AN EXTREME ENCOUNTER: ANTARCTICA

Far below us on this planet awaits an adventure as intriguing and almost as inaccessible as outer space.  Antarctica is a place where the bolt goes into the bottom of the globe.  It’s a land of extremes that defy imagination.   At temperatures of 126 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, nothing can possibly live, yet life finds a way.   It is a place where a person can run around the world in twenty seconds.  It’s where anyone can die in 20 minutes by standing still. This “Ice Continent” forms nacreous clouds described as ‘Mother of Pearl’ that create unfathomable milky, opalescent glows across the evening sky.  It’s where the sun hovers at 12 noon for five months but temperatures remain below freezing.  It’s a continent with ice three miles thick.  Twenty-five foot long skeletons of dinosaurs remain from 65 million years ago when those beasts once romped across the land.  It’s home to 180 million penguins and millions of seals.  Whales by the tens of thousands feed in the food-rich waters around the continent.  Yet, not a tree grows anywhere on 5.4 million square miles of land.  Averaging 7,000 feet above sea level, Antarctica is our highest continent with 90 percent of the world’s fresh water locked up in glaciers hundreds of miles long and as much as 58 miles wide when they pour into the Southern Oceans.

Yet, it’s the lowest point of the world not only physically, but also within our minds.  In 1773, Captain Cook, aboard the “Endeavor,” was the first to ply its dangerous waters—only to be turned back by deadly icebergs.  Later, British explorers Robert F. Scott and Ernest Shackleton attempted to reach the South Pole by land.  Shackleton came within 97 miles before he retreated for lack of food.  In 1912, the Norwegian, Roald Amundsen, mushing sled dogs over 800 miles of snow, succeeded in reaching the South Pole.  A month later, arriving in second place, Scott and his men died on the return from the Pole.  The Australian Mawson succeeded in his quests but suffered horrible consequences.  Later, Shackleton and his men lived through one of the greatest epic survival stories of all time.  What they survived in polar exploration defies reality.  Their story, in the pages of Alfred Lansing’s “ENDURANCE” will never be duplicated in the history of the universe.

This is my story about Antarctica.  It’s about the little guy whose name never reaches the spotlight, but it’s the little guy whose struggle makes the hero’s feats possible.  Without those of us who swab the decks or peel the potatoes, the ‘big’ guys would not succeed.  This is about my struggle at the bottom of the world. It’s a story of intense adventure with men and women who came to the “Ice Continent” determined to experience it for themselves.  Yes, life and death happened while I was there.  I tempted death myself and lived to tell about it.  More than that, it’s a tale of the drama of people working under extreme conditions at a tiny scientific outpost at the bottom of the world--and what I learned from them.  What I experienced with them and that frozen continent, I share with you.  It is a MOST fascinating journey.