This weekend I was super happy to have my brother John visiting from Chicago.  In addition to being my older brother and one of the coolest guys I know, John happens to be an incredibly accomplished polar explorer.  He was here to give a talk about his life and recently successful Victorinox North Pole ’09 trip at Boulder’s own Neptune Mountaineering.  On the North Pole ’09 trip John and his expedition partner Tyler Fish became the first Americans to ski, unsupported and unresupplied, from Canada to the North Pole.  This trip has been called the “hardest trek on the planet,” and forced John and Tyler to ski for just under 500 miles (55 days), lugging all of their gear (300 pounds each at the trip’s start) on sleds behind them.  Temperatures often dipped into the -50 F range.  The guys slept 3 hours in the last 3 days of travel. When my family and I met them a few days later at Gardamoen Airport in Oslo, Norway, they were gaunt and delirious, but happy with their success.  Truly an amazing accomplishment.

John Huston hauls his sleds across the Arctic sea ice. 

The happy and tired travelers at their goal: the North Pole.

It seems like a crazy trip, but John and Tyler weren’t driven by the egotism that sometimes pushes people to bag peaks and attempt death-defying feats of endurance.  Rather, their trip was guided by the principles they’ve lived by for a long time: “Optimism, Humility, and Responsible Action.” John and Tyler skied north to prove the power of the human spirit to themselves and those watching them, to test their mental and physical limits in one of the world’s most forbidding places, and to raise awareness about the destruction that humankind is reaping to the earth, a destruction most evident in the dramatic melting of the polar ice caps.  A few years from now, as the arctic sea ice continues to recede, it will probably become impossible to recreate John and Tyler’s trip.  In our lifetimes someone will probably become the first American to swim to the North Pole.  John and Tyler’s trip was thus a wake-up call of sorts, a challenge to all of us to engage with the values they represent.

On Saturday I got the chance to go up to Brainard Lake and do some ski touring with John, Gary Neptune, and Gary’s wife Bibi. Gary is a legend in the global mountaineering community and a pillar of our local community here in Boulder. And he’s one of the most down-to-earth and welcoming people I’ve met in a long time. For all of his accomplishments and feats of determination, he’s just another guy out for a ski on a nice Saturday in October.  Just another business owner in Boulder, Colorado. And, as I found out, just another guy who lives a couple of doors down from me in south Boulder.  Indeed, like my brother, Gary Neptune personifies the principles of “Optimism, Humility, and Responsible Action.” 

Bibi Neptune, Gary Neptune, and my brother John Huston. Left Hand Reservoir, Indian Peaks Wilderness.

I write today not really to talk about business or learning or technology like I usually do, but to ponder life for a few minutes.  Not all of us will undertake unheard of feats of adventure like those achieved by my brother John or Gary Neptune.  But, everyday we each embark on our own harrowing life adventures in some way.  As an entrepreneur and a young person trying to make it in the world I often feel as though I’m engaging with life “unsupported and unresupplied,” standing in some barren landscape, trying to chart my course forward.  I think I have a great deal to learn from John and Gary if I embrace the Optimism, Humility, and Responsible Action that they represent.

In an almost eerie coincidence I sat in on an online seminar on eduFire.com last Wednesday, the day John arrived in Boulder.  I’ve written a fair amount about the future of online learning and eduFire is definitely at the forefront of this movement. Wednesday’s seminar was led by famed entrepreneur Ben Casnocha and eduFire CEO Jon Bischke. Ben started off the meeting by saying that he considers entrepreneurship to be a lifestyle.  Sure, it often has to do with business, but, in Ben’s mind, entrepreneurship is really a set of values, a perspective on life itself. And the five qualities that Ben identified as the core of this perspective are optimism, persistence, self-improvement, side projects (aka curiosity), and action. Shades of North Pole ’09, no?  Those qualities that helped my brother safely complete a ski trek that no American had ever before finished are the same ones that helped Ben Casnocha become a wildly successful entrepreneur as a teenager. The same principles that guided Gary Neptune up Everest and Ama Dablam are the ones that can sustain me everyday as I arrive at the mindfish office and fire up my computer. In short, we are all explorers in our own ways. All of our lives are dramatic first ascents and unprecedented feats of determination and endurance. And, if our hearts and minds are in the right place – fired with optimism, tempered with humility, and driven to right action – we all have the chance to succeed on the highest level.