ShakeyJay

In many respects the South Pole at the turn of the 20^th century was an environment of no’s.  There was no point of reference.  There was no large geographical landmark announcing, “You are here!”  There was no large hole in the ground staked with a massive pole obtrusion or place name.  There was no marker.  There was no obvious tell tale sign that an objective had been reached.  There was no support for life. There was nothing there but wind: a wind so cold and bitter that it was life sucking. It was as if the wind gods had found a place on earth to vent their anger unabated.  A howling, deafening non – prevailing wind with snow and blizzard and drift that was constant only in its relentless power: a non-prevailing confused and chaotic maelstrom because there was no direction here – except north.  There was no warm southwesterly, steady westerly or an easterly.  Everywhere one turned one was facing north.  There was only the bitter north wind.  And coming from all directions!

 And there was nothing at the South Pole except a frigid, blinding white desert plain projecting a desolate and frighteningly yet awesome picture of nature – at its best and at its worst: a lifeless, broad, flat, monotonous stretch of frozen landscape that stretched as far as the eye could see – in every direction.  In the summer months there were 24 hours of sunshine but with it came an incessant blinding glare.  In the wintertime an eternal darkness fell over the land like a veil of silence in death:  a darkness that was made all the more eerie and dangerous with temperatures dropping off the bottom of the Fahrenheit scale.  And everywhere one looked it was always the same.  There were no distinctions: only wind and drift and snow and ice. 

The south polar plateau was an icy land that was both hypnotically breathtaking as it was nomadically restless.  Ice that was so pervasive, it was everywhere:  ice – in crystallized air;  ice – in frozen breath; ice – in frozen sweat; ice that was over a mile thick; ice that permeated and smothered every secret that the land may hold; ice that moved; ice that scorched a path across a barren landscape; ice that was so relentless and unwavering in its slow glaciated crawl across the south polar plateau toward the Trans-Antarctica Mountains; and ice that fell in precipitous icefalls, down expansive glaciers that were bordered by mountains over 15,000 feet in height.  Towering granite peaks, like sentinels, these mountains protected a high frozen polar ice prairie that was home to a non-descript geographical point of the earth that was the frozen underbelly of the world.  The South Pole was indeed cold and inhospitable. It was a terrible place.

And on this land of ice and snow, on this south polar plateau some 10,000 feet above sea level, tales unfolded in an historical context of polar exploration that have since become the source of legend and myth: legendary tales of survival, of leadership, of endurance, of courage, of success, of heart rendering self-sacrifice, of depression, of defeat, legendary myths and tales of men, of dogs, of ponies, of unremitting hunger, of disease, of death.  It is a place of storied heroism, of foolishness, of fickle and fate, of obstinacy and ignorance, of mental breakdown and stupidity.  It is a place of friendship, of camaraderie, of jealousy, and spite.  It is a place of majestic peaks, of icy crags, of hidden crevasses, of bottomless chasms, of pressure ridges, of untold beauty and horrific dangers and suffering.  It is the vast polar plateau, the Beardmore and Axel Heiberg Glaciers, the expansive Ross Ice Shelf, The Devil’s Ballroom, McMurdo Sound, the Western Mountains, Katabatic wind, Terror and Erebus, the Bay of Whales.  It is the playground of killer whales, the home of the Emperor and Adele penguin, the Weddell seal, Skuas and the Antarctic Petrel. 

For some men the South Pole symbolized gentlemanly fulfillment. The Antarctic environment entrapped them into an addiction of exploration and an escalating sense of superhuman accomplishment.  It instilled a sense of unbridled commitment and fulfillment to a cause that was of intellectual importance and of spiritual poetry and propriety.  Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of Robert Falcon Scott’s men and author of one of the best south polar chronicles written “The Worst Journey in the World” (Cherry-Garrard, 1930) described south polar exploration this way: “Exploration is the physical expression of the Intellectual Passion”(Cherry-Garrard, 1930, page 577). Perhaps it was for men brought up on Victorian values: Victorian men who were intellectually nurtured on Browning, Tennyson, Dickens and Darwin, or influenced by Jowett (Hibbert, 1987).  But for many of these men there was also that adolescent like fearlessness and ignorance of the horrific dangers, subtleties and paradox that was the Antarctic.  Reading their stories, their fearlessness and bravado somehow undermined the intellectual passion and poetic romanticism.  For the Antarctic may be in one instant a beautiful thought provoking place.  But in the next it heralds a terrible, frozen death.  Its death knell is both unsuspecting and indistinguishable, but death nevertheless.   For the Antarctic environment knows no glory.  It knows no sense of gentlemanly conduct.  It has no sense of fair play or understanding of intellectual pursuits or passion. The Antarctic is not a positive place at all. It is an environment of no’s.

(c) Shakeyjay 2002

I don’t want to dwell too much on this place, this wet coast city; needless to say I got a job at a paper, cardboard packaging company that had an international flavour to it. My sister and her partner welcomed me with open arms and made me feel at home. In their old beater, they took me on day trips around the city and surrounding country side. I must admit that when the sun did come out on those rare occasions, the city’s natural, geographical setting was spectacular. Only problem was that these occasions were as remote as a west coast hippy’s tendency to find a job. Me, I worked.

I also met Sandy, my sister’s best friend and our next door neighbour’s oldest daughter. She and my sister decided to come out to the west coast with all the other hippies of this so called summer of love. Go west young dude, and dude-ess was the hippy siren call of the day. So, with a suitcase full of “tie dyes”, with hope upon hope and a restless thumb they all hitchhiked to the promise land.

Sandy lived in a commune in the south east end of the city. It was so cool she told me. Yes it was sooo cool, figuratively and literally, but also run down and shabby: ten of her closest friends living together under one roof. The only enterprising dude in all of this was the landlord. Yet his dependency of course was not the free spirited, enterprising skills of the inhabitants of his run down abode but the municipal government’s largesse of the day affectionately known by all of the caterers of the hippy commune crowd as “Welfare Wednesdays.” And commune is just a hippy expression and a Latin word for shithouse!

Sandy showed me her space, which was in the corner of a large open basement, damp, dark and dank, with just a dirty mattress and a blanket curtain marking off her personal territory: a bare incandescent light bulb her only means of artificial light.  It was sooo cool she told me. And you’re so square, uptight, so un-cool she would criticise me to no end. Get with the program she would insist. Her limited vocabulary was only limited by the amount of drugs she imbibed. The letter “C” was a predominant determinant of their nondescript and boring alphabet and part and parcel of the hippy dialogue and cultural landscape. What she didn’t tell me of course was the amount of times she was robbed of her food and money by her cadre of close but oh sooo cool family of friends.

But what did it for me in this run down abode of a dwelling was an incident that occurred while visiting Sandy. Sitting in the kitchen on the main floor, Sandy was making me a cup of coffee when suddenly the front door was kicked in by some scruffy looking Manson like figure dude of hippiedom, stoned out of his ever lovin but lifeless mind. His eye balls rolling and puffing out of his skull; his dirty unkempt beard gave him the impression of a crazed out Sasquatch, or a mountain man. Someone who hadn’t seen soap in a very long time! Foam seemed to be frothing out of the sides of his mouth. He was cursing to high heaven, tripping out I would assume, in the hippy vernacular. Paranoid perhaps. But what was really scary and sooo un-cool, was the sawed off shotgun that he was wielding in his left hand and forearm. I do hope to God he is right handed I prayed. I couldn’t move. I was gobsmacked. Just as well, as any movement by us in his direction probably would have triggered his aggression, and not in a good way.

And just as quickly as he entered, he turned and left, exiting out of the now damaged front door. Perhaps he had the wrong address I thought.  I almost shit my pants and when it was deemed safe I high tailed it out of there but not before I pleaded with Sandy to come with me. She declined.  “But Damian is sooo cool” she told me. Damian? Damian? Damian is sooo cool? Isn’t Damian a name for a devil? Like a Griffin, a devilish name? I thought to myself.  And with a sawed off shotgun as his calling card? These hippies are sooo prone to self delusion and self destruction. It must be the drugs I thought or the drinking water or the raindrops pounding relentlessly on their noggins.  More than likely it was the Purple Haze in the shallow recesses of their minds or the West Coast Bud where everyone, everybody, crazy or not, is your best friend forever, or buddy. I never returned to Sandy’s commune.

I do believe that in the two month period that I lived there, 60 days I think, that it rained for 59 of them. Exaggerating perhaps but it just seemed so. It was either raining or about to rain or had just finished raining.  And with the rain came the melancholy. And with the melancholy came the empty feeling of loneliness and with the loneliness and melancholy, and vitamin “D” deficiency, came depression. The suicide rate in this city was through the roof.