Speaker 1: Today and next week. We're featuring ambient music from Nathaniel
Speaker 1: Kraus here more and Nathaniel Krause dot band camp, dot com,
Speaker 1: links and more on our website Ephemeral dot Show. Ephemeral
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heeart three d ad Fuful Exposure.
Speaker 1: Listen with that phones what draws us two places off
Speaker 1: the beaten path, seldom seen or only dreamed about. I
Speaker 1: think they're all born explorers in the sense that as
Speaker 1: soon as you learn how to walk, you kind of
Speaker 1: walk off to the house you're living and you start
Speaker 1: to wonder what's between you and the horizon. Um, as
Speaker 1: soon as you get to horizon, you started wonder what's
Speaker 1: beyond the horizon. That's how we'll be born. Unfortunately, when
Speaker 1: they get the year and a half and two years soul,
Speaker 1: all the five years old, you get corrupted by kindergarten,
Speaker 1: by your parents, by your friends, you mentioned by the
Speaker 1: school system, by the government. You never stop being an explorer,
Speaker 1: but gradually it's diluted that spirit. And also think we're
Speaker 1: kind of all born philosophers too, like you know, thinking
Speaker 1: about thinking, thinking about big questions. That's something you do
Speaker 1: when you're two or three or four years old. Then
Speaker 1: you gradually stopped doing that too. It's a better question.
Speaker 1: Like a friend of mine, the philosopher Arnns, was asked
Speaker 1: why do you climb? And he replied, why did you stop?
Speaker 1: My name is Alene. I'm from Norway. I'm a polar explorer, mountaineer,
Speaker 1: and I was the first in the world to reach
Speaker 1: the top of Everest and the North Pole and the
Speaker 1: South Pole by foot. This is the first two episodes
Speaker 1: will run this month featuring Early, who I interviewed the
Speaker 1: motely from a studio in Osla. In addition to his
Speaker 1: legendary expeditions, Arling is also an art collector, the owner
Speaker 1: of a publishing company, the author of eight books, and
Speaker 1: just generally a guy with a one of a kind resume.
Speaker 1: I started out when I was twenty years sold to
Speaker 1: sail across the Atlantic with three friends. Then we sailed
Speaker 1: back in when I was twenty one, and then I
Speaker 1: sailed first time to Antarctica bit a Bermuda boat called
Speaker 1: war Baby in eight to six eight to seven. And
Speaker 1: then when I was twenty seven, I walked with Burger
Speaker 1: Olsland to the North Pole. Burling and Burger hold the
Speaker 1: Guinness World Record for being the first to reach the
Speaker 1: North Pole unsupported by air drops. Strange thing is at
Speaker 1: least my experiences, and I think also quite a few
Speaker 1: other explorers and all the people's experiences that first to
Speaker 1: get the idea, then he decided to do it, and
Speaker 1: then you start to figure out how to do it.
Speaker 1: Because if it's the all the way around, they get
Speaker 1: the idea, then they start to figure out how to
Speaker 1: do it. You may give up quite quickly because it
Speaker 1: is too complicate, it too demanding, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: too irrational to walk to the North Pole in over time,
Speaker 1: I was college and I already been to Antarctica. I
Speaker 1: have been doing different fairly extreme trips. And a guy
Speaker 1: I knew him a little bit. He was an adventure
Speaker 1: and he said, you know, Lank, should we walk to
Speaker 1: the North Pole together. I just felt like this is
Speaker 1: great and I didn't know much about it. And then
Speaker 1: berg Alsland today probably the world's leading polar explorer. I
Speaker 1: always wanted to see for myself what is behind the horizon.
Speaker 1: I always had that drive in me. We met him
Speaker 1: almost by accident, and they decided to go together. I
Speaker 1: spent two years preparing because expeditions has many All the
Speaker 1: things in life all comes down to good preparations. If
Speaker 1: you're not really well prepared, you will fail. So well
Speaker 1: prepared for two years and started to walk from Northern Canada.
Speaker 1: When you say you're prepared for two years, what I mean,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? Obviously you need to train fish
Speaker 1: Cliff to become super fit to dragon two hundred and
Speaker 1: fift pounds sled to crevasses and you know reugh eyes,
Speaker 1: and you need to have the right food, so you know,
Speaker 1: it's lots of physiology to make up like as many
Speaker 1: calories as possible per pound as you possibly can digest
Speaker 1: because you're have to bring all the food video for
Speaker 1: one or two months, and at least at that time,
Speaker 1: you need to design your own undrax because you couldn't
Speaker 1: buy proper gear and did design the sledges. And then
Speaker 1: you need to raise the money because needros had any
Speaker 1: you know, sufficient means, so we need to raise money, sponsorships.
Speaker 1: It's not the Hobbit's a total of style. So for
Speaker 1: two years, I don't think I did any park this
Speaker 1: or anything like that. Just kind of worked really hard
Speaker 1: getting ready, and I was at school at the same time.
Speaker 1: But of course that suffered too, so it's kind of
Speaker 1: the most important thing in my life to get to
Speaker 1: the North Pole for those two years. It's a very
Speaker 1: ecocentric thing to do. I wouldn't say it's egoistic, because
Speaker 1: that's such a misused world, but it's certainly very egocentric thing,
Speaker 1: and maybe, like you know, also a little bit unsympathetic
Speaker 1: to focus so much on yourself and also to use
Speaker 1: nature as kind of a field for competitive things. That's
Speaker 1: what quite a few people think, and that's thought the fair.
Speaker 1: But I'm proud of what I did. What kind of
Speaker 1: stuff do you care? I mean, what's on that tuner
Speaker 1: to depound sled? Yeah, about one key load, which is
Speaker 1: about two pounds of food every day, and then you
Speaker 1: have fueled to melt the ice and snow into water,
Speaker 1: and a little cooker, sleeping bag and maddress and a tent.
Speaker 1: Of course, we had like twelve hundred and fifty three
Speaker 1: grams so repair kits, so we didn't bring any spares.
Speaker 1: We could repair everything that broke down, and of course
Speaker 1: when it's done to minus fifty four centigrade, kind of
Speaker 1: everything breaks down and it's so cold, like you're crying
Speaker 1: when you're peeing at least when having a because it's
Speaker 1: so unbelievable cold. That was kind of everything we had
Speaker 1: in the sled and add up to dred twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five kilos, which is about two hundred sixty pounds. I think,
Speaker 1: did you say that one of your feelings broke and
Speaker 1: you had to replace your feeling? Yeah. I was eating
Speaker 1: lunch and of course I gots solid frozen and I
Speaker 1: broke on tooth and it was I think a lot.
Speaker 1: First I walked to all today with painful tooth, and
Speaker 1: then in the evening we heat up the tent and
Speaker 1: I laid back and all my mouth. The one guy
Speaker 1: I was just keeping my mouth open and clean my tooth,
Speaker 1: and then the other guy was filling it up the
Speaker 1: Temporarily it's worked really well. The dentists had a hell
Speaker 1: of a time to get it out again when I
Speaker 1: get back to Norway. How many days was that particular expedition,
Speaker 1: It was fifty eight days and nights. The Arctic is
Speaker 1: an oceans are to navigated by continents, with the North
Speaker 1: Pole on the top, while the south Pole Antarctica is
Speaker 1: a continent setting navigated by oceans. So due to walk
Speaker 1: to the north pole. We walked and drifting ice. Sometimes
Speaker 1: the ice breaks apart, and you know it's sea level.
Speaker 1: It's like three thousand meters, so if you fall into
Speaker 1: the water, it's quite dramatic. Then it's given polar bears
Speaker 1: up there, so it's not super dangerous, but you know,
Speaker 1: pretty dangerous and very difficult, I think, to walk to
Speaker 1: the North Pole, and that's why most people fail. How
Speaker 1: does that relationship, that interpersonal relationship change over the days
Speaker 1: and and how do you sort of come to rely
Speaker 1: on each other? How do you really interact with each
Speaker 1: other on a trip like that. It's quite interesting because
Speaker 1: I didn't know the guys, the two other guys very well.
Speaker 1: And get the guy who asked me at college if
Speaker 1: you should do it together. You had an extent early
Speaker 1: on not to give up. And then it was Burger
Speaker 1: and myself and the harder new each other and the
Speaker 1: only new child because you have been preparing the expedition,
Speaker 1: so we kind of didn't have much in common at
Speaker 1: the time, so we hardly talked about anything but food
Speaker 1: because we're starving, because we're eating like six thousand calories
Speaker 1: per person per day. It was too little to talk
Speaker 1: about food. We talked about being freezing cold. Beyond that,
Speaker 1: it totally focused on putting one leg in front of
Speaker 1: the other to get northwards, because to walk to North
Speaker 1: Pole technical wise is that simple. You just need to
Speaker 1: put your leg in front of the other sufficient times.
Speaker 1: That's was over total main concern. Today we are great friends,
Speaker 1: I think at that time we're not great friends, but
Speaker 1: just two guys who had the same goal that was
Speaker 1: totally dependent on each other. And I think that was
Speaker 1: a great advantage because if you had been close friends,
Speaker 1: had that, you know, shared history, so much more to
Speaker 1: argue about, so much more to misunderstand. But we only
Speaker 1: had one goal. I think that was a good start.
Speaker 1: But also, like I think, you know one way, you
Speaker 1: are totally hypnotized when it start on such an expedition.
Speaker 1: You are totally focused on having one direction and what
Speaker 1: behind you or to the left or to the right
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. All they want is to get to the
Speaker 1: North Pole. We hardly talked walking to North Pole and
Speaker 1: to the soft poll. I didn't talk at all. Maybe
Speaker 1: I said a few words, but I hardly talked for
Speaker 1: fifty one of you to two days. Your next trip,
Speaker 1: you're planning to go to set poll. You decided to
Speaker 1: go alone. Why do you decide to go down? Several reasons. One,
Speaker 1: it's more difficult, and I believe in making life more
Speaker 1: difficult than it has to be. Of course, if I
Speaker 1: was born in Sudden Sudan, I will have thought differently
Speaker 1: about it. But as a Norwegian it has to be
Speaker 1: more difficult, I think to be meaningful. And also I
Speaker 1: want to be the first to do some things. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to walk to themselves poll in the way
Speaker 1: someone else had done it before. That had you know,
Speaker 1: many good reasons I didn't express to myself, and afterwards
Speaker 1: it was so much more interesting to be absolutely by myself,
Speaker 1: not to meet any people, not to talk to anyone.
Speaker 1: It's not about turning you back to the world to
Speaker 1: be in silence for a while. To me, it was
Speaker 1: the opposite. It was about opening up to the world,
Speaker 1: thinking about people in a different way, with more respect,
Speaker 1: and loving the world even more. One thing which is
Speaker 1: easy on expeditions, because sometimes it's really rough, really hard,
Speaker 1: really cold you're suffering, is to swear. Here. I never
Speaker 1: swear on expeditions because it on the drags you down
Speaker 1: with just a negative words that drags it down. It's
Speaker 1: a total waste of time to swear. It makes life
Speaker 1: even worse. So that's another reason why I kept my
Speaker 1: mouth shut. You tell a story in the Silence Book
Speaker 1: that I think when you're under is the plane of
Speaker 1: the helicopter going to your like dropping point that they
Speaker 1: made you take a radio? Is that right? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: was forced to bring a radio by airline company that
Speaker 1: flew me off to the edge of the eyes and
Speaker 1: my sponsor. But of course I didn't want to be
Speaker 1: in touch with anyone, so I cheated a little bit
Speaker 1: to stick to my ambition to be by myself. I
Speaker 1: had to leave the batteries in the plane to begin with.
Speaker 1: You are restless because you think about eight hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty miles or something to go, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: meet any people, no idea or somebody else, but no
Speaker 1: exact idea about how many days is going to last.
Speaker 1: Then you kind of feel like a little bit desperate
Speaker 1: or you don't feel happy. But then as the hours
Speaker 1: and days passed by, you get into a written and
Speaker 1: you start to enjoy life. It's a beautiful feeling, and
Speaker 1: it's not like a feeling you should be living by
Speaker 1: your self for rest of your life, because we're all
Speaker 1: born social beings. But just like you have a break
Speaker 1: from the world, and as you've already talked about, like
Speaker 1: you know, experiencing the world and sometimes not the whole expedition,
Speaker 1: but being in the present. So I'd rather say it
Speaker 1: was an absolutely beautiful experience, and I think most people
Speaker 1: would react to the same way as me, because it's
Speaker 1: in daily life. It's kind of very exotic idea to
Speaker 1: be by itself for such a long time, but I
Speaker 1: think if you had to, most people would have enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: In Earling set his sites and somebody in Mount Everest
Speaker 1: becoming the first person to complete on foot what's known
Speaker 1: as the Three Poles challenge. You know, has similarities in
Speaker 1: the sense that you are very much a part of nature,
Speaker 1: that you feel that you have been out there for
Speaker 1: a while to kind of feel that your body doesn't
Speaker 1: stop by your skin, no, by a finger tips, but
Speaker 1: it's extended in the nature. So that's a similarity. A
Speaker 1: high upon a mountain. It's not as dangerous as you
Speaker 1: read or here in the media, but still it is dangerous,
Speaker 1: so you have to be very careful. But of course,
Speaker 1: you know the difference between the poles are like, this
Speaker 1: is a mountain. This is a huge mountain, and it's
Speaker 1: so much bigger than how I could have imagine before
Speaker 1: seeing the mountain. It's dramatic because if you fall, you
Speaker 1: don't fall into the water. It is could be tough enough,
Speaker 1: but you can fall two or three thousand meters. I
Speaker 1: think sometimes if they hear people claiming it's easier to
Speaker 1: climb evers, but usually the people who didn't get to
Speaker 1: the summit, I think everyone helped me to the summit
Speaker 1: agrees it's readers have going to get to the summit.
Speaker 1: How's the view? Ah? You know when people tell you
Speaker 1: the climb evers because they want to see the view,
Speaker 1: it's not absolutely accurate. I think I love the view,
Speaker 1: but you know, the view from the next month is
Speaker 1: even better because then you can see everything perspective. So
Speaker 1: I got to the summit, I was smoothed, I was
Speaker 1: so happy, I was almost crying. But then shortly afterwards,
Speaker 1: you know, my next feeling was how in hell should
Speaker 1: I get down again? Because to get down from the
Speaker 1: mountain is kind of more dangerous than getting to the summit,
Speaker 1: because you easily feel more confident, less self critical. Is
Speaker 1: starting to take small chances and suddenly it's faithal to
Speaker 1: my experience, most accidents are happening on the way down
Speaker 1: from the mountains. I'm not on the way, so breaks
Speaker 1: up palling, that manorious palling. Do you think there's something
Speaker 1: about the simplicity required by that life, having everything on
Speaker 1: your back or in your slid and hiking or climbing
Speaker 1: that like affects your sense of pleasure and reward, that
Speaker 1: things seem maybe more easily rewarding than they would in
Speaker 1: like a normal sort of work of day life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's sort of true. You're so much more present, So
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, philosophers are writing about the existensive list,
Speaker 1: but to be on an expedition way of the apolar
Speaker 1: regions or close to the summit of everys like existensive
Speaker 1: listm in real life is so present. And I think
Speaker 1: one of the most beautiful feelings you can have is
Speaker 1: to be freezing cold and then get warm again. That's
Speaker 1: the best feeling. And of course this advantage being warm
Speaker 1: all the time that you're not appreciating it, just like
Speaker 1: you know, if you have been healthy throughout your own life,
Speaker 1: you don't appreciate, you don't feel grateful for being healthy.
Speaker 1: If you're always healthy, time is not linear, and to
Speaker 1: have the variations in life makes life feel longer. There's
Speaker 1: a Norwegian saying, and I think translates in English too
Speaker 1: much want more. Yeah, yeah, that's the Norwegian saying. I'm
Speaker 1: sure that they have then other languages too, but at
Speaker 1: that we say it to Norwegian bill, Yes, much will
Speaker 1: want made more. If you have a lot of things
Speaker 1: in your life, you just want more and more things.
Speaker 1: It's this kind of the opposite of the old wisdom
Speaker 1: that if you're going to live a happy life you
Speaker 1: need to keep your pleasures simple. Do you think something
Speaker 1: that's too easily obtained can lose its sense of pleasure?
Speaker 1: Like I think of this is the aphorism like no pain,
Speaker 1: no gain. Yeah, absolutely very much, believing in struggling, fighting hard,
Speaker 1: not getting things too easy in life. Of course, both
Speaker 1: you knew we should be careful not romantizing about it,
Speaker 1: because of course many people are to talk like this
Speaker 1: is almost obnoxious, because you know they have a daily
Speaker 1: fight just to survive and support their families. But for
Speaker 1: me it's maybe it sounds a bit strange to say,
Speaker 1: but for me it's different because I live in quite
Speaker 1: normal Norwegian middle class life. I grew up in a
Speaker 1: typical Norwegian middle class family, and then you have to
Speaker 1: make your life more difficult and you have to struggle.
Speaker 1: And I think it's super important to struggle. But because
Speaker 1: people know who has not been struggling, have been spoiled
Speaker 1: throughout their whole lives, they get very boring and they
Speaker 1: quite often complain that their lives are short, that is
Speaker 1: not much excitement going on. So I don't think it's healthy.
Speaker 1: I think life is a struggle. It should be a struggle.
Speaker 1: The difference between walking or climbing up to the top
Speaker 1: of a mountain compared to use a hell a culture
Speaker 1: up to the same place. You know, it doesn't relate,
Speaker 1: even if you at the summit is totally different. Flow
Speaker 1: in the helicopter. You need to stuggle it, you need
Speaker 1: to use some time, You need to feel the environment,
Speaker 1: You need to kind of become a part of nature.
Speaker 1: If you're going to appreciate climbing a mountain. One of
Speaker 1: the meanings of life is to fulfill your own potentials.
Speaker 1: And if you're going to do that, we really have
Speaker 1: to get up and live an active life. And you
Speaker 1: need to think you need to experience, you need to read,
Speaker 1: you need to talk to people, you need to move around,
Speaker 1: you need to be moved. Just when you get up
Speaker 1: in the morning. Like you know, if you are a
Speaker 1: fairly privileged life, you don't even need to get up
Speaker 1: from bed. You can just stay in bed and your
Speaker 1: moderate eventually give your food because she feels sorry for
Speaker 1: you. You You can just remain in bed to just get
Speaker 1: up in the morning. After that, everything kind of feels
Speaker 1: nicier and easier, and then throughout the whole day. It
Speaker 1: is very much about making life more difficult than it
Speaker 1: has to be. Of course I'm more eager than most
Speaker 1: of the people on it. And then the beauty, oh,
Speaker 1: not getting a shape about it, and sometimes just remain
Speaker 1: in bed. A variety is important. M hm m hmm.
Speaker 1: I want to talking about a couple more expeditions that
Speaker 1: you did in the US. Funny ten, I think right,
Speaker 1: you went to New York and you did two very
Speaker 1: different kinds of walks. Yeah, it walked like five days
Speaker 1: and nights. Together with your fellow of American Steve Duncan,
Speaker 1: who's urban history and an urban explorer. City shaped their
Speaker 1: environment and the way they do that is through infrastructure
Speaker 1: with some of the people. I came and went went
Speaker 1: to Northern Bronx, walked through New York City, partly through
Speaker 1: the train, water, subway and search systems that is beneath
Speaker 1: the city streets. Navigating the literal underbelly of New York City.
Speaker 1: You straight up like went up to like a manhood cover,
Speaker 1: just lifted it up and just just drafted right. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you could climb on fences and get into a tunnel
Speaker 1: or something, but like just in Green Street and over Manhattan,
Speaker 1: we just waited and it was no cars, and then
Speaker 1: run over to the manhole and climbed in and cling
Speaker 1: poop and the man holds back again and it was
Speaker 1: down in the dark. So I've been Northern brown Swit
Speaker 1: went into the sewage and walked down to Harlem and
Speaker 1: then kind of crisscross the city through these tunnel systems
Speaker 1: all to Shamaka Bay the Atlantic Ocean, and they have
Speaker 1: to get that ball ground to change tunnels. Of course,
Speaker 1: you can walk at subway tunnel through all of Manhattan,
Speaker 1: but we want to have the variety. We want to
Speaker 1: just see the city from the inside out and see
Speaker 1: what the city would look like if you turned it
Speaker 1: upside down, and it was great crossing the city with
Speaker 1: a backpack, with a sleeping bag, little mattress, little cooker,
Speaker 1: hit Waiders suggest Wailers. It's no hardship. It's not like
Speaker 1: an ob expedition. It's kind of easy going. And I
Speaker 1: guess the biggest risk was to be called by the police.
Speaker 1: You were even laughing. Sometimes it's kind of playing flat
Speaker 1: in the sewage, and so how we got absolutely soaking
Speaker 1: webb wash. It was pretty crazy expedition, and even some
Speaker 1: people living down there, not in the sewage, but in trentannels.
Speaker 1: I'd really like New York City, and again I was
Speaker 1: partly driven by curiosity to get to know New York
Speaker 1: City even better. I'm not thinking about that expedition, or
Speaker 1: like all the expeditions, unless I talk about it. Even
Speaker 1: to me, it sounds strange thinking about it. Unfortunately, I
Speaker 1: sat down off words to write down what we have
Speaker 1: been through, because if you do it several years later,
Speaker 1: it's a different story. So fortunately I wrote it down.
Speaker 1: What I wrote my book two is kind of based
Speaker 1: upon what I wrote in twenty ten, so it's pretty accurate. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm super happy with that that expedition and we didn't
Speaker 1: get sick on that same trip to New York after
Speaker 1: experiencing the city from the inside out, Stephen Erling side
Speaker 1: from the top down, we'll climbed Williamsburg Bridge, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's not really climbing. You have to climb some gates,
Speaker 1: so it's a little bit risky, not super whiskey, and
Speaker 1: then it's almost like stairs getting you to the top.
Speaker 1: The biggest risk there is Toma sees you and reported
Speaker 1: to the police, Like my friend Steve said, when it's
Speaker 1: on the top of the bridge and sound there's absolutely
Speaker 1: quiet down on the street below you. Then you're deep
Speaker 1: because then the police has closed off the bridge. So
Speaker 1: it's what like it's like super early in the morning
Speaker 1: and you just go to the very top of the
Speaker 1: Williamsburg Bridge and you have no permission to do it.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't get the permission that we were
Speaker 1: happy to get that permission it was possible, but of
Speaker 1: course they will never give you a permission, so you
Speaker 1: have to do it without the permission. I'm not recommending
Speaker 1: and want to do it, because you know it's not legal.
Speaker 1: That's one thing, But I'm another think it's like all
Speaker 1: this is a little bit anxious to me it was
Speaker 1: worth it. If it's worth it for you, I don't know.
Speaker 1: The beauty is that we understand there we had the
Speaker 1: sunrise over seeing into Brooklyn and Queen's beyond that the Atlantic.
Speaker 1: Of course, New York City is very much about making money,
Speaker 1: and making money makes lots of noise. But as I said,
Speaker 1: it was at night, early in the morning, so it
Speaker 1: was fairly peaceful on the top of the bridge. And
Speaker 1: to see a city kind of low and early in
Speaker 1: the morning, to sit there still asleep and see the
Speaker 1: sun is rising, it's a fantastic experience. Other way enreaching
Speaker 1: experience and made me feel grateful. I think more people
Speaker 1: should get up and wanting to see the sunrise, because
Speaker 1: that puts your life into perspective. There's one more work
Speaker 1: I want to talk about. You went in I think
Speaker 1: you went to Los Angeles and walked from where to wear.
Speaker 1: We walked Cesar Jervis Avenue, which is kind of east
Speaker 1: in l A, walked down Caesar Chaves and into Sunset Boulevard,
Speaker 1: and then we walked Stor Billward into the Pacific Ocean
Speaker 1: to kind of walk into the whole city. He didn't
Speaker 1: leave Caesar Chervis and Sunset Boulevard at all, so just
Speaker 1: followed us two streets. We could probably have done it
Speaker 1: in one long day, but we had three nights sleeping
Speaker 1: and we did whatever we can do in l A.
Speaker 1: On those streets. We didn't see anything that you don't
Speaker 1: see if you're driving, but it's kind of the sort
Speaker 1: in slow motion, and we saw it from a different
Speaker 1: angle because you saw it from the curve of the road.
Speaker 1: So for the first time in my life, I did
Speaker 1: manicure and pedicure for me as no reagi, and I
Speaker 1: thought was very exalted because it's so many pedicure manicure
Speaker 1: saloons in l A's kind of get a feeling that
Speaker 1: everybody is kind of doing pedicure on each other. We
Speaker 1: went into the church or psychology and had nineteen in
Speaker 1: its consultation, and the church concluded that we were all
Speaker 1: insane but they could help us. And then we went
Speaker 1: to all kinds of bars and you know, restaurants, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And first night they slept at the hotel called Value In,
Speaker 1: which is kind of hotel when you bring a person
Speaker 1: to for maybe before half and over two hours and
Speaker 1: go back home again just doing whatever you could do
Speaker 1: on those two streets was not even dangerous, just kind
Speaker 1: of interesting and fun to see. L A. It was
Speaker 1: this truth that you got stopped by the cops for
Speaker 1: walking because it just looks suspicious. Yeah, actually that's kind
Speaker 1: of a cliche. I had read this novel from the
Speaker 1: fifties that kind of this guy was speculating was going
Speaker 1: to happen in the future. It happened to us in
Speaker 1: East l A. It was pretty rough neighborhood. So the
Speaker 1: police guy was just kind of wondering, you know, why
Speaker 1: do you walk here with a small backpackage publicly a
Speaker 1: bit suspicious And we told him what we were doing,
Speaker 1: and he was very nice. It just said, you like
Speaker 1: to take a photo with me, So it was a
Speaker 1: very nice policeman. Did you experience any kind of Catharsis
Speaker 1: hitting the Pacific Ocean? Yeah, this loneliness approaching the Pacific.
Speaker 1: I've been driving through l A. Of course, when it's
Speaker 1: also cars, you move slowly, but then you're kind of
Speaker 1: piste off again and tie moves fast because nothing is happening,
Speaker 1: or it's like at this life feel a little bit
Speaker 1: meaningless because nothing is happening this time you're walking so
Speaker 1: towards the oceans. It felt meaningful, and it felt like
Speaker 1: so many things to see and to experience and to think.
Speaker 1: And then ematually get to the ocean. You jump into
Speaker 1: the ocean, you have a swim, and then you go
Speaker 1: to this gladstones. I think the restaurant is at the
Speaker 1: end there, and you have a cocktail, and life is great.
Speaker 1: Any big expeditions planned or things that you want to do, No, No.
Speaker 1: After this, I jump on my bike and go home
Speaker 1: to cook for my kids. That's that's my thing today.
Speaker 1: And I will do some hiking tomorrow. Day after tomorrow
Speaker 1: I will go on long expeditions again. Most likely, of course,
Speaker 1: nobody knows anything, but somehow, some of the biggest mistresses
Speaker 1: in life or in the world is in your own backyard.
Speaker 1: I think, to Arling's earlier point, if we are all
Speaker 1: born explorers and in tandem philosophers, what is it that
Speaker 1: each of us might be looking for? For Erling, the
Speaker 1: answer was silence, not only in his surroundings, but silence
Speaker 1: of the mind. That's next episode. This episode of Ephemeral
Speaker 1: was written and assembled by Alex Williams, with producers Max
Speaker 1: Williams and Trevor Young and editing by Rima Ilkali. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Nitro Sound in Oslo, Norway, and to Andrew
Speaker 1: Howard for gifting me a copy of Silence in the
Speaker 1: Age of Noise, which, along with Walking One Step at
Speaker 1: a Time, are the books by Erling Kage on which
Speaker 1: this conversation was based. Find them wherever books are sold,
Speaker 1: and find us on the world wide Web at Ephemeral Show.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.