Big Dead Place. Nicholas Johnson
would keep us alive.” Horrified, they shushed him, imagining their black lot without the dogs there to pull their pitiful effects through the bleak nightmare.
Besides freezing and starving, they suffered from scurvy. They tied lengths of bamboo behind their knees to keep their legs from curling irreversibly while they slept, a symptom of the illness. Mackintosh, the leader of the expedition, was delirious with the disease. His gums were swollen, his knees were black and bent, and he conversed with imaginary visitors to his tent. A priest brought along on the expedition was strapped in his sleeping bag to a sled pulled by the limping men and the dogs, popping opium tablets from the medicine kit, reciting Bible verses, and bleeding steadily from the ass. He died as they approached the safety of Discovery Hut, south of Cape Evans, another shelter left by Scott.
At Discovery Hut their worst problems would be alleviated. There would be shelter, a stove, and plenty of seals. Crewman Richards wrote that as the expedition neared the hut, he “had the strongest desire to rush to one of those animals and cut its throat and drink the blood that… would hose from its neck… the blood for which my body was crying out.” They arrived to find the emergency hut half full of snow and had to enter through a window. Richards wrote, “There was absolutely nothing in the way of general provisions—no flour, no sugar, no bread. The sole food we had from the middle of March until the middle of July—four whole months—was seal meat. That is all we had—morning, noon, and night.” For those long stormy months, recovering from their crippling afflictions, the men gorged on seal and huddled from draughts behind a heavy canvas curtain, blackened by smoke from the seal blubber they burned in a corner of the frozen hut, which still stands just across the bay from McMurdo Station.
McMurdo lies in the shadow of Mount Erebus, a smoldering volcano encrusted with thick slabs of ice. To make room for McMurdo, a ripple of frozen hills on the edge of Ross Island have been hacked away to form an alcove sloped like the back of a shovel, and then affixed with green and brown cartridges with doors and windows. Silver fuel tanks sparkle on the hillside like giant watch batteries. As if unloosed from a specimen jar, a colony of machines scours the dirt roads among the simple buildings, digesting snow and cargo dumped by the wind and the planes, rattling like cracked armor and beeping loudly in reverse.
McMurdo is the largest of three3 year-round American stations in Antarctica. With a summer population of around 1,200, one need not greet a passing stranger outside or in the halls. Some people drive to lunch. People like McMurdo for the natural beauty that surrounds it, and dislike it because it is loud, crowded, and industrial. In the distance, framed by ratty utility poles and twisted electrical lines, the gleaming mountains of the Royal Society Range spill glaciers that glow like molten gold onto the far rim of the frozen white sea, on which planes land, out near all the buildings with skis. Near Castle Rock, skiing toward Mount Erebus, in the middle of nowhere, you can stop at the bright red emergency shelter that looks like a giant red larva and call your bank4 to dispute your credit card fees.
The town bustles in the summer with ships, helicopters, planes, cranes, and semis. It is the coastal hub for infiltrating the rest of the continent. By plane or helicopter, equipment and supplies radiate outward from McMurdo to field camps and to Pole, the second largest year-round base, which is officially called “Amundsen-Scott Station.” The name is mildly embarrassing, and seldom used except in government documents and such. Roald Amundsen was the first person to reach the South Pole. His men and his dogs made it to Pole a month before Robert Scott. Amundsen also made it out of Antarctica alive, whereas Scott is still encased in the ice like an insect in amber. Amundsen’s account of his journey is matter-of-fact, while Scott’s is a heroic tale of nationalist sacrifice. Uncertain whether to honor the winner or the team player, the U.S. has given its allegiance to the hyphen. Workers usually call it “Pole.” It is a smeared fleck on a hulking lobe of ice called the Polar Plateau, 800 miles inland from McMurdo, where there are no seals, whales, penguins, or ships. Pole is surrounded by a desert of ice, around which the eye glides without traction inevitably back to the crawling machines, the drums of solvent, and the clusters of cargo that, more than penguins or icebergs, characterize daily life in the United States Antarctic Program, known locally as “The Program.”
The first science foundation—which fostered the work of Euclid, the first star map, the calculation of the earth’s diameter, and an inkling of the steam-engine—was established in the third century B.C. by Ptolemy I. The National Science Foundation—the federal agency that manages the United States Antarctic Program—was established during the Cold War by Congress. Ptolemy’s ancient think tank, history’s first endowment of science, was headquartered in Alexandria, Egypt. NSF is headquartered near Alexandria, Virginia, in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.
Congress passed the National Science Foundation Act of 1950 to “promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; and to secure the national defense.” In Antarctic brochures, NSF describes itself merely as “the U.S. Government agency that promotes the progress of science.” Someone exposed only to such brochures or to newspapers might get the inaccurate impression that most Americans in Antarctica are scientists or researchers.
Most of the population work for NSF’s prime support contractor, which employs everyone from dishwashers and mechanics, to hairdressers and explosives-handlers. All prime support contractors in U.S. Antarctica have been subsidiaries of defense contractors since Holmes & Narver assumed operational control of South Pole Station in 1968. ITT Antarctic Services held the contract in the 1980s. And Antarctic Support Associates (ASA), a joint venture of defense giants EG&G and Holmes & Narver, held the contract until 2000, when ASA was displaced by Raytheon Polar Services Company (RPSC), a subsidiary of Raytheon Company. While the National Science Foundation is known as a proud sponsor of public television programming, Raytheon is known for making the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle and other top-shelf weapons systems.
In U.S. parlance, all 5.4 million square miles and 7 million cubic miles of ice that make up Antarctica are “The South Pole.” This is understandable, because from that royal dot have arisen many of the greatest tales of misery and suffering by those whose bodies are scattered across the wasteland. The South Pole, an abstract natural nonlandmark, has no visible identifying characteristics, which only adds to its elusiveness and mystique.
In Antarctic parlance, all of the United States divides into “Washington,” referring to NSF’s sphere of influence, and “Denver,” referring to a vague suburban belt of Sheratons and brewpubs on the outskirts of Denver, where the support contractor has long been headquartered. Toward Denver is the most immediate over-the-shoulder check for the Antarctic lackey. “I’m going to have to ‘okay’ that with Denver first,” they say, or “I’m not the one who made the decision—if you have a problem with it, talk to Denver.” Denver is where most of the managers and full-time employees work, and where strategies for improving morale are formulated. Some of the clocks in McMurdo and at South Pole are set to Denver time.
I had just arrived back in McMurdo for my third summer, but this time I would stay for the winter also: a year contract. I was in Sid’s room with him and Milo, upstairs in 155. I had expected them to be wild-eyed and deranged, with big beards and lips glistening with spittle, but Sid and Milo, both on the tail end of a winter contract, didn’t look so bad. Sid’s face looked a bit pasty, and Milo was a little haggard, but overall they seemed fit and tranquil. A few minutes after I greeted them I realized that the winter-overs were emitting a low harmonic drone that I was overwhelming with my turbulent piercing chatter. While they were calm and steady, thoughtful and deliberate, I had arrived with the agitated enthusiasm of one who has had a break from the ice.
The curtains were open to admit the perpetual summer sun.
“I got in trouble for making toast this winter,” said Milo.
All winter Milo often chose to eat toasted bagels rather than attend the meals, because in the winter simple tiresome food can become preferable to elaborate tiresome food. Because there are no restaurants, a small supply of basic foods in the Galley is available for 24-hour