Big Dead Place

by Nicholas Johnson

  4 Honored with framed photos hanging on the wall in Bio-Med at Pole are Edward Wilson, the first doctor to reach the South Pole, and Frederick Cook, the first doctor to winter over in Antarctica. Besides his historic Antarctic involvement in the Belgica expedition of 1898-99, Dr. Cook in 1903 claimed to be the first person to reach the summit of Mount McKinley, a claim that was debunked when one of Cook’s party later confessed that they had never come close to the summit, verified by two climbers who duplicated Cook’s photo of “the summit” at a point 14,000 feet below. In the later years of his life, Dr. Cook spent five years in prison for securities fraud.

  5 “They might as well have named the North Pole ‘Pluto’ then, since Byrd didn’t fly there either.” —Señor X

  6 Bunny boots are white insulated cold weather boots. They have a valve on the side, left open during plane flights, but otherwise closed to keep a layer of air trapped in the boot. Boots with valves on them are somewhat peculiar, and this oddity was put to good use once to convince a fingee Waste manager that he had to have his boots filled with glycol, an antifreeze, before he could use them outside. He questioned that because he hadn’t heard it before, but what more evidence did he need? Look at the valve on the boot! Why else would a boot have a valve? They dropped him off in front of the Heavy Shop and he took his boots inside. Unfortunately, it was just a few minutes after breaktime, and all the mechanics were lingering around the front desk. “Is this the Heavy Shop? I was told to come to the Heavy Shop and have my boots filled with glycol.” No one knows whether the laughter burst from their throats or spewed irrepressibly through their noses.

  7 The soundtrack of any American-sponsored frontier is less likely to feature the haunting orchestral strings of 2001 than the tinny strains of Bad Company and CCR and Steve Miller.

  8 Because of a personal conflict with his supervisor in the Galley, the cook had tried to leave on the earliest possible flight, but management had denied his request.

  9 A psychologist once told a winter-over, after scoring his test, that he was either schizophrenic or an artist. She later purchased three of his paintings.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE SOUTH POLE

  Antarctica is cold and forbidding.

  —NSF brochure

  There is no ATM at South Pole.

  —South Pole Station Guide, 1999-2000

  TWO DAYS AFTER my psych interview I was sent to Pole to fill in for its Waste Supervisor, who was taking R&R. R&R (insistently renamed “Preparatory Leave” by Denver) is an enticement to sign contracts when the company is desperate to fill winter positions. The Pole Waste Supervisor had signed a winter contract on-ice, so she was given a week of R&R in McMurdo. McMurdoites are flown to Christchurch for R&R.

  That morning I packed my orange bags and caught the airport shuttle to Willy Field. On our way across the ice shelf the radio emitted soothing static and the chatter of Mac Ops and Mac Weather operators orchestrating the morning’s events. There were four PAX on the flight, including a writer sponsored by NSF. She was chatting to two of the other passengers about her research on the early Pole station and how “Paul Siple did as much shoveling as the grunts.”

  In 1957, Siple was among the first to winter at Pole. He devised the windchill factor and is the namesake of Siple Dome camp. Few have matched his extended time in the Antarctic, and he had been popular with the public ever since he tagged along on Byrd’s first expedition as an accomplished Boy Scout. His application included an essay on why he wanted to join the expedition.

  Here is the first paragraph of Siple’s essay:From my first observation of Commander Byrd I have highly admired him and his work. Because of the scientific training and experience that I would receive from association with him and his companions I hope to be the fortunate Scout to go on the polar expedition. If there were no other merits to be derived except the close relationship with Commander Byrd I would feel highly honored, if chosen, and while that is one of the foremost reasons why I would like to go there are others of great importance to me.

  Elsewhere in his application he described himself as “mentally awake and morally straight.” During the winter at Little America, Siple was a member of Byrd’s secret Loyal Legion.1 After the expedition, while everyone else was out banging whores and getting loaded in New Zealand, young Siple wrote, “I spied some late summer [flower] varieties blossoming on the other side of a fence and I leaned over to inhale their fragrance deeply. Then I hurried to a field where I flung myself on the ground and lay daydreaming in the soft warm breezes until my body cried out for a glass of milk and some fruit.” Siple’s wholesome appetites continued throughout his career. He was chief scientist-observer for the U.S. Army in 1946 during Operation Highjump, which historian David Burke described as “the most massive military force ever sent to Antarctica,” including helicopters, landing-assault vehicles, 13 ships including a submarine, 23 aircraft, and 4,700 troops. The goals of Operation Highjump were covert until 1955, when one of the directives was found to be “consolidating and extending U.S. sovereignty over the largest practicable area of the continent.” Afterwards, while planning Highjump II (later canceled), Paul Siple mused: “Success [of Highjump II] would establish a preeminent American claim over the entire continent…the U.S. could be in a unique position to claim Antarctica for its own should it so desire.”

  The NSF-sponsored writer was three-quarters finished with her book, she said, and excited to visit Pole to augment her research. Her clothes were very clean. She said she had just talked to the Colonel, who had told her Pole was only 40 flights behind on fuel from McMurdo. This surprised me because I had heard otherwise from Polies, and I told her so.

  “Well, I’m not going to question the Colonel,” she laughed.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  She laughed.

  Waiting in the Galley building at Willy for the call to board the plane, I drank coffee and stepped outside occasionally to smoke. In the Galley I met a woman just back from Vostok, where the U.S. was setting up a new summer camp, East Camp, just across the runway from the Russians, to study an enormous lake below the ice. The lake is of immense interest because it has been sealed off from the rest of the world for millions of years, and the bacteria in it will contribute to the progress of humanity.

  I asked her about the recent “international incident” at Vostok that had reverberated all the way up to Washington. The rumor around town was that a drunk Russian had stormed into the American camp waving a gun. The woman just back from Vostok said the incident occurred during their solstice celebration.2 A drunk Russian, hooting and hollering, had fired a flare harmlessly into the snow in the middle of nowhere. Instead of seeing the flare as a makeshift firework, such as Americans use to celebrate Independence Day or as Admiral Richard Byrd’s men fired to celebrate the return of a sledging party, the manager at East Camp saw the flare as a threat and reported the incident to his superiors, who took it to “the next level,” as they say in McMurdo. Dr. Karl Erb, Director of NSF’s Office of Polar Programs, wrote a severe email to Valery Lukin, Director of the Russian Antarctic Expedition, concerning the “absolutely unacceptable” behavior of the two Russian tractor drivers involved. “Sometime during their visit,” wrote Dr. Erb, “one of them discharged a firearm. Fortunately, no one was injured…I strongly protest not only the behavior of the Vostok drivers, but also the fact that members of the Russian Antarctic Expedition are allowed to carry guns.” He wrote that this was a security threat not only to residents at East Camp, but also to everyone at McMurdo Station and to the residents of Vostok itself. Vostok Station, with its drunk Russians and flare pistols, had been there since 1957. The Americans had just moved in next door. During the Cold War, such proximity would have been unlikely, but these days it is welcomed. The Russian Antarctic program is very poor. American visitors to Vostok have said that the food supply for the year appears to be little more than a pile of frozen potatoes, sacks of flour, and cases of vodka. The U.S. has earned warm Russ
ian cooperation with expensive gifts of fuel and cargo transport. “Your immediate attention to this matter is necessary,” continued Dr. Erb, “to prevent any further deterioration in our relations and to allow our partnership to continue.”

  This typifies the American understanding of “peaceful cooperation.”

  The linchpin of international peaceful cooperation is the Antarctic Treaty, first signed by 12 nations in 1959, which established an internationally recognized legal framework for activities in Antarctica. “More than any other nation, the United States benefits from the Antarctic Treaty,” wrote William J. Burns in a 1996 Department of State Memorandum to the National Security Council. The U.S. likes the Treaty because, unless a nation is an original signatory, the privilege of exerting influence by voting at Treaty meetings requires that the nation in question perform substantial scientific research in Antarctica. Countries who do not have that kind of cash may join in the peaceful international cooperation, but only as observers at the meetings; thus smaller nations tend to view the Treaty as a rich man’s club.

  Before the Treaty was signed, seven nations had divided most of Antarctica into wedge-shaped claims based on their early explorations. These claims have been deferred for the life of the Treaty. The United States, which did not get in the Antarctic game early enough, was left a miserable slice of the pie, which it rejected in favor of a tactic of non-recognition that dates back to 1924, when Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes wrote that discovery by exploration “does not support a valid claim of sovereignty unless the discovery is followed by an actual settlement of the discovered country.”

  The U.S., with three year-round stations, is maneuvering into position for the dispute that will inevitably arise when Antarctic hydrocarbons or mineral reserves are confirmed and the technology to extract them cost-effectively has been invented, at which point cooperating nations with good claims will find the Treaty cumbersome. The current state of affairs was best summed up by Eisenhower in 1958 when he said, “The U.S. is dedicated to the principle that the vast uninhabited wastes of Antarctica shall be used only for peaceful purposes…” Vast uninhabited wastes are much easier to share than a billion barrels of oil or veins plump with ore, and neither the U.S. nor any other nation wants to be left in the lurch when the Antarctic bauble has finally been appraised.

  International law typically finds “fictional occupation”—planting flags, mounting plaques, or dropping swastika markers from an airplane as the Nazis did—less convincing than effective occupation, best illustrated by Chile, which an NSF report says has “placed whole families in residence at its Antarctic stations, with schools, banks, and other evidence of ‘effective occupation’.” Chile is not the only country playing house in Antarctica; Argentina has reportedly established a hotel on the continent, and a woman at Esperanza Station in 1978 gave birth to the first native Antarctican, which Argentine President Jorge Gonzáles Videla said “reaffirms not only the role of the family in our society but also the inalienable role of Argentines in those far lands.” Homesteading like Chile’s and Argentina’s is not recognized by the U.S, which has instead, as publicized by the CIA in 1978, “stressed its neutrality by placing its Amundsen-Scott Station at the South Pole where six of the claims converge.” This curious definition of “neutrality” was restated in 1996 by Undersecretary of State Tim Wirth when he said, “If we weren’t at the South Pole, there would be a mad scramble for territory… We’re the only country that can manage the logistics in that extraordinary place. We have to maintain this presence to maintain the continent’s neutrality.”

  In other words, if it weren’t for American station managers taming the Russians with safety concerns, or for U.S. “proactive leadership” in squatting on the Pole, the world’s stray dogs would no doubt lapse into a frenzy of bloodshed. “Our proposal,” said Eisenhower, “is directed at insuring that this same kind of cooperation for the benefit of all mankind shall be perpetuated.”

  By 9:15 we were in the air, strapped to our canvas seats and clutching brown-bag flight lunches (a couple of sandwiches, a box of juice, and some candy). I had been to Pole the summer before with Jane. One of the Pole Wastees, Chernobyl—nicknamed for his manic and messy work style—had met us at the plane. People magazine once ran a full-page photo-story on him. The story consisted of a few paragraphs about the snow and cold at the “international scientific base,” and a few details about Chernobyl’s upbringing. The photo showed him with the Dome in the background, shoveling snow in a photogenic area that typically doesn’t need shoveling. Chernobyl gave us a tour when we arrived, including his room.

  “Why do you have all these tape measures?” Jane asked, indicating the several dozen tailor-variety tape measures in his small room, hanging from makeshift racks and curled on shelves.

  “I keep them and give them to people if they ever need one,” he said.

  Chernobyl used to perform as the Wheelie King, driving around the floors of arenas packed with motocross fans howling as he rode an everlasting wheelie. He once went to Mexico to find Juan Valdez of the Colombian coffee TV commercials in the 1970s. He located Juan Valdez’s small hometown, then loitered there until he bumped into the celebrity, who invited him to dinner at his house. Chernobyl always carries with him a picture of himself and Juan Valdez, and people often encourage him to repeat the story.

  I nibbled on my flight lunch as the plane streaked over the plateau. My bunny boots still wore the dried smear of Jeannie’s blood from our filming of Cape Hades. The previous night while I slept Señor X had written “Work me” on the back of my left boot and “to death” on the right. Laz and Señor X, I later found out, had emailed Kath the libel that I had been boasting of my upcoming “vacation to Pole.” On the toes Señor X wrote, “Hi Kath, we miss you,” with a drawing of an arrow-pierced heart.

  Kath greeted me as I came off the plane. I threw my bags in the back of the van; the driver would deliver them to Summer Camp. We walked toward the Dome. I stopped to show Kath my boots with the messages from her friends in McMurdo.

  “Tsk,” she said, “I’m afraid I’m gonna have to work you until you collapse in a heap.”

  “Don’t forget: I’m replacing your boss. That means I shall find some warm and comfortable nook in which to shuffle the papers while you tend to the tasking. I need a fucking smoke.” We entered the Dome through one of the arches.

  South Pole Station looks like an elf village overrun by a blue-collar tribe that worships Martian gods. Inside the Dome, red buildings are stacked like walk-in Christmas presents and surrounded by boxes of Cocoa Krispies and cartons of ice cream. Only buildings are heated, so the Dome and tunnels are cold like the outside, but enclosed for an aesthetic like Disney rides and childhood forts. Unlike the coastal stations, Pole has no animals, so simulation is more apparent there. Plastic flowers are planted in the snow outside some buildings. On a desk a magnetic fish lurches in its fishbowl, and in the Galley a plastic potted smiling flower dances to loud noises. A snow bike with miniature tractor tires leans against a drift as if waiting for a leprechaun.

  Leading out from the Dome are tunnels lined with thick fairyland frost and crammed with shelves of spare machine parts, tools, and conduit. Barrels and shovels and sleds always stand along the bootprinted path. The snow around the Dome is patterned with equipment tracks, and the patterns of perpetual machine sound occasionally dominated by planes coming or going are its soundtrack. A beaten boombox regurgitates classic rock in the garage, where the snow is streaked with oil.

  The Martian aesthetic is enshrined in the Dark Sector, the Viper Telescope, Seismic Vault, the ground shield moon door, and the elevated blue dorm that looks like a cross between a McDonald’s Playland module and a spaceship. A building across the ice was pointed out to me through a window in a lounge called Skylab: “That’s where they’re using telescopes to find out how fast the universe is expanding.”

  Kath and I went to the smoking bar, passing a group of people in unfamiliar clot
hes who were talking excitedly in the upper Galley at a table by the shelves of board games.

  “Who are the heroes?” I asked her as I lit up.

  “They flew down to 89 degrees and then skied the last degree to the Pole.”

  “Wow. That’s a good one. How far’s that?”

  “About 60 k.” Kath finished rolling a Drum, and I lit it.

  The bar is small, but because of the crowded Polies’ advanced understanding of unattainable privacy, Kath and I could inoffensively have a conversation that excluded and all but ignored friends coming in to smoke. I was acutely aware that I didn’t know anything about the bearded men in dirty and blackened Carhartts smoking silently in the lounge, but they, at the very least, knew I wasn’t a Polie, though, by my own ratty overalls, that I wasn’t a beaker or a manager.

  “So they paid to ski across a piece of map?” I asked.

  “You got it. Then they get a free cup of coffee, a hero shot at the Pole, and a boot in the ass to get out.”

  The expeditioners were alone in their excitement over this accomplishment. Tourists aglow from having arrived at the South Pole are met by management with a unique official courtesy that borders on scorn, and with indifference by Pole citizens more concerned with who’s screwing his or her way to power and the technical problems of the power plant. People talk about tourists when they come, but with less interest than about construction projects or the Galley menu.