Her résumé: “A visual artist with interests spanning painting, photography, and sculpture, Wendy Trusler is also owner/operator of her own catering company, est. 1988. Renowned for her expertise cooking in remote work sites. Her versatility means she is as comfortable catering a cocktail party in Toronto as she is preparing hearty meals for hungry tree-planters in a northern Ontario bush camp.” I had a good feeling.
Later: Wendy was fit, with long auburn hair, curly. We sat in a windowless office with a photo of an Estonian icebreaker ship on the wall. She invited me to her upcoming art show Forest Stories. I wanted to hire her then and there. Imagine two-in-one: a cook and resident artist.
OCTOBER 18, 1995
Interviewed Sean today by telephone for the camp manager position—to take over after I leave Antarctica. Why does everyone I interview sound so casual but interested in the job? He’s a Scottish mechanical engineer who loves mountaineering. Worked for the Scott Polar Research Institute and The Antarctica Project at Cuverville Island studying penguins. I was happy Sean also knew the Antarctic Treaty, no-trace camping and the sanctity of Sites of Special Scientific Interest, as there are a few near Bellingshausen. I worried he was too skeptical about our cleanup aims.
I also called Greenpeace in New Zealand, as their MV Greenpeace was in Antarctica earlier this year inspecting bases. They kindly said they’d mail me the confidential report and public materials. This can help give me a picture of what we can do at Bellingshausen and the concerns.
OCTOBER 19, 1995 // TORONTO, 401 RICHMOND
Opening of Wendy’s show. The gallery smells like a forest. Wendy’s burls are smooth, carved wood, those big knobs that grow on trees. I told her the job was hers if she wanted it.
The last time I sent a job offer to someone I wrote at the top of the job description “For an elegantly wild person who likes adventure.” Wendy said yes.
OCTOBER 20, 1995
To do:
•send Wendy a contract
•send Sean a contract
•call Barb about Nike donation: expedition jackets, hats
•fax Lena. Bring walkie-talkies? Number of bedrooms for volunteers?
•gear from Canadian government—do they have sub-zero sleeping bags, tents, stove?
•information packages for volunteers
•make appetizer for Heidi's party Friday
NOVEMBER 2, 1995 // TORONTO
Provisioning day with Wendy.
She took me to shops on Chinatown’s Spadina Avenue that I have never been in before. I carried the money and Wendy chose small and large cooking utensils of shapes and purposes unrecognizable: cutlery, plates, mixing bowls. She was meticulous and thrifty, nothing too large, nothing too expensive, nothing impractical, she assured me. How the hell were we going to get these things to Antarctica?
We knew what we’d face couldn’t be anything as serious or tough as the challenges endured by old-school Antarctic explorers like Adrien de Gerlache or Ernest Shackleton, but despite understanding scurvy and having the benefit of modern communication, technology and flights to the Antarctic, the variables were still many. It was a make-it-up-as-you-go enterprise based on a shared belief it was worth it. Wendy invited me over afterwards. We had a glass of wine at her place, a warm and narrow house with antique wooden skis, old hat boxes and cookbooks about. For the first time we relaxed. Looked through Antarctic books donated by a geography teacher, a former VIEW volunteer. Got excited about the upcoming trip.
NOVEMBER 4, 1995
Bonus: Dr. John Croom will join us for part of the season as resident scientist. He sounds accomplished and experienced, good slow southern U.S. drawl and he’s studied at Bellingshausen before. Talkative. Was research program biologist at U.S. Palmer Station in 1968–69 and then went to what was Soviet Bellingshausen station as exchange scientist in 1970. I asked him, “So, what is there to clean up?” He laughed and said, “Well, likely things from the seventies.” John is an associate professor at Emory University, Georgia, in the human and natural ecology program. The Croom Glacier at 70°18'62°25'w on the east coast of Palmer Land was named after him. John said he plans to measure water quality and sample bacteria during his stay at Bellingshausen. Later he’ll investigate if the bacteria can be used to break down petroleum products in the soil.
NOVEMBER 7, 1995
I laugh and do new things with K such as play basketball. But he mentioned children. Not a good idea. We’ve barely started dating.
A mix of Americans, Canadians and a few other nationalities are coming to Bellingshausen. Maybe the average age is fifty-two. A lot of seniors go to the Antarctic, those with the income, but I think our project attracts the healthy, fit and adventurous. I hope so. It’s also not a crazy price to get both a tour and a unique volunteer opportunity. There has to be something great about most people who pay for an unusual work experience.
It’s hard to answer volunteers’ questions on where they are going to sleep or what work they’ll do. I say what I can and make up the rest using the disclaimer, “For example, you might . . .” The majority don’t expect detail. Really I should go to Bellingshausen first but there is no time or budget. I hope there are enough rooms and beds for everyone.
The constant preoccupation is what will be the cleanup work. I asked Lena a few times when I was in Saint Petersburg. She said, “Don’t worry. There is a lot to do.” We have to wing it. At Arctowski earlier this year it was a mix of heavy labour and light.
NOVEMBER 11, 1995
It’s good our office is next to Marine Expeditions Inc. They lend us services like booking the ship cabins, flights to Ushuaia and hotels in Buenos Aires for the volunteers. Their graphic designer made us an expedition T-shirt and badge.
NOVEMBER 20, 1995
I called New York. In Saint Petersburg Lena told me about Bruno “Penguin” Zehnder, a photographer and ecologist who recently lived at Russia’s Antarctic Mirny station and is helping with a cleanup there. I like learning of other cleanup initiatives. He sounds like a character. Bruno wants to meet us en route to Argentina and says it’s excellent we’re working with Bellingshausen; every bit counts. He said it is important to work collaboratively with the Russians.
How it’s going to work: Marine Expeditions offers us a rotating schedule on the Akademik Boris Petrov and the Professor Multanovskiy to drop off and pick up passengers on a five-day schedule. MEI will accept two 50 gallon barrels of non-toxic, non-hazardous debris from the Bellingshausen cleanup on the ship with each volunteer group returning to Ushuaia.
Greenpeace report arrived. In handwriting in red pen across the top: Preliminary Report, January 1995 CONFIDENTIAL: NOT FOR EXTERNAL USE.
The press release on the base inspections is headlined, Greenpeace Expedition Finds Little Evidence of Effective Implementation of Environmental Agreement in Antarctica. They noted effort and money were put into the logistics of maintaining a presence in the Antarctic rather than into science and reported “a marked increase in military activity in this ostensibly de-militarized region of the world.”
It’s a helpful internal report but I was surprised read to a reference to Dostoevsky in it.
Russia is planning to ratify the Madrid Protocol. Hopefully all Antarctic nation’s environmental practices will improve. Surely the bases are a reflection of the government’s current interests.
Antarctica coming up fast. Excited to return. So much to do, K frustrated I am so busy. Promised to go skating with him tomorrow night.
Fat snowflakes like bits of tissue paper are whirling around outside my window.
ALL THESE YEARS LATER . . .
Wendy
I see the opening for my installation Forest Stories as a watershed moment. I had made the break from cooking for tree-planting camps the previous spring to join a team paddling across Canada to raise awareness for AIDS. And when that venture didn’t pan out—too proud to head back to the bush—I spent my first summer in nine, away from the Canadian boreal forest, creating a b
ody of work to honour it. Fifty bowls hand-carved from wood burls salvaged from slash piles up north.
The opening was packed. Family and friends, many of them tree-planting alumni, gathered in the woodland I recreated in the gallery. Carol let me know I got the job as soon as she arrived and a “You’re going where?” buzz added to the night. I felt sorry word reached my parents before I had a chance to tell them. Still smarting from the cancelled canoe trip, I had kept this project under wraps since I applied in September. I shared the news with my boyfriend and thanked the friend whose exaggerated endorsement, “You are the only person who can get food to Antarctica,” had given me confidence to pursue the position.
From the outset the project struck a chord. My work in the North had a similar enviro bent and I enjoyed the challenge of making things run smoothly in seemingly unworkable conditions. Having few resources to draw on brings out the best in some people; that’s my tribe. But for all its romantic appeal I accepted the job because devoting the growing season to making art hadn’t been practical: I needed the money.
Carol and I worked on logistics immediately. By late October she had me compiling wish lists. What would I need for the kitchen, dining room or common room? What special things would I want to do? Her attention to detail was extraordinary; I could tell she cared deeply about what we would be doing and the people who would be participating in the project, whoever they were.
Apart from a journal to navigate occasional rough spots in my twenties I was never much of a diarist, but I am a list-maker and keeper of things (at least until I understand what they want to be). From calendars, letters, and lists I’ve kept all these years I can trace my mindset leading up to the project. In a way they tell me more than a diary could.
In early November the report arrived from a five-year post-op brain scan I had that summer—a milestone to remind me how resilient and vulnerable we are. No tumour recurrence, just bit of scar tissue responsible for occasional nocturnal short-circuits—no real cause for worry. I was good to go.
On November 22nd our first purchase order was to be faxed to our supplier in Ushuaia, Argentina. My cantina Spanish (“Dos cervezas, por favor”) was put to the test.
In all the busyness of goodbye it’s easy to neglect making time to say it. As November drew to a close P organized a surprise going-away party. We were in a newish relationship—his first since a separation and my first in four long years getting my footing after a love that didn’t hold. In the weeks after I accepted the job we developed a confusing pattern of twelve-hour breakups. I assumed he was dealing with emotional baggage and let myself think he loved me more than anyone else had.
Filling a restaurant with well-wishers was a lovely gesture, but I felt silly about all the fuss, given I was only going to work. Mostly I was touched he thought of it and took it as a sign that he was becoming more comfortable with my migratory patterns.
You can fit a lot more than skis in a ski bag. In addition to my knives, aprons, food processor, a few key cookbooks and music I also packed my stuffed bears, a quilt I made from my old T-shirts, inspiring non-fiction, Russian and Spanish phrase books, art supplies and telemark ski equipment. I make home wherever I am.
Art supplies were the real luxury. For all the freedom it brought me, the drawback of cooking for a third of the year was shutting down my art practice. With fewer mouths to feed than in tree-planting camps I was optimistic I’d have time for art—perhaps even for the project I was leaving midstream. As I folded my studio, I got the idea to collect Antarctic recipes to incorporate into the cookbook/painting I was making with recipes from my tree-planting days. Carol gave me a small recipe file to get me started and asked me to write a teaser about the cookbook to include in my VIEW team bio.
Not one of my traditional mediums, writing was a bit of a leap, especially since I rarely found time to write letters while working. But for some reason one of the last things I did to prepare for the journey was arrange to write to CBC Radio host Peter Gzowski for his Letters to Morningside broadcasts. I also bought a journal. Soon we were on our way.
Books:
A Schoolteacher in Old Alaska: The Story of Hannah Breece, Jane Jacobs ed.
Roughing it in the Bush, Susanna Moodie
The Miracle of Language, Richard Lederer
Northern Bounty: A Celebration of Canadian Cuisine, Jo Marie Powers and Anita Stewart eds.
The Cook’s Handbook, Prue Leith
The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, and The Moosewood Cookbook, Mollie Katzen
Potager: Fresh Cooking from the French Kitchen, Georgeanne Brennan
South to the Pole, L.B. Quartermain
Under Scott’s Command: Lashly’s Antarctic Diaries, Commander A.R. Ellis ed.
Scott’s Last Expedition: The Journals, G. C. Scott
Frank Hurley: The Bosun (John Vincent) of the Endurance mending a net. Glass Paget plate phototransparancy, 1915
{The Bosun of the “Endurance”, Vincent A.B. mending a net / Call no. ON 26/5}
“The first three weeks of November have gone by with such a rush that I have neglected my diary and can only patch it up from memory.”
—Robert Falcon Scott, Scott’s Last Expedition, Volume 1, November 25, 1910
MIRRORS
Carol
During the spring of 2011, I visited the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) Library and Archives at the University of Cambridge. Archives are time travel. I went with the question, “What were those early explorers thinking?”
This archive was a small room with four desks and two private doors: one to the collection and one to the picture library. I sent my list of requests for documents. I waited.
With white gloved-fingers I opened Robert Falcon Scott’s 1910 notebook; its pages were empty, but for three words crossed out in pen: Limes from Melbourne.
I found tidy notes in pencil—the winter lectures of the Terra Nova Expedition on birds and meteorology, including Antarctic rainbows.
In a simple black journal was Scott’s chart of time passing and list of food to be consumed en route to the South Pole. One note in pencil on grey-lined paper was, “1. Large proportions of butter.” In one calculation Scott appeared to have foreshadowed missing the return ship. Scott and his party reached the South Pole a month after Roald Amundsen’s Norwegian expedition won the race on December 14, 1911.
On Scott and party’s trek back to the ship they died, only eighteen km from a food cache.
One document was a letter with the loopy, confident handwriting of Peggy Pergrine. She asked Shackleton if she could join his 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition. Shackleton refused and it was remarkable any of the men who did returned. Their ship, the Endurance, got crushed in pack ice, stranding twenty-eight men in no-man’s land.
These days, who doesn’t enjoy a survival story. Australian explorer and artist Frank Hurley’s hopeful, poetic entries about science and food in his journal from Shackleton’s expedition gripped me such as, “In the stomach of the leopard were found some 50 pre-digested fish, in excellent condition, their stomachs in turn, crammed full with amphipods.” (March 30, 1916). I raced to read about the starving party’s rescue from desolate Elephant Island. This island is near King George Island where we lived in relative luxury 80 years later.
Arctic explorer, scientist and humanitarian Fridtjof Nansen (1861–1930) inspired me most. He shared survival lessons learned from the Inuit and participated in creating the League of Nations. He designed the Nansen Passport that was issued to 450,000 stateless people and honoured by 52 governments.
I travelled further reading journals that revealed more of the writer’s feelings than only details of the temperature or meals. The observations were entryways, whether they were written to be shared or not.
I discovered parallels in Wendy’s and the historic journals: the beauty of our shared humanity, records of the weather and heart, humour and hardship, the shifting inside and outside world, the value of knowledge transfer and a hearty st
ew.
EXPECTATION
DECEMBER 6–20, 1995
{Wendy Trusler}
Outside it’s just water, sky and seabirds—
we’re all waiting for the first iceberg sighting.
DECEMBER 6, 1995 // TORONTO
CDEveryone says, “Be careful”.
We have nine bags weighing 40 or 50 pounds each.
“As they go by tell me what is in them,” says the airport customs officer.
“Pots, pans, utensils, books,” says Wendy as the first bag goes through the X-ray machine.
“More pots, pans, utensils, books, and skis,” she continues.
“This big one?” the officer asks.
“Carol’s makeup,” Wendy teases.
P and K took forever saying goodbye. The guys dipped us at the same time in an embarrasing tango move. The customs guy said, “Okay, time to go. Leave them alone.”
WTVoyage to el fin del mundo. Early morning pickup at my place so I’m tired before we start. No time for breakfast or dishes. Keys in the mailbox for subletters. Last minute visit next door to drop off painting. Squish into the airport limousine. Wait at airport surprisingly emotional given how weird things have been with P recently.
Commuter plane to NYC. Carol gets hit on. At airport met Bruno Zehnder—gave us slides of his cleanup at Mirny station and copies of his emperor penguin calendar to sell to the “rich tourists”.
NYC switch and then Miami to Buenos Aires.
Ushuaia most spectacular, a sharp contrast to arid land we’ve flown over.
Note from Dave German welcoming us then taken directly to ship. Funny to run into friends from the tree-planting world down here.
DECEMBER 7, 1995 // USHUAIA
CDFlying into Ushuaia was amazing. We did a dramatic swooping landing on a narrow airstrip next to the water. Snowy mountains behind the town.
The Antarctic Book of Cooking and Cleaning: A Polar Journey Page 2