by Mike Horn
What they didn’t know—and I had just learned—was that there was at least four days of bad weather ahead, which would have kept me from going to sea anyway.
* * *
I left Murmansk on a Saturday on a bicycle I purchased in town. My high-end Trek mountain bike that had been specially designed for my needs was in Kirkenes, and according to Jean-Philippe, the bureaucratic obstacles to getting the bike across the Russian border were insurmountable.
The blacktop road to Norway ran down along a river, then crossed it and climbed back up on the opposite side. It climbed and dropped relentlessly, winding through a landscape of steep tundra, hills, and lakes. Unfortunately, the road was in terrible shape, pocked with potholes and covered with ice, not to mention the sleety mix of snow and rain that was falling from the sky. I took some spectacular spills as a result.
Winter had returned. My water bottle froze. To keep from meeting the same fate myself, I pedaled along without a break.
Midway between Murmansk and Kirkenes, I happened upon a checkpoint station where, once again, guards examined my papers and asked me the usual questions. My one-year Russian visa was still valid. I spent the night at a nearby sort of hostel that offered rooms for thirty rubles, about a dollar a night.
The next morning Jean-Philippe confirmed that my boat would arrive in Kirkenes the following day. I got back on my bike. A few hours later I arrived at the first Russian border post. Between it and the second border post were twelve miles of road, accessible only to closed vehicles. However, Sergei smoothed out all obstacles in my way. Not only did he obtain a special permit for me, but the guards welcomed me with happy cries. This was a nice change from the usual routine. They even waved me through with a smile.
I crossed the no-man’s-land between the two Russian border posts. When I reached the second one, the guards signaled to me to hurry up. They resolved all the formalities in a hurry—a nice change, as well—and ushered me ahead of the crowd of Russians who had climbed out of their buses, suitcases in hand, and were preparing to spend endless hours in line before they could enter Norway. In short, I got VIP treatment.
The Russians must have been delighted finally to be rid of me. I couldn’t help thinking that if they had been this enthusiastic from the beginning, they would have been rid of me a long, long time ago. Everyone’s lives would have been much simpler.
* * *
A hundred yards farther on stood the Norwegian border guard station, which meant that I had done it. I had made it across Russia in approximately eleven months, just as I had predicted. Now there was nothing that could keep me from succeeding. My trimaran would be in Kirkenes any minute now. In the worst case scenario, I could still bicycle on to North Cape.
But I wanted to arrive the same way I had left: by boat. I wanted to see the same cliffs I had been imagining for more than two years now.
* * *
To my great surprise, the Norwegian border guard was much less friendly than his Russian colleagues. He looked at me with an air of disgust, clearly seeing me as a hippie cyclist, bearded and filthy, who was trying to get into his squeaky clean country. Luckily all my documents were in order. He examined them carefully and asked me, “How long do you plan to work in Norway?”
Once I got over my astonishment, I explained that I was coming to Norway only to complete my expedition. Afterward, I planned to go home. I swear!
He wasn’t buying it. He was convinced I was a potential illegal guest worker. Therefore, he refused to let me in unless two reliable contacts in Norway would vouch for me. I gave him the name of Stig-Tore Johansen, who lives in Kirkenes and who had already helped us a great deal, and Børge Ousland in Oslo.
The guard changed expression, “You mean Børge Ousland … the famous Børge Ousland?” In Norway, Børge is a star, as well known as the king.
“The very same,” I said. “He’s one of my closest friends.” From his sarcastic expression, I could see that he thought I was lying. I called Cathy to ask for Børge’s phone number, which I didn’t have with me. The guard began to treat me differently when he heard me mention Børge’s name, but he completely changed his tune when he heard his voice on the other end of the line.
“There’s a guy here named Mike Horn” he started to say.
“Mike!” roared Børge. “Put him on!” The guard obeyed. Børge and I chatted for a solid fifteen minutes. When I hung up the phone, the man in uniform had changed his attitude considerably. Just to comply with requirements, he called Stig-Tore, who confirmed that I would be staying with him in Kirkenes.
I received the final stamp on my passport, and I peddled the last few miles into Kirkenes. Traveling along the icy road, I thought back on everything I had experienced and daydreamed about everything that awaited me. I began to prepare for the arrival, which I knew would empty me out once I realized that I no longer needed to set out again the next day.
A freighter traveling at full speed takes about six miles to come to a halt. How long would it take me? Since Murmansk, I had paid only the slightest attention to the rotten weather conditions that were brewing, which was a sign to me that I had begun to slow down from “expedition speed.”
Stig-Tore and his family took me into their big beautiful home overlooking the fjord in Kirkenes. Showered, shaved, and rested, I began to look like a civilized human being again while I waited for my boat to arrive.
The boat was running a day late because of problems with the shipper. When it finally reached the Russian border, it was delayed due to new problems with red tape. Jean-Philippe, who was traveling with the boat, had to return to Switzerland urgently to deliver a lecture on his trip across Australia in a sand yacht, a trip he had squeezed in during some downtime on my own expedition. He had to hitchhike across the border to go catch his plane, leaving my sailboat at the customs station. Since I couldn’t go back into Russia, I experienced hours of extreme anxiety, uncertain whether I would ever see my trimaran again.
But I managed to get my hands on it after eight hours of hard work through bureaucratic channels.
* * *
My boat was in Kirkenes. All that was left was to sail to North Cape. But that was barely a day’s journey, and that would put me far ahead of schedule. The official date that Cathy and I had set for my arrival was October 21, 2004.
I decided to take advantage of this scheduling wrinkle to take a bicycle trip through the magnificent landscape of islands and fjords that stretched between where I was and my final destination. A 185-mile excursion, which I could complete in three or four days while enjoying the scenery, thinking, dreaming, and decompressing along the way. I would meet up with my boat at the end and cover the last few miles by sail. I would arrive—according to Cathy’s predictions—wreathed in sunshine.
* * *
I biked along happily, all the way to a small fjord that just happened to be named Small Fjord, where Stig-Tore, two days later, met me on the road with my boat on its trailer. We spent a day putting it in the water and readying it to set sail. Piled on the trimaran were my bicycle, my kayak, and most of my gear—it was like a small-scale picture of my expedition. After my departure, Stig went back to his job as a professor and I set off on the last stage of my solo journey. The sail swelled gently in an ideal wind, and the boat began to glide out to sea. I moved along, a tiny figure beneath the immense cliffs of those majestic shorelines.
On October 20, I sailed into Skarwag, a small port town on the island of North Cape. Here I would be able to prepare calmly for the great moment of arrival, which was scheduled for the late morning of the following day.
I still had to prepare for that last step, and I still needed to be alone.
Cathy, my daughters, my mother, my team, and about a hundred good friends had arrived in Hönningsvag, the closest neighboring town. About twelve miles away from them, I spent my last night on my boat.
* * *
The next morning I hoisted my anchor for the last time. I set my course northward, so that
I could turn about midcourse and sail straight toward the base of the huge promontory atop which stood the bronze globe that I had seen from below the day I left. At this panoramic vantage point tens of thousands of visitors each year look out over the Arctic Ocean, imagining the North Pole lying straight ahead of them over the horizon.
Up on that very perch everyone who was waiting for me that day looked out, imagining—not the North Pole—but the instant that a tiny twenty-eight-foot trimaran, barely visible in the vastness of the sea, would cross an imaginary line in the waves.
After I rounded a rocky spit, I could spot the cape dead ahead. There it was, the immense black cliff whose image I had carried in my heart for the past twenty-seven months. I could feel it spreading from the roots of my hair all the way down to the tips of my toes. I didn’t dare close my eyes for fear it might vanish.
Fifteen minutes later I crossed the virtual finish line. In the distance, high above me, I could see a tiny, excited crowd, and in that crowd, I knew, were my wife and my daughters.
The emotion of victory was overwhelmed by the contentment of being back. The words that came to my lips were not, “I won” but rather “I’m home.”
I reversed course and rounded the cape to drop anchor in a little inlet on the other side of the island. Jean-Philippe and Steve were waiting there to take possession of the boat, which they would sail back to Skarwag. I found this inlet before leaving twenty-seven months ago. From this inlet I had looked east and said to myself, “I’ll be coming from that direction!” Now, in the same spot, I looked out in the same direction and thought, “That’s where I came from!”
Striding with giant steps, I climbed up to the outcropping at the far end of which everyone was waiting for me. A helicopter flew overhead at regular intervals, each time carrying a new band of passengers, curious to watch from on high as I walked the last few feet. We waved at one another.
As I emerged onto the outcropping, I saw the white dome of the North Cape visitors’ center and, in front of the building, a crowd. This time, their silhouettes were almost life-sized. The group moved toward me, and I moved toward them. There were cameras flashing.
The crowd slowed and halted to let three figures move forward. Cathy, Annika, and Jessica. My mother was right behind them. My wife and my daughters threw themselves into my arms. Cathy was crying and laughing at the same time. My daughters were tugging on my parka.
We walked along, all wrapped in a group hug. I could hear myself saying stunningly banal things like, “You all okay? Happy to see Daddy?”
I would find the words later—when I woke up from a long, deep, refreshing sleep.
Epilogue
IN THE ARCTIC, when the sunlight shines through ice crystals, it creates a prism containing the entire palette of colors of this cold and magnificent world. Those twenty-seven months were a prism of life, a strong concentration of emotions and excitement. I experienced as much in that time as I had in my previous thirty-six years of life: fear, pain, joy, disappointment, euphoria, rage, hope, and despair, as well as happiness, in particular, with a special intensity. The expedition was an emotional roller-coaster.
I saw everything I had wanted to see, experienced everything that I had wanted to experience, and learned to handle disappointment and frustration as the inevitable elements of any journey, clarifying my own priorities at each step along the way. I learned something new every day of the trip.
When I came back, I was a different person—a better person, I’d like to think. I was a little humbler, a little wiser, a little happier to be alive, to live with myself and with those around me.
I know that everything that I lived and learned during those twenty-seven months would help me in all my future endeavors.
* * *
My expeditions, although they remain physical challenges, increasingly resemble traditional rites of passage. I bring back such treasures of knowledge and understanding that the real reason I set out is to go and find more.
Now, when people ask me why I do what I do, I can truly reply, “Because the older I grow and the more experience I gather, the more questions I ask myself to which I have no answers. Because, in my view, pushing your own limits is the only way to know yourself and to grow as a human being.”
The twelve thousand miles that I covered ultimately took me back to my starting point. I never really went anywhere; it was inside myself that I took a long, long walk.
* * *
My daily routines and way of life over the past twenty-seven months had become second nature to me. When I came back home, it took me a while to get used to the fact that I no longer had to pitch a tent every night or light my camp stove to make dinner. It took me some time to adjust to the fact that I didn’t have to start off again every morning, to understand that I no longer had a geographic objective to attain, and that I had every right to stay still. It was time to accept life’s complications rather than live as a man whose only goal is survival. It was time to stop thinking about myself and to start thinking about others.
I would need a period of time to reacclimate to the world I left more than two years earlier, a world that had changed quite a bit during my absence. (For instance, at the Geneva airport on my way back home, somebody stuck their cell phone in my face. I thought that they wanted me to speak to a friend, but they wanted to take my picture!)
* * *
After all these years of playing at survival the way that other men go to the office, I own nothing to show for it except for my own experience and the sum of the knowledge that I have accumulated. These are priceless treasures that no one can ever take away from me.
The long periods that I spent far away from the people I love, the sacrifice of basic comforts that most people enjoy, the physical and mental suffering, the frequent risk of death—these are just the less pleasant aspects of a profession that I chose for myself and that I generally practice with a smile on my face. I have a chance to live my dreams every day, and I wouldn’t trade my life—or my dreams—for anything else on earth.
But I will soon be turning forty, and I can’t keep practicing this “profession” indefinitely. Maybe I will devote the second half of my life to teaching values to troubled young people. I believe that I could teach them, in the context of difficult expeditions, a sense of determination and solidarity, and turn them into strong, respectable adults. Perhaps I will do just that … down the road.
But I’m not ready for retirement yet. The project I’m contemplating next will completely overshadow everything I have done to date and will combine all the most difficult aspects of each of my previous expeditions.
* * *
I would like to give Cathy a ring with a solitaire diamond. The ring would symbolize my trip around the Arctic Circle and the perfect path that I followed to be reunited once again with the ones that I love. The diamond would symbolize the sublime beauty of the worlds that I traversed, the hardness and glitter of the ice and its inestimable value, since it is itself the source of life. It also would signify the harshness of my journey, and the toughness that I had to develop in order to survive it.
After all this time, all this work, all these sagas, all the ordeals, and all the joys, I only want to say one thing, “I am happy to be alive.” What did I leave behind me in the Arctic? A few footprints, quickly blown away. What did the Arctic give me? Experience and wisdom that I will take with me to my grave. It made a man out of me—a slightly better man, perhaps.
Acknowledgments
To all those who helped and supported me before and during this expedition, I would like to express my gratitude and my friendship. None of this would have been possible without you.
Main Sponsors
Groupama Assistance; Mercedes-AMG; Mirabaud & Co. Private Bankers; Panerai Watches
Partners
Andaska; Eider/Gore-Tex; Town of Château d’Oex/Pays d’Enhaut; Julbo; Salomon
Official Suppliers
Corsair Marine; Ferrino; Prijon GmbH; Tr
ek; Vade Retro
Other Suppliers
Ajungilak; Energizer; Global Satellite US; IBM Think Pad; Katadyn; Montana Sport Int.; Morand; Musto; Othovox; Toko
Support Staff
Cathy Horn; Jean-Philippe Patthey; Martin Horn; Philippe Varrin
Skippers—Boat Transport
Bernard Stamm; Pierre-Yves Martin; Ronan Le Goff
Expedition Videographer
Raphaël Blanc
Expedition Photographer
Sebastian Devenish
Special thanks go to:
Børge Ousland; Support Group—Team Mike Horn; Johann Rupert and the committee of the Laureus Awards; Philippe Rochat; Steve and Yvan Ravussin; Thierry Legeret and Tiziana Camerini of TLRP
CONQUERING THE IMPOSSIBLE. Copyright © 2005 by Mike Horn. Translation copyright © 2007 by Antony Shugaar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Maps by Noël Meunier
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First published in France under the title Conquérant L’Impossible by XO Editions
eISBN 9781466880153
First eBook edition: July 2014