The Long Walk
Many of us hold a fascination and appreciation for the epic expeditions of the past. People like Shackleton, Cook, McKenzie, Perry… These are names we associate with daring voyages into little known voids of geography. We admire them for their almost super-human perseverance and determination. Despite our knowledge of the danger, pain, loneliness and death that they faced, we envy them for having had the opportunities and the bravery to set out towards that blue horizon at the end of their worlds, step over that line, and continue into the gray vastness of the unknown, and back again. There is one thing that most of these undertakings had in common: The element of a deliberate expedition–the planning, the financing, the recruiting of a troop of willing co-travelers.
Not all expeditions of historic proportions and achievement, however, were born out of planning, and one of the most remarkable true-life stories of human travel falls in to this category. In 1941, a Polish man by the name of Slavomir Rawicz, along with 6 others, escaped from a Siberian prison labor camp in northeastern Russia and walked south. Equipped with only some furs, home-made moccasins, an axe, a knife and some bread, four of them managed to survive their extraordinary trek for over 3,000 miles south all the way to the safety of British-controlled India.
Their epic journey, covering almost a year, is exceptionally remarkable. They succeeded through determination, discipline and luck even though they made decisions that should have been fatal to them all. Perhaps adding to the intrigue of this feat is the fact that it was unplanned, an act not of deliberation, but of desperation. They were not seeking, they were fleeing, and this adds an intriguing element to this story that is not found in other epic journeys that we know of.
The story was published in 1956 and then re-released in 1997, in a book titled “The Long Walk.” There is some dispute over the authenticity of the story which is not surprising. It is hard to imagine the struggle they went through, and because they were fugitives in communist Russia, there is no other documentation of their journey other than the word of Rawicz. But, Rawicz did not seek out a channel to tell his story. He only reluctantly allowed it to be presented to the world 15 years after his escape.
The skeptics’ arguments seem to be rather week. There were certainly other undocumented escapes from Siberian gulags where millions of people were put into slave labor in the early and mid 20th century—some escapes would have been inevitable. Most of these other fugitives were probably either re-captured, or perished in the wilderness of empty Russia. But, some of them must have made it out to safety, against steep odds, and with more than a little luck. Many skeptics have attempted to prove the story untrue, and they have failed in their efforts. It is easy, after reading the account, to say “this can’t possibly have really happened. There’s no way they could have survived.” And, yet, we know that human beings have achieved feats like this in other more well-documented accounts. We know that truth is often stranger than fiction. Would we believe the story of Lewis and Clark if it were their word only? Would they have believed James Cook if he had stood up and claimed what he accomplished without the accompaniment of documentation? No, and yet, those feats were real.
I read the book in two days and I know I will always remember it. It is a phenomenal story.
