From Middle Earth to the End

During my trip to Antarctica I managed to ready my new all time favorite book, The Worst Journey in the World by Aspley Cherry-Garrard. Obviously I recommend it to everyone. Its a timeless tale of a lesser know but absolutely heroic adventure to find some penguin eggs.

It was particularly interesting to me as I read through it with the adventure correlating to my time on the Ice. As Cherry spoke of Castle Rock  I would stare up from my seat and note the massive landmark. We did our seal census next to Hutton cliffs where he battled with this sledge. Seeing Scott’s discovery hutt has so much more value as I knew even more of the inner workings and stories of them who built the structure. I pretended to know what the conditions were like for him but couldn’t conceive the hardships. In our perfect conditions everything was such an effort it seem unreal he was working in -70 degrees and pitch blackness.

My favorite quote comes about Erebus of which I read during the first couple days at Scott Base:

“I have seen Fiji, the most dainty and graceful of all mountains; and also Kinchinjunga: only Michael Angelo among men could have conceived such grandeur. But give me Erebus for a friend. Whoever made Erebus knew all the charm of the horizontal lines, and the lines of Erebus are for the most part nearer the horizontal than the vertical. And so he is the most restful mountain in the world, and I was glad when I knew that our hut would lie at his feet.  And always there floated from his crater the lazy banner of his cloud of steam. “

If you can put yourself in my ECW boots and imagine what it was like to read this knowing that I too would soon be lying at the feet of Erebus than you will know why this quote is all but etched in my brain. I found Cherry was correct in describing Erebus as a masterpiece and I became quite attached to him.  Our camp was also placed in Windless Bight, directly where Cherry, Bowers and Wilson crossed through to get to Cape Crozier.

If you get a chance to read this book its great up to the 643 page. In fact, the last two paragraphs were the greatest of the whole novel for me. BUT DON’T CHEAT! you can not skip to the end, they won’t have the same meaning for you. The real life events of this book are more surreal than the latest Harry Potter novel.

” Take the Rockies, the Alps, and Mount Washington. Cover them with thick, crusted snow that, like frosting spread by a giant’s hand, has spilled down over the land to end in a jagged, uneven border where it meets the sea. Imagine yourself on a spaceship in another world- a world that for ten million years has been locked away behind ramparts of ice and where escape is blocked in all directions by a cruel, cold ocean.  Take all the adjectives in Mr. Rogets’s Thesaurus and you stil haven’t got it. For nothing,  not even Mr. Roget’s best, can convey one’s first impression of that vast, mysterious immensity of ice. lt is a lesson in humiliity, and unforgettable reminder of man’s mortality, and it is like no other place on earth.”  ~ Jennie Darlington

Another fabulous quote from a novel I’m reading about a young bride who ended up following her husband who was commander of an expedition by the US Antarctic Program to fill in the last blank spots on the Peninsula. For me, its more a shock to imagine being married at 22 than to be living in Antarctica for a year. Shows how time has changed since the mid 1950’s. Jennie was one of the first Women to step on to the Ice.   Now most of my class is filled with women.   Yeah girls!

“Eight Adelie penguins immediately came to greet us with many exclamations of interest not unmixed with disapproal. ‘Where on earth have you been? What took you so long? The Hut is around this way. Please come this way. Mind the rocks!” They insisted on our going to visit Hut Point where the large structure built by Captain Scott’s party stood, looking just as in the photographs and drawings that illustrate this book. The area about it, however, was disgusting- a kind of graveyard of seal skins, seal bones, penguin bones, and rubbish, presided over by the mad, screaming skua gulls. Our escorts waddled past the slaughterhouse in all tranquillity, and one showed me personally to the door, though it would not go in. ” ~Ursula K. Le Guin Sur

Neat piece of writing as it is Fiction, Ursula having never traveled to Antarctica. Many other authors choose this style of writing as the continent lives in many peoples minds as vividly as real life.

“The first time you travel to the Ice its for the Adventure, the second time its for the money, the third because you just don’t fit in anywhere else”

“I wanted to stand at the dead center of the carousel, if only for a moment; try to catch my bearings” ~ Thomas Pynchon

” After all, the geographical questions may have been answered, but the metaphysical ones remain, and the most foreign territory will always lie within. ” ~ Sara Wheeler Terra Incognita

Great contemporary account of a writer traveling down to Antarctica in 1995. She traveled all around to various bases and really immersed herself in the culture. Highly recommended.

” The continent’s powerful landscape did not seep gently into the soul; it transfixed you; seized you, the moment you arrived. This was no gentle romance, it was a geographical coup de froude. Here, there was simply no  before” ~ Kim Griggs On Blue Ice

” To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yeild” From  Ulyssess by Lord Tennyson.  Used by Robert Falcon Scott