During the weeks between March 21st and March 29th 1912 Robert Scott, Edward Wilson and Henry Bowers were stuck in tent in a blizzard in Antarctica. Scott wrote this as his final diary entry:
“Since the 21st we have had a continuous gale from W.S.W. and S.W. We had fuel to make two cups of tea apiece and bare food for two days on the 20th. Every day we have been ready to start for our depot 11 miles away, but outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift. I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more.
For God’s sake look after our people”
100 years later on March 23rd to March 25th 2012 I was stuck in a tent in a blizzard in Antarctica.
In the hinge zone, a HF radio and a satellite phone sitting next to me, drinking tea boiled on a primes stove with a Tilly lamp causing the frozen lining of the tent to drip on my sleeping bag, I tried to imagine what it would be like to have none of that. A bed of straw and sheepskin with no fuel and no food, an aching back, frostbitten and miserable. I tried to imagine what it would be like to leave as Oates did and walk out into nothing. Wearing my down tent boots, with smooth bottoms, and stepping out the wind started to unexpectedly blow me along the snow surface. A few meters from the tent and there is only white. If I wasn’t holding on to the hand line I would be lost.
What did I feel? Privileged and excited, for all I get to experience and the fragility of live. Selfish and sad, knowing that this experience, and even for Scotts expedition, the notion of adventure still comes at a cost. Spending the last two years cycling through the Korail slum, everyday seeing children with nothing and a smile, knowing that life has recently got even harder for them and I am here. That wasnt an adventure they have chosen. Part of me is drawn to our peoples next adventure, mining asteroids and visiting other planets.
Part of me worries how this will affect our people.
The hinge zone is a beautiful place. It is where the ice falls of the continent of Antarctica and becomes the Brunt Ice Shelf. It is filled with crevasses, canyons and towering formations of wind sculpted ice. It is no more unique than any other though. Possibly not as well known as many others. It has its own beauty. But then so does Korail.
