Now what? It's dark and it's cold, this is the reason I decided to stay in Antarctica for the winter, I wanted to see what it was like to live in a place that was dark 24 hours a day. Well, now it's dark and it's always been cold, so now what?
For the first few weeks of winter we played a game in town called, "Who do you think is going to be the first to crack?" Bets weren't placed, but names were wagered in hush silence around the dinner tables in the galley and over the counter at one of the three bars.
The question "who do you think is going to be the first to crack?" was a certainty. Last year, when I came here in August, I saw people who had the battlefield-one-thousand-yard stare. The next plane out of town couldn't come soon enough, and, because of weather delays, it took five days later than scheduled. People go crazy in Antarctica. People go crazy in isolation.
In years past one person hit another over the head with a hammer. Another thought he was going to be picked up by UFOs, aliens, ETs.
It's not a matter of "If" it's a question of "When". Next comes, "How many?"
At first the smart money was to stay out of the gossip mill, but nobody in McMurdo plays with smart money when it comes to gossip. And, as the dishwasher, I see the town, I hear the gossip. Washing tables, I overhear conversations that should only be spoken between a patient and a doctor or lawyers and clients or two lovers behind closed doors.
The first one to crack was anti-climatic. He/she was like the ante in a poker game. Most of us had her/him pegged the day he/she stepped foot on frozen ground. Maybe it was a self fulfilling prophecy? If the whole town thinks you're crazy and the whole town treats, talks and reacts to you like you're nuts, won't you eventually need to check into Medical once a week to get your head examined? Well- this is her/his case.
So, what is there to do to stay sane? For variety and excitement? Oh sure there's the outdoor life, staring at the Southern Cross and searching the skies for another fire dance of green and white Auroras. For me, sanity comes in a 15 pound blue ball at the bowling alley.
In 1966 the Navy realized the obvious, but, for the Navy this was an accomplishment. They decided there wasn't much to do in McMurdo so they built a two lane bowling alley. The pins are racked by "human pin setters" who sit behind the lanes, with ear plugs and colorful socks, and rack the pins after each ball is thrown. If you throw a strike, the pin setters clang a symbol, if you miss your spare, your ball is likely to be rolled back to you with a piece of duct tape stuck to your ball and a statement that says, "sissy" or some other cheeky statement questioning your manhood.
The lanes are rutted from 37 years of use. Each lane is more akin to a miniature golf course than a bowling alley. The lane on the left slopes left to right and this is the good lane. The right side lane is sloped at nearly a 45 degree angle leaning to the left. However, if you can find the well worn grove down the center, your ball will hit the head pin leaving a 6/10 split 9 out of 10 times.
Good bowlers, great bowlers and poor bowlers all suck in McMurdo. Breaking one hundred is an accomplishment. Not knocking the legs out from underneath one of the pin setters is also a good night at the lanes.
The first time I bowled, I scored a 113. This was the third highest score that night. For those keeping track (and I do) Penny bowled a 63 or 87 or some such two digit feat. Later that night, thinking she'd missed the object of the game, I told her the idea behind bowling was to actually knock the pins over.
Possibly taking my advice to heart, the next time she bowled, Penny scored a 154, but more importantly she rolled three strikes in a row or a Turkey. And it's those small accomplishments that are rewarded in McMurdo. On these lanes, bowling a Turkey is almost like bowling a perfect game, your name is emblazoned on a cartoon turkey and placed on the wall in the bowling alley.
My life has factored down to the lowest common denominator: bowling. Is this it? Am I living at the bottom of the world to watch pins spin counter clockwise when they're hit by a bowling ball? Is this what keeps me sane?
Actually, yes.
And next week, on Wednesday, I'll play Bingo. Thursday is cribbage, Friday is the wine bar, Saturday we're flagging a route across the Ross Sea (it's frozen, of course) so vehicles can travel to and from what will be the airport in August. The flags will prevent people and vehicles from falling into crevasses or getting lost in white out conditions. The flags could save lives. I don't know why a dishwasher and a janitor were chosen for this task? Sunday is poker....
Penny wrote this email to me today. The photos were taken several weeks ago, by Penny, to show what a "typical work day" looks like, as a janitor. I thought the photos and story complemented each other well. Especially, since she wrote this story, because she thinks I can't cross the street in Antarctica without writing a story about it being a "near-death" experience.
Choose a Number Between One and Ten
By Penny
brendan our weather forcaster has been over worked the last few weeks. yesterday was a condition one to two all day. at any given moment i would be stuck were ever i happened to be when the conditions turn to one. this time i was cleaning in the coffee house, i could hear the wind attempting to tear appart the building. when i first walked in i could smell a hint of gas. not to concerned i began my work. as time went by my once dull headache turned into my skull reving up for an implosion. every few minutes i would lay my head on the bar wishing i could sleep if only for a moment.
i was so tired. realizing i couldnt muster up the energy to sweep another foot i decided to leave for break a few minutes early.
outside was mayhem. the wind was exhailing gusts up to 45 knots. snow chaoticly wisping around masking the buildings 200 yards ahead. according to our warning lights what i was looking at was a condition 2, i could see that what i was walking into was clearly a condition 1, but i didnt care.
i needed food so i went for it. half way to the galley the warning lights changed to condition one. i had a choice turn back or press on. i chose food not gas. i survived the unforgiving gusts and felt my way to galley.
midway through my break
my headache had fizzled and my energy was back. somewhere my slow brain finally made the connection. gas=eternal sleep. i was slowly killing myself in the coffee house. my symptoms weren't caused by my bleeding croch, it was the gas. had i tried to leave 2 minutes later i would have missed my open window and been forced to wait out the condition one in the coffee house. i am lucky to be alive. i was only two to four hours from death.
thats my story.
sound familiar? i guess you werent the only one who had a near death experience down here.
Jamie saved my life.
I was at the South Pole. Pulmonary Edema had nestled in my lungs, I couldn't breathe, could barely think and didn't have the energy to get out of bed. Luckily my friend Kevin had given me a candy bar, the sugar, the sweet, the cocoa he'd left in my coat pocket gave me the energy to stumble, in the minus fifty degree weather, to medical.
In the hospital I soon realized I didn't know how to think. My words were slurred, I couldn't count to four. The benefit to not being able to count to four was when Dr. Silva said, "Without oxygen, you were two to four hours from death" I didn't have a concept of the number "four." Telling the mushy oxygen starved pulmonary edema brain of mine that I had four hours of life left, was like saying, "Your life could have ended in 29 billion nanoseconds." Four could have been instantaneous, it could have been forever.
Then, Dr. Silva put me on oxygen. Sweet, sweet oxygen. Sweet, sweet Dr. Silva. The light at the end of the tunnel, the "All aboard The Death Express" that was two to four hours away, quickly left the station and I didn't get on board. Oxygen was keeping me alive until I could get medivaced out of the South Pole.
As I was laying face up on a medical cot counting ceiling tiles and realizing how small the numbers "two" and "four" seemed out of the 143 tiles on the ceiling, the news of my hospitalization traveled quickly through the South Pole community of 200. Soon, people I'd just met and others I'd known from living in McMurdo surrounded my bed.
The X-Rays of my lungs were still on the computer screen when people came in, I was high on oxygen, "Look. Those are my lungs. They look like milk jugs. I almost died. Can you believe it?" And, of course they could believe it, because my speech was accentuated with the gurgling of liquid inside my body.
Jamie was one of the people by the side of my bed. I had met Jamie in the first week or so of arriving in Antarctica. She and her boyfriend Jake lived in McMurdo for six or eight weeks before getting shipped off to the South Pole. And these two people were stand outs in the McMurdo community. These were two people who I looked forward to not only seeing but, when they came to my dish window, I even looked forward to washing their dirty plates. Jamie and Jake were just good people. And I was happy that Jaime was beside me at the South Pole.
Having a near death experience makes you crave two things: Oxygen and Friendships.
As my friends were around my bed, Dr. Silva told me my plane was getting ready to land, so I needed to say good-bye and get bundled up to go. My friend John was there, I thanked him for running up to the gift shop and getting my grandmother a South Pole t-shirt. Then I turned to Jamie and said, "Mruch, Jammmmmmm, one, seven..."
The "Death Express" was returning to the station. The light at the end of the tunnel was coming. The gurgling in my lungs got louder and instead of saying good-bye to Jamie, like "See you soon" I knew I was going to have to say good-bye to her like "I'm about to die and you're the last person I'll ever see." The oxygen wasn't doing its job to fight off the pulmonary edema.
I grabbed one of Jamie's hands. The look in my eyes had to say so long, because my words were too slurred to say "Good-bye Jamie."
In Jamie's eyes, I didn't see worry or compassion or sadness. I saw demon wickedness and I was confused.
"I'm dying here Jamie," I wanted to yell.
She must be able to read my thoughts I thought, because she said, "You'll be okay Phil, don't worry, I'll save you." And, with that, she held up her other hand. Not the hand I was clutching for human touch before I slipped away, but the hand that was holding my oxygen tube, tied in a knot.
"I wondered what would happen," she said with the curiosity of a child.
Releasing my hand and untying the knot, the oxygen flowed back into my body, into my brain, "that was the sickest, funniest thing I have ever seen," I said. "If you hadn't released that knot, I would have died. Jamie, you just saved my life."
The next time I saw Jamie, she and her boyfriend Jake were on their way out of Antarctica. McMurdo was just a layover as they left the South Pole and planned to vacation around Australia before heading back home. The last time I saw Jamie I was dressed in the warmest clothing I had in my closet. It was, as always, freezing. Penny and I were getting ready to climb Observation Hill and Jaime was sitting in her dorm room, hanging outside the window and she was dressed in only a T-shirt and pants.
"Why are you bundled up for a blizzard?" Jamie yelled down.
"Because I couldn't hack it at the South Pole," I yelled back up to her. Even though it was minus 10 in McMurdo, that was balmy weather to someone fresh from a few months at the South Pole. I said good-bye to her knowing she was leaving the next morning. I said good-bye to her, this time, in the way you'd say good-bye if you were going to see your friend again.
Winter set in to Antarctica. The last flight left us isolated down here, in the dark and in a place where news travels slowly. I was wiping tables in the galley the next time I heard about Jamie. Alex asked me if I knew someone named Jamie and Jake, "Of course," I told her, "Jamie saved my life."
News travels slowly, Alex didn't know how long ago it had been, or what exactly had happened, but there had been an accident in Australia. Jamie and Jake and a friend of theirs from back home had been hurt. They had been hit by a truck or they hit a truck or a truck rolled down a mountain, but the Red Cross was sending their families to Australia. News travels slowly, Alex didn't know how bad, but she knew they were alive. And maybe the Red Cross wasn't doing anything, she didn't know. If she didn't know, then nobody knew, because, she was the one who would know. Because news travels slowly in Antarctica.
A week or two later it was decided to hold a benefit auction in McMurdo to send money to Jamie and Jake. Because Jaime and Jake lived at the South Pole, there aren't a lot of people in McMurdo who knew them. Alex, who is their friend and also in charge of recreation, asked if I'd be the auctioneer, since I also knew them.
No problem. You bet.
A few days before the auction Alex came up and asked if I was ready to be an auctioneer, "no problem" I said. "I've been practicing," I replied. Then I'd say, very slow-like, "Can someone bid a dolllllaaaaar. Does someonnnnnneeeee want tooo biddd twooooo dollllaaarrrrrsssss."
In the days that led up to the auction Alex kept asking, "Have you gotten the aucitoneering down, "No problem." I'd reply, "You bet, " I said. Watch this, "Can I getttttt a dolllaaarrrrrr. How about twooooo dolllaarrssss," I'd drawl."
And Alex would say, "You know auctioneers speak faster than that, can you go faster. Can you move things along quicker?"
How about this, I'd say, "Cannnnn I getttttt a dollaaaarrr how about seven dollllllarrrsssss. Is that moving thing along faster. Did you see how I jumped from a dollar to seven dollars really quick? Is that how an auctioneer does it?"
Alex stared blank faced. She looked like she had pulmonary edema and couldn't comprehend my stupidity.
What she didn't know was I was practicing. In the pot room. In the dish room. The sheet pans were my audience, the kettles were my bidders, the six inch hotel pans out bid the two inch sauce pans and the skillets wanted to buy every lot on the market.
As I washed dishes I spoke to the pots and pans, "five-five-I-hear-five-can-I-get-Ten-Ten-Ten-Ten-I-want-15-Any-less-tells-Me-You-Don't-love-Jaime-my-Life-Giver-My-personal-Savior-Can-I-get-a-Hallelujah-From-the-colander-can-I-get-a-praise-the-Lord-from-the-Utensils."
For seven days I sung auctioneer speak to the dishes, to the knifes and to the forks. It was very important that we raised money for my friends. It was important for a small community to rally around two members of our Antarctic family.
On the night I was to be the auctioneer, I stood up in front of the town, dressed up like a greasy truck driver. I told McMurdo about a girl named Jamie who saved my life. And, if I had one wish and one wish only, it would be to stand by her hospital bedside and to tie her oxygen tube into a knot.
When I told my story about Jamie saving my life, I spoke really slow. Alex had a look on her face which said, "we might be lucky to raise nine dollars with this idiot as an auctioner."
But this night I wasn't an auctioneer, I was a preacher. Tonight my audience wasn't metal pots and pans, they were real people, and the people said, "hallelujah." And the people yelled, "Praise the Lord." And when the bidding began, the people opened up their wallets. A town of less than 200 people donated over three thousand dollars to our friends. To people they didn't know. To the person who saved my life. To Jamie.
News travels slow in Antarctica. I've heard Jamie and Jake and their friend are recuperating. Certainly the money we collected is minuscule to what they need, and that's too bad, because imagine what you would owe the person who saved your life.
I take take off my hat and wish Jamie well.
It's dark and it's one o'clock. It could be one in the morning or one in the afternoon. I look at my clock and have to think if I'm taking a nap in the afternoon or if it's the middle of the night.
There was a party several weeks ago. Men dressed as women, women dressed as men, it was the night of the last sunset. Since then, night and day has become only night.
The wind is blowing against my window. The wind is blowing through my window. I think the wind might break my window. Dorm 208 in McMurdo is where I live, this dorm was built under a government contract by the National Science Foundation. The window that is letting the Antarctic wind blow into my room was purchased by the lowest bidder on a government contract to build a shelter to protect me from the elements. If or when the window breaks and if I'm asleep I wonder if I'll wake up or just drift deeper and deeper in to a cold coma sleep.
Every movie I've ever seen about dying when it's really cold, it's always implied, inferred or directly stated, "it's great to freeze to death, because you just go to sleep."
Right now, I'd like to freeze to death. I'd like to go to sleep.
Now it's two. It is two in the morning. My alarm is set for seven and I'm going to get up and write about the day to day living in Antarctica. Except, now, the day to day has turned night to night. There isn't a sun and fluorescent lighting is how I live my life. Photographs taken in fluorescent lighting have a blue/green hue to them. The light in dorm 208 room 322 built by the lowest bidding government contractor is lit by the least expensive fluorescent light bulbs money could buy. My room is blue. My room is green. It's dark outside.
At three I wake up. I look out the window and I can't tell what time it is. The wind hasn't broken my window, yet, but it seems to have found more ways to come through the cracks. By government contract we are issued two blankets to keep us warm in Antarctica. One blanket is red the other is wool. When it's cold my wool blanket always slips off the side of my bed and covers up the heater. The wool blanket switches into a "self-preservation" mode when it gets cold. The blanket jumps on the heater, makes the room colder and forgets its purpose is to keep me warm. Cheap, selfish, government gray blanket.
Between the hours of four, five and six, I don't sleep. It's too loud to sleep. It's too dark to sleep. After spending six months in total daylight, I have forgotten how to sleep when it's dark. Whether my eyes are closed or open, it's still dark. Some days I have to stop what I'm doing and think, "Am I awake or am I dreaming?" More than once, my answer has been wrong.
A few nights ago, I was stumbling around my room trying to find the light switch. Somebody had moved it and I was late to work and whoever moved the light switch was making me even later. "Am I awake or am I dreaming?" I'm awake. My feet are on the floor. A few minutes ago I was dreaming when I dreamt I was a dishwasher in Antarctica, now I'm awake and I need to get to work in Utah.
I turnd on the light and my room was filled with a government hue of blue and green. This room looked just like the room I dreamt about when I was a dishwasher in Antarctica. Some how I had confused my dreams with reality. This won't be the last time.
There are 198 people in McMurdo. One of these people has a weekly mental check up. I don't know what happened, but the doctor was concerned for his/her mental well being and, perhaps, the safety of those around him/her. I'm not the one who needs the check up and this concerns me. I mean, what levels of confusion has this other guy/girl slipped into? What do I have to look forward to?
At eight thirty the phone rings. The plan to get up at seven and write about the night to night living in Antarctica is now a dream. The voice on the other end of the phone is my boss, the weather condition in McMurdo is now a Condition One. This is as bad as it gets, the visibility is zero and the wind, he says, "is about to break your window. Stay at home because it's not safe to come to work today."
Am I awake or am I dreaming? I stay at home just to be safe.
"I read your lies today," Penny said.
"What lies?"
"The ones at your website. That story about using dynamite was one lie after another."
"No it wasn't."
"See, there, that was a lie. Just like your dynamite story."
"No it wasn't," I said again as though by saying no again would make the story true. Two double negatives, I reasoned, would then be a positive. Making one positively absolutely true non-fiction story.
"Liar," Penny said.
It didn't work.
"There's a big difference," I said," between lying and stretching the truth. I just took what was 100% true and made it 27% more true."
"How are you going to end your '27% more True Dynamite Story?' Because if I remember correctly, the day you left to blow up a mountain, somehow, and no one pointed the finger at you, but somehow 'somebody' broke Little Bear's tractor and there wasn't an explosion."
"It wasn't a tractor that I broke, it was a drill. Who's the liar now?"
"Tractor or drill. I knew it was you who broke the machine. Tell me how you're going to end the story. Tell me the truth. Start from where you finished your last story. No, wait, start just before the 'big lie the one about the truck exploding."
"I never said the truck exploded, I only implied in a story 27% more true than the original version that the truck..."
"Start with the truth."
"Okay," I said, "The Last Time I Saw the Sun Part II. Guaranteed to be Only One Hundred and Seven Percent True."
"Leave out the Bull Shit."
"Okay, I said, "The Last Time I Saw the Sun Part II. Guaranteed to be Only 53% true.
"That's better."
"Little Bear saw I was jumpy and on edge. He recognized this the moment he handed me the box containing the 12 sticks of dynamite. And I froze. Not because of the temperature outside, but because of fear. I put the dynamite in the back of the truck, just like I said in my story and then we drove to the mountain and that's when he yelled, 'Oh Shit These Should Never Touch.' And I ran away from the truck and dove in the snow and turned to watch the truck explode."
"But, what really happened, Phil?"
"The truck exploded. It really lit up the mountains and Little Bear escaped when I saved his life by running back to the truck, pulling him from the cab just before, BOOM."
"Lies."
"The truck didn't explode. Little Bear tried to scare me by yelling obscenities, and it worked. I nearly peed my pants and he just sat in the front of the pick-up truck laughing at me. I couldn't move, I really thought the truck was going to explode and he just kept laughing. Laughing like a man might laugh just before he dies. If death comes knocking at your door and asks you to pick a number between one and ten, say 'No' because you'll always lose. Little Bear was laughing in the face of death. He had gone crazy and I couldn't move, couldn't reach for the handle of the door to run couldn't even talk and Little Bear kept laughing.
'Then he put the truck in gear and said, 'You should really get out from behind that dish machine more often, it's like you've got suds where your brain should be.'"
"Little Bear," Penny said, "told me you were shaking so scared he thought you might be going into shock, and you tried to blame it on drinking too much coffee. Are you going to tell that part?"
"It was Dynamite, DY-NO-MITE, of course I was scared, but in my story, I'll be more brave. I'll say, Then we drove up to the mountain or hill or knob or whatever this small piece of Antarctic real estate is called that was about to get 12 sticks of TNT shoved inside of it like an exploding enema.
"We unloaded the truck. I reached for the dynamite to show Little Bear I could take a joke and his dynamite all in stride. He said to leave the explosives in the truck, because we first had to drill six holes in the ground to place the dynamite.
"The drilling apparatus was more like an animal than a machine. It was temperamental, loud, dangerous and stinky. Because of the decibel level we had to wear ear plugs. Because of the wind, we had to wear three layers of hats and because of this, it was nearly impossible to hear what we said to each other.
"Little Bear drove the drill to the top of the hill. The drill rode on a tractor that pulled the generator that gave the power to the drill. It was so cold, the tractor part of the drill, and Little Bear's helper, wanted to take this day off. But the drill said, 'work,' and Little Bear said, 'Mmmpphhfff.'
"Like I said, I couldn't hear, so I just stayed cleared, and figured he said to me, 'work.'
"When we got close to the area we were going to drill, we unhooked the generator from the drill. The drill and the tractor were powered by a hydraulic hose, about 100 ft long, connected to the generator. My job was to keep the tractor from running over the hose."
"Is this," Penny said, "how you broke the drill? Did you let Little Bear run over the hose?"
"No," I said. "I saw the sun." Penny knew what this meant, let me fill you in.
At this time of the year, the sun still hadn't officially set, but we hadn't seen the sun in McMurdo in at least two weeks. McMurdo is snuggled and nestled in a bowl of hills and mountains. To see the sun at this time of the year you'd have to travel outside of the authorized zone. Traveling outside of the safety zone can be done in several ways, but the opportunity doesn't arise too often. One way to travel outside the safety zone, is by getting approval to blow up a mountain.
"It was freezing," I continued, "Even beneath all the layers of my clothes, I was cold. My blood was a red Slurpee. My cheeks were slightly exposed beneath the mask I was wearing and Little Bear saw that I was starting to get frostbite, so he gave me his extra face mask. The only way to get warm was the sun, but I hadn't seen the sun in 14 days and thought I wouldn't see it again until August or September, and then, it peaked above Terra Nova, just to the left of Mt. Erebus.
"I reached for my sunglasses, but they were at home on my desk. In the summer, sunglasses were more important than a good jacket. Early Antarctic explorers experienced painful snow blindness and sought temporary relief by rubbing cocaine into their eyes. Instead of giving us cocaine, the National Science Foundation gave us $150 to buy good sunglasses. That's what 100 years of technology gets you, I guess.
"Without my sunglasses, I didn't care, I stared at the sun, the small sliver of light I could see was like the top of an eyebrow, barely a crescent of blonde light coming over Terra Nova. Soon, though, soon I'll have the sun.
"The sun didn't do what the sun was supposed to do. As sure as the sun rises, it didn't rise, it just traveled parallel to the mountain and then, and then, and then it disappeared.
"At some point while I was making myself blind, Little Bear said, 'Mmmmpphhfff.' I thought he said, 'Look at the sun, isn't it beautiful?' And I screamed, 'YES.'
As we drove home, Little Bear let me know, he'd actually asked, 'Is it clear to back up the tractor?' And I'd yelled YES as I watched Apollo pull the sun across the sky in his chariot, instead of looking at the ground and seeing the large boulder a tractor could run over, knocking its tank like tracks off of their spindles or gears or whatever it was Little Bear was yelling about.
"So you did break the tractor," Penny said. "Look who's the liar now."
"Tractor, drill, whatever," I said, "that's what you said, it doesn't matter what broke or who broke it. To me, this day was no different than yesterday or tomorrow. I didn't need 12 sticks of dynamite to make a 27% more true story.
"This just happened to be what I saw the last time I saw the sun set."