What Better Place to Die

Chapter 4-A

                                                  Chapter 4
                                     Looking Back... Moving On

                            “Living on borrowed time is a curious blessing…
                              to feel that I owe something, certainly to my
                               rescuers, and possibly to others.”

On Tuesday I drive back to Maine in my car, with Elaine following in hers. A telephone rings.
It is the cell phone built into my car. Thinking it is Elaine calling me, I pick it up. It is
the Associated Press (AP) seeking an interview. I have three choices:
                  To ignore the request and go on
                  To actively defend myself
                  To complete the interview in order to learn from my experience

Since it would be a shame to have had such an experience and not share its message with others, I choose the latter.

The next phase of my misadventure is now beginning.

                                                     Looking back...
                                         Defining and Sharing my story

When I arrived home, so as to avoid being a “Soviet historian,” a latter-day revisionist, I sat at my computer and completed eight pages of text, the details as I recalled them. Fortunately, the discussion at the rescuers class and the AP wire services interview had gelled the facts and the questions about my misadventure. In the midst of this task a photographer from the AP came to our home and took photos; some with me alone, others with Elaine. Did I ever look old and haggard! Soon my story went nationwide, first in newspapers, and shortly thereafter on network television. During the chaotic weeks following my rescue and hospitalization, I received scores of well wishes from people in my current life and distant past. I also responded, in a non-confrontational manner, to a number of inquiries, comments, and questions, keeping in mind my Number One Promise made on the mountain. This process caused me to go deeper into the review of my misadventure, a misadventure that was almost a “terminal event,” as we say in the morgue. I tried to make more sense out of what happened to me, why I found myself in a near-death situation, and how I dealt with my impending death on both a physical and a spiritual level. Hopefully this follow-up—this resolution phase—would wane and life would soon return to normal.

However, several weeks after I returned from Mt. Washington, because of the extensive media coverage, Husson College in Bangor, Maine invited me to present my story at their Business Breakfast lecture series. Since it was just before Christmas, they requested that I include an element of “spirituality” in my presentation. I wondered: What does a pathologist have to offer anyone on the subject of spirituality? Perhaps the logic, the “inspiration,” for including spirituality arises from three potential sources :
         
         The original Bernhoff Dahl, my grandfather and namesake, was a minister in an ancient Baptist
         sect in his native land of Norway that claimed to trace its roots all the way back to John the
         Baptist.
         I graduated from Wheaton College in Illinois—Billy Graham’s alma mater—with a major in
         Chemistry, but also with a degree in Bible.
         I did have a religious experience in my early teens at a church camp in New Hampshire.

After considerable hesitation, I agreed to speak. My presentation was well-attended and received. It was also audiotaped by Maine Public Radio and soon thereafter broadcast in a series entitled Speaking in Maine. As a result I was invited to speak in a number of venues: service clubs, graduations, libraries, classrooms, outing clubs, and professional societies here in New England. These I accepted with some hesitation; but, nevertheless, I did accept them—and they were all presented pro bono.
The opening of my presentation, “Lessons for Living from a Mt. Washington Misadventure,” always started with:
     "October 23, 1999: Mt. Washington, New Hampshire. It was truly a “dark and stormy night” for me—perhaps the darkest and stormiest night of my life, for I came to within minutes—five minutes—of Death, my Death... for, unbeknownst to me, my rescuers were about to give up! As a physician and pathologist for more than thirty years I had developed a close professional relationship with Death and dying, but not a personal relationship with my dying, certainly not with my Death! During that long afternoon, evening, and night as I lay waiting for a rescue in extreme whiteout conditions with hurricane-force winds...and then, having given up hope, and waiting for Death...I had abundant time to think about living, and to think about dying.
       It has also been said, since ancient times, that to know how to live, one must first learn how to die."

After I told the story of the mountain rescue, I shared with each audience what I had learned, the three lessons:
                  Be prepared to die!
                  Have a plan to live!
                  Do it now!

This is very same message I have continued to share with all my audiences—but especially with myself. While these admonitions, especially the first one, may seem offensive or intrusive, they were the true deep-seated message from my misadventure. As a hero who had returned from his quest, from the forbidden and dangerous “other world,” I had learned new lessons and confirmed old ones. I had gained new insights and became increasingly burdened to share them.

Subsequently, a film crew from London, England emailed me for several months from throughout the world while on assignments. Eventually, they convinced me to work with them on a re-enactment of my misadventure for The Learning Channel’s series entitled StormForce. They brought me, Mike Pelchat, and several other rescuers (none of the other members of my Magnificent Seven) together on Mt. Washington for the re-enactment.

Why did I accept this offer, this opportunity, this challenge? Was I intoxicated by the attention? Would it be a new experience where I would gain skills? Would it be something to do, some way of making sense out of my retirement? Was it a reprieve from nothingness? I think it came down to pure curiosity, or as Will Rogers noted, “Men are like monkeys; you throw anything into their cage and they will consider it.” I have always been Will Rogers’ monkey.

The Learning Channel show has been broadcast worldwide on several occasions. Soon I developed a web site and received thousands of visits and hundreds of personal stories of misadventures and tragedies. I attended the Cavett Institute of the National Speakers Association in Arizona to improve my scripts and presentation skills. Veteran actor and director Ken Stack of Bar Harbor, Maine skillfully helped me discover, develop, and perfect my stage persona. I went on to share my story as a keynote speaker, and by way of accompanying workshops, in the widest possible range of venues in the USA and beyond—even in Katmandu and Singapore on the way to Mt. Everest Base Camp in Nepal.

Chapter 4- B

It seemed that my “near death” experience had taken on a life of its own. As I shared my story of that fateful night, I gained interesting and revealing insights into human nature—both mine and that of my fellow humans. I shared my story and message through a wide variety of media: by way of speaking, writing, and my Internet Web site. As a result, hundreds have shared their own stories of adventure, crisis, rescue, and return. Their stories are uplifting and positive. Their reverence for life is extraordinary.

                                            Risks, Mistakes, and Luck

Let there be no doubt: I took risks and made mistakes on Mt. Washington. This I continuously and consistently admitted from the moment my rescuers found me.
     I took risks by hiking on Mt. Washington beyond the usual summer season and into the fall. It is interesting to note that the official weather forecast predicted no such weather—certainly not hurricane-force winds and whiteout conditions.
     I continued to hike after the weather changed from rain to snow. My only possible explanation was that I was joyously lured into a hike in a wonderful white winter world of huge snowflakes. The hike became a mythical quest into the unknown.
     I continued to ascend after I encountered the strong winds on the Lion’s forehead. This decision was based on the fact that because of my knee prosthesis it was easier to ascend than descend. In addition, as a veteran strategic planning facilitator, I was committed to implementing my plan. As it turned out, my ascent was a mere fifty feet before I started the gradual descent home. It was, however, a small but deadly mistake.
     I hiked solo and enjoyed the serenity and quiet of day, a great day for an introvert. With a hiking partner, we may have decided against further ascent into the bad weather. Had we proceeded, we may have been able to find the cairns in the whiteout and reach the Auto Road. However, as Mike Pelchat noted, reaching the Auto Road may have led to an even greater disaster since it had been abandoned for the season and left unplowed—without any markings, such as cairns, we would have easily lost our way. A hiking partner might, however, have argued against continuing the hike into and through the wind/snow/ice zone.

There were several times when I made good choices and did wise things.
     I continued to hike on the trail according to my new plan even as the weather worsened, and did not attempt any creative shortcuts or bushwhacking.
     I stopped when I could not find the next cairn rather than wander off the trail.
     I used my recently purchased bivvy sack for protection for over an hour.
     I did isometric exercises, as long as I could, to stave off hypothermia.
     I used my cell phone intermittently and continued to make a series of six 911 calls, each time giving my name, situation, itinerary, and estimate of my location. When there was some confusion during transmission, I made corrections every time until my message was correctly repeated back to me.
     I kept calm after losing my bivvy sack and my cell phone became inoperable.
     I stayed by the cairn to increase my chances of being found.
     I developed and carried out a plan to stay awake and maintain hope using the only power I had left during the long hours of maximal exposure: my thoughts.

In addition, bad luck may have played a role.
     I was unlucky when the weather changed, turning worse, opposite to the weather forecast of the day.
     I was unlucky in losing my bivvy sack to the high winds.
     I was unlucky when my cell phone died.

However, I was lucky—very lucky—in several ways.
     I was lucky to have been found by seven volunteers: Mike Pelchat, Rob Adair, Neil Brodien, Peter Lewis, Ben Miller, Craig Taylor, and Ian Turnbull. For me, they are the Magnificent Seven.
     I was lucky that they continued to search for me, in spite of the severe weather, when others were forced to call off the rescue. They persevered for hours of searching, in spite of vague communications and conflicting data.
     I was lucky that they risked their lives to save mine.
     I was lucky that Mike, the persistent leader, encouraged the crew to search for “just five more minutes” when he saw a boot print—perhaps mine.
     I was lucky that the other rescuers were willing and courageous enough to follow his lead—that was the ultimate stroke of good luck for me.

If I had died on Mt. Washington that fateful night due to my own risk-taking, foolishness, and bad luck, for some that might have been sad. My misadventure cascaded into a series of events that caused others—volunteers, strangers—to risk their lives high up on the mountain to save my life. Had any of these stalwarts been injured or killed, that would have been unpardonable. However, due to their expertise, experience, commitment, but above all their courage and persistence, we all survived my Mt. Washington Misadventure. They are true heroes.

                                                        Media Madness

There is a popular concept that everyone should enjoy fifteen minutes of fame. However, I have experienced a much longer period of infamy, of negative coverage—that is, “bad press”—on the broadest possible range of media outlets in the USA and beyond. I did not seek out articles in the media, so as a result, I reviewed just a small sampling. Despite being privileged to write articles for Maine Times and the Maine Sunday Telegram, wherein I outlined in detail my risks and mistakes, the erroneous statements and conclusions continued.

From this experience with the media, I have gained new insights for the efforts that reporters should expend in their challenging search for accuracy and truth, under pressure of deadlines. However, I also saw their need and bias to sensationalize in order to sell papers or gain ratings. The most accurate and balanced reporting of my misadventure was during the reenactment for The Learning Channel’s StormForce series, but they had the luxury of time and careful editing.

I was also amazed by those who are interviewed and their creative fabrication of the “facts,” so as to express their ideas and fulfill their agendas. Most of the statements about my misadventure were made before official or substantiated information was available. The most vocal people never interviewed me and never knew the facts from my vantage point; after all, I was the only one present during the entire misadventure. I have experienced, in a very small way, the frustrations that politicians, movie stars, and other real celebrities must endure, on an on-going basis, if they are successful or controversial—or both.

From the beginning, the media madness focused on the abovementioned three controversies.
     The use of a cell phone to call for rescue. Various media soon after the rescue, and even several months later, reported a number of opinions voiced:
“There are two types of rescues, avoidable and unavoidable. Not carrying cell phones will help with the avoidable.”
“You’re better off taking a rain jacket than a cell phone. A cell phone isn’t going to feed you or keep you warm and dry.”
“The thing about cell phones is you can’t eat them, you can’t get into them for shelter, and they don’t warm you up. They don’t replace a pair of boots and they don’t replace common sense.”
“If you took the cell phone away from him at the beginning of the trail, how would it have changed his decision making?”

However, it is interesting to note that several vocal observers in the media express a different opinion:
“I think a cell phone is a good way to get help when you need it.”

The statement was made, in response to my misadventure, that “search and rescue officials say that hikers too often use their cellular telephones as a substitute for common sense.”

The challenge is: how do rescuers decide when a cell phone is being used as a “substitute for common sense” at the time of the crisis, when rapid action may be required? How do they select those who will be rescued and those who will be left to suffer, even die? To rescue or not to rescue? That is the question.

Electronics and telecommunications have rapidly jettisoned society into a very high orbit... of capability and expectations. We have gone to the moon and back, we can perform robotic surgery thousands of miles away from the patient, and we can communicate instantaneously throughout the world and into outer space. Already, some cell phones services have GPS (global positioning system) capability... to find you, or at least your body, wherever you are.

There are increasing numbers of wilderness adventurers and adventure companies who are traveling further and further away from home... to exotic and dangerous places. There are also increasing numbers of well-trained, marvelous, risk-taking, and courageous rescuers as well as rescue companies (now armed with the latest technology on stand-by in a corporate jet!).

Another issue is that some people may overuse or abuse the capability to call for rescue—perhaps an electronic version of the Russian tale of Peter and the Wolf. However, when we call for “help,” we must then wonder if rescue is out there, and whether or not help will arrive on time. Your cell phone will not come with a guarantee of your rescue!

We live in a dynamic world... full of risks for the adventurer who wants to live a full life. Not every misadventurer will be rescued. That is the risk they take. That is the risk I took.

The bottom line for me is very simple: had I not taken my cell phone on Mt. Washington, Iwould have died. No argument, no logic, not even circuitous logic, will ever convince me otherwise.

Chapter 4- C

Hiking solo. There was less criticism in the media of my hiking solo than there was of my use of a cell phone.

It is curious how the human spirit celebrates the solo challenger who succeeds. Charles Lindbergh was the first to fly non-stop from New York to Paris. Reinhold Messner was the first to climb Mt. Everest without oxygen, then solo without oxygen. Sir Francis Chichester sailed around the world solo. Yuri Gagarin was the first human being to go into space.

But we criticize the solo adventurer who fails—perhaps rightfully so.

Soon after my misadventure, I was on a trip to southern California. I had a few days between conferences to return to the mountains. Having promised my wife I would not hike alone again, I found a qualified mountain guide, a guapa y flaca rock climber who helped me “get back on the horse” and back to the mountains. She added a new dimension to mountaineering.

On that same trip, I was amazed at my own reaction to a solo surfer on the California coast a few months after my misadventure. Should I have gone down and told him to go a couple hundred yards up the coast to join the group of surfers that I had just left?

On April 14, 2001, I was privileged to trek to the Mt. Everest Base Camp in Nepal at some 17,100 feet. My guide, Tenzing Sherpa, arranged an early morning meeting with the famous mountaineer, Babu Chiri Sherpa. Babu Chiri had ten successful Everest ascents, including four on the north face as well as the fastest ascent—just four minutes under seventeen hours—and even spent the night on the summit, sleeping there for over twenty-one hours. Most of these record-setting exploits were solo.

But on April 29, while trying to take pictures from different angles around Camp II, he fell to his death into an unknown crevasse. He was solo.

The bottom line for my hiking solo was that the rainy weather dampened my fellow hikers’ interest, but not mine. I was enjoying a day out in a place I knew very well over decades of hiking. However, there is no doubt that I will be doing less solo hiking—and probably no hitchhiking, a practice that saved me a fortune as I hitchhiked throughout Latin America, from Paris to Oslo, multiple round trips between New Jersey and Chicago, et cetera, but that was back in the 60s and 70s.

Pressing on when the weather turned bad. The official weather report from the Mount Washington Observatory, which is printed and distributed to multiple locations throughout the Mt. Washington area, on the morning of 23 October 1999, read:

              Good morning from the Mount Washington Observatory! Last night temperatures slowly   
              rose all across the region due to southerly air flow at higher altitudes. A large area of low
              pressure continues to move slowly east from the Great Lakes while another low offshore
              moves north. Once these two combine and move away from the region rain will diminish to
              showers. By tonight cooler air will begin to flow in from the north and west, but the cold
              front won’t get here until later in the day tomorrow, which will change rain showers to snow
              in northern areas. High pressure will build enough by Monday to dry things out briefly, but
              with another system approaching mid week, that dryness won’t last long.
                                                                 —Nate Moore, Observer
                                                                      Mount Washington Observatory

Although this weather forecast was uniformly reported in the local media, several local observers erroneously described a different forecast in their search to build a case against me.

However, when I entered the snow field below Lion Head, and soon thereafter the zone of old and new-falling snow and high wind, any forecast was of no consequence. It was superseded bythe reality of the moment. I made the choice to continue into that hostile and changing weather.

The bottom line is the irony of my pressing on and that of the perseverance of Mike Pelchat and his crew. Without their persistence, I would never have been rescued alive.

The media reported that there were folk that claimed to have told me not to continue my hike and that I ignored them. No one during my misadventure ever told me not to continue my hike. The sole person I met high up on the mountain, “the man from Florida,” when the weather had turned bad, did not tell me… nor advise me to descend. To my knowledge, the media never interviewed him. Others, however, found their way to the media along with their crafted stories. Why? To be a part of the excitement? To be on TV or quoted in the newspaper? This creativity is, perhaps, innocent, if it is limited in scope and time.

There was, however, a small subset of media-seekers who seem to crave the exposure on a continuing basis. They needed to be hoisted up on the bandstand, to be seen and heard. They not only created their story, they continued to expand and perpetuate their story, their agenda, even when the facts were given to them. I had written to the two key characters and received scant or no response. These folk, who lack integrity, have apparently replaced the credo of “ready, aim, fire” with “fire, fire, fire.” It takes courage and integrity to admit one’s errors, to make amends, and to publicly correct their stories. It is far easier to remain small.

Of additional interest was the small sub-group of critics who surfaced well after the initial media coverage, primarily via my web site and e-mail. It would be easy to just “delete” them and, at most, consider them to be just angry people using the Internet for low-priced and anonymous psychotherapy (known as a nastygram). One might wonder if there are any valid reasons that may precipitate an angry e-mail.

While it is the privilege for any American to criticize anyone else, even (perhaps especially) those in high office, what might be the justification? Surely, negative criticism would be justified—even expected—from my rescuers who were on Mt. Washington that eventful night. One could expand that group to other rescuers who had risked their lives in search and rescue, or even on to their family members. One would certainly understand the anger, a full-fledged nastygram, from a widow or an orphan of a rescuer who had died during a rescue.

Going beyond the simple pettiness we all suffer as humans, perhaps the negative criticism that is expressed, is, in reality, a sub-conscious manifestation of discomfort in addressing death and dying.

Perhaps the most surprising and distressing experience from my misadventure was a quote written in a newspaper:
                             “We always help them out, but when I get a call
                         from someone wandering around in the Presidentials
                            in a snowstorm, I wonder if it wouldn’t be a great
                                    message to the public if they just died.”

Chapter 4- D

                                                      Moving On…

                                 “The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
                                  But I have promises to keep,
                                   And miles to go before I sleep,
                                   And miles to go before I sleep.”
                                                     —Robert Frost,
                                                     “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening”

Promises to Keep

On the mountain, I made a series of promises were I to be rescued. Even to this day, I deny that they were prayers. Perhaps that’s just a semantic problem. Was I avoiding dependency on God? Was I not expecting an answer? Was I not worthy of a rescue? Worst of all, Was my God too small, too weak?

My promises included the following:
        To be insensitive to negative criticism
        To dispose of real estate
        To make amends to my first wife and son
        To enjoy what I have... to sort and toss
        To network with people from my past
        Above all, to simply my life

When I attended Steve Harrison’s National Publicity Summit in New York City, we edited carefully and practiced our brief “hook and pitch” to be presented producers and writers for radio, television, and print media. Mine was:

                   Imagine…you are alone, on Mt. Washington, with white-out conditions
                                         and hurricane force winds,
                                   slowly sinking into hypothermia…
                                       what would you be thinking?

These are my “six promises”, as odd, strange, or illogical as they are.
      
                                  What would you be thinking?
   
Promise #1: To be insensitive to negative criticism.

Keeping this promise has been much easier than expected. In a one-on-one situation, the solution is to simply listen. Say nothing; don’t agree, don’t disagree, don’t argue—just listen. Enter into a “power listening” mode. Eventually, even the angriest person will simply exhaust his ire.

Psychologists note than one in five Americans are chronically angry to the degree that it negatively affects their lives. Their anger is often based on anger with themselves and their world, their shortcomings, their frustrations. Expressing anger at some other entity, a person an animal, or an inanimate object, is a source of releasing pent-up energy, but more so, to blame another for one’s anger.

It was my my tai chi master, Chungliang Al Huang, who taught me the basic principle of tai chi:
                           “To go with, not against, the opponent’s attack;
                                   to deflect, not counteract, his energy;
                                        to use his energy to defeat him.”

In the ancient battle at Actium, in 31 BC, Octavian moved his ships back as Mark Antony attacked with his ships to the point of exhaustion… then Octavian went on the offensive and won the battle and became known as Caesar Augustus, Roman Emperor.

If I feel compelled to respond in words, I tried to act on the wisdom of the Bible verse that says “A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger. (Proverbs 15:1)"

It is too easy at first to fight back, to match insult with insult, as the encounter escalates. In this case, there is rarely a true winner. If we follow that other Old Testament concept of “an eye for an eye,” eventually everyone will be blind. There is a trick I learned from an old man who, in a traffic incident, will quote “blow a kiss” instead of offering the classic single digit, avoiding road rage, usually.

When nasty critics arrive at my doorstep by way of letters or emails, I have several options.
                        Disregard or delete
                        Have another person read the message and select those to which I should respond
                        Read them all, learn from them, and answer those of interest

For the incorrigible Internet nastygrammer, we provide a link that takes them to a Web site that deals with anger management. They can take it from there.

Over the years, there have been a number of curious and silly kneejerk critics. For example, on a photo in a newspaper article, I am shown with my last name embroidered in large letters on my Northface parka. A kneejerker wrote criticizing me for arrogance. The basis for the lettering was in response to a request by my wife on the eve of my first attempt to summit Aconcagua in 1996, so that, should I fall into a crevasse, my body could be more readily identified.

Several critics are angry that I am making money from my misadventure. They have not bothered to ask or consider the costs or preparing, marketing, and presenting keynotes and seminars, or in writing and publishing a book. In addition, they have not considered my multiple donations to the search and rescue community and plans for distributing any future profits.

It is a human shortcoming to experience a hostile encounter wherein you were unable to respond with a clever retort, a perfect squelch, but you don’t think of one until after the incident has passed. Perhaps it is better that way.

Promise #2: To dispose of real estate.

Having grown up in a family of commercial/industrial real estate developers, I have a clear view of the frustrations, challenges, and opportunities, as well as the need for long-term visioning and planning—yes, strategic planning in real estate. My knowledge in real estate development came largely via osmosis (observing the process for over twenty years) and from a smattering of short courses, but no long-term formal training. In Maine, in 1976, I was alone in my real estate development activities; my on the job training came rapidly. Fortunately, success followed soon thereafter.

Then came the economic cycles and the “great sucking sound” of NAFTA, and the loss of military bases and the shoe industries from Maine.

When I came off Mt. Washington, I had five small or modest (up to 10,000 square feet) completed and leased buildings with tenants of reasonable quality—that is, they didn’t trash my buildings excessively, and they tried to pay the rent on a timely basis. I had, however, two major albatrosses, non-revenue-producing properties.

First was my inventory of developed land at Freedom Park (my private park in a world of local, subsidized parks). Each city or town had its own park and were “making deals” (read: free land and little or no real estate taxes to pay… tough competition), but I knew this when I started Freedom Park.

Second, and much worse, was Oak Ridge Business Park near the Bangor Mall. Soon after the purchase of this twenty-acre tract of gentle sloping farm land, the market for such land vanished and the only party interested in the project was the tax collector from the City of Bangor. To compound this injury, the City was selling comparable land for much less and paid no annual taxes. My real estates taxes paid for their infrastructure, development, and marketing.

In disposing of real estate rapidly, one can have an auction, just like a garage sale, where only bargain-hunting bottom fishermen show, or donate to a non-profit organization. I was not ready for the former and my experiences with the latter had been negative.

My new plan to sell developed land was simple: to maintain visibility via modest advertising and signage on the property, contact all interested real estate agencies, and consider and accepting any and all reasonable offers.

I decided to apply the aphorism which I credit to my father, “Do not deny the person before you or after you to make a reasonable profit… keep moving.”

This plan required great patience, a virtuous quality I lacked. I wanted to accelerate the process—to do more. It was, however, Chungliang Al Huang’s wisdom that surfaced:
                                “You can work to open the first door.
                                  You can work to open the second.
                                  But you must wait for the third to open on its own.”

I waited and experienced two modest sales. Soon a third door opened, and I had a major sale at Oak Ridge to a fellow real estate developer who I hold in high regard. The wait was worth it.
In this time Target built a facility nearby and there is considerable discussion about Lowe’s and a Super Wal-Mart being built in our neighborhood. Perhaps this is the time to be patient—to make the wait worth even more.

Promise #3: To make amends to my first wife and son.

The divorce from Audrey in 1976, after eleven years of marriage, was the first real failure of my orderly and successful life. We had married while I was a resident physician in pathology at the University of Vermont, in the setting of the recent death of her father, a prominent physician in Burlington, and the suicide of my brother Johnny. During the four-year residency we had two children, Sarah and Eric. Then we went on to Kansas for my two-year stint as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer with the Center for Disease Control. In that relative isolation, our little family grew together, enjoyed abundant time together, to take trips together. We were a handsome fledgling family.
 
At the time of the divorce I was deep into the leadership of a new group practice of pathology in Maine, perhaps too deep. There was scheduled time off for vacations and play, but never enough. Audrey had come from a family of physicians, three generations of physicians. I thought that she would “understand.”

We had a huge historical house that we restored and abundant income, but my exploding medical career took precedence. Over a two-year period we went to marriage counseling and then a slow “creative divorce.” The deal was that Audrey would take Sarah to live with her in Vermont, where Audrey returned to teaching, and I was to pay alimony and child support for both children. I had failed her, she had not failed me as a wife, or us, as a mother. There was no “other woman” in my life at that time that might have contributed to our divorce. There was no acrimony, no quarreling, that would come later.

Audrey’s goal was to find and marry a nice guy, like the kind and gentle dairy farmer she knew, who had names for each of his cows. She never did.

How…and why do you go back to a relationship, a venture of eleven years that failed, that ended in divorce? What could be gained? The opportunity to meet with Audrey in a group setting, a family outing, was at a birthday party for grandson Isaac, son of daughter Sarah, on Halloween just a few weeks after my rescue on Mt. Washington. There was an awkward moment on a deck outside the house, where we were alone for a few minutes. I was able to briefly review the good parts of our marriage (namely Sarah and Eric) and apologized for not making a better, more concerted effort in making it better. It was a feeble attempt, but nevertheless an attempt. There would never be another opportunity, or even an attempt to some sort of reconciliation.

With Eric the story was different. Born just 11 months after Sarah, he was tall, handsome, and very Nordic in appearance. He lived with Elaine and me in Maine from the age of seven, was an OK student, but a great athlete, and president of his senior class at Hampden Academy. During those years he visited with Audrey in Vermont and maintained telephone and letter-writing contact with her. Invariably for two to three weeks after one of these encounters, Eric would be sad and retire from our family. Then he went off to Dartmouth to major in French and pretty much left Elaine and I behind as just some past history to be forgotten. We would hear from occasionally and had to invite ourselves, as did Audrey, to his graduation from Dartmouth. Then he went on to “find himself” as I wondered out loud if should rather “lose himself.”
 
Then on Father’s Day in ____ I got a telephone call. The voice said, “This is Eric”. I responded “Eric who?” for I had other Eric’s in my business and professional life. “Eric your son, and I would like to come and visit you, along with a friend”.

Soon thereafter, Elise Salaun, a petite attractive French Canadian would enter out lives in her hand-painted electric blue VW van. She taught French at the Language School at Middlebury College in Vermont, where Eric met her. Our concern was that Eric’s goal was to show Elise what jerks we were. The encounter was just the opposite, for we laughed at some of the absurdities of our past lives, and looked eagerly into the future. Had Eric evolved and matured on his own? What role did Elise play in this unfolding drama?

Eric went on to marry Elise, at Sarah’s palatial home in Bennington, Vermont, where Sarah and husband Charles both practiced medicine. During the ceremony I kept singing to myself the lyrics from Let a Woman in Your Life, from My Fair Lady, for I felt that Elise had been the major factor in the return of Eric to us.

Chapter 4- E

Promise #4: To enjoy what I have... to sort and toss.

Over the decades of my life had collected a lot of “stuff” as George Carlin so eloquently described. I had stuff because I had abundant discretionary funds with which to puchase “stuff”. I had a wide range of interests which required handy items like books, file cabinets, and computers. I had storage space for my stuff, beause I was in the real estate business, providing space for clients as well as for myself. In addition I had not moved my residence since 1972 when I arrived in the Bangor, Maine area, so I was not required to select and toss. To compound this collection of stuff, since my early retirement in 1995 (at age of 57) it had increased that rather than been reduced.
 
Books, books, I had lots of books, collected over decades.Within a few months of my rescue I started to collect, sort, and toss books, namely by donating books, whenever I could find a cooperative donee. This proved to be an awsome task, for as a voracious reader I had the habit of writing in the books, making comments, some smart-ass ones, but also insighful ones, whenever/wherever I felt inclined. However, whenever addressing my books as just reference books, I gained great assistance from the increasing value and ease of use of search engines, especially Google. I did, however, jealously guard my Moroccan leather-bound set of Great Books of The Western World from the University of Chicago (1952) a gift, by default, from my brother John after his suicide.

Next came all other stuff, collections of electronic and camera gear, often outdated and surpassed by newer, better models. There was the host of 3-ring notebooks, over 300 of them that housed the various facets of my rainbow of interests. There were also the filing cabinets with the notes and ideas that did not make it to the 3-ring notebooks. Then there were there web sites, all six of them in various stages of development. There were joys and memories in all this stuff, as well as frustrations, challenges, and opportunties for the future. I simplified this huge task with the simple acronym, STUF, sort, toss, use, and file.

The bigest challenges was deciding which of my world of stuff was truly supportive of worthwhile activities…of things that had a future of value in my life. But first I had to define that illusive new and “simpler” life I would create based on Promise #6, the I could STUF with accuracy and vengeance..

Promise #5: To network with people from my past.

We all have people that help (and some hinder) our journey through life. It obviously starts with our parents, grandparents, siblings and others in our extended family, if we have one. Then we add teachers, friends, classmates, for some, the police. Over time we add fellow students and workers, as well a buddies in the service or military. As we leave home and move purposely or just drift through our lives, we “surpass” many of these folk, wondering if they offer any lasting and future benefit to our lives, as we move away geographically, and on in our education, employment, and recreatioal activities.
   
For me, a perenial student, the key people in the first half of my life were teachers. In the second half of my life, the key people were those in medicine, chief among those were pathologists, medical technologists, the clerical staff in laboratories, and other physicians as I applied my education to the practice of medicine. There were also important contacts in the world of investments and business, including hospital adminstrators.

My position as Chief of Pathology at the tender age of 33, just out of training and government service was the product of successful networking. Except for the continued education courses in the two major pathology societies, where I came in regular contact with pathologists outside my geographic practice, I soon lost contact with most of the mentors of my past.

For some reason in 1976, the bicentennial year, at the age of 38 and deep in the practice of pathology, I had planned to contact the top 10, no, the top 25 teachers, key fellow physicians, mentors, and even the tormentors of my life. Some of my best mentors were also the top tormentors, a powerful combination needed for an occassionally incalitrant like me. This laudible project failed at the outset, because I was going through a divorce and was embarased that I had failed at marriage.

However, soon after the rescue on Mt. Washington, I set out to develop and maintain contact with some of the key folk, using the power of the professional organizations and, above all, the Internet. My primary goal was to give thanks for their help and advice.

I increased my actvities in the professional organizations and started to share the wisdom and follishness I had learned in my years “in-the-trenches” of Medical pracice and other business ventures. I became a dedicated networker and even a mentor, sharing my knowledge with the next generation. This is the “giving back” of networking.

Promise #6: Above all, to simply my life.

During that time of deep thought and reflection on Mt. Washington, I focused on my world of responsibility of being a husband, father, grandfather, brother, and uncle, as well as my competative world of business ventures, writing, lecturing, mountaineering, and traveling. All of these activities was linked with stuff, including thousands of photographs in a wide range of media from 110 negatives to images on CDs and DVDs. Lots of 35 mm. slide shows that could easily be edited. Fortunately no home movies.

As I pondered the toughest of all six promises, I remembered my long day on the Ganges, when I saw hundreds of Indians in that phase of life so well defined in Hinduism. It was the fourth stage of life, when one enters the life of an ascetic, called the sadhu or the sannyasin. This is a rejection of ordinary life and all that it means, in exchange for a search to attain moksha, that is, the release from the cycle of samsara, re-incarnation. While a person may enter into this stage of life at any time, it is usually the older man that has raised his family, completed his business activities, and can become fully retired. It may take an extreme of the total rejection of household duties and responsibilities of the former stages of life. It may include the rejection of the religious beliefs, wherein ones even burns religious texts.  The sannyasins become wandering hermits, living life without any shelter or possessions. They eat when they can acquire food, but never enter into any work to acquire it; it must be given or found. They become holy men, seeking spiritual enlightenment and power, striving to achieve the true wisdom of the cosmos.

Wow! That is easy to define, but a bit extreme. However, all six promises would be eliminated.

A less dramatic approach might be that decriibde by psychologist Abraham Maslow in his Heirarchy of Needs, that describes a person’s motivation and resultant behavior as being determined by ones’ needs. I could focus on the highest level, self-actualization and go beyond the basics of life and simply find a single “calling” and heed it.

But what single calling? I decided that I would get rid of real estate in an orderly manner and complete succession planing for my business ventures. However, I would maintain a family life and continue my writing, speaking, and traveling on a more limited basis. High-altitude mountaineering was probably over, after all I was over 60 years of age, far beyond the ideal age of such risk-taking.

Chapter 4- F

As a student of human nature, I realized that for me to accomplish the six promises and the three admonitions I would need to write them down, revisit and update those writings on a regular basis, and to act decisively. Writing down one’s ideas ands commitments forces one to clarify their thoughts, but moreso it provides documentation. It is far too easy to alter or ignore those commitments if they are just fleeting thoughts in one’s mind. So I decided to write the book, actually three books, my trilogy, based on the advice a number of literary agents and fellow authors.

To Write the Book

                     “The world is coming to an end. Children no longer obey
                       their parents and every man wants to write a book.”
                                                           —Babylon tablet, c. 2800 B.C.

The majority of people who heard my story were sympathetic and understanding. Some shared their own stories of a near-death experience and its impact on their views of life. Many shared their insights and asked a host of questions I had not considered. I answered as best I could. With all of this input and wisdom, I felt compelled to “write the book,” to share the message from my misadventure, my quest.

Writing the book forced me to better define each of the promises, but, above all, it provided the source of power to fulfill them.

How does Stephen King do it? All those books, those chapters. All those words. Such creativity. What discipline! His office and mine are on opposite sides of the Bangor International Airport. There was devious plan afoot: I hoped that King’s Muse might become a bit disoriented and veer off the runway and pay me a visit... or two. Hasn’t worked so far.

In the summer of 2002 I started my “trilogy”: three books linked by the theme of taking charge of one’s life through personal strategic planning. This book was to be the first, followed by Optimize Your Life! The One-page Strategic Planner, a concept I had developed in 1981. The third book will be Journey Into the Self, an allegory wherein two protagonists journey through time and space and seek wisdom on three levels:
                            Know yourself
                            Know your world
                            Make wise choices

Stephen King was an English literature and writing major at the University of Maine, as well as a teacher in nearby Hampden Academy. Sure I took the mandatory writing courses in high school and college, and even snuck in a course on magazine article writing while earning a degree in Chemistry. My crowning achievement for that course was the acceptance of an article on sun tanning by a nudist magazine in nearby Chicago. The joys of my first article for which I was paid, had to be kept a secret, for I was matriculated at my strict Fundamentalist Christian college.

During my twenty-five years of group practice of Pathology, I did a great deal of writing, primarily technical and professional. The pay was excellent.

My professional writing was, by definition, nonfiction. My writing outside of Medicine, namely short stories, essay, and articles were all based on real life experiences. I heed the admonition: “Write what you know.” I was, however, slowly evolving into the world of creative non-fiction. That world, that genre, has its own sub-genres, including personal essay, memoir, personal criticism, and literary journalism. Some critics also include literature of place, nature, science, and travel. To fit in, to be publishable, I had to choose the category or even categories in which I would write. I also learned that I had to drop the hyphen in nonfiction. The greatest challenge of all was, however, to write so that my work did not read like an autopsy report or a colon biopsy.

I wonder if the world of fiction writing is easier. According to King’s book On Writing, stories and novels consist of three parts: narration, description, and dialogue. While fiction writers do have to deal with facts, they do not have to deal with “the truth.”

Using the scripts I had developed, I started to work on this Misadventure book. After several months of writing and struggling, I made a deal with David Fitzpatrick, my computer and Web site developer, to assist me on a part-time basis. Soon we developed a routine. In preparation for the project of the day, I would outline and complete a rough draft. Typing with two index fingers is slow but quite accurate. I get some solace in knowing that James Michener used the same typing style. Then together with David, a typing wizard, we would upgrade my handiwork. David knew grammar and syntax, for he had graduated from Hampden Academy where he was taught by George “Mac” MacCutcheon, fellow teacher with Stephen King. Mac was also King’s first editor and advisor, along, of course, with King’s wife, Tabitha.

As the work progressed I coaxed David into reorganizing and printing the manuscript in the format of a six- by nine-inch book—primitive cover, contents page, index, and all. A real book, my book was developing, maturing within the womb of the studio.

To augment my writing skills I had attended an array of writing courses over a fifteen year period. The most dramatic and awe-inspiring was the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, a panoramic week with instructors like Ray Bradbury, Charles Schulz of Peanuts fame, and comedian Jonathan Winters. Once I applied late but they found a place for me when I gave my address in Bangor, Maine and then answered correctly their question: “Do you know Stephen King?” They had been trying for years to get King to speak at the SBWC. (Sure, I know Stephen King... but he surely does not know me.) I was making progress on the creative side of creative nonfiction!

Writing the book soon bogged down. It had evolved into a memoir, a personal story, based on a specific event, which, by definition, had to also show how the chief character had changed. I would need to bare my soul, tell my full story. Even if I were willing to do this, I did not have the requisite skills to do so. Then came a series of courses in memoir writing along with the critiques in class by fellow seminarians as well as the teacher. Material was added, then deleted. “Show, don’t tell” was the maxim taught to us by Aristophanes. “Tell us, Bernie, how did you feel... really feel?” With each draft, the manuscript improved, but the nagging question about my memoir, any memoir, often surfaced: Who will care about my story?

To gain additional skills and to better understand the genre, I read Phillip Lopate’s The Art of the Personal Essay and steeped myself in classic essays from Seneca, Plutarch, and Michel de Montaigne in the West to Ou-Yang Hsiu, Lu Hsun, and Junichiro Tanizaki in the East. I came under the influence of Bill Roorbach in Maine on a personal level and via his book Writing Life Stories. On a broader scale, I read and reread The Art of Creative Nonfiction by Lee Goodkind.

During the months while I wrote this book, there were many other demands on my time—speaking, consulting, traveling, maintaining several web sites, and managing my real estate. Since the major theme of my seminars and consulting was organizational strategic planning, and since I had written articles and short monographs on the subject, I decided to expand this material into the second book of the trilogy. At the same time it became evident that a major portion of the Misadventure book dealt with strategic planning that had gone awry and that one of the three lessons, “Have a plan to live,” dealt with personal strategic planning.

As a result, over a period of several months, I wrote the manuscript and worksheets for Optimize your Life!, making it the first book of the trilogy. The book was based on a simple concept:
                            define your goals,
                            then divide them into component projects
                            then divide each project into simple definable and doable tasks.

This approach is in opposition to the giant boiler-plate strategic planning reports generated by high priced consultants, plans that rarely get fully implemented. Once the Optimize Your Life! book was published and in the marketplace, all efforts became focused on completing the this book.

                                                                   *  *  *

Chapter 4- G

While Part I of this book is a memoir that tells the story of the misadventure, Part II: The Message is in a “how-to” format. From my personal life as an energetic, perhaps hyperactive, child and adult, I learned early that to gain any benefit from a written how-to message one needs to follow four key, actually mandatory steps:

                                 Read it!
                                Think about it!
                                 Write it down!
                                 Do it!

Part II will provide you with text to read as well as encouragement to think about the text. After pondering the written how-to message, you will be encouraged to write down your personal response on the worksheets provided. One option is to photocopy the worksheets in this book (a setting of 140% will optimize an 8.5” x 11” sheet of paper) and place them in a three-ring notebook. An alternate option is to copy the worksheets from the accompanying CD to your computer. This will allow for the privacy of your password protection, data entry, updating, and retrieval, as well as printing the completed worksheets with your personal data. Using the power of the completed worksheets, you will be encouraged to act on the decisions and choices you make; that is, simply to Do it!

It was British philosopher John Ruskin who wrote:
                     “It is not what you know or believe that counts.
                      The only thing that counts is what you do.”

The process of taking charge of your life is an awesome one, but can be mastered by using the principles of classic strategic planning—but in small, manageable steps. Properly done, this process of addressing small focused segments can yield early successes in control, change, and improvement of one’s life. Human nature responds well to success, for success breeds success. Done slowly, carefully, and deliberately, this process can also be fun and enjoyable as one gets new insights into himself and the world around him. The process will assist in making wise decisions and addressing risk tolerance. In time this process may become a way of life; a habit… a good habit.

To start all you need is this book. After you have read Parts II and III, you will be encouraged to address the admonitions.

Admonition #1: Be Prepared to Die! This may sound cavalier, abrupt, or even offensive, but it is necessary to get this personal strategic planning process going. You will be called on to collect all sorts of data, documents, and paperwork, and then sort, collate, and store them in a known and safe place. While this process deals with information and material that is very personal and private, you will probably need to include others in completing the project. Although this book and CD will provide worksheets with generic questions, there will be abundant opportunity to adapt and modify them to your personal needs.

Admonition #2: Have a plan to live! It will focus on strategic planning itself and how you can gain its power for your personal, family, educational, business, and/or professional life. We will address the history, successes, frustrations, and failures of classic strategic planning used for hundreds of years. Then we will consider the use of the One-page Strategic Planner, a simple and focused form of strategic planning created, developed, and successfully applied by the author over the past two decades. Using the worksheets, you’ll create personal Mission and Vision Statements as well as a SCOT (Strengths, Challenges, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis. In addition, we will study the awesome power of personal values with an emphasis on love, forgiveness, and self-forgiveness as you compose a personal Values Statement. After an exercise in creating lists of short and long-term goals, each goal will be reduced to its component projects. In turn, each project will be reduced to manageable tasks. Using the One-page Strategic Planning worksheet, selected tasks will be addressed for evaluation and implementation.

Admonition #3: Do it now! It will deal with the challenge of completing and implementing one’s personal strategic plan. This is the level where many strategic plans, even those that are well conceived, fail—even those that are well-conceived. The concept of the “scorecard” will be introduced and applied. In addition, risk-tolerance and risk-management will be discussed, as well as methods and techniques for making wise choices. We will also deal with the negating power of procrastination and techniques for becoming you own change agent.

                                                          ****************