Adventures, Journals, and Memories

Green House porch, August 2007 - Photo by Jerry Erickson

January 31, 2013 was my last day of almost 24 years at a challenging, but stressful job as a marine scientist. Ever since then, for the last month or so, I feel that God has given me a great gift of time that I never had before – to sleep (past 5 am!), read, pray, think, and write. I have also had the time to locate and dig out all my journals and writing idea notebooks that I have been keeping all these years – in hopes of using them ‘someday’. Among these sets of notes were those that I kept during my summers as a mountaineering guide at Beyond Malibu from 1978 to 1981. Until I re-read these notes, I had completely forgotten about many of the things I had written about – what God was teaching me, what terrific adventures we were having in the mountains and at base camp, and the great people I was meeting and becoming friends with on staff and on the many trips I had guided. The thirty years since 1981 - filled with graduate school, working, marriage, and raising four kids have pushed a lot of memories to the sidelines (or completely out of my mind)! However, I was filled with profound gratitude that I had actually taken the time back then to write down what I was thinking and experiencing.

An amazing book that I finished reading in January also illustrates the value of writing down what you are experiencing – no matter how inconvenient or pointless it seems at the time. The book is: ‘The Worst Journey in the World’ by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, about the ill-fated British Antarctic Expedition to the South Pole, led by Robert Falcon Scott in 1910-1913. Cherry-Garrard (or ‘Cherry’), who at 24, was the youngest member of the expedition, kept a journal during the entire time, and went on to write his book, now considered the definitive account of the expedition, when he arrived back home in the UK. The book is based on his own journal, as well as excerpts from the journals of many of the other men on the expedition. During the expedition, most of the men faithfully recorded extensive, literate daily entries in their journals - despite often horrific conditions of week-long blizzards, temperatures ranging down to -70 degrees below zero, frostbite, and for five of the men, death from starvation and hypothermia. National Geographic Adventure Magazine lists this book as the No. 1 book on their list of 100 greatest adventure books of all-time. I mention this book also because of the many parallels of the expedition to Beyond – the warm comradeship and close community they formed, the great adventures they had in the awe-inspiring mountains, ice shelves and glaciers of Antarctica, and the sense of common purpose they had as part of a grand expedition.

So – buy some (waterproof) blank journals and start writing – during your summers at Beyond and afterwards …

 Jerry Erickson
March 5, 2013

Beyond Staff 1978 (Yes Jerry is in this photo)