IN ANTARCTICA: AN AMUNDSEN PILGRIMAGE

JAY RUZESKY

In Antarctica

AN AMUNDSEN PILGRIMAGE

NIGHTWOOD EDITIONS

2013

Copyright © Jay Ruzesky, 2013.

Photography by Jay Ruzesky © 2013, unless otherwise noted.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, www.accesscopyright.ca, info@accesscopyright.ca.

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Nightwood Editions acknowledges financial support from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publisher’s Tax Credit.

This story, while fictional, is based on actual events. In certain cases incidents, characters, names, and timelines have been changed for dramatic purposes. Certain characters may be composites, or entirely fictitious.

Edited for the house by Silas White

Typesetting by Carleton Wilson

Cover design by Anna Comfort O’Keeffe & Carleton Wilson

ISBN 978-0-88971-282-9 (paper)

ISBN 978-0-88971-286-7 (ebook)

For my mother, Shirley Mae Amundsen (1930–2013),

and in memory of Mike Matthews

…by now dream and reality had fused into one.

—Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia

It hath beene a dreame through many ages, that these Ilands have been a maine, and that it hath beene terra incognita; wherein many strange monsters lived. Indeed it might truly, before this time, be called incognita, for howsover the mappes and generall descriptions of Cosmographers, either upon the deceivable reports of other men, or the deceitful imaginations of themselves (supposing never herein to be corrected) have set it downe, yet it is true, that before this time, it was never discovered, or certainely knowne by any traveller, that wee have heard of.

—Francis Fletcher (chaplain for Sir Francis Drake)

South Polar Chart, 1906. Courtesy the David Rumsey Map Collection

1

2010—VANCOUVER ISLAND

The bank is from another era: forty-foot ceilings, marble columns, the floor burnished like a palace, tellers lined up behind barred stalls. It’s the kind of bank Butch and Sundance would have robbed and I’m slipping into a reverie about horses and dust when the loans officer calls my name. She swings open a wooden gate and leads me to her cubicle near the vault. It feels like privilege.

What can I do for you today?

I’d like to take out a loan. Ninety thousand dollars.

Okay. Now, if you’re looking for a mortgage we need to go about it in a different way.

No, not a mortgage.

Is this a car loan or house renovations? Something along those lines?

I need to go to Antarctica.

She stares at me, then looks at the form on her desk and lets her pen hover over it like a Ouija board planchette. She’s searching for a box to tick called Antarctica, but it isn’t there. Antarctica, she says without looking up.

Yes. I wonder what other boxes are missing from her form: Cult Leader Start-up Fund; Small Business Loan (Crystal Meth Lab); Large-calibre Ammunition Supply.

She meets my gaze. There’s no candid camera here, is there? You’re not kidding.

I tell her my story: the twenty-five-year quest; the centennial date looming; how I’ve exhausted all the other avenues… and the streets, cul-de-sacs, back alleys and dead ends.

I’m not sure we’re going to be able to help, she says.

2

ROALD AMUNDSEN

Portrait of Roald Amundsen in Nome, Alaska, after his successful navigation of the Northwest Passage. National Library of Norway photo

Every family has its claim to notoriety. On my mother’s side, that claim rests with Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer. Amundsen was my great-grandfather’s cousin. He was the first human to set foot at the South Pole, December 14, 1911. Because the claims of both Robert Peary and Frederick Cook to the North Pole in 1909 are now generally discounted, Amundsen was also the first to the North Pole when he and Umberto Nobile flew over it in an airship in 1926.

From 1903 to 1906, he sailed above North America, intentionally freezing in with his ship, Gjoa, over the winters to drift with the pack ice, and successfully becoming the first explorer and first known man to navigate the Northwest Passage. During the Northwest expedition, he encountered several Inuit groups and traded with them. He gave them metal blades and tools, strange food like bread and biscuits and fruit jam. Sugar. He did magic tricks with dynamite. In return, he received invaluable lessons about Arctic clothing, igloo-building, polar survival and, most importantly, driving dogs.

Gjoa was intentionally frozen in on its Northwest Passage drift. National Library of Norway photo

The key to Amundsen’s success in the race to the South Pole with the Englishman Robert Falcon Scott was that Amundsen brought the skills the northern Inuit taught him. The British, some of whom still believed that the Inuit were unenlightened savages, took Siberian ponies and early prototype motorized sledges, but planned all the while that they would man-haul their way to the South Pole. The expedition was outfitted with felt and wool. Scott maintained a sense of military order so, even in the Antarctic wilderness, the tents were separated down the middle with a blanket and one side was reserved for officers and the other for enlisted men, though all the men would have been better served by sharing their heat. It was often minus forty degrees Celsius or colder outside the tent.

Amundsen, on the other hand, was a model of efficiency. Every biscuit was weighed, packed and repacked. He brought 97 dogs with him when he sailed south and had 121 by the time he established his base, called Framheim, at the Bay of Whales. The dogs helped him lay food and fuel depots through the Antarctic fall so he wouldn’t have to take supplies for the return journey all the way to the Pole and back. Then, after waiting out a long, dark winter, the dogs carried enough supplies for the 1,600-kilometre sledge trip. The most efficient way to accomplish his goal, he determined, was to sacrifice the weakest dogs once they carried him from sea level at the Ross Ice Shelf, up a glacier over the Antarctic mountains to the Antarctic Plateau at three thousand metres. A substantial percentage of the weight on the sledges was food for the dogs; shooting half of them at the plateau would eliminate the need for so many provisions. As an added benefit, the slaughtered dogs would provide a cache of meat for the surviving dogs and men on the return journey when they were all likely to be hungry for it.

3

1973—THUNDER BAY, ONTARIO

There I am on the Antarctic Plateau. Just me and my dogs and the sledge and not a soul for thousands of kilometres. The only sound is wind blowing at ten knots across the plain. It curls around the wolf-fur fringe of my hood and tries to bite my beaten face, skin already gnawed raw by sun and cold and other winds that have made their mark. It is clear, almost unbearably light, as most of the rays of the sun reflect back off the snow. I can see forever in all directions, this blank canvas pulled tight over the entire hunched back of Antarctica. The huskies curl their noses under their hips and fall asleep so snow whirls in drifts over their bodies… And then what?

I have developed this image of myself—strong, brave, romantic and of course successful—posing for the camera at 90° S. Eight years old. I am a picture of the heroic explorer.

As a young child I had a toy dog—a stuffed Greenland husky that I made traces for and attached to makeshift sledges. The husky, named Husky, hauled his bunk mates, a Chinese panda called Panda and a spider monkey called Monkey, from the North Pole on the fringes of the dining room, to the South Pole, directly under the trap door for the attic on the third floor. Husky was a stoic worker, never complaining about the blizzards or lack of food, nor about the way he did all the work while his companions merely rode the sledge and grinned. Supplies, consisting almost exclusively of Ritz crackers, were packed in a wooden cigar box that fit nicely on the sledge and was fixed with laces from my father’s seldom-used hiking boots. Their round shape made them a packing challenge for the cigar box, but the team, including Husky and Monkey, preferred them to the more sensibly shaped saltines which were sometimes an option if my mother had not replenished the stores before we set out on our journey. We camped in the hallway under a blanket held up, appropriately, by a ski pole and drank non-existent hot tea from plastic cups heated on the ashtray that served as a Primus stove.

There I am on the Plateau. It was always me who had the pleasure of planting the flag at the Pole. Panda snapped the photograph.

4

LIFE ON EARTH

There are scientists who do not believe life on earth began in a warm primordial soup, not near volcanic vents, nor in tropical ponds, but in the ice during an age of winter that covered the planet 3.8 billion years ago. In the layer of fresh water between an ice sheet and an ocean, or between glacier and ground, or in ammonia and cyanide trapped in bubble-formed passages resembling test tubes—whatever the configuration, some people think life on earth began in Antarctica.

On December 28, 1967, Dr. Peter Barrett was on the exposed slopes of Graphite Peak near the Beardmore Glacier about 650 kilometres from the South Pole. He had climbed to the exposed surface to collect samples as part of his study of the geology of the Trans-Antarctic Mountains and what he found surprised him so much that at first he thought it might be an elaborate joke. Except that there was no one who could have played it. As he tapped at the rocks with his geological hammer, he noticed an oddly shaped stone that turned out to be a fragment of the left jaw of a type of amphibian known as a labyrinthodont, an ancestor of all current living vertebrates on earth including, of course, humans.

Another theorist, Robert Argod, suggests through a study of oral histories and mythology, that the mystery of the origins of the people of Polynesia might be solved by looking to the bottom of the world where all the waters of the world mingle and where the immortals reside. So it seems that part of the story of Antarctica is a story of origins and of beginnings.

From early on, my imagination went to the ends of the earth. When I grew out of my dreamy expeditions to the attic, I began to read everything I could about polar exploration. I read Amundsen’s diaries of his voyage on the Belgica when he was a twenty-five-year-old mate bent on earning his stripes, read his account of the winters during his historic passage through the northwest on Gjoa in 1903, and read his triumph in Fram to the South Pole on December 14, 1911.

I grew up in Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, Saskatoon and Calgary—Canadian cities where the bite of winter goes deep and kids go out to play wrapped in so many layers they look like bomb-disposal experts. I remember cold January days, two inches of new snow, the low sun blinding so that walking outside was like crossing the threshold to heaven and peering into the eye of God. All the textures of snow. Some days, my boots crunched ice that had warmed and refrozen like walking through a mash of glass shards and Styrofoam; other mornings the snow squeaked under my feet as it compacted in the crisp air, or it slurped as I slipped my way to school through a deep mash that was reluctant to turn to water.

Some families tie themselves to class. Perhaps the great-great-great-grandmother who was the governess of the czar and generational whispers of an illegitimate child who, if the DNA were traced, would be revealed as the true heir to the Russian throne. Some to fame—he used to sing with Enrico Caruso…and often better than Caruso. And children who grow up with their family myths look in mirrors and wonder if they might be the count or countess, or if the fire of Rudolph Valentino waits to flare in them under the bleachers during the high school dance. My family ties itself to ice and I look in the mirror for Amundsen.

As a young writer, bent on earning my own stripes, I felt his story had been eclipsed over the years by Robert Falcon Scott’s death after reaching the Pole a month after Amundsen. So I read Scott and Apsley Cherry-Garrard and Edward Wilson. I wanted to sink into Amundsen’s story like a sailor going down in brash ice. I bought a map from the US Geological Survey a metre and a half square and had it mounted on my office wall. It is a stereographic composite made of satellite photos and in it the continent is blue as the lapis lazuli so when I turn off the office light after a day of work, it glows for a short while, distant memories of aurora australis still ghosting its surfaces. Like a man reading braille, I have traced my fingers along this geography, the spine of the Trans-Antarctic Mountains and the belly of the Ross Ice Shelf.

Antarctica is a space not easily crossed, an otherworldly landscape with threats at every angle. From its centre there is no way of knowing what direction to go. There are no reference points; nothing to tell you who you are. When you reach the Antarctic you have reached the end of the planet. You balance on the edge of knowing. The safe gesture is to fall back, trusting that someone will be there to catch you. The risk is in staggering forward, arms in front like a naked man crossing a room in darkness, like falling in love.

Those who say that the quest for the Poles was a search for nothing forget that there is more to this life than the meaning we humans can make for ourselves—our acquisition of things, our politics, our sweaty couplings in the dark forests of our beds. The search for the Poles was a search for the property of the gods. What other landscape would be a more likely place for a deity to live and work the wonders of the world?

So my own quest to Antarctica is not just a following of footsteps, it is a pilgrimage to the place where epic struggles played out, where heroes were made and died, and where the gods had announced their presence in the form of unknown and indescribable wonders.

5

MAY 2010—PROTECTION ISLAND

How do you get to Antarctica?

I am staying on a small island called Protection off the east coast of the much larger Vancouver Island. I have come to get some writing done and have with me only a change of clothes, my guitar, a small computer, and beans and tortillas. I am also here to give up on my dream of going to Antarctica. I don’t remember when I began thinking that there might be a way for me to get to the South Pole. I began writing about the Antarctic when I finished graduate school in 1989 so I had twenty-two years before the anniversary of Amundsen’s arrival at 90° S.

Sometime around the turn of the century, I heard about a writer-in-residence opportunity called the Antarctic Artists and Writers Program operated by the National Science Foundation in the US. American scientific programs are some of the most extensive in Antarctica: the way the Artists and Writers Program works is that creators piggyback on various scientific missions going on in Antarctica, including at Amundsen-Scott Station at the Pole. Werner Herzog received support from this program to spend time on the continent making his film Encounters at the End of the World, which is a startling portrait of Antarctica because he turns his attention more to the quirky individuals who choose to spend time in Antarctic isolation, and to a long underwater sequence about the strange world of aquatic beings that thrive under the ice.

During the time frame when I might have had a 10 percent hope of having an application vetted, we were at the end of the Bush years and the NSF was in swamp and disarray. The phone was disconnected, emails bounced back and I couldn’t find anyone to tell me whether the program existed anymore. So I gave up. I knew there were tourist companies that take people on adventure expeditions. One outfit takes small groups on ski expeditions across several degrees of latitude to the Pole. It costs $85,000, not including airfare to New Zealand.

At night I have a dream of Amundsen on his ship, at the helm, looking over an ice-cluttered sea. But he is much younger than I usually imagine him and he is not sailing along the Barrier but into bays and around islands. In the morning, I remember images from my sleep and I take a cup of coffee out to the point to watch a container ship sail through the Northumberland Channel. I hear the shouts of men across the water and when I close my eyes, I can hear the creak and groan of a wooden hull and can feel the roll of the sea under my feet. I can go anyway. Maybe not to the South Pole itself, but to Antarctica—to the peninsula at least. That is where most ships travel because it is relatively accessible in the astral summer and because there is something to see there. Only 2 percent of Antarctica is not permanently covered by ice and most of that is on the peninsula.

I do some research. There are several ways to be taken to Antarctica. I choose a ship—Polar Pioneer, registered in Sydney, Australia. She’s a seventy-one-metre, ice-strengthened research vessel that can cut through one-metre-thick ice if necessary. Built in Finland in 1985, she worked in the Arctic until 2000 when she was refitted to accommodate fifty-four passengers. The crew is Russian and they are well seasoned in polar seas. She takes small groups and can manoeuvre into pack ice. The goal of the expedition would be to make as many landings as possible in Antarctica and to cross the Antarctic Circle. But even this type of expedition is not cheap. It costs between $10,000 and $30,000. Most accommodations are shared and there is no way I can afford a private room. I need a cabin mate.

My brother is a successful businessman. For my birthday a couple of years ago, he took me on a week-long drive around the Maritime provinces. A loop around Cape Breton, ending up in Montreal for the Grand Prix. We travelled in his Lamborghini, alongside his friends in their Ferraris and Maseratis. But that’s another story. I call him in Calgary. He has just returned from a business trip to China, touring wire factories that produce the kind of raw material he needs for the chain-link fences he turns into money.

How’s your spirit of adventure after China?

To tell you the truth, I’m looking forward to being home for a while. Why?

I’m planning a trip and I need a cabin mate.

Where are we going?

Antarctica.

I expect a longer pause than I get. I’m definitely interested, he says. Tell me about it.

Polar Pioneer would travel close to the inside passages of the Antarctic Peninsula. When as a young man I thought of Amundsen, I thought about his best-known adventure—the South Pole expedition in Fram. But Amundsen, as mate on board Belgica in 1887, also navigated the same waters we would travel in Polar Pioneer, so we would be following in his footsteps, just not the ones I thought I might follow. And now there are three stories here: the story of Amundsen on Belgica, of Amundsen on Fram, and me in my rustic cabin on the little Finnish ship that doesn’t think twice about sailing to the end of the earth several times in a season.

We’re going to go to Antarctica a hundred years after Amundsen was there? my brother asks. Following in his footsteps sort of thing?

Sort of. In spirit more than in deed.

Which one of us is Amundsen?

For decades, the idea of going south in 2011 has been my idea; it’s my journey, the revelations will be mine, the stories will be mine. I realize I’ve always seen myself just as my brother is suggesting. I am Amundsen as I imagine myself heading to Antarctica. The solitary. Most certainly the leader. I’ve spent years thinking about the things I have in common with the Great Explorer. I’m the one who inherited the Norwegian genes. When we were young, my brother was dark-haired while I was blond. He was always cold when we went skiing and I wanted to stay out longer.

Here is my brother, invited by me to insinuate himself into my dream, and I realize he has grown up with the same myths, the same stories. It has never before occurred to me that he identifies with our Norwegian heritage. We were competitive siblings, wanting the most, wanting the