shackleton and cutting off your own arm

it happens to most bloggers, the dreaded break. life happens and somehow writing and the blog get put on the back burner. i think mine ended up in the garbage disposal. here's the part where i apologize for my lack of posts and list various excuses as to why i've been too busy to write.

on to the post...

"ordinary people doing extraordinary things" is how tales of survival are often described, even though i'd beg to say that there is a divide in the genre; there are stories of people who found themselves accidentally in terrifying circumstances (see: shipwrecks and plane crashes) vs. those people who more or less invite the adventure upon themselves, though they may not know to what extent their adventure will take them (see: explorers, mountain climbers).

in any case, however, it seems that under dire circumstances, people are able to do things they thought were impossible. many of these stories shouldn't be called "survival" stories, as that was unfortunately not the outcome for all involved.

some of my favorites (true stories):

• alive (piers paul morgan) - the uruguayan rugby team's plane crashes in the andes
• into thin air (jon krakauer) -a tragic ascent of mt. everest
• into the wild (jon krakauer) - chris mccandless goes off the grid and into the alaskan frontier (emile hirsch did a fantastic job in the film version)
• grizzly man - less survival, more strange man vs. nature. timothy treadwell gets a little close to his passion - grizzly bears. the film is great, although some (me) may find that director werner herzog tried too hard to let you know that he is god's gift to the documentary film world

more recently:

• 127 hours - movie version of aron ralston's story of being trapped in a canyon in utah, where he amputated his own arm in order to escape. was a little underwhelmed by danny boyle's version (probably because i really like his other films), but the story itself is pretty epic.
• the endurance (caroline alexander) - british explorer ernest shackleton plans to be the first to cross antarctica on foot; instead the team's ship becomes trapped in ice floes only to sink, leaving them stranded. the book has beautiful black and white photos of the entire saga. there is a made for tv movie version starring kenneth branagh that might be worth watching, haven't seen it yet.

future endeavors:

• the long walk (slavomir rawicz) - story of soldiers' escape from a russian gulag in 1939 and their trek all the way to british india
• skeletons on the zahara (dean king) - 1815 shipwreck and landfall on the edge of the sahara desert
• adrift (steve callahan) - story of the only person to have survived over a month alone in a life raft
• we die alone (david howarth) - espionage and escape above the arctic circle as a norweigan soldier attempts to escape nazi capture
• rescue dawn - i'll give herzog another chance with his film remake of a previous documentary, little deiter needs to fly. a downed pilot's makes his way to safety across and laos and vietnam during the vietnam war.

in researching popular survival books and movies, i came across this man several times: alexander selkirk, who some say is the real-life inspiration for robinson crusoe. in 1704, selkirk was marooned on an island off the coast of chile for over four years. more selkirk details here and recent discoveries on his campsite here.

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and in case you wanted some of those excuses as to why i haven't written in the past few months...life updates:

• have been all moved in to the new apt. for a few months now. no, it doesn't look like a swedish cottage, nor does it even look like an ikea catalog. no, i never had the housewarming party i hoped to hold. no, i still haven't found correctly-sized curtains for the bedroom. but it's home and it's cozy and the radiators are working quite well on this wintry afternoon.
• grad school semester 1 is officially over. and yes, i still want to be a social worker.
• have started training for the shamrock marathon in march. hello 12 miles at 8am.