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I N S I D E T H E N OT E B O O K VO L . X X I N O. X X I S E P T E M B E R 2 1 , 2 0 1 5 28 I n a September National Geographic article, climber Mark Jenkins tells how he and his team tried, and only barely failed, to summit Hkakabo Razi (KA-kuh-bo RAH-zee) in Myanmar. ey wanted both to prove it is the highest peak in Southeast Asia by being the fi rst to take a GPS measurement at the summit and to hike in a place that is truly remote. Hkakabo Razi took weeks of walking just to reach. e tale of their quest brought to mind the process of a startup company, or any creative endeavor for that matter. e team fi rst decided on the tar- get mountain, located in the jungles of northern Myanmar on the border of Tibet, just beyond the eastern edge of the Himalayas. ey prepared for the arduous climb ahead, planning routes, amassing supplies and fi nding porters to help carry gear. After a one-month trek "through dense jungle riven with plunging forges and inhabited by venomous snakes," they reached the mountain, Jenkins wrote. It was there that he realized that what he had wished for — remoteness — "was the very thing that threatened our expedition from the beginning." Describing the diffi cult climb, Jenkins talked about two of his climbing partners, Cory Richards and Renan Ozturk: " e wind slams into me, and I desperately grip my ice axes to keep from being ripped off the mountain face…Beneath my crampons is a 5,000-foot drop…I am roped to my two companions, with nothing attaching us to the moun- tain. A fall here would send all three of us plummeting to our death…We are too far apart to talk. We just stand there, together but alone…" Finally, after 39 days of getting to the mountain and clawing their way up, the team fi gured it was ready to reach the summit. It was not to be. e mountain's deep notches would have required another day of climbing, which at that point meant a night of clinging to the side of the mountain in the wind and risking freezing to death. "Nothing is more damning in the mountains than hubris, yet hubris is fundamental to climbing mountains," Jenkins wrote. So is deep trust in your partners, as he described a typical moment of climbing: "Together we traverse the fi rst of a series of large rock spires…If one of us were to slip off the lance-like ridge, the only way to save his life would be for the next climber on the rope to quickly throw himself off the opposite side, both men praying in the millisecond of potential oblivion that the rope isn't pulled taut over a knife- sharp rock and severed." As I read Jenkins' words, I thought of my own creative process when I write, and of the processes I'd heard from the many entrepreneurs I'd interviewed over my journalism career. His description of getting the right team together to identify and tackle a goal, decide how to get there and bring in expertise paralleled that of entrepreneurs and creators. So, too, did the setbacks, the stress and ten- sion of the climb, the arguments, the achievements, the tradeoff s and the ultimate results. e work as a team, yet the alone- ness of digging deep inside oneself for ideas in areas so remote you may not have known they were there, all ring true in the creative process. So, too, does that last desperate eff ort to achieve your goal even when you suspect you might not. And fi nally the realization that, regardless of the outcome, all you want to do is get out alive. Tapping creativity can be like climbing a mountain L V , Mainebiz senior writer, can be reached at @ . and @ LV . 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Idexx Laboratories MaineGeneral Health Maine Machine Products Norway Savings Bank Occupational Medical Consulting, LLC Platinum Level A fall here would A fall here would A fall here would A fall here would A fall here would A fall here would A fall here would A fall here would A fall here would send all three of us send all three of us send all three of us send all three of us send all three of us send all three of us send all three of us send all three of us send all three of us send all three of us send all three of us send all three of us send all three of us plummeting to our death ... We are too far apart to talk. We just stand there, together but alone. — Climber Mark Jenkins

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