Fortress of Solitude
Whatever happened to the man of tomorrow?
When Superman needed a place to get his head straight, he headed to his fortress of solitude. Away from civilization, typically to some uninhabitable place. In the earliest Superman issues, created by DC Comics, the superhero used the fortress of solitude as a place of solace and secrets. At first it was in the arctic. Later on the fortress moved to the Andes, to an underwater oasis under the Sargasso Sea, and finally to a mountain outside of Metropolis. The constant theme in all of these locations was that Superman needed a place to reflect and to strategize. His fortress doubled as the headquarters for his fight against evil on earth. He was a busy guy; even superman needs to push the pause button now and again.
The concept of a fortress of solitude first emerged in the comic book series Doc Savage, that was the precursor to Superman. Doc was a scientist, adventurer, detective, explorer, and polymath. Part Sherlock Holmes, part Abraham Lincoln. His only superpower was a photographic memory. He was a martial arts master too which helped. Like superman, he righted wrongs and fought evil forces. Stan Lee credited Doc Savage with being the forerunner to all superheroes and he should know, because he helped create so many. For Doc Savage, the fortress of solitude was also a very remote and cold place. It should be noted that western man was still celebrating both successful polar explorations; our cultures had been consumed with the desire to reach these two theoretical points on earth for several hundred years. Flags had been planted at both extremes only a decade or two before.
I never purchased and read comic books on a regular basis, but I do confess to reading them while I was at summer camp and after paper drives, where my boy scout troop picked up old magazines and newspapers. I thought of comics as a waste of money; if I was going to buy any magazine as an adolescent, it was Mad Magazine. Similar graphics, totally different concept. Just throwing this out there, that comics and Mad Magazine were both credited with causing Juvenile Delinquency in the post war era of the fifties and sixties in America. In this day and age that notion would be hilarious; we have many more bogeymen to thwart in these times of peril. But you get my point which is that new and creative concepts are often misunderstood at first. Then they become the norm and they are accepted. Sadly, Mad Magazine finally went out of business, likely due to the absurdity of modern day life in America, and a collective loss of an appreciation for sarcastic humor.
Aside from the bad habits that I acquired from reading these questionable literary journals, what I picked up from comic books was the archetypal nature of the genre. The depictions of the characters are over the top; they do not pretend to be complex or nuanced. Instead a considerable amount of creative energy goes into making the characters universal and mythic. Like the Gods of ancient Greece and Rome, comic book characters are easily understood and recognized. Under the surface they may be complex and even petty, but they are known by the external, surface nature of their being. Their powers. These gods or characters play a significant role in the way that we humans describe our present day conditions on earth. Our individual consciousness identifies with one or more of the archetypical representations at some point in our lives. For some, including one former president, professional wrestling provides the same form of therapy.
In his book, The Seven Basic Plots; Why We Tell Stories, Christopher Booker argues that all stories cover the following seven themes: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth. His themes coincide more or less with the twelve archetypes identified by Carl Jung and clarified by his students and his followers (of which there are many):
Ego types:
Innocent
Orphan/regular guy or gal
Hero
Caregiver
Soul types:
Explorer
Rebel
Lover
Creator
Self types:
Jester
Sage
Magician
Ruler
These archetypes appear in all the cultures of humanity and not just in the collective consciousness of Western Man. Jung was fascinated by the indigenous people that he encountered in the Pueblos of the Southwest and their stories. “We are sorely in need of a truth or a self-understanding similar to that….. which I have found still living with the Taos Pueblos….” he wrote in 1925. Those sessions with the indigenous people of New Mexico were enough to confirm his suspicions that all men and woman, no matter the culture or community that they come from, are seekers of self knowledge.
Jung believed in individuation — the lifelong psychological process of differentiation of the self— originating out of each individual's conscious and unconscious minds. Basically how we are different and distinct from each other. How we are not like others. Let’s call it man’s need for autonomy, the desire to understand oneself in the context of where one fits in with the universe. It is the one thing that all people have in common, the desire for individuation. Jung also believed in what he termed the collective consciousness— something akin to prehistoric instincts that we all share. He was also the first to coin the commonly used terms, introverts and extroverts which he saw as conflicting universal traits:
Next to Freud, Jung is considered to be the most influential person in modern psychology and the two collaborated until they parted ways over some fundamental differences of opinion, and perhaps a few professional slights, back in 1912.
Super heroes are definitely Jungian archetypal characters. While comic book villains may be extroverts, it is no surprise that Superman and his alter ego, Clark Kent are both introverts. Superheroes favor independence and take the world on alone. It is hard work and it doesn’t come easy. These guys are grunts more or less; most superheroes are like tired old journeymen. Thus the need for the fortress of solitude, to recharge and reflect in quiet. Like Atlas, Superman seems to be carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Upon occasion he needed a quiet spot to unburden the load.
I can relate. As an introvert I have created my own fortress of solitude, a place where I go to escape from the noise of modern life. Coincidentally, it is in the arctic tundra or the White Mountains of New England in the winter— only in books. These days I find my fortress of solitude reading stories about death by hypothermia. I did not see this coming, but by the age of thirty, I was totally hooked on books about the polar expeditions and about mountain climbing, particularly when it occurred in snow fields and on glaciers. I would stock up on these books and read them during summer vacations. Ever the multitasker, I would be working on my tan, while relaxing with a cold book!
At first I did not realize what was happening to me. However, around the time that I devoured one of the best polar exploration books ever written, The Ice Master, in 1992, I came to realize I had a serious recurring vision of my own death, expiring due to the elements. The thought of perishing on ice or snow or on a mountain glacier, or in deep snow, began to dominate my imagination. I could not stop thinking about what death would be like if I died from exposure during a storm. How would it feel to have your body drained of its heat and to turn to ice yourself? For reasons that I cannot explain, these thoughts actually comforted me and gave me hope. The stories that I read about survival and death from the elements became my fortress of solitude. Finally, after more than thirty years of subconscious rumination, I have found the courage to examine why that is.
The Ice Master, exquisitely written by Jennifer Niven, is actually an uplifting and optimistic story about a disastrous polar exploration. Basically, a determined and persistent hero, Captain Bartlett, braves a solo trek over open sea ice and the cold to flag down a ride back to port where he commandeers a boat to return and rescue the the surviving members of his crew. The book tells the story of one of the earliest scientific explorations of the north pole aboard a specially crafted ship called the Karluk. The subtitle of the book, The Doomed 1913 Voyage of the Karluk, gives away the plot line. Eleven men died, nearly half the crew; the rest of the men had to endure a winter on a frozen island off the coast of Siberia while Captain Bartlett set off to find help.
In this regard the story of the Karluk is very much like the story of the Endurance which occurred shortly thereafter. Only this time, Sir Earnest Shackleford, the person who organized the ill fated expedition, was able to get all of his men to safety. It was a truly heroic effort that included sailing through open water by means of dead reconning, and then a climb over a snow covered mountain range to civilization. This occurred during the so called golden age of polar exploration. This era, as I noted earlier, predated Doc Savage and Superman comics, but the written accounts of these adventures was just getting started by the late twenties. Later on these expeditions were featured in some of the first movies and documentaries ever made. Maybe I was just born too late; the era of polar exploration was over before I got a chance to get started in it. Then we turned our attention to space, another cold and inhospitable place.
Possibly the most interesting and enlightening aspect of this golden age came with the contrasting accounts of the Scott (British) and Amundsen (Norwegian) expeditions to the south pole. Both parties found the pole, but Scott and his British team perished, while Amundsen, the Norwegian, returned safely. The Norwegians did the trek on skis, with dogs, and succeeded by carrying less food and travelling faster. The British team, on the other hand, tried a motorized vehicle, spent more time, energy, and money making plans, but ultimately failed due to the unpredictability of the situations in Antarctica. They got lost and missed the last cache of food. It is a cautionary tale about the hubris of too much planning and preparation, and not enough training on how to adapt and change in light of deteriorating circumstances. You cannot plan for everything.
In this regard, the accomplishments of Reinhold Meisner, the first climber to solo Mount Everest, the first to reach the summit without using supplemental oxygen, also compare favorably as adventure stories. I spent years engrossed by his writings and by the unauthorized accounts of his adventures. He stands out among mountaineers because of his imagination and the audacity of his goals and dreams. He did things that other professionals thought impossible, and he did them in a manner that no one else would dare to attempt. While others in his field and profession died, frozen in place in the dead zone above 20,000 ft, Meisner has survived into old age and he is still prospering to this day at nearly eighty.
Meisner is the Superman in the realm of mountaineering. His superhero attributes? Incredible lungs and a very high VO2max. There are so many firsts on his resume, others have just stopped trying to outdo him. The fact that he accomplished so many of these feats, nearly a half century ago, only adds to his reputation. Just as one example, the clothing that mountaineers use today is far advanced from the sixties and seventies when it was not uncommon to find something wool in the mix on Everest. The Lowe brothers, Jeff and Greg, by way of example are both dead and they pioneered the development of clothes (Lowe Alpina they called the brand) specifically designed for these kinds of mountain conditions. I bought their brand religiously whenever I could from a small local shop in Concord Mass. The old man who owned the shop would whisper tales from his youth in the mountains, and praise these new fangled materials. Had they been available when he was climbing, he told me, he would not have had to turn back so often.
For three decades, I immersed myself in the stories of men and woman who perished in freezing cold temperatures, often to the exclusion of family and friends. I was overwhelmed by the desire to understand what drove these people to risk their lives to experience what most other people would never care to know. To call it a death wish is oversimplification. I took plenty of risks myself, culminating in an unusually dangerous day in 2016 when I not only set off a small avalanche in the back country of British Columbia, but I also stumbled into a tree well that swallowed me whole, to the point where I was barely visible. Fortunately I was in the woods with someone who was observant, and he rescued me with some netting, a rope, and the help of our tail guide. I was sixty three at the time and evidently nearly ready to give up the ghost that day. But that kind of risk taking pales in comparison to the risks that serious mountaineers take on every expedition.
There is a death wish among all those who set off into the cold mountains or the polar landscapes for sure. The deadly conditions are like a magnet and we are the iron ore. Very early in my White Mountain winter hiking adventures, I encountered Guy Waterman tending to the old Crag Camp below Mount Adams. He was a small, wizened, and wiry old man at that point, but I knew, upon meeting him, that there was a back story about him that needed to be told. Many years later I happened upon the book, Good Morning Midnight, by Chip Brown, a biography of a man who worked as a speech writer for Richard Nixon, played in a jazz band, and who made a name for himself in the small world of American Mountaineering. Best known for raising his two sons as accomplished mountain climbers; his son Johnny made an amazing 145 day solo ascent of Mount Hunter that has yet to be attempted again. Sadly Guy Waterman lost two of his sons, Johnny and Bill, to the mountains. It was the same guy who checked me in at Crag camp and collected my five spot for the privilege of sleeping there that night. I had no idea that his life had ended so sadly.
Guy Waterman committed suicide by climbing up to the Lafayette Ridge outside of Franconia NH without any overnight gear or the intent to return. He sat down and died, a broken and deeply depressed man who had given up on life. An accomplished author and historian, Guy and his wife Laura wrote passionately about hiking etiquette among other topics. He planned out his death so that there was no attempt to rescue him; he would not have wanted a single person to risk their life on account of his planned death. Talk about manners! He died in same way as both his sons who passed before him, cold and wet. Hypothermia is not a bad way to go. they say. Robert Frost wrote, “for destruction ice is also great and will suffice”. Better than fire for some.
Many years later, a man who had plenty of winter climbing experience of his own, took a novice up to nearly that same location on Lafayette Ridge and he did not make it back. His rookie climbing partner barely survived the experience and was evacuated by helicopter, only to lose a leg to the cold after the fact. That doomed adventure, covered extraordinarily in The Last Traverse, a page turner of a book written by Ty Gagne, is a must read for those of us looking for meaning in yet another meaningless death in the mountains. The book reminded me of Stephen Crane’s seminal work, The Open Boat, where the strongest member of the small team of sailors, who have to flee a sinking ship in a small open boat, dies in the pounding surf, while the young, inexperienced narrator survives.
Just this past weekend my google feed fed me the news story of Christopher Roma, who died attempting a solo hike near Mount Bond in the White Mountains in January of this year. I have been there a couple of times and know it to be a troublesome area above tree line and in the clouds. He must have gotten lost and went off the trail in heavy snow and wind. He died from exposure leaving a wife and two year old behind. He was a very capable hiker who had achieved many noteworthy accomplishments including the triple Crown of hiking which is the Appalachian Trail, the Continental Divide Trail, and the Pacific Coast trail. Only 37 when he died, he had amassed a lot of miles in hiking boots; he had so much more to live for. He went too far into the mountains under extreme conditions, and he did not turn back when he had the time to do so.
When I was ten years old, I hiked a mile or two into the woods behind our house at 531 Lowell Street in Lynnfield Ma, and I built a small fire on the edge of a pond. Inspired by Jack London’s To Build a Fire, that episode sparked a life long interest in books about adventure (and sometimes death) in cold weather. This fascination with the cold and solitude has guided my choice of activities and my passions in life, attracting me to the mountains and pairing me up with other like minded individuals. There are obviously many of us who feel the same draw from the magnet that I mentioned earlier, but we are a small minority among a general population that isn’t flirting with death on a regular basis. Most people like the creature comforts, many fewer seek the uncomfortable feeling of being cold. Until just recently, and after arthritic conditions began to take over my body, I actually enjoyed being cold. Sort of like the opposite of a turtle basking in the sun.
During my time on snow, I met and skied with two young men who died in thier twenties in skiing accidents. There is nothing so tragic as a young life cut short. Alec J. Stall had a bright future ahead of him as a producer of ski movies about back country skiing in New England. He got caught up in a fluke avalanche outside of Stowe resort while filming for his company Meathead Films, and he was swept over a cliff. Several years before his death, we skied Tuckerman’s Ravine together along with his dad and a good friend of mine who arranged the outing. We made an annual pilgrimage to this hike to ski venue, which is the real deal in extreme skiing and has been so since the earliest days of skiing in New England. The Meathead concept was to showcase the back country experiences available in the white mountains. It was a good idea, way ahead of its time. Alec was a nice young man; very quiet, polite, and thoughtful. A really good skier who used his athleticism to keep his speed in check when necessary. He was not reckless; he was exactly the opposite, very deliberate and careful.
John Nicoletta was a different story. When I skied with him at Steamboat Springs in 1990, he was a teenager with a boatload of talent, and an a well demonstrated future in the emerging world of extreme skiing. I watched him spend a morning building an imposing jump at the summit of Steamboat and then he did front and back flips off that jump and onto the steep slope of deep powder below. I could see that he had a vision and could see lines and possibilities on snow that no one else would dare- even at the tender age of 18 . He died while skiing at the 2008 Subaru World Freesking Championships being held at the Alyeska Ski Resort in Alaska. He was a Colby College graduate like me and he had spent hours at the Loaf where he honed his skills and temped death on some of the steepest slopes in New England. He had legendary abilities and a quiet nature that attracted a lot of people to him.
What causes this affliction? What drives otherwise ordinary people to take these kinds of risks? What are the psychological traits, some might say character flaws, that produce a person who wants to pursue these kinds of dangerous activities in cold and remote places? Alone. Far away from help and medical support. I have no insights but I do suspect that there are some commonalities among these stories and personalities. They are typically introverts and slightly depressed people who seek out adventure in order to feel truly alive. Thrill seekers and people who demand a jolt of adrenaline every now and then. All of us are living out that Jungian compulsion for individuation, attempting to differentiate ourselves from others, trying desperately to demonstrate who we are not. Some of us, especially those with talent and ability, take that compulsion to the extremes.
As I have been writing this essay, I have come to realize that my fascination with these stories, the many hours spent reading about these cold weather adventures, has not been about the harshness of nature, the risk of death, or about my love of adventure. I read these stories and books to try to understand the people who find themselves in these situations and how they react; I am enthralled by personalities and by the motives that drive these souls to attempt such obviously dangerous pursuits, and how they respond when the situation goes awry. Their stories comfort me because they ratify my lifelong desire to create my own personal fortress of solitude in the mountains and on snow. I am not alone. Remoteness, cold, and the risk of death; it beats the hell out of dying of old age, it seemed to me when I was younger. Finding a quiet place of reflection where I can examine my own personality and explore my individuation. You are never more alone, than when you are standing above a steep slope or a chute on skis, and you are face to face with your own inner fears.
I was reminded recently about the dearly departed, Norm MacDonald’s moth joke. Here is the transcript:
“A moth goes into a podiatrist’s office, and the podiatrist’s office says, “What seems to be the problem, moth?”
The moth says “What’s the problem? Where do I begin, man? I go to work for Gregory Illinivich, and all day long I work. Honestly doc, I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t even know if Gregory Illinivich knows. He only knows that he has power over me, and that seems to bring him happiness. But I don’t know, I wake up in a malaise, and I walk here and there… at night I…I sometimes wake up and I turn to some old lady in my bed that’s on my arm. A lady that I once loved, doc. I don’t know where to turn to. My youngest, Alexendria, she fell in the…in the cold of last year. The cold took her down, as it did many of us. And my other boy, and this is the hardest pill to swallow, doc. My other boy, Gregarro Ivinalititavitch… I no longer love him. As much as it pains me to say, when I look in his eyes, all I see is the same cowardice that I… that I catch when I take a glimpse of my own face in the mirror. If only I wasn’t such a coward, then perhaps…perhaps I could bring myself to reach over to that cocked and loaded gun that lays on the bedside behind me and end this hellish facade once and for all…Doc, sometimes I feel like a spider, even though I’m a moth, just barely hanging on to my web with an everlasting fire underneath me. I’m not feeling good. And so the doctor says, “Moth, man, you’re troubled. But you should be seeing a psychiatrist. Why on earth did you come here?”
And the moth says, “‘Cause the light was on.”
In other words, you cannot escape from that which attracts you; the punchline to that joke should have been obvious from the start. When I take the Jungian personality test, I come up as an ISFP. Here’s an excerpt from the description of this personality: “Though ISFPs tend to be bold and spontaneous, seeking new experiences, they tend to become bored easily and can struggle with decision-making and planning for the future.” I often say about myself, I have the attention span of a flea. Skiing is all about possibilities; hiking reveals a new vista around every turn on the trail. This has been the stimulation that I needed to get by and thrive. Now I must contemplate what life will be like without it.
I withdrew from the back country ski trip this year and I am resigned to skiing at resorts and on groomed trails from now on. At the end of the day, it is all about health and ability. I just do not have either anymore and that is difficult for me to admit. Due to blood thinners and heart issues, I am just one fall away from a 911 call. I have had to dial back my training and that has caused me to lose some strength. Recently, while skiing at Sugar Mountain, I fell and I couldn’t get up. I had to take my skis off and rise from my knees. As I have had to adjust my efforts to my sagging abilities, I have come to realize that I will not perish from the cold, die from hypothermia, or be buried alive by avalanche. But I can still read my books about the mountains and dangerous expeditions; I will relish my time in old age in my fortress of solitude and that should be enough to get me by.