Book Review: Endurance, by Alfred Lansing

Well, unfortunately, Marshall and I don't have enough horse flesh to keep us busy 100% of the time outside.  So when we're not doing that we have do do inside work, like the dreaded school work.

If you're ever feeling too happy for your own good, read Endurance, by Alfred Lansing.  And if you're wishing for adventures, do not go to the Antarctic....  it sounds pretty dang bad.




Here are some of the reasons you should be glad that you didn't go with Sir Ernest Shackleton on his famous expedition - I'll count down from Ten:

10:  You don't have to be frozen and wet day and night for months.
9:  When you get blisters, they don't freeze and turn into hard lumps on your skin.
8:  You don't have to sleep in rotting sleeping bags on top of melting snow and bird guano.
7:  You don't have to live on an iceberg, or worry about it splitting in the middle of the night, and dropping you into the sea.
6.  You don't have to be attacked by leopard seals.
5.  You don't have to row for 3-4 hours, without gloves, and save your hands from freezing when you get back to camp by thrusting them into a freshly killed seal.
4.  Your food is not all meat and blubber, with some seal brains thrown in for variety.
3.  You don't have to heat, cook, and stay warm by burning blubber, which coats you in inky black soot.
2.  You don't have to spend hours in boats with freezing water up to your knees, eventually freezing your feet, and then have one turn gangrenous and have to be cut off.
1.  If you're in charge of a dog team, you don't have to shoot them one by one and then eat them for a change in diet.

Shackleton was really a hero even though he made some mistakes throughout the adventure. But almost everybody came home in one piece.  I'm just glad I wasn't with him.  So this winter when I'm riding my horse and think I'm cold, I'll remind myself, I'm really not.