by Glen Johnson
Ross Island would be surrounded by the Ross Sea if not for the cold and geology of Antarctica. Instead of being encircled by water, it’s bordered by the Ross Ice Shelf, a thick floating platform of ice that flows from a glacier to a coastline and then floats on top of the water.
The Ross Ice Shelf is the largest in Antarctica—about 200,000 square miles and 500 miles across, roughly the size of France—and is nearly 2,500 feet thick in some places.459 The vertical wall at the end can rise 50 to 150 feet above the ocean surface.
The Ross Sea adjacent to McMurdo is passable in the summer months, allowing ships to reach the station to deliver supplies and take away garbage.
We flew past Mount Erebus before the pilots made a final turn to line up with the Pegasus Field, a “white-ice” runway on the Ross Ice Shelf. The ice beneath it is about 110 feet thick and covered with three to four inches of compacted snow.460 Our arrival was announced with a solid thud followed by an unexpectedly smooth rollout on the snowy surface. We taxied for several seemingly interminable minutes before coming to a halt.
When the loadmaster opened the door, we entered another world.
First of all, you felt like you were stepping onto the moon because you were wearing a spacesuit of sorts. I had on long underwear, thin and thick socks, pants, a shirt and undershirt, a sweat jacket—and then all my ECW.
It consisted of white snow boots, black snow pants held up by braces over my shoulders, and a fur-trimmed orange snorkel parka covering from the middle of my thighs to the top of my head.
I also wore a hat and inner and outer gloves, as well as sunglasses to fend off the blinding light.
Second, you felt like you were in no place you’d ever been before because of the absolute lack of sound. There was a bit of a breeze, of course, but there were no buildings to catch it, no passing cars or rustling trees or planes flying overhead.
The sound of silence is like a pure vacuum.
While it was about zero degrees outside, our gear protected us from the elements. The bigger challenge was moving in the clothes while also toting your ECW duffle bag and, in my case, protecting camera gear against the freezing cold.
Moving with the grace of sumo wrestlers, we made our way to a caravan of red Ford Econoline vans. They were just like the ones used back home but outfitted for Antarctica with monster truck-sized snow tires. We clambered in and set off for Williams Field. It was another airport built atop 25 feet of snow covering more than 8 feet of ice—floating on 1,800 feet of water.
We were meeting another plane for the flight to “Pole,” the singular term locals use for the South Pole.
Our half-hour trip between airports was akin to taking a drive across a frozen lake. There was no pavement or painted lines, but the right side of the route was marked with orange flags stuck in the snow. There were a couple of intersections, but no other traffic and no traffic lights.
When we reached “Willy,” the propellers on an old gray C-130 named the City of Albany were already spinning so we could take off immediately on our three-hour flight. The plane was specially outfitted with skis protruding around each set of its tires.
Everyone quickly sat down for takeoff, but almost as soon as we buckled our seat belts, we got disappointing news: the weather at the South Pole had deteriorated just since we landed at Pegasus Field. The trip was being canceled.
We’d been onboard barely enough time to use the tarp-shrouded latrine. Despite the disappointment, we adjusted by falling back to Plan B.
We left Williams Field and drove to McMurdo Station, where we boarded a pair of helicopters for a six-hour tour of the area. I ended up riding knee to knee with Secretary Kerry aboard a Huey chopper similar to those flown during the Vietnam War.
Our tour guides were Dr. Kelly Falkner, director of the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs, and Dr. Scott Borg, leader of the Office’s Antarctic Sciences Section.
We flew north over McMurdo Sound for about twenty-five miles before setting down at Cape Royds, a promontory west of Mount Erebus where there is an Adélie penguin rookery and the preserved hut of explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton.
Shackleton was an Irishman who led three British expeditions to Antarctica. The second of them, the Nimrod Expedition that got within 115 miles of the South Pole, lasted from 1907 to 1909. Its members spent the winter of 1908 in a hut built of wooden planks and tarpaper.461 The wood-burning stove still works, and the walls have shelves stocked with canned goods the group never used. A seat remains on the snow-filled commode outside.
The secretary marveled at the thought of fifteen people living in the space, sharing bunks covered with furs.
We walked across a volcanic surface up a rocky hill several hundred yards away so we could look at the rookery, a breeding ground for Adélie penguins. The wind was over 60 miles per hour, numbing our exposed skin and forcing us to lean into the breeze. The air reeked with the smell of penguin poop.
Looking down on clusters of penguins, we realized they too were fighting the elements. Most were squatting down, their heads pointed into the wind and the slipstream moving over their well-oiled backs.
We posed for pictures outside Shackleton’s hut before flying on past snowy cliffs and the occasional Weddell seal napping in the sunshine.
We crossed McMurdo Sound and landed at the Marble Point Air Facility. It’s a US Antarctic Program way station with six above ground tanks to refuel helicopters and an orange corrugated metal hut where the ground crew and their cook live.
Our visit underscored the uniqueness of the work in Antarctica and the people who undertake it.
As in other spots we visited, the people who greeted us were cheerful and welcoming. They lead remote lives, many of them centered around scientific research, and they exude the kind of heartiness needed to endure the elements.
Our cook made a lunch of sauerbraten and spaetzle, a vinegary beef dish that only my Germanic mother and aunt had ever made for me. The cook also generously used her monthly allotment of fresh greens to compose a salad for us.
There was nobody around for miles, but there was a real sense of community among the fifteen or so people who shared a meal inside that metal hut. I felt bad leaving the cook behind.
We took off and flew south to Taylor Valley, one of the McMurdo Dry Valleys with extremely low humidity and surrounding mountains that block the flow of ice from nearby glaciers.462 We turned west and flew up the valley to the tip of the Taylor Glacier, a massive flow of ice and snow whose end is marked by Blood Falls.
In that spot, a plume of saltwater colored orange by iron oxide bubbles over onto the icy surface of West Bonney Lake.463
We continued on to our final stop at New Harbor. The research station was nothing more than a pair of Quonset huts sitting side by side on a lake bed against a backdrop of Mount Erebus. About a half-dozen people were living there, including a sketch artist working under a federal art grant and a pair of scientists who wedged through holes cut in the nearby ice to study the marine life living underneath.
When we emerged, we were greeted by a lone stray Adélie penguin. It was as curious about us as we were about it, so it waddled over, its wings swept back at forty-five-degree angles to maintain its balance.
“Come on, walk up here, buddy!” the secretary said. The penguin obliged, stopping about ten yards away.
The rule in Antarctica is that visitors can’t approach wildlife, but wildlife is free to approach visitors, so everyone stood still and preserved the moment with cellphone pictures and video.
Some footage caught by Chief of Staff Jon Finer ended up appearing on The New York Times website.464
Our return to civilization was heralded by a lone snowmobile track across the frozen Ross Sea. It led to the hillside cluster of about one hundred buildings looking like a mining town but denoting McMurdo Station.
We landed and made our way to Hut 10, where the secretary, the DS special agent in charge, and I would spend the night. We all had a chance
to shower and eat dinner.
I took a moment to contemplate what I’d seen during not just our trip to Antarctica but also the trips to the Arctic Circle preceding it.
Up north, the damage caused by climate change is readily apparent. It’s evident in the fjord that’s no longer frozen, the glacier receding farther and farther inland, the larger and larger icebergs breaking off the ice shelf.
Down south, the current damage is less perceptible—but only because of the vastness of scale. Ice thousands of feet deep. Snow hundreds of feet high. Stretches untouched by man for as far as you can see. The absolute absence of life—or sound—for miles.
Antarctica is the world’s ice chest, and if it’s broken, there’s no man-made tool big enough to fix it.
I kept thinking back to that Arctic researcher aboard the HMS Thetis, as we floated off the coast of Greenland and took stock of what, ironically enough, amounted to a canary in a coal mine.
He said that as bad as things already were up north, they could end up being one hundred times worse down south.
Secretary Kerry touched on this reality a couple weeks later during a speech at the Women’s Foreign Policy Group Conference in Washington.
“Climate change is growing as a threat in so many ways that are very hard to convey to people. It’s very hard to talk about the nature of the threat, which is existential, and get people to relate to it because it is so enormous and so big. People look at the oceans and say, ‘My God, how could I affect what’s going on in the oceans?’” he said.
“We can’t afford public people who ignore science. We can’t afford to simply turn our backs on these realities.”465
(Top) Arrival at Pegasus Field. (Bottom) Six-hour helicopter survey of vast Antarctica.
(Top) Inside Shackleton’s hut. (Bottom) Braving high winds and penguin poop at Adélie rookery.
(Top) Snow ripples and striated mountains. (Middle) Letting an Adélie penguin come to us at New Harbor. (Bottom) Addressing McMurdo residents.
(Top) Seeing core sample at Scott Base. (Middle) Secretary Kerry crosses an ice field near Scott Base en route to a Weddell seal resting spot. (Bottom) After over 100,000 photos of him, one with the Boss.
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LIFE AT MCMURDO STATION is not for the timid, especially for those who winter over and have to endure total darkness for months on end.
In addition to the bitter weather, there are limited places to go. And not just anyone is allowed to work in Antarctica.
While there are medical facilities at the station, all visitors have to undergo a rigorous physical before making the trip to ensure they have the proper fitness. The State Department doctors likened America’s exams for those going to Antarctica to the examinations faced by astronauts, with a full medical history and blood workups, as well as an EKG, and, in some cases, a stress test.
Everyone also has to be tested for HIV, since McMurdo residents participate in a living blood bank. If someone needs a pint, volunteers pull up their sleeve and provide it.
Most of the people living at McMurdo Station aren’t scientists but logisticians who support them and their work. Besides those stationed at the South Pole or remote stations like those at Marble Point or New Harbor, there are dozens of scientists working at the Crary Labs within McMurdo itself.
The secretary toured the labs our second day on site and was overwhelmed by the biology, earth sciences, atmospheric sciences, and aquatic research under way.
Residents at McMurdo Station work a twenty-four-hour schedule. They live in assigned lodging and are served up to four meals per day in light of the round-the-clock schedule. They have Internet service, albeit slow, and get mail. Visitors to the South Pole can get their letters and postcards stamped at a post office offering the unique “South Pole” postmark.
Residents also can attend spiritual services at the Chapel of the Snows and receive mental health counseling if the way of life gets to them.
In addition, they may blow off steam at Gallagher’s Pub and Southern Exposure, two clubs that serve alcohol.
I had to work late to transmit pictures from our helicopter tour back to the United States, but a couple of colleagues visited the clubs and came back with a report on the local way of life.
They were told that, given the limited number of people on base and everyone’s assured good health, McMurdo has a tradition of relationships running from holiday to holiday. Couples will form, say, on Memorial Day and then break up on the Fourth of July, only to have each individual find a newly single mate for another relationship lasting until Labor Day.
This circle of life continues around the Gregorian and federal holiday calendars, the State Department visitors were told.
Secretary Kerry missed out on that insight, but he lauded everyone who lived and worked at McMurdo Station while addressing a staff assembly in the dining hall after his helicopter tour.
He explained the scientists he met up north in the Arctic Circle urged him to make the trip because it would further highlight the planetary risk from climate change. He said he understood after what he saw and heard while flying across Antarctica.
The secretary also implored them to forge ahead with their research, even if the incoming administration questioned the science behind climate change or followed up on its threat to abandon the prior year’s Paris climate change agreement.
“I don’t know if that’s going to happen. I’m not predicting anything. I’m not getting into any political fight here or anything like that,” Kerry said. “But I’m just saying to you that I’ve seen the curves, I’ve seen the ups and downs of this process for over thirty years, and we’ve made gains and we’ve had setbacks. And we’ve never made the gains without fighting for them, and we’ve always had a difficulty in being able to make the gains because we haven’t necessarily had the quality of the science that we need to be able to prove to people what’s happening.”466
He echoed the thought two days later, after returning to Christchurch and flying on to Wellington, New Zealand, for a meeting in the capital with Prime Minister John Key.
When a reporter asked Secretary Kerry whether he was concerned President-elect Trump would abandon the Paris accord, the veteran politician said “there is sometimes a divide between a campaign and the governing.”467
While Kerry wasn’t sure a President Trump would do the things a Candidate Trump promised, the secretary said the places he’d visited during his four years at the State Department, and the things he’d seen firsthand, deepened his resolve to fight on.
“I believe the evidence is clear, and the question now that we, this administration, are going to continue to address is how we will implement the Paris agreement,” he said. “And until January 20th, when this administration is over, we intend to do everything possible to meet our responsibility to future generations to be able to address this threat to life itself on the planet.”468
Six months later, President Trump announced he was withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate change agreement. The decision would take effect November 4, 2020—the day after the next presidential election.
A call to political arms had been sounded. As another Vietnam veteran, former senator, national leader, and environmentalist had put it, the fate of Earth was in the balance.
9
THE TRUMP ERA,
AND BEYOND
WHAT I JUST DESCRIBED is the motif of traditional diplomacy. What followed Secretary Kerry’s time at the State Department was anything but.
Both President Trump and the person he nominated to succeed Kerry, Exxon Chairman Rex Tillerson, dismissed diplomatic conventions as they began their jobs during the winter of 2017.
Trump, a businessman-turned-politician, picked a nominee for secretary of State with worldwide business connections and company operations on six continents—but no experience in government or the policymaking it entails.
Tillerson, like Trump himself, was new to both Washington and the dynamics of its powe
r games. Instead of reaching out, the new secretary turned inward and made overhauling the State Department bureaucracy his first priority.
What followed was Draconian. There were cuts to and the loss of the top echelon of the diplomatic corps, paralysis among those who remained because of Tillerson’s languishing organizational analysis, and questions from US allies about who was handling the nation’s foreign policy: President Trump; his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was given a diplomatic portfolio; or Tillerson.
It ended in just fourteen months in the most undiplomatic of manners, with the president tweeting he’d hired a new secretary of State. White House Chief of Staff John Kelly later told reporters Tillerson had been on the toilet, ill and overseas, when he was told he was being fired.
That crass treatment drew sympathy even within the Harry S Truman Building, evidenced by the applause the outgoing secretary received after delivering his farewell remarks.
He spoke from the same spot in the C Street Lobby where Kerry had said his own goodbye to the Department little more than a year earlier.
“I hope you will continue to treat each other with respect,” a deflated Tillerson said. “Regardless of the job title, the station in life, or your role, everyone is important to the State Department. We’re all just human beings trying to do our part.”469
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AS DISAPPOINTED AS SECRETARY Kerry was while in New Zealand when he realized Donald Trump had been elected president, and as concerned as he was about perpetuating the Iran nuclear deal, Paris climate change accord, and other areas of focus during his time in office, he also was clear to the entire State Department team when Rex Tillerson’s nomination was announced.
We were to assist with an orderly transition in every manner possible, “so that the incoming administration can pursue the important work of US foreign policy around the world.” That was how he termed it in a statement issued the day the president-elect named his nominee.470