"Nothing is impossible if you have already realized it in your mind”. This is the sentence that attracted me to his internet site. This and the pure nature of his gaze.
It is reductive to describe this man that journalistically speaking is an “extreme desert explorer”. It is very difficult to have the opportunity to interview him because he is very selective, and therefore I begin thanking him, his wife and Press Agent Krista Corso for agreeing to speak with me.
When you read this interview, it will be May and the person writing it will be in Jerusalem – Gaza – Sinai (540 km), having gone there for love to fill the emptiness of peoples’ souls and will shout, that in the name of God, we do not kill, but we love.
Max Calderan is a unique man who stays alone in the summer in the desert, without a doctor or assistance, non-stop, sleeping with micro sleep cycles that last 7 minutes.
Science does not yet know how to explain the reason that he is able to survive exposed to these inhumane conditions. These are his four world records: Qatar 202km in 38 horus – 45 degrees: Oman 437 km in 90 hours – 42 degrees; Oman 198 km in 49 hours – 58 degrees: Oman 360 km in 75 hours – 52 degrees. And here we are today, at the race of Love in Gaza and then, in 2010 at the most extreme challenge: the crossing of the Empty Quarter in Saudi Arabia, 1400 kilometres of firey desert...Max surprises me with another of his phrases that make you think: “The desert does not change, but it makes who we are in reality emerge”.
When did you first fall in love with the desert?
7 years ago. Looking through an encylopedia I was struck by the image of a beduin and a camel with the caption “desert of the Empty Quarter, Saudi Arabia”. I saw myself in that beduin and I made a plan and wrote above the image: 2010 Arab desert. Then I went to my mother and I said “Your son will be more or less 40 years old and he will be the first man to cross the unexplored desert”.
Therefore, can you say that you are carrying out your childhood dreams?
I think that each of us can obtain what we want if we want it. Sometimes you hear people say that "It is not possible to do this thing". This concept does not exist. It is not possible to not succeed if you want to in a visceral, almost spiritual way. If you want that thing, you see your dream realized, you visualize it intensely and nothing is impossible. It is enough to know how to eliminate bad thoughts and bad company. If at the end, you can't do it, nothing is lost, it means that you are nevertheless a human being capable of dreaming and if you are capable of dreaming, it means that you are alive.
Tell us a little about your inner strength and how you technically survive in the desert in such extreme conditions?
First I would like to say that I am not an extraordinary person. I am completely normal. My electroencefalogram, my electrocardiogram, my blood tests, etc, are in line with those of any sedentary person of my age. Even if my electrocardiogram shows a heart that is like that of an 18 year old, there is no sign of the typical enlargement of an athelete. You should not be surprised by what I do. Rather, what surprises me is that other people are not able to do the same. They do not do it not because they are not capable, but becasue they do not know the strength that they have inside. A strength that is obscured and that permits anybody to do great things.
Many people ask me: how do you survive, how do you work out, what do you eat in the desert, etc. I don’t have any secrets or things to tell. I do not condition myself. I do not get distracted by that which imposes limits on us. I will explain: if we read than a man dies in the desert with 58 degree heat, then it is easy for him to die, but if we have the strength to get rid of this limit, this does not happen. Everyone can do it and not die without eating, without sleeping without stoping, without gps, without satellites, etc. We are much greater than what people would like us to believe.
How did you manage to discover these capabilities?
I have never meditated, or done training, or yoga, even though I know that these are very important and functional for some people. Personally I am convinced that applying an external method functions, but does not belong to us and is therefore contaminated in some way. If we want to discover something about the world, we do not have to point the telescope towards the sky, but we can turn it towards ourselves and look within to find our own strength.
The desert therefore helps us to discover who we are?
The biggest desert is not to be found in kilometres of sand, but it is here, in civilization. The worst snake is not hidden under a rock, but sits next to us in the office where we work. The most dangerous animals are in the cities. The greatest danger is not hidden in 1000 kilometres of sand, but in the station in Milan at midnight.
It is important that in everything, there is a meeting of souls. This is what helps us to discover who we are, the true positive conditioning that must guide us. My strength comes from this place, in the life of everyday.
No alibis or compromises and even the person who is at my side, for example, is not a conditioned soul.
In the desert I am a superman only because in real life I have this great strength that makes me filled with love. A Love with a capital L, not made of “what I lack” but of the belief that there is something bigger, valid values. To have a woman by my side who is not only a person who irons your shirt or is half-dressed on television, but instead represents your larger goal: a couple united against any limitation.
In 4 world records of solitude you will have had dramatic or cathartic moments ...
I can tell you by only making you visualize something. Let’s imagine an afternoon in the middle of August on the beach. We take away all of the umbresllas and the people. We look at the sand that does not end in the sea, but continues as far as the eye can see. 58 degrees, the feeling of being closed in a car without air conditioning. You would like to roll down the window but you cannot, you would like to escape, but you cannot.... You check your water bottle and you realize that you are out of water. You look around, there isn’t anybody there... That is the most dramatic moment, which for me is the greatest opportunity that God can give me. It is as if he were saying to me: “Wake up, you can change your limits, you know that you are bigger than this!”
It is in the moment of drama that you recognize the strengh of souls; in those moments you are not alone. I have the soul of my wife with me who says “you can do it”, a strength that is double, not like two bodies, but like two souls. The soul of my wife enters into me, as if I were wearing it, and it pushes me forward. Two united souls have an explosive strengh, the individualist man will never achieve what he wants.
But if instead you ask me to say what has been the worst moment I tell you only that it is the fear of not succeeding to communicate well to others what I want to say. This is more dramatic for me than being without water in the desert!
What is fear for you?
An instrument to control the masses. For me it does not exist. Fear conditions us, it stops us in so many things.
I was reading about your micro sleep cycles, how do you get such little sleep?
There is nothing extraordinary in this either. My micro sleep cyles go back to man’s origins. Cavemen, in fact, had to be alert if they did not want to be assaulted by prey and they slept this way. The trickery of sleep was born afterwards and came on by having to nourish ourselves with starches, which first did not exist. In reality, the canonical eight hours of sleep are not necessary. It is the stress of life today that makes us sleep a lot.
What does it feel like to be alone in the desert?
There is always something bigger that keeps us company. We are never truly alone. There is alway something greater that keeps us compnay and with which, if you want, you can speak. The souls of people who you love are there with you: you speak with them, you speak with Jesus.
Patty Pravo who is passionate about the deserts and visits them asked me an extaordinary question about this. She asked me: “Max, how do you find the strength to leave the desert”. This is the crux of the discussion: from the desert it is difficult to find the strength to leave. You feel so well that you not only don’t want to leave but you want to bring it with you, away from the chaos, to the people that you love.
But what smells do you smell?
The smells in the desert are fascinating. The heat, for example, has a smell that can qualify as a liquid smell that envelops you and permeates your pours dilating them and entering into your body. It is an alive smell of heat, full of energy. You feel the beating of your heart because you aren’t distracted by external sounds. You hear your blood flow through your veins, you hear your your breath and in the end you discover that absolute silence does not exist because there is always a sound in the background, which is yourself and your living soul. Animals that you meet in the desert, like the scorpion, the snake, or others are one with the universe, a splendid gift from God that we have almost completely destroyed.
Tell us about your trip in May of 2009?
It is a race that is a little different than the others. It is the crossing of the human soul, it is the search to fill the desert with all of the world’s love. Today we no longer say, I love you. We do not listen to our elders, who are our memory. We reflect: this is a true desert, the desert of the soul that should be filled every day with small gestures. I am going to the Holy Land to repropose what we all must do in our everyday lives.
After "the strength inside", you are writing another book. What will it be about?
It will be about this trip to the Holy Land and my meeing, in the desert, with Jesus. We will meet like old friends. He will tell me about the world 2000 years ago and I will tell him about the world today. In the end, he will get very angry when he learns how he and his work are used to delude people and to make a profit.
A banal, but a necessary question. Are you scared of death?
No, because if you do not submit to it, but you command it, it brings you to life.
In your training, you go to Friuli, Tuscany and the Arab peninsula. You pass through Friuli, where you are from, to the Arab peninsula, this much we understand, but why train in Tuscany?
To gather emotions and then, because even if it is absurd, in Tuscany if we take away the greenery, the hills and the vines and we leave stones, and its ascents and descents, we have the desert. Contrary to what people believe, the desert is not only a yellow ocra strip on the horizon, but a continual succession of climbs and descents and it is not only sand, but is also stone.
But who really is Max Calderan?
A normal person who, like everyone of us, leaves his mark. I always go alone in search for good, not looking for the spiritual, but begining with the spiritual. I do not want to change the world, but make people understnad that the body and the spirit, in each one of us, exist as one with an extraordinary force.