Big Dead Place. Nicholas Johnson

and not to speak to the employees on the base. I was in shock. Then he left. The New Zealand station manager told us not to worry and tried to excuse the American leader. It didn’t help. We knew from that moment it would be an unpleasant stay at McMurdo. For a few days we spent time with the Kiwis at Scott Base, helping them with their work and getting visitors from McMurdo. The American workers were horrified by the way we were treated, and when I asked them why they dared to visit us (it was forbidden) they told me they had broken every stupid rule on base, and they might as well break this one as well. I really felt good among the workers; they are normal people with the ability to work in extreme environments. Also I believe that a majority of these people want an adventure. That’s a similarity between me, as a polar expeditioner, and them.

      Around this time, we learned that one of our best friends had died on a platform in the Northern seas, and Rolf and I went into almost total breakdown. A Dutch cargo ship offered us a lift but NSF, wanting to make an example of us to other expeditioners, pressured the Dutch not to accommodate us, after which NSF offered us a flight to New Zealand for a fee of $50,000. I learned a lot about bureaucracy at the American station. It appeared that orders were coming from somewhere in the U.S. where they, as the author would probably express it, “sure as shit” don’t know what happens in far away Antarctica, making it impossible for “leaders” with National Geographic hats to make sensible decisions. I believe this system is crazy. That’s why I agreed to write the foreword for this book.

      After fighting blizzards, crevasses, extreme subzero temperatures, distance, and my own psyche, I remember when I told the expedition leader on the cruise ship that finally took us from Antarctica that “if Antarctica has an asshole, McMurdo is it!” Yes, I was angry. Not toward the workers, who are truly the reason why the stations continue to run, but toward the system of bureaucracy that serves no purpose but to treat everyone poorly. The author writes that “I have never heard one person say that the most difficult thing about Antarctica is working outside, or being cold… I have never heard of one returnee who finally quit because it’s the world’s highest, driest, coldest or whatever. People leave because of the bullshit.” After experiencing McMurdo for myself, and reading this book, I believe him.

      For people that wish to work or have worked in Antarctica, this book may be a bible. For other people it will be spectacular reading about how it can be working in the world’s last wilderness in good days and bad days. The author’s historical knowledge of Antarctica is very good; the book will introduce new readers to some of the well-known Antarctic expeditions, and will for those already familiar with Antarctic history consolidate some of the most obscure and interesting anecdotes. The author’s straightforward language and insights into human characteristics make this book unfit for the light-hearted. It will persuade the reader to think about the difference between sane and insane behavior from normal people doing normal jobs. It may make you angry, but it will certainly make you laugh. It will provoke NSF and other U.S. officials for sure. I believe they need it, and may even learn something from it.

      Eirik Sønneland

      July 2004

       Life at a remote station is life in a test tube; it is an environment in which men and their behavior can be subjected to searching scrutiny. I feel that observations which are made and lessons which are learnt have important implications for the more complicated urban environments in which most of us lead our daily lives.

      —Philip Law

      I’m more American than I am human.

      —David Nelson

       CHAPTER ONE

       FROZEN REALM OF MYSTERY

       … the general object of the expedition was a peaceful voyage, to explore and survey coasts, seas, and islands, and to make such investigations as might be found practicable in aid of science...

      —Charles Wilkes, 1845

      This is one of the “heights” of a polar voyage, when all one’s comrades are one’s bosom friends, and when every single experience is viewed through rose-coloured spectacles.

      —Raymond Priestly

      I STEPPED FROM MY ROOM in the upper hallway of Dorm 202 to go for a piss down the hall. It was the middle of the afternoon. A man lay on his back in the middle of the hallway. He was barefoot and wearing no shirt. I assumed he was drunk. He too must have worked nightshift. His eyes were open. As I neared the bathroom I asked groggily, “Dude, are you all right?”

      Only his eyes moved. “Eventually you will make a mistake,” he said.

      I nodded, walked into the bathroom, and peed on a cake of pink deodorant in the urinal. I washed my hands and then dried them with a paper towel from a dispenser that someone had recently ripped from the wall and left in a sink.

      “You sure you’re okay?” I asked as I passed the guy in the hall again.

      “Eventually you will make a mistake,” he said calmly.

      I shrugged and went to my room, where I curled up under the covers and started to fall asleep. Before I did, I groaned and climbed out of bed to lock the door, in case he had been talking to me.

      Soon after I arrived at McMurdo Station by plane that first summer, the station manager gathered the employees in the Galley for an orientation. As he spoke, we fidgeted at the cafeteria tables. Our red parkas hung in the hall, but we still sweated in our long underwear, black wind-bibs, and heavy white boots with air-valves. Paintings of glaciers hung on the walls. I had only one question in mind: How long can I stand outside before I die? The station manager instead told us that if our neighbors were noisy, we should report them to the Firehouse. The Housing lady said a few words, and we formed two lines for keys to our dorm rooms.

      From the pile of standard-issue orange bags in the hallway, I dislodged mine and sought my room. Someone else had already been assigned to my bed, so I took my key back to the Housing Office, where several people were in the hallway outside the door, not in line, but just hanging around. I couldn’t tell whether they were new like me, or if they had been here before. I consoled a woman who was crying because she was not assigned her choice of roommate. I could hear people talking inside the Housing Office, so I asked a guy leaning against the wall, “What’s the deal here?” He shrugged and said he also needed to talk to them, gesturing at the Housing Office door, which was locked. I knocked and got no response. After a few minutes, a woman with a crowded keychain arrived from around the corner. The crying woman shifted to a hopeful sniffle. The woman with the keys looked beyond the waiting crowd as if inspecting some grave blemish in the distant hallway. Her ready key slithered into the lock, she slipped inside, and the door slammed behind her. The sniffles reverted to sobs, and one more voice joined the merry clamor from within the Housing Office. People who for a moment had stood at attention resumed their positions against the wall. After a few more minutes, the door opened, a man emerged from within, and a woman tried to close the door.

      I would have worked for free my first summer, just to go to Antarctica. Because I had little knowledge about the place, I imagined that I also had few preconceptions about it. I suspected, though, that wherever the unknown lurked, science would be there to stop it, so I expected to find radar dishes and weird machines, as at a moon base. I would not have been surprised to find myself shivering in a tent full of scientists or staggering through a blizzard pulling a sled. Mostly, though, I was free of assumptions about the frozen realm of mystery. I knew only that in Antarctica, things would be different, and I was ready to do whatever it took to adjust to the rugged frontier.

      Now I was blocking the door of the Housing Office with my foot.

      “Excuse me,” I said with a smile. “Someone is in my bed. Where do you want me?”

      The Housing woman nervously eyed the crowd closing in around the door.

      “What dorm are you in now?” she asked.