Day 29: The Birth of Joy

The Fabulous Four have made it!!! Kendall Park, Mayella Krause, Ryan Wanless and Erick Basset who has now finished the 1,000 mile distance in all three modes, are all in Nome!

And now for pizza and parties and celebrations, right? I’m reminded - of times following exams in school, feeling nothing but a blanket of relieved exhaustion as the body fights back like an unleashed animal ready to punish – that feeling on steroids.

Consider what these athletes have endured, athletes with hearts, slowing down to care for others on the trail, valuing community over individual glory, solidarity over competition - we dot watchers want good things for you. Four sharing the finish says a lot about what they value, gratitude forged in camaraderie. 

We have poured our hearts into you and now don our metaphorical hats out of respect and admiration, not just for what you accomplished, but for how you accomplished it. 

In that spirit, we continue to watch our lone racer, Gavan, as he scrapes across Norton Bay, making good time for such an unpredictable stretch. The gratitude displayed by the Fabulous Four juxtaposes the solitude Gavan must contend with in addition to the same physiologic stresses of such an expedition.

And what are these stresses? While there is some individuality, there is also a lot of common ground for athletes who are stretched to capacity; stresses that I will sum up as pain: physical, emotional, spiritual, and any other kind you can think of. 

Working as a Spiritual Caregiver, or Chaplain, in Hospice for the last eight years, this writer spends a lot of time with pain of all kinds. Pain distills. There are no more secrets, no more masks. We become the epitome of who we are: our core revealed. 

When backed against a wall, a tug of war ensues between hope and despair, and we quickly identify what’s most important to us. People generally think of spirituality as cognitive and it can be enlightening to explore with our mind, but there is one reality, and it is not cognitive. Pain strips the clothes of thought we don to make sense of what is unknown and throws us naked into an emotional ocean of it.

Many of the ITI participants, particularly in a race fraught with extreme conditions, push themselves into some early stages of physiologic decline, with characteristics that appear to resemble my patients who have diseases that lead to slow decline as they face an initial transition towards end of life.  

Senses sharpen - seeking little lifelines to wile away tentacles of fear: a kind companion (or three), a volunteer who nudges when weariness clouds, a Ptarmigan call, a song stuck in the head (and often it’s not the one we want there), northern lights against a snowy ridge, a glimpse of an arctic fox (though hopefully not a musk ox) . Homesickness and urgency grow palpable.  

It’s normal to encounter hallucinations (even months before a sharp decline in Hospice). These may be mundane or reflect intense emotions. Waves of lability grow rhythmic, faster and more extreme. Physical and emotional experience fuse, muddying interpretation. Like labor, the only way through these cycles is birth. And if it’s labor, what is being birthed?

While all athletes are competitive, there are limits to the lure of winning - barring delusions of grandeur - and while there is plenty of that in the athletic world, it can blind the importance of sound strategy and mutual reliance on a venture such as this. When facing icy claws from blowholes and white outs, I would imagine even competition against one’s self might pale next to prioritizing survival. 

When pushed to the limits of tolerance and then doing it again after enjoying moments of reprieve such as Larry’s bounty at Galena or lemon cake. What makes a person persevere? Whatever makes life worth living and loving.

There is something fundamental about encountering enough hope to hold pain in one hand and love in the other, fearing a chasm while trusting profound encounters that become our spiritual home to be in that chasm with us. It’s a labor that clarifies, with the potential to birth Joy.

Joy is a powerful experience which transcends whatever we feel moment to moment, turning the hub on the wheel of our life. It’s not something we have but something we practice, not theoretical, but physical, personal, specific. There is no medium outside of symbol, ritual, mantra that can capture its meaning. 

We see its importance in a flock of racers choosing to finish together rather than push for individual glory. The power of solidarity personified in living symbols, fuel for the soul.

And yet, for Gavan, what does fuel look like when alone? Gavan now remains the only racer in every Iditarod category, including dogs – facing indescribable conditions that our writers over the last few days have already detailed. Gavan is no stranger to solitude - perhaps one of the most difficult aspects to persisting when facing physiologic decline. Having rowed “across the pond” in a rowboat, in the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge, now called the World’s Toughest Row, he has already faced the unknown alone.

Joy is the practice of weaving metaphors - in the form of sight, sound, story - into the fabric of our life, even while we remain vulnerable to a harsh but beautiful ecosystem: exploring the fragility of life with reverent participation, curious in human capacity, open to gifts on the trail that turn isolation into solitude. We are not alone in being alone. There is an existential freedom in embracing such a state.

Sometimes the pain we choose can alleviate the suffering we can’t. In a world of human designed chaos, strategy offers reprieve, solving problems grounds us in perpetual mindfulness. We can’t control what happens to us or to those we love, but we can control our next step, and as we know from our athletes, one step leads to the other. 

Here is a hope to our charges on and off the trail - that they might find companionship in solitude, embodied wisdom, peace in struggle, and Joy in their journey.

Written by Sarah Bergstrom

Photo provided by Emily and Ryan Wanless

Thanks to Wild Winter Women - Kari Gibbons, Amanda Harvey, Faye Norby, Jan Redmond Walker, Jessica Roschlan, Laura Wiesmann Hrubes, Allison Carolan, Leah Gruhn, Lynn K Hall, Madeline Harms, Rashelle Hintz, Rebecca McVay-Brodersen, and Sarah Bergstrom.