Ranch, Lenox, Massachusetts www.canyonranch.com
Springbrook, Prince Edward Island, Canada
One Hundredth Anniversary Celebration of One of America’s Greatest Explorers
The one hundredth anniversary of Admiral Peary’s historic expedition that reached the North Pole with his American assistant Matthew Henson and Inuit assistants Ootah, Egigingwah, Seegloo, and Ooqueah is 2009.
In honor of the admiral’s achievement, the North Pole Tenderfoot logo features the globe and star from his memorial at Arlington National Cemetery.
Multi-Media Bonus
www.Aspirations.com features audio from the nightly phone calls from the Arctic, plus video and color photos from the Arctic.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1 Why Are You Going to the North Pole?
CHAPTER 2 The Adventure Begins
CHAPTER 4 The Longest Day…Part One
CHAPTER 5 The Longest Day…Part Two
CHAPTER 7 Welcome to the Mountains
CHAPTER 8 Welcome to the River District
CHAPTER 11 Houston, We Have a Problem
CHAPTER 13 American Express Platinum Card
CHAPTER 15 Craig Meets Tornarsuk Again
CHAPTER 16 The Arctic Devil Is Only Sleeping
CHAPTER 17 A Thing to Discover
The Four Core Great Aspirations! Parenting Principles
Prologue
JULY 19, 2005, 7:58 P.M.
Victoria Playhouse
I STOOD IN THE WINGS OF THE nearly one-hundred-year-old Victoria Hall, home of the Victoria Playhouse in Victoria by the Sea in Prince Edward Island, Canada. It’s a big name for a very small village, which not long ago was listed as one of the fastest-shrinking municipalities in Canada as a result of the conversion from year-round to seasonal residents.
The historic Victoria Playhouse was where the story of North Pole Tenderfoot was first told.
I was preparing to perform North Pole Tenderfoot, a one-man play based on my rookie experience as an Arctic explorer. I had always dreamed of performing a play of my own, but as I stood in the wings I wondered if I was about to fulfill a dream or live out a nightmare. The next hour and a half could be the worst ninety minutes of my life.
The house was full, for reasons I still don’t understand. In the second or third row in the center sat Charles Mandel, the theater critic from the Guardian, the largest newspaper on Prince Edward Island. He’d written some caustic reviews that summer, even firing shots at the College of Piping and Celtic Performing Arts’ performance of Highland Storm—performed by island youth.
I worried that he would take my play to task (or to the woodshed). And as the playwright and sole actor, I’d have no one else to blame.
Though I’d delivered over a thousand talks to business groups and co-hosted national radio and television shows for millions, this felt different. This was ninety minutes, plus intermission, with just the audience and me—performing in my first play since a high school appearance in The Pajama Game, performing the first play I’d ever written.
The stage featured the actual sled from the expedition and a replica of Peary’s sled. A rear projection screen displayed trip images and video.
On the stage was the actual dogsled we’d taken to the North Pole, along with a near perfect replica of one of Admiral Peary’s sleds, designed from photographs taken at the Berkshire Museum in western Massachusetts.
To bring the full theater experience alive we had Styrofoam blocks cut to look like ice and a team of four Inuit dogs—well, actually they were children’s stuffed animals. At the back of the set stood a monstrous rear projection screen, on which we’d project the images, video, and audio of my adventure.
I’d chosen to create and perform this one-man play to fulfill a dream as well as to improve the chances of success for this book. Of my four previous books, the two that had been best sellers—Jump Start Your Brain and Jump Start Your Business Brain—had been performed as lectures before they were written. The two that sold poorly, Maverick Mindset and Meaningful Marketing, had been written without being performed.
From this sales history, I could reach three possible conclusions: I should only write books titled Jump Start Your Brain; I should never write a book with a two-word title with each word beginning with M; I should perform all books before writing them to improve the storytelling.
Truthfully, I’d never intended to become an author. In fact, I studied chemical engineering at the University of Maine, in part, because it required mostly math and science courses and virtually no English classes.
However, in the early 1990s, a story about my Eureka! Ranch in the Wall Street Journal caught the eye of three book editors, and following a spirited bidding process I landed a hefty advance and a contract to write a book. Frightened of writing, I followed my instincts and assembled a lecture, telling the story of what would become the book. I performed it for audiences around the world. After refining the story based on the performances, I wrote the book quickly.