You must just be amazed by the developments in technology in the last five to ten years.
Actually what I’m amazed at is the snail’s pace of online education. Nothing’s happened. There are no real programs out there; there’s a few, but it just simply amazes me. In the middle of the budget cuts, online education is just waiting to happen. It’s not utilized. So I’m back into it. This project gets me into the mainstream of education and environment again.
Is this something you think you’ll do again?
I’d like to do another expedition next year with NOMADS, but I know for sure I’m going to be launching my own foundation and activating my whole vision I’ve had all my life. I’ve got a really good direction now. This whole project here is about drawing the real decision makers and leaders together. If you could take people in certain fields working on certain policies and bring them here to my center, it can do wonders. I’ve always had faith in nature.
International cooperation is always a big thing for me, I really learned that in the Trans-Antarctica expedition. That’s what we do not have right now. I don’t think we have any leadership in this country, especially on environmental issues. It’s the only way we’re going to solve our world’s problems. I really think this election year, the environment is going to be a voting issue. We are so polarized, which is very unfortunate. But I think politically it’s going to have to be addressed. There’s a yearning or a need, I feel it here in our state. There’s a hope for direction and leadership, someone who won’t lie to us.
There are professional reasons for you to get back on the sled, but what about personal reasons?
It’s a meditative space for me. I’ve sought that all my life, actually… awareness, religion. I went through all that, withdrew from all of it, flushed it out. Not that religion isn’t OK.
I respect my parents’ faith, I don’t judge people’s faith, but I don’t think about it that much. I’m looking forward to this expedition. If it works out, it’ll be a time of real regeneration for me. I think the vision quest that the Indians did, along with the fasting, that’s what it’s all about. Just clear out your head and get into a real physical mode of being.
You’re almost sixty. Are you worried about the physical aspects of this? Is this the sort of athleticism where a man gets better as he gets older?
I’m better. I don’t train. Living here, I’m quite active. If I was living in the city it’d be a different story. I’m going to be sore for the first two weeks—it’s always tough getting back into it. But I’m not concerned physically.
Age is quite an interesting thing. In our society, especially in America, you can easily think of yourself as old. I realized twenty years ago that thoughts are energy. Your thoughts are like energy, and when you think, whatever you think comes into being. If you think you are old, you’re going to start being old. And putting on the years, I see how easy it would be to start thinking that way.
How does a person decide to try a professional expedition—in your case, to go to the North Pole—and then actually make it happen?
In 1982, I left here after I got the homestead together and the school. It was a year and a half trip across the Canadian Arctic. That’s when I realized the North Pole had never been reached unsupported with dogsleds. At that time, I saw my place in history. I was going to do that. We spent the next months just adventuring and training. When it was over, I borrowed money from my parents and flew home with the dogs. I got home Saturday and then Monday morning I called the Dupont Corporation’s 800 number. I’d studied the outside magazines, and called them because I thought they were a big sponsor. I talked my way up to the marketing director, and got turned away. I knew he’d be in at 8:00 a.m. the next morning, so I tried to catch him right before his workday. It worked. He said, “Alright, send me a proposal.” So I typed it up—I worked really hard writing it—went back, and just kept going. I got a contract from National Geographic, and they liked and trusted me. So they put $5,000 down on me, and that got Dupont more interested.
You weren’t nervous at all, meeting with these high-powered executives?
Wearing the suit and going to all those East Coast office buildings, that wasn’t hard. I mean, yeah, we were nervous. Lots of times we didn’t even have money for food, we would rely on some of the meetings to get fed. We got into the airport in New York City and we didn’t have enough money to get a taxi into town. We didn’t think anything of it—that’s how we always did it, by the seat of our pants. The North Pole expedition, it was so grassroots.
Exploration has really changed. All the geographic firsts are kind of drying up…
Yeah, the geographic firsts, there isn’t really anything left. Crossing Antarctica was one of the last. I feel very fortunate. It helps to be on a geographic first for the big sponsorships, but those don’t really exist anymore. But whatever turns your crank, whatever it is in your head, you can do it and be the first one. There’s a guy [Göran Kropp] who bicycled from Sweden all the way to Mt. Everest, climbed to the top, and biked back again. God, what a good idea. I’d like to look at a map and connect a couple dots, and do an adventurous route like that. It doesn’t have to be a world first.
What is the most important goal of this expedition?
Among a lot of other things, we want to talk to the Inuit elders and get their impressions on global warming. We’re traveling to five Nunavut communities. Then that will all be a part of the education program that millions of schoolkids will have access to online.
Have you personally seen evidence of global warming?
Absolutely. In both the Arctic and the Antarctic. We saw the Ward Hunt ice shelf up in Northern Canada in 1986; there is nothing there but water now. In 1993, in the Antarctic, we spent a lot of time on the Larsen Ice Shelf in the Antarctic. That all is gone now. The single most radically changing environment on the planet is the Antarctic Peninsula. As the snow and ice cover go away on both poles, these regions will no longer reflect heat and light from the sun. They will absorb, and that sets a global domino effect into motion. This is my mission now, to raise awareness about the drastic change in our polar regions. Back in the 1980s, you couldn’t talk about climate change—it was too hot of a topic. But now everyone knows it’s a fact, and we’ve got to do something about it. We’ve got to raise awareness that what goes on down here goes up there and affects the world’s most delicate environments, which in turn affects the whole planet. But the current administration has completely dropped the ball on the environment.
Can a guy with your stature get in to see President Bush, to look him in the eye and tell it to him straight?
No, I can’t get to him. The only way, I’m afraid, is to remove him from office. We met his old man after Antarctica. At least he had John Sununu with him, a guy with a little environmental savvy. But no, this president is surrounded by people who have no sympathy.
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