Chicken Soup for the Unsinkable Soul

by Jack Canfield

  The greatest risk I ever took was deciding, at sixteen, to rock climb. I went as part of a recreational program for the blind. The idea was that blind people, given the opportunity to challenge themselves, would become more independent and successful adults.

  I had enough faith in myself to give it a try. Through trial and error, I found that I could hang from a hold with one hand while my other hand scanned for the next hold, then hang from that while scanning for the next. The technique was tedious, but I managed to work my way up my first rock face.

  When I sat on top, my feet dangling over the edge, the heat of the rocks beneath my hands and the sound of

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  space all around me, I knew that I would never catch a pop-fly in the seventh game of the World Series, and I would never drive a car in the Indy 500, but I could get to the top of almost anything I set my mind toalthough I might have to get there a little differently.

  Like risk taking, I've also learned how to create systems and strategies to compensate for my blindness. Before the McKinley climb, I worked on organizing and reorganizing my pack, memorizing where each piece of gear was stowed. On the mountain, losing a sock or glove could mean losing a toe or finger, and losing an ice axe or shovel could mean losing the life of a teammate. I also had to figure out how to follow the team, even in high winds when I couldn't hear their footsteps. I found that two ski poles were the answer. With my poles, I could scan the trail and stay almost exactly in Chris's, my leader's, footsteps.

  One day, on the steepest part of the mountain, I couldn't seem to catch my breath. At 16,000 feet, a climber has only half of the oxygen of a person at sea levela condition called pressure breath. Chris said, "You've got to breathe," but I couldn't seem to find my rhythm. My pack and sled seemed heavier than on other days; the hip straps cut sharply into my sides and kept slipping, putting more weight on my shoulders. I found myself wondering how far I could push myself before I collapsed in the snow. I feared that I had made a huge mistake in attempting this mountain, and I seriously doubted that I had the strength within me to reach the top. Somehow, though, I silenced the fear, concentrating on my breathing and the placement of each step.

  That day I found the meaning of the climb: to show me that, with enough preparation, we are all capable of pushing ourselves far beyond our perceptions of our own limitationseven farther beyond those that others set for us!

  On day fifteen, we reached our summit camp and hiked

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  out to a ledge that overlooked our starting point, the Kahiltna base camp, ten thousand feet below. It was hard to imagine how far we had come.

  That evening began a five-day storm that blew wind above us at more than one hundred miles per hour. By the fifth day, we were running out of food and fuel, forced to contemplate the grim possibility that we might never reach the summit. Chris reminded us, "We don't decide when to climb a mountain. The mountain decides!"

  The next morning, the sky was clearer. We decided to climb just to the saddle between the north and south summits, where we could reevaluate the weather. We left at 6:00 A.M., wading through a field of thigh-deep snow. I was sheltered from the minus-twenty-degree temperature by so many layers of polypropylene, fleece, down and Gortex. The howling wind and the frigid temperatures rendered my senses of hearing and smell useless, so that my only contact with the earth was the metal bite of my crampons in the deep snow.

  When we reached the saddle, the weather seemed to be holding, so we went on to Pig Hill, the last "grunt" before the summit. Halfway up, Chris said, "I think we might make it." When we crested Pig Hill, the summit seemed very close. I didn't realize the hardest part of the entire climb was yet to comethe summit ridge. The ridge is two feet wide, with a one-thousand-foot drop on one side and a nine-thousand-foot drop on the other. The good news was that it didn't really matter which side one fell off of.

  Chris said, "Boys, if you fall here, you'll drag us all off the side of the mountain."

  I was nervous, taking each step slowly and carefully, knowing that the mountain would not tolerate any carelessness. I was concentrating so hard that I was taken by surprise when someone yelled over the wind, "Congratulations! You're standing on the top of North America."

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  All of us put our arms around each other and stood as a team on the 20,300-foot summit of Mt. McKinley. As we unfurled the American Foundation for the Blind flag, I thought about this magnificent adventure that had begun as a dream more than a year ago. Now it was real.

  An hour before we summitted, we radioed out to Base Camp Annie who radioed in turn to a small air strip where my family waited. Now, as I stood on the summit, my dad, two brothers and girlfriend, Ellen, circled above me in a Cessna, sharing our joy.

  We waved our ski poles and cheered at the plane as they flew overhead. I asked Sam if he thought my family would know which one was me, since we all wore identical jackets and hats.

  "I think they will" he laughed. "You're the only one waving your ski pole in the wrong direction."

  Erik Weihenmayer

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  Ode to the Champions

  Who are these people

  These doers of deeds,

  These dreamers of dreams

  Who make us believe?

  Who are these people

  Who still win the day

  When the odds are against them

  And strength fades away?

  These people are champions,

  For they never give in.

  A heart beats within them

  That is destined to win.

  They follow their dreams

  Though the journey seems far,

  From the top of a mountain

  They reach out to a star.

  And when they have touched it

  When their journey is done

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  They give to us hope

  From the victories they won.

  So here's to the champions

  To all their great deeds.

  They follow their hearts

  And become winners indeed.

  Tom Krause

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  Ask Creatively

  The chief buyer for a thriving company was particularly inaccessible to salespeople. You didn't call him. He called you. On several occasions when salespeople managed to get into his office, they were summarily tossed out.

  One saleswoman finally broke through his defenses. She sent him a homing pigeon with her card attached to one leg. On the card she had written, ''If you want to know more about our product, just throw our representative out the window."

  The Best of Bits & Pieces

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  Never Say Quit

  The highest reward for a man's toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it.

  John Ruskin

  I was fresh out of college and had just started my teaching and coaching career at St. Bernard's, the same high school I had attended. Compared to the schools that surrounded us, we were rather small, with two to three thousand students. My first year I served as an assistant coach with our football and basketball teams; during the spring, I was in charge of the track program.

  We had a phenomenal year. Our football team won ten games, finishing the season undefeated. Our basketball team won twenty-one games, losing only five. We emerged as conference champions in both sports.

  Being young and naïve, I didn't recognize what extraordinary athletes we had that year. By the next fall, fourteen of our former students would be playing college footballfour with major scholarships. Two others would be running track for Division I universities. In twenty-five

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  years of coaching after that, I never encountered a more gifted group.

  Yet the student who made the greatest impression on all of us wasn't one of these promising young men. Physically he was as different from them as a donkey from a thoroughbred. His name was Bobby Colso
n, and his impact will last the rest of my life.

  Bobby was the freshman brother of our star two-mile runner, Mark Colson. Early in the season, Bobby stopped me in the school hallway. At five-three and 175 pounds, he looked like the model for the Pillsbury Dough Boy. He told me that he'd been doing some serious thinking about joining our track team and believed he could make an important contribution. He added that he didn't know in what events he could help us, but felt confident that he had something to offer. I was impressed by his presentation and self-confidence.

  Given his physique, the logical role for Bobby was that of a "weight man"an athlete who specializes in shot-put and discus throwing. We quickly encountered a setback, however: Even though Bobby's 175 pounds was a lot of weight for a freshman, he didn't have an ounce of visible muscle. Not only was he unable to put (throw) the shot, he could barely pick it up.

  Undaunted, Bobby proceeded with me to the discus area. A discus is considerably lighter than a shot, so immediately we were off to a good start. I coached him in the proper grip, delivery and release. Things seemed to be going fairly well. On command, Bobby would assume a wide stance, bend his knees, spread his fingers, bring his arm back and fourth three times, and let fly.

  That is, most of the time he'd let fly. Every few tries, though, he'd forget to let go, or he'd start to run right out of the circle, holding the discus in front of him in his pudgy little mitt. Whenever he actually released the discus, he

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  would quickly spread out the measuring tape to see if his throw challenged the freshman-sophomore school record of 131 feet. Finding he had more than 110 feet to go didn't seem to faze him.

  We decided that Bobby might see greater results by adding the spinning technique to his discus endeavors. We stayed after the official close of practice to review the required footwork dozens of times. I even drew footprints on the circle to show him exactly where to step. Bobby was incredibly persistent and extremely coachable. I began to wish that all my athletes shared his attitude.

  The moment came to give the new technique a try. It was a sight to behold. Once Bobby got to spinning, he resembled a human centrifuge about to explode. He was still twirling when the discus flew out of his hand and landed twenty-seven feet in the opposite direction from where we'd intended. After I got Bobby to stop turning, he staggered around like a wounded water buffalo for a few minutes, looking as if he might throw up. Then he rushed to measure his latest effortthat's how I know it was exactly twenty-seven feet.

  Bobby felt very encouraged by this outcome, but I didn't think the season was long enough to get his technique to the point where we weren't endangering liveshis own included. After a bit of smooth talking on my part, Bobby agreed that we should investigate another event. The long jump seemed like a possibility; the only problem was, Bobby couldn't make it to the landing pit from the takeoff board. We quickly eliminated the pole vault, high jump, hurdles and triple jump. Bobby wasn't blessed with a lot of foot speed, so sprints and relays also went by the wayside. When we ended the session, I was at a loss what to suggest for the following day's practice.

  As it turned out, Bobby made his decision without me.

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  The next morning he informed me that he was going to be a two-miler like his brother, Mark. I knew Bobby idolized Mark, who not only was an outstanding two-miler but also an outstanding person and team leader.

  I admired Bobby's enthusiasm, but to myself I questioned whether the two-mile race was a good choice. Yet Bobby was determined, and for the next two weeks, he painfully but gamely struggled through his workouts.

  Our first meet was a "triangular" between St. Basil's, Notre Dame and ourselves. In those days, the two-mile race was the first running event at each meet. Because of the length of the event, both the frosh-soph and varsity teams ran at the same time; the younger runners wore their shirts inside out to identify their level. Field events all started at the same time as well.

  So here we were, with the two-mile well underway. At the varsity level we were set to finish first and third. Mark Colson launched another memorable season by setting a new conference record.

  Then there was Bobby. Every team has one or two very slow frosh-soph runners, but next to Bobby, they all looked like sprinters. When all the other runners had finished, Bobby still had three laps to go. The host team started putting hurdles on the track for the next event. I yelled at them to leave lane one open, so Bobby could finish the race.

  As Bobby completed his first of his remaining laps, I could see tears on his cheeks. I didn't realize it, but several boys from the other squads had started calling him names and making fun of him. Only our high jumper, Pat Linden, knew what was happening. He left the high-jump area and stationed himself at the far curve to shout words of encouragement to Bobby.

  Meanwhile, other athletes continued to ridicule Bobby, shouting at him to get off the track. Bobby was crying

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  more noticeably now, but he kept going. A few more of our varsity team members noticed Pat's absence and went to join him in urging Bobby on.

  During my many years of coaching since then, I've seen top athletes walk off the track when they knew they weren't going to win a race. Usually they developed a pulled hamstring or something of that naturethough often I thought the injury was more to the spirit than to the body. Bobby, in contrast, never once considered leaving that two-mile race, grueling as it plainly was for him. Once he started, quitting was not an option.

  After he finished the race, Bobby went from event to event encouraging his teammates. When one of our athletes took a first place, Bobby got more excited than the winner.

  A few days later, we had our second triangular meet, with Holy Cross and St. Patrick's. The scenario in the two-mile was much the same as before, except this time all our athletes left their respective areas to urge Bobby on. Imagine: Our whole team lined up around the track, clapping and cheering for Bobby as tears coursed down his face. It was really a moving sight to see.

  By our third triangular meet, at Bergon High School, word had spread about Bobby. This time our team members weren't the only ones rooting for himall the other teams were there, too, filling the straightaways as well as the curves.

  At the end of the season, the varsity team purchased a large trophy for Bobby and had it inscribed: To Bobby ColsonOur Most Courageous Athlete, St. Bernard's Track Team 1968.

  Bobby had been right when he told me that he felt he could make a significant contribution to our track efforts. He had joined a good team and made it into a great family. His example helped us all to understand that

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  talent is God given, and we should be thankful, but conceit is self given, and we should be careful.

  We didn't find out until late that summer, but Bobby Colson had a rare form of leukemia. He died the following fall.

  Bob Hoppenstedt

  Submitted by Kathy Jones

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  Struggle and Victory

  Brothers and sisters help each other along, first up backyard hills, and later up life long climbs.

  William Bennett

  In a small farmhouse fifteen miles from the nearest town, my mother gave birth to her fourth childa fragile boy, with a fair complexion and a fretful cry.

  Troy was an unusually restless baby, with a delicate digestive system. Feedings were a struggle, as my parents desperately tried one formula after another in an attempt to nourish the frail child. At four months, Troy weighed less than he had at birth.

  The rural community had no sophisticated hospital, no pediatric specialist, no support groups. Only a tiny bed in a three-room house and a country doctor with limited knowledge of infant disease. My parents realized something was tragically wrong with their son, but didn't know what.