TA
Latitude:53.15319
Longitude:-62.59439
GPS location Date/Time:07/22/2012 19:35:28 NDT
Message:TA’s location on her Churchill River (Labrador) Canoe Expedition.
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TA
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TA
Latitude:53.20555
Longitude:-63.17749
GPS location Date/Time:07/21/2012 16:43:00 NDT
Message:TA’s location on her Churchill River (Labrador) Canoe Expedition.
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TA
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TA
Latitude:53.42689
Longitude:-63.63092
GPS location Date/Time:07/20/2012 16:59:40 NDT
Message:TA’s location on her Churchill River (Labrador) Canoe Expedition.
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After a two hour ferry ride, about 100 km of pavement and 500 km of gravel highway, we arrived in Goose Bay, Labrador this evening. As the backseat rider I read seven magazines and my entire 321 page book so I don’t have any reading material left for the Churchill River. The new gravel highway that connects the South Coast of Labrador is a memorable drive. Besides still feeling like I’m rattled from 500 km of pot holes, I cherish the intense sensation of wilderness and isolation that was apparent today. I also spotted a fox running along the road and two Minke whales along the coast. Road trips just spawn the desire to return for deeper and more intimate exploration. We head up to Churchill Falls in the morning and hope to be paddling around noon. Catch you next from the banks of the Churchill River.
Sent from my iPod
The expedition team had a good day of driving. 12 hours of driving have landed us in St. Barbe with a ferry across the Labrador Straits in the morning. I’m looking forward to driving the new road all the way through to Goose Bay. The Churchill River awaits.
Sent from my iPod
Life is a series of summits and setbacks. The way we deal with both is equally important because we can’t have one with the other.
-TA Loeffler 🙂
Everything in life is a risk of some sort. Many climbers have been seriously hurt or killed driving home from the hills. Climbing holds can break unexpectedly, but lightning also strikes. Most people exist so swaddled against danger, measuring out their lives with coffee spoons that those who reckon by a different calculation of risk and reward appear insane. Yet to survive a perilous situation is to love life more than the average person can imagine.
-Michael J. Ybarra
A week ago I was flying to Edmonton to mourn the loss of my grandmother and now, seven days later, I am propped up in my chair with ice on my right knee. In less than a blink of time, I am without Oma and unable to go on my George River expedition. This day, rather than sitting quietly in my writing chair, I was supposed to be running around like a headless chicken attending to all the last minute details of launching an expedition. There was food to pack, gear to sort, a home life to put to bed, and three weeks of wilderness journey to experience, following in Mina’s footsteps and paddle strokes.
Where life is supposed to lead and where it does lead are often two different destinations. Oma so often said, “Whatever comes, comes.” So despite my wanting to rant and rail about what was supposed to be happening today, I am trying my best to take her advice and settle into wherever this change of plans leads.
My family has a cottage on Lac St. Anne. I grew up there every weekend and four weeks a summer. The small summer village of Ross Haven provided the rich soil for growing an outdoor explorer. I climbed trees, swam in the lake, chased birds, and generally played outdoors from dawn to dusk. Wild raucous laughter and games of chase abounded. On our birthdays, and other random occasions, we were tossed in the lake.
Tuesday evening after a wonderful meal of one of Oma’s favourites, schnitzel and potato salad, I decided to throw Xander into the newly filled backyard pool. Being new to the family tradition, he came up to the surface a bit upset and my cousin Doug, to help him feel better-picked me up and tossed me in too!
It had been about 30 years since I was last tossed into a body of water. Everyone laughed deeply and tears fell from the joy of the moment instead of the depth of our grief. Then, Rayne wanted me to toss her in so I ran and caught her and she joined into the wet and wild fraternity. Then I tried to toss Doug in and the rest, as they say is history. In the midst of a game of chase to try to land Xander in the pool once again (we had a gentle person’s agreement that I would just dip him in by the feet) that I hit a wet patch of grass, my foot twisted and I went down in a heap.
“Aunty’s down, ” came the cry. I stayed down because I knew by the sensation, that my knee was hurt. Badly. I hobbled up and we instantly aware of the pain at the side of my knee-I’d felt it before. Likely a meniscal tear or injury. Sigh. I had to leave for the airport shortly there after to fly home overnight. A doctor friend met me at home and said that it seemed like it was an injury that would require two to four weeks to heal at least…time will tell. That knee has been scoped once before and I hope it doesn’t need that depth of treatment.
It was tough breaking the news to my expedition team and I really hoped they would chose to continue on the trip without me. We’re meeting again today to decide. We might find a “knee injury” appropriate route to do somewhere else in the province…sigh. I was so looking forward to following Mina’s river and losing myself in the simple rhythm of expeditionary life. Marian had been working so hard while I was in Edmonton to get the canoe ready as were the rest of the team taking care of all of the last minute details. I feel so bad for all of them.
So instead of packing, I am writing. Instead of doing details, I’ll attend to work tasks that have been on the back burner. Instead of crying over what was supposed to be, I’m trying to open to whatever is coming my way. Sigh.
Miss you Oma.
In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing. ~Robert Ingersoll
TA with one of Oma’s Bouquets
Luther Burbank said that, “Flowers always make people better, happier and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the soul.” As I look and see the pink carnations here, I can’t help but think of Oma Frida as a beautiful flower who made everyone she met, a better person.
Her smile beamed like sunshine, her love of food legendary, and a hug from Oma made any ailment instantly better. In remembering our Oma, we chose the pink carnations because they were part of her wedding bouquet and she loved them so much.
The pink carnation is also the symbolic of a mother’s undying love and we all know how much Oma loved my dad and all her grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Oma was born in 1917 during World War I. This was the same year that both the electric drill and marshmallow fluff were invented. It’s hard to imagine all of the technological and world change that Oma witnessed in her life from the invention of the zipper to Velcro to I-phones, from early aviation to the space shuttle.
1917 was also the first year that Christmas lights were commercially available to light up our lives. Oma was one of the brightest lights in my life and I will see her sparkling in every Christmas light from now on.
Oma lived a hard life filled with the challenge of beginning over, and over, and over again. She was orphaned at the age of six and had to go live with a new family. She survived World War II but lost her home and all belongings.
Oma told me stories of throwing her body over my dad’s during bombing raids in the hope that he would survive. After Opa came home from the war, she and Opa immigrated to Canada. Oma began her life over again once more in a new country, spending her first year in indentured servitude on a Saskatchewan farm.
Settling in Good Soil, Saskatchewan, Oma trained and then worked as a nurse’s aide at the local hospital. Oma hated to see any person or any critter, suffer extending her care to patients both near and far. Always the trickster, I remember her telling me stories from the hospital including one time when she took an amputated limb down from the operating room to the kitchen for the soup pot. The cook, fortunately, turned her down.
Some years later, Oma moved to Edmonton and began working at the Misercordia Hospital. With other family members and friends from the Sudenland, she introduced us all to German food and culture and shared her love of sausages across multiple generations.
After two decades in Edmonton, Oma and Opa headed to the Okanagan Valley for their retirement. There, Oma reveled in her garden and often sent us boxes of fruit at harvest time. She and Opa spent days hiking in the surrounding mountains often searching for mushrooms and wild flowers.
Oma always had a delicious German feast ready for us when we came down from a big day of skiing at Silver Star. After Opa died, Oma moved back to Edmonton to be closer to family.
On many Mother’s Days, I had wonderful conversations on the phone with Oma. I would say how amazing it was to still have my Oma and she would always answer, “Whatever comes, comes!” I often asked, “Did you ever think you would live to be 91, 92, 93 or 94?” She answered, “Oh no, I thought I would be dead at 60 since everyone in my family died early.”
Always looking for wisdom, I would then ask, “What do you think the secret of your long life is?” She thought a moment and replied, “I walked everywhere. And I never overeat. I eat my veggies. And have some sweets every now and again. I never hit the bottle much.
Though schnapps are a good cure for an upset stomach and I take everything as it comes.” This was from my Oma would had been declaring to me since I was ten that she was dying, who could still out walk me, and who was famous for carrying heavy cement bags at the age of 70.
Despite all the hardships she’s faced, Oma was a delightful, generous, and loving person. Her voice brightened whenever I called her on the phone. When I visited in person, she would still grab my cheeks, pulling me forward to plant several kisses my forehead, and she would always tell me how much she loved me.
Oma’s spent the last sixteen years living without her dear husband with whom she shared life for over fifty years. If anyone in my life knows about starting again, starting over, picking up the pieces, and going forward, it was my Oma.
And although I am going to miss Oma each and every day, I am happy that she has been freed from her earthly bonds.
I like to picture Oma hiking freely through the hills surrounding Vernon with Opa and Dad at her side, yodeling every step of the way. And on one of my climbs, should I ever see an Edelweiss in a mountain meadow, I’ll know it is Oma winking at me and I’ll wink right back.
No one ever really dies as long as they took the time to leave us with fond memories.
~Chris Sorensen
All before my little room;
And in my flower-beds, I think,
Smile the carnation and the pink.
–Rupert Brooke
One of Oma’s favourite flowers was the carnation. She had pink carnations in her wedding bouquet.
Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.
~From a headstone in Ireland
Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.
~William Shakespeare
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
~Kahlil Gibran
Sadness flies on the wings of the morning and out of the heart of darkness comes the light.
~Jean Giraudoux
Expect the best, plan for the worst, and prepare to be surprised.
–Denis Waitley
The most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what’s in between, and they took great pleasure in doing just that.
–Norton Jester
We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.
–Aldo Leopold
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.
― Plato
Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
–Winston Churchill
If one’s dream should fall and break into a thousand pieces, never be afraid to pick one of those pieces up and begin again.
–Flavia Weedn
So…last night I finally finished unpacking from my Greenland expedition. It wasn’t my fault, really. You see, I came home to a canoe in the living room. And that canoe was really a bit too big for the living room so it blocked the hallway to the gear room and laundry room. So, given the choice of stepping over the canoe while carrying gear or leaving it on the couch, I chose the later. For about four weeks now. Until last night and realizing that we are on a four week countdown to our next adventure and thus needed to clear out the old gear to make space to stage the new. And I’d learned to gently move the bow of the canoe sideways by four inches which makes is possible to step beside instead of over. The canoe that is.
So, you probably wondering what these ordinarily sane people are doing with a 16.5 foot canoe in their 14 foot living room? Well, that’s an excellent question…you see, it started when Marian went for coffee with her work pals about 14 months ago. A simple cup of coffee led us to canoe school in Ontario with Paul, Joe, Lew, George and Mike and that wonderful ten days prompted an invitation to join Paul, Joe, Lew and George on the George, River that is.
During their schooling, most Newfoundlanders and Labradorians will have been assigned a book to read, “The Lure of the Labrador Wild.” This classic tells the story of Leonidas Hubbard’s attempt to travel the George River through Labrador and Quebec in 1903. As many will recall, it didn’t go so well and it frequently prompts Marian and I to say, “Remember Hubbard.” The long story short…he didn’t get enough local knowledge before setting out, the maps weren’t the greatest (or at all), and GPS wouldn’t be invented for another 80 years or so…so Leonidas and company headed up the Susan instead of the Nasapki, swamped their boats, lost bunches of food, found little wildlife to eat, and eventually Leonidas starved to death but the others got out alive to tell the tale.
And Mina Benson Hubbard, Leonidas’ wife didn’t appreciate how her husband was portrayed in Wallace’s book and the media, so she organized an expedition two years later in 1905 to complete her husband’s dream. And she’s been my hero since…and I’ve wanted to follow in her wake/paddle strokes/footsteps since first reading, “A Woman’s Way through Unknown Labrador” over twenty years ago. And (it’s the and paragraph) in four short weeks, we’ll begin driving across the island to begin our trip so I’d best get off my butt and start hacking away at the gigantic to do list…much more about the trip and Mina and company to follow in the coming weeks…welcome aboard another adventure awaits!
PS…The additional reasons for the canoe being in the living room will be revealed as well.
I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
–Michael Jordan
I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.
-Albert Einstein
It is very difficult to generalise. Everyone’s adventure is original.
–Bernard Pivot
Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.
–Ray Bradbury
My old grandmother always used to say, Summer friends will melt
away like summer snows, but winter friends are friends forever.”
― George R.R. Martin
Remember that the most difficult tasks are consummated not by a single burst of energy or effort, but by consistent application of the best you have within you.
–Og Mandino
Congratulations to the WOKies on our fourth anniversary of our summit of Kilimanjaro. See you literally or figuratively on “The Hill” tonight.
Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.
–Lance Armstrong
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
~Dalai Lama
By Michelle Osmond (MUN Today May 31, 2012)
“Imagine looking out at vistas of only white and blue with a horizon line that parts only these two colours and that you ski toward for days at a time.”
This is how Dr. TA Loeffler described her latest expedition on her blog. She left St. John’s on April 11 for Greenland. She and her three expedition mates then traversed 275 kilometres of unexplored Greenland by ski from the Brede Glacier to Gunnbjørn Fjeld, the Arctic’s highest peak at 3,694 metres.
The team summitted Gunnbjørn Fjeld on May 12, which took about six hours of climbing up and two and a half hours of skiing and climbing down.
Dr. Loeffler said she’s already brought this expedition into her classroom through stories, pictures and case studies.
“I am teaching outdoor recreation management in intersession and have been able to demonstrate several real world applications of the theories and models we are studying in the course,” she said. “I’ve also used it already in my introduction to outdoor education and recreation class as well as giving the students the opportunity to see how the skills they are learning in class can be used in longer and more challenging environments.”
The expedition was aptly named Go for Greenland and also involved seven Newfoundland schools as virtual expedition members. With the help of third-year physical education student Taylor Lynn Marsh, who helped design and implement the curriculum, Dr. Loeffler was able to get daily expedition dispatches and curriculum activities to students in Grades 4, 5 and 6 around St. John’s.
She used technology called a SPOT messenger that beamed out her location to her website each day with both longitude and latitude co-ordinates as well as flagging it on Google Maps. The students could also post comments and questions to the website which came to Dr. Loeffler on her satellite phone so she could answer them in almost real time.
“It was really rewarding to have the students follow so closely along and it was the highlight of our days to download their questions,” she noted.
This was Dr. Loeffler’s second summit success in a polar region in six months after she climbed Mount Vinson, the Antarctic’s highest peak in December.
“I hadn’t planned to do both peaks in six months but it was a thrill that it worked out that way,” she said. “This expedition also included an ice cap traverse on an un-skied route which was also a goal of mine.”
Dr. Loeffler’s next adventure, which will be closer to home, has a personal element.
“My next expedition is to the George River in Labrador and Quebec. Fulfilling a longtime dream, I will paddle a canoe and walk in the footsteps of Mina Hubbard, who did the George in 1905. She is one of my exploration heroes and has been the subject of some of my research.”
She’ll be joined by three other Memorial employees and two Memorial retirees from mid-July through early August.
An iceberg at the edge of the sea ice in Greenland. This berg was soon to be set free to float south and perhaps reach Newfoundland one day.
I delivered a polar bear this week. Albeit a relatively small one. Without much bite and with lots of soft fur to a Grade Four class at Bishop Abraham School in St. John’s. This group of explorers in training under the tutelage of Mrs. Courage, aptly named for her love of all subjects adventure, exploration, and Everest, asked for the polar bear. Turns out they are becoming quite fond of adopting polar animals and polar explorers. This class threw me a party when I returned from Mount Vinson and Antarctic, and they were once again eager to celebrate my Greenland expedition.
They listened to the audio updates each morning and send along some very good questions for Paul and I to address from the expedition. They loved hearing their school named and having their very own questions answered from Greenland. One of their favourite parts of the Go for Greenland curriculum was the “Did you Knows” about Greenland. I had decided to include those because that class had shared many “Did You Knows” about Antarctica with me during our first party together. I knew my outreach goal for the Greenland expedition had been met when the class teemed with more questions about my Greenland expedition and they paid rapt attention to the answers. The students showed me their art work on the classroom walls and I loved seeing their renditions of the white and blue world I had described to them.
At the end of our gathering most of the students hugged me good-bye and I left smiling from ear to ear toting two penguins, a rock, and an iceberg. Thanks again to all the teachers who had their students following along. It provided a new dimension to the expedition to be fielding questions from students in almost real time. Thanks as well again to Taylor Marsh for her excellent work on the school curriculum and expedition communications.
Whatever is a reality today, whatever you touch and believe in and that seems real for you today, is going to be – like the reality of yesterday – an illusion tomorrow.
–Luigi Pirandello
Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior’s world.
― Pema Chödrön
As long as our orientation is toward perfection or success, we will never
learn about unconditional friendship with ourselves, nor will we find
compassion.
― Pema Chödrön
Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
― Pema Chödrön
TA Loeffler's Adventures that Move 