Big Dead Place

by Nicholas Johnson

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Foreword

  Praise

  CHAPTER ONE - FROZEN REALM OF MYSTERY

  CHAPTER I NOTES

  CHAPTER TWO - THE OFFSHORE ACCOUNT AND THE ALIEN ABDUCTION

  CHAPTER 2 NOTES

  CHAPTER THREE - LITTLE AMERICA

  CHAPTER 3 NOTES

  CHAPTER FOUR - THE SOUTH POLE

  CHAPTER 4 NOTES

  CHAPTER FIVE - THE MOST PEACEFUL SPOT IN THIS WORLD

  CHAPTER 5 NOTES

  CHAPTER SIX - THE GRINDER AND THE PROJECTED MAYHEM INDEX

  CHAPTER 6 NOTES

  CHAPTER SEVEN - THE ICE ANNEX AND THE MEDEVAC

  CHAPTER 7 NOTES

  CHAPTER EIGHT - DISASTER CITY

  CHAPTER 8 NOTES

  CHAPTER NINE - THE UNITED STATES EXPLORING EXPEDITION

  CHAPTER 9 NOTES

  CHAPTER TEN - THE ANTARCTIC SERVICE AWARDS

  CHAPTER 10 NOTES

  CHAPTER ELEVEN - FAITH IN SCIENCE

  CHAPTER 11 NOTES

  APPENDICES

  GLOSSARY

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright Page

  FOR MOM

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Though this book is non-fiction, most of the dialogue herein is reconstructed from notes I made at the end of the workday, with the exception of recorded dialogue, which is inset.

  Because the United States Antarctic Program is a very small world, I have changed the names of most of those who work in The Program, unless they have given permission, or unless their positions have already brought them media attention in other instances.

  In my menial position as an Antarctic garbageman, I was exposed to a wide array of unusual official documents that had been discarded in the White Paper category. My deep research in this area (sometimes to the bottom of the bin) would not have been possible without the conscientious recycling program of the National Science Foundation, for which I am grateful.

  Map Courtesy of National Science Foundation

  FOREWORD

  by Eirik Sønneland

  MY FIRST MEETING with McMurdo was the smell of diesel. The same that disturbed our noses when over a month earlier Rolf Bae and I had skied into the U.S. South Pole base. The clean and cold air of Antarctica’s wilderness had reset our senses. Approaching McMurdo Station, we could smell humans as far as 20 kilometres outside the heart of the largest infrastructure on this frozen continent.

  I looked at the GPS Monday 5th February 01.00 a.m. Behind us lies a ski trek of close to 3800 kilometres, from Gjelsvikfjella in Queen Maud Land, via South Pole to McMurdo Station. 105 days on skies, 11 months as the first winter crew at the Norwegian Research station, “Troll.” Research, station upgrades, a year’s worth of maintenance, and the world longest ski trek had been a success. It almost seemed like our minds and bodies didn’t know how to react—all this would soon be over. A strong feeling of humility is the best description I can give today. Feeling fragile but at the same time strong.

  Near McMurdo, the first building we arrived at turned out to be part of the fire department at the airfield. Five guys stepped from the small barracks and walked toward us. They looked confused. “Where are you coming from?” was the first question. We explained. It was silence for something that felt like a long time, and then one guy said, “You must be tired!” I didn’t feel tired, nor happy. To be quite honest I didn’t feel a thing. It was unreal. The firefighters invited us in for food and hot chocolate. They treated us very well and were calm and polite. It seemed easy to make friends. After sleeping on their couch we were escorted to Scott Base the next day. The New Zealand Base commander asked us what had happened and why we had missed our boat, the Khlebnikov. We told him the truth: we hadn’t made it in time. It seemed like he understood and offered us use of the phone to arrange alternative transport. He told us that only the U.S. Antarctic Program had transport at this point in the season, except for some cruise ships arriving in a couple of days.

  The next day we were ordered to have a meeting with the U.S. base leader. I knew this meeting would be special. It’s well known that, for various reasons, the U.S. and NSF will not support any private expeditions, which was fine with us, because we believed we could find our own way out. He arrived with his big red parka and a National Geographic cap, probably to show us that he knew all about expeditions and exploration. Obviously he didn’t. He had a strange arrogant attitude and wouldn’t listen to our story about our transport from McMurdo. He talked to us as though we were criminals. He told us that we were not allowed to enter the McMurdo Station area, nor to enter any buildings or vehicles, and not to speak to the employees on the base. I was in shock. Then he left. The New Zealand station manager told us not to worry and tried to excuse the American leader. It didn’t help. We knew from that moment it would be an unpleasant stay at McMurdo. For a few days we spent time with the Kiwis at Scott Base, helping them with their work and getting visitors from McMurdo. The American workers were horrified by the way we were treated, and when I asked them why they dared to visit us (it was forbidden) they told me they had broken every stupid rule on base, and they might as well break this one as well. I really felt good among the workers; they are normal people with the ability to work in extreme environments. Also I believe that a majority of these people want an adventure. That’s a similarity between me, as a polar expeditioner, and them.

  Around this time, we learned that one of our best friends had died on a platform in the Northern seas, and Rolf and I went into almost total breakdown. A Dutch cargo ship offered us a lift but NSF, wanting to make an example of us to other expeditioners, pressured the Dutch not to accommodate us, after which NSF offered us a flight to New Zealand for a fee of $50,000. I learned a lot about bureaucracy at the American station. It appeared that orders were coming from somewhere in the U.S. where they, as the author would probably express it, “sure as shit” don’t know what happens in far away Antarctica, making it impossible for “leaders” with National Geographic hats to make sensible decisions. I believe this system is crazy. That’s why I agreed to write the foreword for this book.

  After fighting blizzards, crevasses, extreme subzero temperatures, distance, and my own psyche, I remember when I told the expedition leader on the cruise ship that finally took us from Antarctica that “if Antarctica has an asshole, McMurdo is it!” Yes, I was angry. Not toward the workers, who are truly the reason why the stations continue to run, but toward the system of bureaucracy that serves no purpose but to treat everyone poorly. The author writes that “I have never heard one person say that the most difficult thing about Antarctica is working outside, or being cold… I have never heard of one returnee who finally quit because it’s the world’s highest, driest, coldest or whatever. People leave because of the bullshit.” After experiencing McMurdo for myself, and reading this book, I believe him.

  For people that wish to work or have worked in Antarctica, this book may be a bible. For other people it will be spectacular reading about how it can be working in the world’s last wilderness in good days and bad days. The author’s historical knowledge of Antarctica is very good; the book will introduce new readers to some of the well-known Antarctic expeditions, and will for those already familiar with Antarctic history consolidate some of the most obscure and interesting anecdotes. The author’s straightforward language and insights into human characteristics make this book unfit for the light-hearted. It will persuade the reader to think about the difference between sane and insane behavior from normal people doing normal jobs. It may make you angry, but it will certainly make you laugh. It will provoke NSF and other U.S. o
fficials for sure. I believe they need it, and may even learn something from it.

  Eirik Sønneland

  July 2004

  Life at a remote station is life in a test tube; it is an environment in which men and their behavior can be subjected to searching scrutiny. I feel that observations which are made and lessons which are learnt have important implications for the more complicated urban environments in which most of us lead our daily lives.

  —Philip Law

  I’m more American than I am human.

  —David Nelson

  CHAPTER ONE

  FROZEN REALM OF MYSTERY

  … the general object of the expedition was a peaceful voyage, to explore and survey coasts, seas, and islands, and to make such investigations as might be found practicable in aid of science...

  —Charles Wilkes, 1845

  This is one of the “heights” of a polar voyage, when all one’s comrades are one’s bosom friends, and when every single experience is viewed through rose-coloured spectacles.

  —Raymond Priestly

  I STEPPED FROM MY ROOM in the upper hallway of Dorm 202 to go for a piss down the hall. It was the middle of the afternoon. A man lay on his back in the middle of the hallway. He was barefoot and wearing no shirt. I assumed he was drunk. He too must have worked nightshift. His eyes were open. As I neared the bathroom I asked groggily, “Dude, are you all right?”

  Only his eyes moved. “Eventually you will make a mistake,” he said.

  I nodded, walked into the bathroom, and peed on a cake of pink deodorant in the urinal. I washed my hands and then dried them with a paper towel from a dispenser that someone had recently ripped from the wall and left in a sink.

  “You sure you’re okay?” I asked as I passed the guy in the hall again.

  “Eventually you will make a mistake,” he said calmly.

  I shrugged and went to my room, where I curled up under the covers and started to fall asleep. Before I did, I groaned and climbed out of bed to lock the door, in case he had been talking to me.

  Soon after I arrived at McMurdo Station by plane that first summer, the station manager gathered the employees in the Galley for an orientation. As he spoke, we fidgeted at the cafeteria tables. Our red parkas hung in the hall, but we still sweated in our long underwear, black wind-bibs, and heavy white boots with air-valves. Paintings of glaciers hung on the walls. I had only one question in mind: How long can I stand outside before I die? The station manager instead told us that if our neighbors were noisy, we should report them to the Firehouse. The Housing lady said a few words, and we formed two lines for keys to our dorm rooms.

  From the pile of standard-issue orange bags in the hallway, I dislodged mine and sought my room. Someone else had already been assigned to my bed, so I took my key back to the Housing Office, where several people were in the hallway outside the door, not in line, but just hanging around. I couldn’t tell whether they were new like me, or if they had been here before. I consoled a woman who was crying because she was not assigned her choice of roommate. I could hear people talking inside the Housing Office, so I asked a guy leaning against the wall, “What’s the deal here?” He shrugged and said he also needed to talk to them, gesturing at the Housing Office door, which was locked. I knocked and got no response. After a few minutes, a woman with a crowded keychain arrived from around the corner. The crying woman shifted to a hopeful sniffle. The woman with the keys looked beyond the waiting crowd as if inspecting some grave blemish in the distant hallway. Her ready key slithered into the lock, she slipped inside, and the door slammed behind her. The sniffles reverted to sobs, and one more voice joined the merry clamor from within the Housing Office. People who for a moment had stood at attention resumed their positions against the wall. After a few more minutes, the door opened, a man emerged from within, and a woman tried to close the door.

  I would have worked for free my first summer, just to go to Antarctica. Because I had little knowledge about the place, I imagined that I also had few preconceptions about it. I suspected, though, that wherever the unknown lurked, science would be there to stop it, so I expected to find radar dishes and weird machines, as at a moon base. I would not have been surprised to find myself shivering in a tent full of scientists or staggering through a blizzard pulling a sled. Mostly, though, I was free of assumptions about the frozen realm of mystery. I knew only that in Antarctica, things would be different, and I was ready to do whatever it took to adjust to the rugged frontier.

  Now I was blocking the door of the Housing Office with my foot.

  “Excuse me,” I said with a smile. “Someone is in my bed. Where do you want me?”

  The Housing woman nervously eyed the crowd closing in around the door.

  “What dorm are you in now?” she asked.

  “155.”

  We smiled at each other. She hesitated, then let me in, closed the door behind me, and established herself behind a counter.

  Thereafter, my daily commute to work from Dorm 202 took seconds. I worked just across the yard in Building 155, the town hub, where the main hallway, called Highway One, is congested in the summer by people using the cash machines at one end and by people talking outside the store at the other. Along Highway One are alcoves with coat hooks, and bathrooms with orangescented hand lotion and free condoms. There are sometimes bags of shredded documents outside the Human Resources Office and people leaning against the wall by the Housing Office or by the computer kiosk. Bulletin boards along Highway One are layered with flyers for Disco Night at the bar, stereo equipment for sale, and accident and injury statistics. There is a sign-up sheet on the door of the barbershop. Haircuts are free here.

  I worked Midrats (midnight rations) as a DA (Dining Attendant) in the Galley. We washed dishes, scrubbed pots, vacuumed the dining area, scouted for spray bottles of disinfectant to wipe the tables, and mixed Bug Juice (industrial-strength Kool-Aid). Most of us on the Midrats crew were fingees (Fucking New Guys). Though our reasons for coming varied, as did our methods of getting jobs, we were all excited to be here. Flo, who referred to herself as a hip grandma, had come down to see penguins. Her husband was an important figure in McMurdo construction. Lindy, who had also married into McMurdo, was here for the penguins as well. Lindy popped her gum, kept freshly painted nails, and liked contemporary country music. June was an ornery, lip-glossed San Diegan whose sister had worked on the ice for years. She had heard McMurdo was fun. Gail was a Midrats salad-maker who had no McMurdo connections. Her résumé had escaped the slush pile because she had drawn cartoon penguins on her cover letter. Mary, our supervisor, had been applying for years to get a job of any kind in Antarctica. She also had no local connections; back in the “real world,” she was a financial consultant. She planned to use her wages to buy a new metal detector, as finding metal things was one of her hobbies. Steve had been down before and had come back mostly for the money. He was from Nebraska, and told me of a recent concert there featuring Jefferson Starship and Eddie Money that drew an enthusiastic crowd. Steve said that Jefferson Starship put on a good show, but that Eddie Money got drunk and bellowed contempt for all the people who had come from afar to see him.

  At work, classic rock blared from different radios around the kitchen, and our exposure to the tinny canon of riffs occupied nine hours a day, six days a week. The Galley might as well have been in Nebraska. Stainless steel, hot water, the smells of baking chicken and boiling potatoes and butterscotch, all to a repetitious soundtrack of Foreigner and The Eagles. I often forgot where I was, until I went outside in the cold and wind to dump cardboard or food waste in the dumpsters off the dock.

  One night early in the summer, Gail called me to the salad room where there was a suspicious hush, with four people crowding around some spectacle.

  “Look at this,” she whispered.

  A snail was crawling across a piece of lettuce in a one-gallon plastic sauce container. There are not supposed to be snails in Antarctica; it had hitched a lift in a box
of leafy vegetables. The lucky snail had found itself amongst a sympathetic group of salad-makers rather than stern representatives of the National Science Foundation, which was decidedly anti-snail by orthodoxy of the Antarctic Treaty.

  “Don’t tell anyone,” said Gail. “If NSF finds out, they’ll make us kill it.”

  I suggested the snail be named Anne Frank, but the salad-makers called it Snidely. A week or so later Snidely was hand-carried back to New Zealand by someone fired for throwing rocks at his co-worker.

  The summer crawled along, with only small local dramas staving off the monotony of working in the Galley. Due to our collective surplus of curiosity about any event more gripping than the burning of sauce, the Galley was a hub of station gossip, a central plaza for the town’s gurgling fountain of undetected infractions and titillating punishments, an engine idling on old accounts of scandalous romances and employee misbehavior. Until the day, after a seemingly endless stretch in the kitchen, the Midrats crew was offered a boondoggle, a trip out of town. Now we would have our own stories to tell: real outdoor Antarctica stories, not common indoor stories that could have happened anywhere. After our shift, we changed into our ECW gear (Extreme Cold Weather) and jabbered with anticipation on the Galley dock, our bright red parkas still clean from disuse. A noisy orange snow vehicle arrived, and Hank from F-Stop (Field Safety Training Program) jumped out and explained that the Hagglund here cost a quarter mil because it floats. “There’s exit hatches in the roof,” he said, which roused a happy murmur: those hatches weren’t there for nothing.