TED Talk To the South Pole and back — the hardest 105 days of my life Speaker: Ben Saunders 第四课
On the way back down to the coast, our crampons —
they're the spikes on our boots that we have for traveling over this blue ice on the glacier — broke on the top of the Beardmore.
We still had 100 miles to go downhill on very slippery rock-hard blue ice.
They needed repairing almost every hour.
To give you an idea of scale, this is looking down towards the mouth of the Beardmore Glacier.
You could fit the entirety of Manhattan in the gap on the horizon. 【跟读】
That's 20 miles between Mount Hope and Mount Kiffin.
I've never felt as small as I did in Antarctica. 【跟读】
When we got down to the mouth of the glacier, we found fresh snow had obscured the dozens of deep crevasses.
One of Shackleton's men described crossing this sort of terrain as like walking over the glass roof of a railway station.
We fell through more times than I can remember, usually just putting a ski or a boot through the snow.
Occasionally we went in all the way up to our armpits, but thankfully never deeper than that.
【选择】-What record did Saunders and his partners break? -They made the longest ever polar journey on foot.
【选择】-Why did the fresh snow on the Beardmore Glacier make their journey even more dangerous? -It caused the crevasses to hidden.
And less than five weeks ago, after 105 days, we crossed this oddly inauspicious finish line, the coast of Ross Island on the New Zealand side of Antarctica. 【词义】inauspicious 不吉的，恶运的=its future success is unlikely
You can see the ice in the foreground and the sort of rubbly rock behind that.
Behind us lay an unbroken ski trail of nearly 1,800 miles.
We'd made the longest ever polar journey on foot, something I'd been dreaming of doing for a decade.
And looking back, I still stand by all the things I've been saying for years about the importance of goals and determination and self-belief,
but I'll also admit that I hadn't given much thought to what happens when you reach the all-consuming goal that you've dedicated most of your adult life to, and the reality is that I'm still figuring that bit out. 【填空】
As I said, there are very few superficial signs that I've been away.
I've put on 30 pounds. I've got some very faint, probably covered in makeup now, frostbite scars.
【选择】-How was Saunders's body affected by his journey? -Frostbite left him with a couple of scars on his face.
I've got one on my nose, one on each cheek, from where the goggles are, but inside I am a very different person indeed.
If I'm honest, Antarctica challenged me and humbled me so deeply that I'm not sure I'll ever be able to put it into words.
I'm still struggling to piece together my thoughts. 【跟读】
That I'm standing here telling this story is proof that we all can accomplish great things, through ambition, through passion, through sheer stubbornness, by refusing to quit,
that if you dream something hard enough, as Sting said, it does indeed come to pass.
【跟读】No one had ever accomplished the journey Saunders and his partner were attempting.
But I'm also standing here saying, you know what, that cliche about the journey being more important than the destination?
【词义】cliche = overused 陈词滥调
There's something in that.
The closer I got to my finish line, that rubbly, rocky coast of Ross Island, the more I started to realize that the biggest lesson that this very long, very hard walk might be teaching me is that happiness is not a finish line,
that for us humans, the perfection that so many of us seem to dream of might not ever be truly attainable,
and that if we can't feel content here, today, now, on our journeys amidst the mess and the striving that we all inhabit,
the open loops, the half-finished to-do lists, the could-do-better-next-times, then we might never feel it.
That I'm standing here telling this story is proof that we all can accomplish great things, through ambition, through passion, through sheer stubbornness, by refusing to quit,
that if you dream something hard enough, as Sting said, it does indeed come to pass.
【跟读】No one had ever accomplished the journey Saunders and his partner were attempting.
But I'm also standing here saying, you know what, that cliche about the journey being more important than the destination?
【词义】cliche = overused 陈词滥调
There's something in that.
The closer I got to my finish line, that rubbly, rocky coast of Ross Island,
the more I started to realize that the biggest lesson that this very long, very hard walk might be teaching me is that happiness is not a finish line, that for us humans,
the perfection that so many of us seem to dream of might not ever be truly attainable, and that if we can't feel content here, today,
now, on our journeys amidst the mess and the striving that we all inhabit, the open loops,
the half-finished to-do lists, the could-do-better-next-times, then we might never feel it.
A lot of people have asked me, what next?
Right now, I am very happy just recovering and in front of hotel buffets.
But as Bob Hope put it, I feel very humble, but I think I have the strength of character to fight it.
Thank you.
【选择】-What does Saunders believe deeply? -Goals, determination adn self-belief are important.