(c) 2006 by Steve Martaindale
(NOTE: In October 2006, I set off on a four-month adventure working as a journalist in Antarctica. Readers of my print column back then were invited to follow along.)
Less than 72 hours into my Antarctic experience found me bundled in my ECW – extreme cold weather gear – along with 19 others as we prepared camp in the snow atop a glacial ice shelf.
They call it Happy Camper camp and the sarcasm is deeper than the snow.
We lucked out with our camping experience because the weather gradually deteriorated all day as we pitched tents and built a wall made of “bricks” sawed out of the packed snow. Temperatures were down to about 13 degrees below zero, but the winds that drove horizontal snow brought the wind chill to almost 50 below.
Lucky? Why?
Because, if we survived – and survival is actually pretty well guaranteed, regardless how miserable we felt – the story of camping out in Antarctica would be all that much better. That fact was borne out after we returned to station. People who knew I was out in the bad weather said they had worried about me. In the next few days, if the topic of Happy Camp came up – and I was not hesitant to bring it up – people said all the right things. They knew we had a challenging experience.
Yep, that was us. We met the storm and we survived.
But, I confided in friends, I felt more like a survivor by default. Had there been a bus stop nearby, it’s quite possible I would have been boarding transport to shelter from the cold and wind that made every task from breathing to seeing a trying and wretched experience.
While there was no bus, there really was a way out. Once camp was completed, our two instructors left for their heated hut about a quarter-mile away. Had any of us bailed out, we would have moved into their building. Of course, an emergency would have activated a search and rescue team. It’s not as if we were marooned on an ice island.
But there’s more to walking out than easing one’s own discomfort. It’s ... well ... it’s quitting.
Stay the course
I remember vividly the words of our high school football coach: “A quitter is a quitter is a quitter. It makes me want to spit.”
Yeah, I thought of Coach during Happy Camp. If I resigned, moved into the instructors’ hut, one less person would be available the next morning to break camp. My job, as it turned out, was to fire up the cook stove and heat water for breakfast and drinks. I didn’t get involved with physical labor until the last two tents. But someone else would have heated water instead of taking down tents. We were a team and everyone played a role.
“It’s only for a short while,” I said to myself. “Just get through the next task. You don’t want to tell people you freaked out and quit on Happy Camp.”
Indeed, another thought playing across my mind was that the entire experience would make a great story to tell. Isn’t that pretty much what brought me to Antarctica in the first place? A desire to encounter new things, to take advantage of a rare opportunity to see and do things most people don’t.
So, I toughed it out, managed to get through. I leaned on teammates when necessary and, I think, did a fair job of carrying my share of the load.
With all due apologies to Robert Frost, I took the road less traveled by with hopes it will make all the difference.
(c) 2006 by Steve Martaindale
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