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In the 2nd Buried Logic Podcast produced by Mauro Media, I had the great opportunity to interview a truly inspiring adventurer.

Modern-day explorer, Eric Larsen’s life epitomizes adventure. A polar explorer, dog musher, adventure racer and educator, he has spent the past 12 years of his life adventuring in some of the most remote and wild places left on earth. Totaled, Eric has traveled enough wilderness miles to circle the globe over two times.

Eric Larsen Explorer

On January 3rd 2009, Eric successfully led an international team to the South Pole – covering nearly 600 miles in 41 days. Eric is now the 3rd American in history to have skied to both the North and South Poles.

In 2006, Eric and Lonnie Dupre completed the first ever summer expedition to the North Pole. During this journey, the duo pulled and paddled specially modified canoes over 600 miles of shifting sea ice and open ocean. Eric’s other expeditions include a 700-mile dog sled journey through northern Ontario, a six week dog sled journey in the barren lands of the Canadian Arctic, several training trips to Hudson Bay and countless dog sled races. He has also summited Mt. McKinley, ridden his bike across the United States, been a back country ranger in Alaska, a white water canoe guide in Colorado and wilderness trip leader in Hawaii.

In 2008, Eric was elected as one of Outside Magazine’s Eco All Stars. He was also inducted as a member of the prestigious Explorer’s Club based in New York City. A gifted communicator, Eric travels extensively giving motivational and educational lectures to schools, universities, non profit organizations and corporate groups.

Currently, Eric is planning and preparing for the Save the Poles expedition. Slated to begin in November 2009, Eric and his team members will travel to the North Pole, South Pole and the summit of Everest all in one year. The ‘Save the Poles’ expedition will journey to these last frozen places in attempt to tell their amazing story while promoting clean energy solutions to the problem of Climate Change.

Eric lives in Grand Marais, Minnesota where he is busy training and planning.

Eric Larsen Explorer

Eric Larsen YouTube

In 2009, renowned Arctic Explorer Eric Larsen will begin an unprecedented journey to the top, bottom and roof of the world. During a continuous 365-day period, Larsen will mount major unsupported expeditions to the North and South Poles and an expedition to the summit of Mt. Everest. This feat has never been completed in one year. To date, only 15 people (no Americans) in history have been to all three ‘poles.’ The expedition’s objectives are:

• Complete the first-ever expedition to Mt. Everest, the North Pole and South Pole in a continuous 365-day period.
• Promote clean energy solutions, advocate strategies for reducing carbon emissions post Kyoto 2012 and collect relevant scientific data.
• Produce a documentary film, book and educational CD-ROM that focuses on global warming, teamwork and the spirit of adventure.
• Develop a post expedition multi-media lecture series.

Get Involved – click here

Join me to learn more about Eric Larsen and his upcoming adventures in the Buried Logic Podcast

Contact Us at Buried Logic

Brian Brawdy

Michael Mauro

Technically, forbidden trees or dwindling trees, either way you look at it, we were evicted and subsequently began to figure on our own feet. From that point forward, our brains and minds reasoned on the run. We think at our best when our feet and hands get dirty.

“What other animal retires?” Michael Roberts is quoted on CNN. “If a lion retires today, tomorrow morning he becomes his brother’s breakfast.”

DNA is designed for deployment and discovery.

Exploration is just another word for Evolution.

Do you find it at all interesting that the first two pages of a Google search for Dwindling Habitats contained references to Rhinos, Polar Bears, Grizzly Bears, Bats, Scrub Jays, Tigers, Lions, Mountain Lions, Frogs, Owls, Grouse and even mice, yet no mentions of humans losing their habitat; not a single reference.

The habitats, jungles, forests, savannahs, mountains, the dynamic circumstances that our distant cousins faced, the natural surroundings that forged who we are, are dwindling fast. No longer do we search for food under the constant threat of becoming food. Instead of hunting for dinner we head to the grocery store, we needn’t chop wood because we have electric heat, why bother walking into a pharmacist’s counter to get your prescription medications for high blood pressure and cholesterol when you can just sit and hit the drive-up window? Finding water is easy, we just turn on the faucet!

The ubiquitous challenge and constant change that crafted us, one step at a time, is replaced with the status quo of comfort zones and its contraptions of convenience. We no longer scamper and scavenge and have long since forgotten how to fend for ourselves, in the wilderness abroad or within our very own minds. Our innate abilities to rally against unimaginable odds, lay dormant, withered and weakened. Without jungles to negotiate, hungry predators to protect against, mountains to climb and rivers to cross, our body and mind is slowly changing, atrophying actually.

We are at an evolutionary junction and it is up to each of us, individually, to choose our path through the fork in the road.

In the challenges that currently face us all, our best bet is to fall back on our inner-ability to struggle, survive and thrive. Our modern day  jungles, and the predators that prowell them, are made of sidewalks, business suits, briefcases and congressional bills. These forests are full of those prowling for prey.

A friend on FaceBook yesterday reminded me of the quote. “It is the North Wind that made the Vikings.” It instantly made me think of Frederick Douglas, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress” and most certainly of John Page’s question to Thomas Jefferson at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. “Do you not think an Angel rides in the Whirlwind and directs this Storm?”

Thankfully, the skills and logic needed to survive and thrive are buried within each of us; they’ve been there since we started The Walk.

You’ve done it.

We are all guilty of it.

But why do we walk in circles when we are lost?

A great study, “Walking Straight into Circles” was reported on today in Current Biology and expanded upon in ScienceNOW with the article “Why we Walk in Circles.”

Seems when we are lost, and have no visual clue to use for course correction (Sun, Moon), our brain works hard to make sense of where we are headed. Problem is, without a visual endpoint, we tend to meander. Once we start down this slippery slope, our brain repeats tiny mistakes in direction and continually repeats these directional miscues bringing us right back where we started.

I remember once being told, perhaps by Tony Robbins, that a plane “on course” to Hawaii is of course 98% of the time and the pilot redirects the plane in tiny maneuvers to keep it going straight.

Now, it’s easy to throw in some crappy little quote here on “The need for a goal in life” and I suspect some reading this post will have already circled around to that conclusion. Oh, well.

I suggest another interpretation, a bit more biologically straight forward. When we walked out of Africa, or out of Eden, we followed the Sun. From the earliest hints of morning rising, we searched onward and used every last bit of available sunlight to highlight our steps.

Like Buried Logic, our need to follow the sun for direction is deeply embedded into our biology. Early on in human history, we walked where the light was.

Exercise is exercise; a total body experience. No “mind-body conundrum.”

Challenging yourself to push into the unknown, exploring and exercising all with the tangential goal of increasing your gray matter, is finally gaining a growing acceptance in the medical community.

Now in a report featured on CNN, scientists believe that Cholesterol levels are tied to increased risk for dementia. The final quote of the report is the most tell-tale.

“What’s good for your heart is good for your brain,” said Rachel Whitmer, research scientist at Kaiser Permanente and senior author of the study. “That really captures all the timely messages about dementia science.”

The Rally, the nation’s largest RV rally, is rolling out two eco-focused initiatives for 2009 in Albuquerque, N.M., providing RVers the opportunity to celebrate and explore RV travel and “go green” as they visit the Southwest.

New to this year’s event, attendees will be able to tune into “Reality RV” to watch and learn as Brian Brawdy, a well-known spokesman for eco-awareness, and his co-pilot live in his biodiesel-powered Lance Model 1181 camper on The Rally grounds. A former New York police investigator, Brawdy now travels North America full time inspiring individuals to take a proactive role in their lives and the environment. He will be challenged to show how traveling by RV conserves many resources. Cameras installed in his rig will frequently monitor and broadcast Brawdy’s quest on a large outdoor screen.

Read the entire article and learn more about the ‘Going Green’ contest from RV Business

For me, AWE is both a word and an acronym. Adventure and Wilderness Exploration are not only innate human characteristics latent in each of us, they are also sure fire ways of reconnecting with the sense of natural awe brought on by time in the wilderness, any wilderness. Squashing the two greatest misnomers about adventure and wilderness exploration is the key to reuniting with that sense of fascination and reverential wonder that sits within us.

Misnomer # 1.

Adventure has to be extreme, death defying, totally overwhelming both physically and mentally.

Perhaps because of the heroic stories of Sir Ernest Shackleton in Antarctica, Lewis and Clarke pushing to the Pacific Ocean, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s ascent of Mount Everest, Neil Armstrong’s walk on the surface of the Moon or Les Stroud surviving in every region and season on our planet, regardless, somewhere we grew to believe that adventure meant risking your life in the process. Why not leave that stuff for the adventure racers? Truth is, adventure has little to do with life-threatening acrobatics. Real adventure is about finding new places to explore, about pushing through the next horizon and cultivating a personal understanding of yourself, your own abilities and the lessons of the wilderness at hand. In the end, adventure needn’t be extreme. It just needs to be yours.

Misnomer # 2.

There are few, if any, wild places left to explore on our planet. Humans have navigated and charted nearly every square mile of the globe.

The “been there, done that” is one of the most curious attitudes about adventure and wilderness exploration. What does it matter if one or many have come before you? That yours is not the first set of eyes nor the first pair of feet to survey a wild place, who cares? If it is a first for you, that’s all that counts. Adventure is a personal pursuit, not to be plagiarized from another’s exploration because they beat you there. If it is new to you, it is an adventure, and when it is yours, it’s the only one that matters.