A POLAR BEAR STORY
… the expedition was slowing down. We were losing energy and motivation. We were exhausted.
As we sleep at night, a polar bear approaching the tent from the back side. We had a tripwire set up around the tent to warn us of unwelcomed visitors like this.
My partner, Børge is dead asleep. The bear had passed the tripwire without setting it off and got into my sled that was parked right behind the tent. He starts tearing the cover of the sled to get to the little bit of remaining food that I had. The sled is moving back and forth as he tears the cover off. The bear touches the tent with his backside and the moment he touched the tent, he sits on it… and he sits on my stomach.
We’ve got two millimetres of nylon in between me and the polar bear. He doesn’t know that he sits on my stomach and I can’t move. All I can move is my elbow and Børge is asleep. The bear eats my food and he’s sitting on my stomach.
I move my elbow and I say: “Børge! Børge, please wake up. There’s a bear in my sled.” He looks at me and he says: “What?! Why are you waking me up? The bear is in YOUR sled, not in mine.”
The moral of the story is this:
WHEN THE BEAR IS IN YOUR SLED, THE BEAR IS IN “YOUR SLED”.
It is your problem and not somebody else’s. Don’t let the bear eat all your food. Solve that problem on your own, so the other people on your team can rest. Because they are going to have to solve their own problems when the bear gets to their sleds and starts eating their food.
So, all that Børge does is he hands me the gun. I walk out of the tent and I shoot the bear. I didn’t kill him, because it was a special gun that only made a massive explosion of flame to scare him away. The bear shits everywhere and runs away.
