Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [157]
That night we celebrated with everyone aboard the Orlova. I had swum the first Antarctic mile—a distance of 1.06 miles, in fact—in thirty-two-degree water in twenty-five minutes. I had been able to do what had seemed impossible because I’d had a crew who believed in me and in what we as human beings were capable of. It was a great dream, swimming to Antarctica.
Afterword
When we sailed into Ushuaia harbor, Dan Cohen and I were standing on the bow of the Orlova, watching the Andes Mountains that embraced the city become steeper as the city grew larger and the gap between the sea and land diminished. Off to the right of the Orlova, we saw an Argentine coast guard cutter racing toward us, and it pulled up alongside us. Eight or nine men in uniform moved to the ship’s stern. The men onboard jumped up and down, waved, and cheered. It took me a few minutes to realize what they were doing. Someone blew the cutter’s horn three times. Dan and I waved and applauded them. I wondered how they had known about the swim, and then I remembered that I had seen the bright red Argentine navy ship, the Antarctica, in the Gerlache Strait. When I completed the swim in Neko Harbor, Susan Adie had radioed the other ships in the area, including the Antarctica, to let them know about our success. The navy must have called the coast guard, who in turn escorted us all the way to the docks, giving us a hero’s welcome.
For the next month few people knew about the swim, but when the story came out in The New Yorker and on 60 Minutes II and I was invited on the David Letterman show, I heard from friends and family I hadn’t heard from in years.
I gave a lecture to a group of elementary and high school teenagers in Callaway, Nebraska, and was asked countless questions about the Antarctica swim and my other swims before it. One of the questions that made me pause was from a seven-year-old boy. He asked, “If you had a goal and worked very very hard toward it, but you didn’t accomplish it, would you still be happy?” I wondered what kind of goal a seven-year-old could have worked so hard toward and not achieved, and how such a young boy could have such a profound question.
I answered him as best I could: “I would have been happy that I tried to reach my goal, but if I didn’t succeed, I would want to go back and figure out what I thought I needed to do to accomplish it, and then try again.”
He smiled and nodded; he appeared to understand so much beyond his years. I still wonder about him and if what I told him was helpful. One friend said I should have told him to reevaluate his goals and to lower the bar if the goal was too high. I asked myself if I would follow that advice, and I decided that’s not the way I do things. I don’t lower the bar. Maybe it’s because the bar’s not high enough or maybe it’s because I work toward goals in reachable steps. The swim to Antarctica was the culmination of thirty years of swimming and two years of complete focus on one big goal. Achieving it was satisfying, and I know that that success will now allow me to do something more. It may be in swimming or another adventure—I don’t know yet. I do know that the nerves in my fingers, toes, and skin are regrowing, and I’m gradually getting the sensation back; it will just take time for my body to fully recover. Until then I’ll be thinking about what’s next, and beginning to work toward it.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2004 by Lynne Cox
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
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