviving on Elephant Island, were rescued. An abundance of ice, coupled with the unavailability of ships, prevented their immediate recovery. While Ernest Shackleton approached Elephant Island, he counted heads and realized that he and his crew had succeeded in one of the most profoundly challenging survival efforts in modern recorded history. Every. Man. Survived.

Tall ship rigging, San Francisco, CA 2012

Nana and I waited at the logging road intersection throughout most of the morning. I seem to remember another guy in a truck coming by, but I honestly don’t remember him doing anything for us. He said he would return, but nothing came of it. My father, working throughout the morning, freed the light blue pickup truck that he had painted himself, picked us up, and we went back to my uncle’s house. We were unscathed, but boy did I have a story to tell.

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There is a lot of modern commentary out there that justifiably and thoughtfully reminds us that “It’s the journey, not the destination.” And certainly, that advice is solidly true. But it’s also only half true. I am not going to turn this idea around to justify prolonged destination fixation, a psychological entrapment of our modern era, but it’s been my observation that during the early stages of our life, during our youth, during the time period where we must listen to the calling of a career, finding a life partner, working to achieve mastery at our life’s task, and sometimes deal with unforeseen struggles that beckon our focused efforts to survive, that being absolutely fixated on a destination is undeniably essential. Without it, there would be no greater journey.

Shackleton’s most mission-critical fixation was the survival of his crew and the return to civilization, which he did in one of the most stunning displays of survival leadership of the 20th century. And, although it’s ridiculously quaint by comparison, my dad’s focused efforts to keep us from freezing to death during that icy night in the Sierras and get us back home.

The difficulty we aging humans run into is not recognizing when it’s time to pivot from destination fixation to the broader journey. By denying or misjudging our necessary transition, we get fixated on the next destination point, thinking it will bring us long sought after satisfaction while the subtle and more nuanced journey of our older years passes us by. Even if we achieve the sought after goal, it eventually becomes normalized and commonplace and we realize we are out of time. We spend all of our time in the present fixated on future potentialities. The journey is the present, and our finite future may not smile upon us. We have to realize the time to pivot.

The parallels between focusing on the journey and holding back the leviathan of Parkinson’s couldn’t scream any more loudly at us. The ice is tightening around the hull. The creaks, and the splintering, are happening. This ship is not going to make it to spring.

For those of us Parkinson’s combatants, think about it... We know exactly where this road ends. No one with Parkinson’s is confused about the destination. But we can refuse to arrive early. After you get through the denial, the bargaining, the anger, the depression, and finally reach acceptance… you then realize that this is the journey now, and this journey is ALL. WE. HAVE. There is no destination to fixate on.

This new journey is exercising like you’re religious about it, guarding your sleep like a vampire, and tactically eating like a biohacker who doesn’t believe in comfort food. You’re protecting your chassis, your body… the best defender of your brain. Pivot onto this journey, waste no time. This is the agency we have, and it’s how we hold back the leviathan.

This is the Nomadic Parkinson’s Dispatch.