By the same author

TEACHING A STONE TO TALK

LIVING BY FICTION
HoLY THE FIRM
PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
TICKETS FOR A PRAYER WHEEL

CJBJ1CHINGA

STONE TO CJALK

EXPEDlrrIONS AND

ENCOUNTERS

HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS, New York

Cambridge, Philadelphia, San Francisco, London

Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Sydney

 I remember muteness as a prolonged and giddy fast,

:,
where every moment is a feast of utterance received. Time

and events are merely poured, unremarked, and ingested

directly, like blood pulsed into my gut through a jugular

vein. Could two live that way? Could two live under

the wild rose, and explore by the pond, so that the smooth

mind of each is as everywhere present to the other, and

as received and as unchallenged, as falling snow?

We could, you know. We can live any way we want.

People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience­

An Expedition to

even of silence-by choice. The thing is to stalk your

calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the

the Pole

most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This

is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn't "attack" any­

thing; a weasel lives as he's meant to, yielding at every

moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity.

I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient,

and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go,
to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even
death, where you're going no matter how you live, cannot I
you part. Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till THERE IS A SINGING GROUP in this Catholic church today, 7
your eyes burn out and drop; let your musky flesh fall a singing group which calls itself "Wildflowers." The
off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scatter, lead is a tall, square-jawed teen-aged boy, buoyant and
loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, glad to be here. He carries a guitar; he plucks out a little
thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles. bluesy riff and hits some chords. With him are the rest
of the Wildflowers. There is an old woman, wonderfully
determined; she has long orange hair and is dressed coun­
try-and-western style. A long embroidered strap around
her neck slings a big western guitar low over her pelvis.
Beside her stands a frail, withdrawn fourteen-year-old
boy, and a large Chinese man in his twenties who seems
16
An Expedition to the Pole 17
 to want to enjoy himself but is not quite sure how to.
He looks around wildly as he sings, and shuffles his feet. The Absolute is the Pole of Relative Inaccessibility lo­
There is also a very tall teen-aged girl, presumably the cated in metaphysics. After all, one of the few things
lead singer's girl friend; she is delicate of feature, half we know about the Absolute is that it is relatively inac­
serene and half petrified, a wispy soprano. They strag­ cessible. It is that point of spirit farthest from every acces­
gle out in front of the altar and teach us a brand-new sible point of spirit in all directions. Like the others, it
hymn.
is a Pole of the Most Trouble. It is also-I take this as
It all seems a pity at first, for I have overcome a fiercely given-the pole of great price.
anti-Catholic upbringing in order to attend Mass simply
and solely to escape Protestant guitars. Why am I here?
Who gave these nice Catholics guitars? Why are they The People
not mumbling in Latin and performing superstitious ritu­ It is the second Sunday in Advent. For a year I have
als? What is the Pope thinking of?
been attending Mass at this Catholic church. Every Sun­
But nobody said things were going to be easy. A taste day for a year I have run away from home and joined
for the sublime is a greed like any other, after all; why the circus as a dancing bear. We dancing bears have
begrudge the churches their secularism now, when from dressed ourselves in buttoned clothes; we mince around
the general table is rising a general song? Besides, in a the rings on two feet. Today we were restless; we kept
way I do not pretend to understand, these people-all dropping onto our forepaws.
the people in all the ludicrous churches-have access to
L.the land.
No one, least of all the organist, could find the opening
hymn. Then no one knew it. Then no one could sing
anyway.
The Land There was no sermon, only announcements.
The priest proudly introduced the rascally acolyte who
The Pole of Relative Inaccessibility is "that imaginary was going to light the two Advent candles. As we all
.point on the Arctic Ocean farthest from land in any direc­ could plainly see, the rascally acolyte had already lighted
tion." It is a navigator's paper point contrived to console them.
Arctic explorers who, after Peary and Henson reached During the long intercessory prayer, the priest always
the North Pole in 1909, had nowhere special to go. There reads "intentions" from the parishioners. These are slips
is a Pole of Relative Inaccessibility on the Antarctic conti­ of paper, dropped into a box before the service begins,
nent, also; it is that point of land farthest from salt water on which people have written their private concerns,
in any direction.

18
An Expedition to the Pole 19
 by one, and we respond on cue. "For a baby safely deliv­ The Land
ered on November twentieth," the priest intoned, "we
,i,,\
pray to the Lord." We all responded, "Lord, hear our ;~~:,
Nineteenth-century explorers set the pattern for polar
("!
prayer." Suddenly the priest broke in and confided to :,1':
expeditions. Elaborately provisioned ships set out for
our bowed heads, "That's the baby we've been praying high latitudes. Soon they encounter the pack ice and equi­
for the past two months! The woman just kept getting noctial storms. Ice coats the deck, spars, and rigging; the
more and more pregnant!" How often, how shockingly masts and hull shudder; the sea freezes around the rudder,
often, have I exhausted myself in church from the effort and then fastens on the ship. Early sailors try ramming,
to keep from laughing out loud? I often laugh all the sawing, or blasting the ice ahead of the ship before they
way home. Then the priest read the next intention: "For give up and settle in for the winter. In the nineteenth
my son, that he may forgive his father. We pray to the century, this being "beset" in the pack often killed polar
Lord." "Lord, hear our prayer," w~ responded, chastened. crews; later explorers expected it and learned, finally, to

r- A high school stage play is more polished than this

service we have been rehearsing since the year one. In
put it to use. Sometimes officers and men move directly
onto the pack ice for safety; they drive tent stakes
into the ice and pile wooden boxes about for tables and
two thousand y~ars, we have not worked out the kinks. chairs.
We positively glorify them. Week after week we witness Sooner or later, the survivors of that winter or the
the same miracle: that God is so mighty he can stifle next, or a select polar party, sets off over the pack ice
his own laughter. Week after week, we witness the same on foot. Depending on circumstances, they are looking
miracle: that God, for reasons unfathomable, refrains either for a Pole or, more likely, for help. They carry
from blowing our dancing bear act to smithereens. Week supplies, including boats, on sledges which they "man­
after week Christ washes the disciples' dirty feet, handles haul" on ropes fastened to shoulder harnesses. South Po­
their very toes, and repeats, It is all right-believe it or lar expeditions usually begin from a base camp estab­
not-to be people.
lished on shore. In either case, the terrain is so rough,
L Who can believe it? and the men so weakened by scurvy, that the group
makes only a few miles a day. Sometimes they find an
During communion, the priest handed me a wafer island on which to live or starve the next winter; some­
which proved to be stuck to five other wafers. I waited times they turn back to safety, stumble onto some outpost
while he tore the clump into rags of wafer, resisting the of civilization, or are rescued by another expedition; very
impulse to help. Directly to my left, and all through com­ often, when warm weather comes and the pack ice splits
munion, a woman was banging out the theme from The into floes, they drift and tent on a floe, or hop from
Sound 0/ Music on a piano.
floe to floe, until the final floe lands, splits, or melts.

20
An Expedition to the Pole 21
 In 1847, according to Arctic historian L. P. Kirwan, eminent Victorians, examining their own prose styles,
the American ship Polaris "was struck by an enormous realized, perhaps dismayed, that from the look of it, they
floe. And just as stores, records, clothing, equipment, were would have to go in for polar exploration. Salomon An­
being flung from the reeling ship, she was swept away dree, the doomed Swedish balloonist, was dying of star­
through the Arctic twilight, with most, but not all, of vation on an Arctic island when he confided in his diary,
her crew on board. Those left behind drifted for thirteen with almost his dying breath, "Our provisions must soon
hundred miles on an ice-floe until they were rescued, and richly be supplemented, if we are to have any pro­
starving and dazed, off the coast of Labrador." spect of being able to hold out for a time."

Polar explorers were chosen, as astronauts are today,

The People
from the clamoring, competitive ranks of the sturdy,
skilled, and sane. Many of the British leaders, in particu­ The new Episcopalian and Catholic liturgies include
lar, were men of astonishing personal dignity. Reading a segment called "passing the peace." Many things can
their accounts of life in extremis, one is struck by their go wrong here. I know of one congregation in New York
unending formality toward each other. When Scott's which fired its priest because he insisted on their pass­
Captain Oates sacrificed himself on the Antarctic penin­ ing the peace-which involves nothing more than
sula because his ruined feet were slowing the march, he shaking hands with your neighbors in the pew. The
stepped outside the tent one night to freeze himself in men and women of this small congregation had limits to
a blizzard, saying to the others, "I am just going outside their endurance; pC!.ssing the peace was beyond their
and may be some time." limits. They could not endure shaking hands with peo­
Even in the privacy of their journals and diaries, polar ple to whom they bore lifelong grudges. They fired
explorers maintain a fine reserve. In his journal, Ernest the priest and found a new one sympathetic to their
Shackleton described his feelings upon seeing, for the needs.
first time in human history, the Antarctic continent be­ The rubric for passing the peace requires that one shake
yond the mountains ringing the Ross Ice Shelf: "We hands with whoever is handy and say, "Peace be with
watched the new mountains rise from the great unknown you." The other responds, "Peace be with you." Every
that lay ahead of us," he wrote, "with feelings of keen rare once in a while, someone responds simply "Peace."
curiosity, not unmingled with awe." One wonders, after Today I was sitting beside two teen-aged lugs with small
reading a great many such firsthand accounts, if polar mustaches. When it came time to pass the peace I shook
explorers were not somehow chosen for the empty and hands with one of the lugs and said, "Peace be with
solemn splendor of their prose styles-or even if some you," and he said, "Yeah."

22 An Expedition to the Pole 23

 The Technology: The Franklin Expedition tion carried no special clothing for the Arctic, only the
uniforms of Her Majesty's Navy.
The Franklin expedition was the turning point in Arctic The ships set out in high dudgeon, amid enormous
exploration. The expedition itself accomplished nothing, glory and fanfare. Franklin uttered his utterance: "The
and all its members died. But the expedition's failure highest object of my desire is faithfully to perform my
to return, and the mystery of its whereabouts, attracted duty." Two months later a British whaling captain met
so much publicity in Europe and the United States that the two barques in Lancaster Sound; he reported back
thirty ships set out looking for traces of the ships and to England on the high spirits of officers and men. He
men; these search parties explored and mapped the Arctic was the last European to see any of them alive.
for the first time, found the northwest passage which Years later, civilization learned that many groups of
Franklin had sought, and developed a technology adapted Inuit-Eskimos-had hazarded across tableaux involving
to Arctic conditions, a technology capable of bringing various still-living or dead members of the Franklin expe­
explorers back alive. The technology of the Franklin ex­ dition. Some had glimpsed, for instance, men pushing
pedition, by contrast, was adapted only to conditions and pulling a wooden boat across the ice. Some had
in the Royal Navy officers' clubs in England. The Franklin found, at a place called Starvation Cove, this boat,
expedition stood on its dignity. or a similar one, and the remains of the thirty-five men
In 1845, Sir John Franklin and 138 officers and men who had been dragging it. At Terror Bay the Inuit
embarked from England to find the northwest passage found a tent on the ice, and in it, thirty bodies. At Simp­
across the high Canadian Arctic to the Pacific Ocean. son Strait some Inuit had seen a very odd sight: the pack
They sailed in two three-masted barques. Each sailing ice pierced by the three protruding wooden masts of a
vessel carried an au~i1iary steam engine and a twelve­ barque.
day supply of coal for the entire projected two or three For twenty years, search parties recovered skeletons
years' voyage. Instead of additional coal, according to from all over the frozen sea. Franklin himself-it was
L. P. Kirwan, each ship made room for a 1,20o-volume learned after twelve years-had died aboard ship. Frank­
library, "a hand-organ, playing fifty tunes," china place lin dead, the ships frozen into the pack winter after win­
settings for officers and men, cut-glass wine goblets, and ter, their supplies exhausted, the remaining officers and
sterling silver flatware. The officers' sterling silver knives, men had decided to walk to help. They outfitted them­
forks, and spoons were particularly interesting. The silver selves from ships' stores for the journey; their bodies
was of ornate Victorian design, very heavy at the handles were found with those supplies they had chosen to carry.
and richly patterned. Engraved on the handles were the Accompanying one clump of frozen bodies, for instance,
individual officers' initials and family crests. The expedi­ which incidentally showed evidence of cannibalism, were

An Expedition to the Pole 25

24
 place settings of sterling silver flatware engraved with as every book ever written about the Inuit puts it, was
officers' initials and family crests. A search party found, "adapted to harsh conditions."
on the ice far from the ships, a letter clip, and a piece Roald Amundsen, who returned in triumph from the
of that very backgammon board which Lady Jane Frank­ South Pole, traveled Inuit style; he made good speed using
lin had given her husband as a parting gift. sleds and feeding dogs to dogs on a schedule. Robert
Another search party found two skeletons in a boat E. Peary and Matthew Henson reached the North Pole
on a sledge. They had hauled the boat sixty-five miles. in the company of four Inuit. Throughout the Peary expe­
With the two skeletons were some chocolate, some guns, dition, the Inuit drove the dog teams; built igloos, and
some tea, and a great deal of table silver. Many miles supplied seal and walrus clothing.
south of these two was another skeleton, alone. This
was a frozen officer. In his pocket he had, according to There is no such thing as a solitary polar explorer,
Kirwan, "a parody of a sea-shanty." The skeleton was fine as the conception is.
in uniform: trousers and jacket "of fine blue cloth . . .
edged with silk braid, with sleeves slashed and bearing
five covered buttons each. Over this uniform the dead The People
man had worn a blue greatcoat, with a black silk necker­ I have been attending Catholic Mass for only a year.
chief." That was the Franklin expedition. Before that, the handiest church was Congregational.
Week after week I climbed the long steps to that little
Sir Robert Falcon Scott, who died on the Antarctic church, entered, and took a seat with some few of my
peninsula, was never able to bring himself to use dogs, neighbors. Week after week I was moved by the pitiable­
let alone feed them to each other or eat them. Instead ness of the bare linoleum-floored sacristy which no flow­
he struggled with English ponies, for whom he carried ers could cheer or soften, by the terrible singing I so
hay. Scott felt that eating dogs was inhumane; he also loved, by the fatigued Bible readings, the lagging empti­
felt, as he himself wrote, that when men reach a Pole ness and dilution of the liturgy, the horrifying vacuity
unaided, their journey has "a fine conception" and "the of the sermon, and by the fog of dreary senselessness
conquest is more nobly and splendidly won." It is this pervading the whole, which existed alongside, and proba­
loftiness of sentiment, this purity, this dignity and self­ bly caused, the wonder of the fact that we came; we
control, which makes Scott's farewell letters-found un­ returned; we showed up; week after week, we went
der his body-such moving documents. through with it.
Once while we were reciting the Gloria, a farmer's
Less moving .are documents from successful polar expe­ wife-whom I knew slightly-and I exchanged a sudden,
ditions. Their leaders relied on native technology, which, triumphant glance.

26 An Expedition to the Pole 27

~.-
 and "perfection," as if they were some perfectly visible
Recently I returned to that Congregational church for part of the landscape.
an ecumenical service. A Catholic priest and the minister
served grape juice communion. They went, I say, partly in search of the sublime, and
Both the priest and the minister were professionals, they found it the only way it can be found, here or there­
were old hands. They bungled with dignity and aplomb. around the edges, tucked into the corners of the days.
Both were at ease and awed; both were half confident For they were people-all of them, even the British­
and controlled and half bewildered and whispering. I and despite the purity of their conceptions, they man­
could hear them: "Where is it?" "Haven't you got it?" hauled their humanity to the Poles.
"I thought you had it!" They man-hauled their frail flesh to the Poles, and
encountered conditions so difficult that, for instance, it
The priest, new to me, was in his sixties. He was commonly took members of Scott's South Polar party
tall; he wore his weariness loosely, standing upright and several hours each morning to put on their boots. Day
controlling his breath. When he knelt at the altar, and night they did miserable, niggling, and often fatal
and when he rose from kneeling, his knees cracked. It battle with frostbitten toes, diarrhea, bleeding gums, hun­
was a fine church music, this sound of his cracking ger, weakness, mental confusion, and despair.
knees. They man-hauled their sweet human absurdity to the
Poles. When Robert E. Peary and Matthew Henson
reached the North Pole in 19°9, Peary planted there in
The Land the frozen ocean, according to L. P. Kirwan, the flag of
the Dekes: "the colours of the Delta Kappa Epsilon Fra­
Polar explorers-one gathers from their accounts­ ternity at Bowdoin College, of which Peary was an alum­
sought at the Poles something of the sublime. Simplicity nus. "
and purity attracted them; they set out to perform clear Polar explorers must adapt to conditions. They must
tasks in uncontaminated lands. The land's austerity held adapt, on the one hand, to severe physical limitations;
them. They praised the land's spare beauty as if it were they must adapt, on the other hand-like the rest of
a moral or a spiritual quality: "icy halls of cold sublimity," us-to ordinary emotional limitations. The hard part is
"lofty peaks perfectly covered with eternal snow." in finding a workable compromise. If you are Peary and
Fridtjof Nansen referred to "the great adventure of the have planned your every move down to the last jot and
ice, deep and pure as infinity . . . the eternal round of tittle, you can perhaps get away with carrying a Deke
the universe and its eternal death." Everywhere polar flag to the North Pole, if it will make you feel good.
prose evokes these absolutes, these ideas of "eternity" After eighteen years' preparation, why not feel a little

28 An Expedition to the Pole .29

good? If you are an officer with the Franklin expedition The Land
and do not know what you are doing or where you are, God does not demand that we give up our personal
I
but think you cannot eat food except from sterling silver dignity, that we throw in our lot with random people,
tableware, you cannot get away with it. Wherever we that we lose ourselves and turn from all that is not him.
\
go, there seems to be only one business at hand-that God needs nothing, asks nothing, and demands nothing,
of finding workable compromises between the sublimity like the stars. It is a life with God which demands these
of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us. things.
They made allowances for their emotional needs. Over­ Experience has taught the race that if knowledge of
wintering expedition ships commonly carried, in addition God is the end, then these habits of life are not the means
to sufficient fuel, equipment for the publication of weekly but the condition in which the means operates. You do I,

newspapers. The brave polar men sat cooling their heels not have to do these things; not at all. God does not, I

in medias nowhere, reading in cold type their own and regret to report, give a hoot. You do not have to do these

their bunkmates' gossip, in such weeklies as Parry's Winter things-unless you want to know God. They work on

Chronicle and North Georgia GazeHe, N ansen's Framsjaa, or you, not on him.

Scott's South Polar Times and The Blizzard. Polar explorers You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however,

also amused themselves with theatrical productions. If you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness

one had been frozen into the pack ice off Ross Island is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.

near Antarctica, aboard Scott's ship Discovery, one mid­

winter night in 1902, one could have seen the only per­
The Technology
formance of Ticket of Leave, a screaming comedy in one ac!. Simi­
larly, if, in the dead of winter, 1819, one had been a It is a matter for computation: how far can one walk

member of young Edward Parry's expedition frozen into carrying how much silver? The computer balks at the

the pack ice in the high Arctic, one could have caught problem; there are too many unknowns. The computer

the first of a series of fortnightly plays, an uproarious puts its own questions: Who is this "one"? What degree

success called Miss in her Teens. According to Kirwan, of stamina may we calculate for? Under what conditions

" 'This,' Parry dryly remarked, 'afforded to the men such does this one propose to walk, at what latitudes? With

a fund of amusement as fully to justify the expectations how many companions, how much aid?

we had formed of the utility of theatrical entertain­

ments.'" And you yourself, Royal Navy Commander Ed­ The People
ward Parry, were you not yourself the least bit amused?
The Mass has been building to this point, to the solemn
Or at twenty-nine years old did you still try to stand
saying of those few hushed phrases known as the Sanc-
on your dignity?
An Expedition to the Pole 31
30
 tus. We have confessed, in a low, distinct murmur, our his hand. The Chinese man with sudden vigor bangs
sins; we have become the people broken, and then the the tambourine and looks at his hands, startled. They
people made whole by our reluctant assent to the priest's run us through the Sanctus three or four times. The words
proclamation of God's mercy. Now, as usual, we will, are altered a bit to fit the strong upbeat rhythm:
in the stillest voice, stunned, repeat the Sanctus, repeat
why it is that we have come: Heaven and earth

(Heaven and earth earth earth earth earth)

Holy, holy, holy Lord,

Are full (full full full)

God of power and might,

Of your glory . . .

heaven and earth are full of your glory.

Must I join this song? May I keep only my silver?

It is here, if ever, that one loses oneself at sea. Here, My backgammon board, I agree, is a frivolity. I relinquish
one's eyes roll up, and the sun rolls overhead, and the it. I will leave it right here on the ice. But my silver?
floe rolls underfoot, and the scene of unrelieved ice and My family crest? One knife, one fork, one spoon, to
sea rolls over the planet's pole and over the world's rim carry beneath the glance of heaven and back? I have
wide and unseen.
lugged it around for years; I am, I say, superlatively
Now, just as we are dissolved in OUf privacy and about strong. Don't laugh. I am superlatively strong! Don't
to utter the words of the Sanctus, the lead singer of Wild­ laugh; you'll make me laugh. The answer is no. We are
flowers bursts onstage from the wings. I raise my head. singing the Sanctus, it seems, and they are passing the
He is taking enormous, enthusiastic strides and pumping plate. I would rather, I think, undergo the famous dark
his guitar's neck up and down. Drooping after him come night of the soul than encounter in church the dread
the orange-haired country-and-western-style woman; hootenanny-but these purely personal preferences are
the soprano, who, to shorten herself, carries her neck of no account, and maladaptive to boot. They are pass­
forward like a horse; the withdrawn boy; and the Chinese ing the plate and I toss in my schooling; I toss in my
man, who is holding a tambourine as if it had stuck by rank in the Royal Navy, my erroneous and incomplete
some defect to his fingers and he has resolved to forget charts, my pious refusal to eat sled dogs, my watch,
about it. These array themselves in a clump downstage my keys, and my shoes. I was looking for bigger game,
right. The priest is nowhere in sight.
not little moral lessons; but who can argue with condi­
Alas, alack, oh brother, we are going to have to sing tions?
the Sanctus. There is, of course, nothing new about sing­ "Heaven and earth earth earth earth earth," we sing.
ing the Sanctus. The lead singer smiles disarmingly. There The withdrawn boy turns his head toward a man in front
is a new arrangement. He hits a chord with the flat of of me, who must be his father. Unaccountably, the enor-

32
An Expedition to the Pole 33
 mous teen-aged soprano catches my eye, exultant. A low lecting a bit of a crowd. It takes a troupe of circus clowns
shudder or shock crosses our floe. We have split from to get us both out. I check my uniform at once and learn
the pack; we have crossed the Arctic Circle, and the cur­ that my rather flattering hat is intact, my trousers virtu­
rent has us.
ally unwrinkled, but my roll of caps is wet. The Chinese
man is fine; we thank the clowns.
This troupe of circus clowns, I hear, is poorly paid.
The Land
They are invested in bright, loose garments; they are a
We are clumped on an ice floe drifting Over the black bunch of spontaneous, unskilled, oversized children; they
polar sea. Heaven and earth are full of our terrible singing. joke and bump into people. At one end of the floe, ten
Overhead we see a blurred, colorless brightness; at our of them-red, yellow, and blue-are trying to climb up
feet we see the dulled, swift ice and recrystallized snow. on each other to make a human pyramid. It is a wonder­
The sea is black and green; a hundred thousand floes fully funny sight, because they have put the four smallest
and bergs float in the water and spin and scatter in the clowns on the bottom, and the biggest, fattest clown is
current around us everywhere as far as we can see. The trying to climb to the top. The rest of the clowns are
wind is cool, moist, and scented with salt. doing gymnastics; they tumble on the ice and flip cheer­
I am wearing, I discover, the uniform of a Keystone fully in midair. Their crucifixes fly from their ruffled
Kop. I examine my hat: a black cardboard constable's necks as they flip, and hit them on their bald heads as
hat with a white felt star stapled to the band above the they land. Our floe is smaller now, and we seem to have
brim. My dark Keystone Kop jacket is nicely belted, and drifted into a faster bit of current. Repeatedly we ram
there is a tin badge on my chest. A holster around my little icebergs, which rock as we hit them. Some of them
hips carries a popgun with a cork on a string, and a red tilt clear over like punching bags; they bounce back with
roll of caps. My feet are bare, but I feel no cold. I am great splashes, and water streams down their blue sides
skating around on the ice, and singing, and bumping into as they rise. The country-and-western-style woman is
people who, because the ice is slippery, bump into other fending off some of the larger bergs with a broom. The
people. "Excuse me!" I keep saying, "1 beg your pardon lugs with the mustaches have found, or brought, a Fris­
woops there!"
bee, and a game is developing down the middle of our
When a crack develops in our floe and opens at my floe. Near the Frisbee game, a bunch of people including
feet, I jump across it-skillfully, I think-but my jump myself and some clowns are running. We fling ourselves
pushes my side of the floe away, and I wind up leaping down on the ice, shoulders first, and skid long distances
full tilt into the water. The Chinese man extends a hand like pucks.
to pull me out, but alas, he slips and I drag him in. The Now the music ceases and we take our seats in the
Chinese man and I are treading water, singing, and col­ pews. A baby is going to be baptized. Overhead the sky

34
An Expedition to the Pole 35
is brightening; I do not know if this means we have
lays his hand loosely over Oswaldo's face and touches
drifted farther north, or all night.
in rapid succession his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. The
baby blinks. The priest, whose voice is sometimes lost
The People in the ruff at his neck, or blown away by the wind, is
formal and gentle in his bearing; he knows the kid is
The baby's name is Oswaldo; he is a very thin baby
cute, but he is not going to sentimentalize the sacra­
who looks to be about one. He never utters a peep; he
ment.
looks grim, and stiff as a planked shad. His parents­
Since our floe spins, we in the pews see the broken
his father carrying him-and his godparents, the priest,
floes and tilting bergs, the clogged, calm polar sea, and
and two acolytes, are standing on the ice between the
the variously lighted sky and water's rim, shift and re­
first row of pews and the linoleum-floored sacristy. I
volve enormously behind the group standing around the
am resting my bare feet on the velvet prie-dieu-to keep
baby. Once I think I see a yellowish polar bear spurting
those feet from playing on the ice during the ceremony.
out of the water as smoothly as if climbing were falling.
Oswaldo is half Filipino. His mother is Filipino. She
I see the bear splash and flow onto a distant floeberg
has a wide mouth with much lipstick, and wide eyes;
which tilts out of sight.
she wears a tight black skirt and stiletto heels. The father
Now the acolytes bring a pitcher, a basin, and a linen
looks like Ozzie Nelson. He has marcelled yellow hair,
towel. The father tilts the rigid baby over the basin; the
a bland, meek face, and a big, meek nose. He is wearing
priest pours water from the pitcher over the baby's scalp;
a brown leather flight jacket. The godparents are both
the mother sops the baby with the linen towel and wraps
Filipinos, one of whom, in a pastel denim jump suit,
it over his head, so that he looks, proudly, as though
keeps mugging for the Instamatic camera which another
he has just been made a swami.
family member is shooting from the aisle.
To conclude, the priest brings out a candle, for the
The baby has a little red scar below one eye. He is
purpose, I think, of pledging everybody to Christian fel­
wearing a long white lace baptismal gown, blue tennis
lowship with Oswaldo. Actually, I do not know what
shoes with white rubber toes, and red socks.
it is for; I am not listening. I am watching the hands at
The priest anoints the baby's head with oil. He ad­
the candlestick. Each of the principals wraps a hand
dresses to the parents several articles of faith: "Do you
around the brass candlestick: the two acolytes with their
believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of Heaven
small, pale hands at its base, the two families-Oswaldo's
and earth?" "Yes, we believe."
and his godparents'-with their varicolored hands in a
The priest repeats a gesture he says was Christ's, ex­
row, and the priest at the top, as though he has just
plaining that it symbolically opens the infant's five senses
won the bat toss at baseball. The baby rides high in
to the knowledge of God. Uttering a formal prayer, he
his father's arms, pointing his heels in his tennis shoes,

36 An Expedition to the Pole 37

silent, wanting down. His father holds him firmly with The bodies of various members of the Sir John Franklin
one hand and holds the candlestick beside his wife's hand ~.
expedition of 1845 were found over the course of twenty
with the other. The priest and the seated members of years, by thirty search expeditions, in assorted bizarre
Wildflowers start clapping then-a round of applause postures scattered over the ice of Victoria Strait, Beechey
for everybody here on the ice!-so we clap. Island, and King William Island.
Sir Robert Falcon Scott reached the South Pole on Janu­
II ary 17, 1912, only to discover a flag that Roald Amundsen
Months have passed; years have passed. Whatever had planted there a month earlier. Scott's body, and the
ground gained has slipped away. New obstacles arise, bodies of two of his companions, turned up on the Ross
and faintness of heart, and dread. Ice Shelf eleven miles south of one of their own supply
depots. The bodies were in sleeping bags. His journals
and farewell letters, found under his body, indicated that
The Land the other two had died first. Scott's torso was well out
Polar explorers commonly die of hypothermia, starva­ of his sleeping bag, and he had opened wide the collar
tion, scurvy, or dysentery; less commonly they contract of his parka, exposing his skin.
typhoid fever (as Stefansson did), vitamin A poisoning Never found were the bodies of Henry Hudson, his
from polar bear liver, or carbon monoxide poisoning from young son, and four men, whom mutineers in 1610 had
incomplete combustion inside tents sealed by snow. Very lowered from their ship in a dinghy, in Hudson's Bay,
commonly, as a prelude to these deaths, polar explorers without food or equipment. Never found were the bodies
lose the use of their feet; their frozen toes detach when of Sir John Franklin himself, or of Amundsen and seven­
they remove their socks. teen other men who set out for the Arctic in search of
Particularly vivid was the death of a certain Mr. Joseph a disastrous Italian expedition, or the bodies of Scott's
Green, the astronomer on Sir James Cook's first voyage men Evans and Oates. Never found were most of the
to high latitudes. He took sick aboard ship. One night drowned crew of the United States ship Polaris or the
"in a fit of the phrensy," as a contemporary newspaper body of her commander, who died sledging on the ice.
reported, he rose from his bunk and "put his legs out Of the United States Greely expedition to the North
of the portholes, which was the occasion of his death." Ir/­, Pole, all men died but six. Greely himself, one of the
Vitus Bering, shipwrecked in 1740 on Bering Island, six survivors, was found "on his hands and knees with
was found years later preserved in snow. An autopsy
showed he had had many lice, he had scurvy, and had r long hair in pigtails." Of the United States De Long expe­
dition to the North Pole in the Jeannette, all men died
died of a "rectal fistula which forced gas gangrene into i~
but two. Of the Jeannette herself and her equipment, noth­
his tissues." ing was found until three years after she sank, when,

38 An Expedition to the Pole 39

r
,I'
on a beach on the other side of the polar basin, a Green­
or the waking god may draw us out to where we can
lander discovered a pair of yellow oilskin breeches
never return.
stamped Jeannette.
The eighteenth-century Hasidic Jews had more sense,
and more belief. One Hasidic slaughterer, whose work
required invoking the Lord, bade a tearful farewell to
The People his wife and children every morning before he set out
Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, for the slaughterhouse. He felt, every morning, that he
brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? would never see any of them again. For every day, as
The tourists are having coffee and doughnuts on Deck he himself stood with his knife in his hand, the words
C. Presumably someone is minding the ship, correcting of his prayer carried him into danger. After he called
the CQUfse, avoiding icebergs and shoals, fueling the en­ on God, God might notice and destroy him before he
gines, watching the radar screen, noting weather reports
It had time to utter the rest, "Have mercy./I
radioed in from shore. No one would dream of asking Another Hasid, a rabbi, refused to promise a friend
the tourists to do these things. Alas, among the tourists to visit him the next day: "How can you ask me to make
on Deck C, drinking coffee and eating doughnuts, we such a promise? This evening I must pray and recite 'Hear,
find the captain, and all the ship's officers, and all the o Israel.' When I say these words, my soul goes out to
ship's crew. The officers chat; they swear; they wink a the utmost rim of life. . . . Perhaps I shall not die this
bit at slightly raw jokes, just like regular people. The time either, but how can I now promise to do something
crew members have funny accents. The wind seems to at a time after the prayer?/I
be picking up.

Assorted Wildlife
On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the
catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does any­ INSECTS
one have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so
blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a I like insects for their stupidity. A paper wasp-Pol­
word of it? The churches are children playing on the isles-is fumbling at the stained-glass window on my
floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT right. I saw the same sight in the same spot last Sunday:
to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' Pssst! Idiot! Sweetheart! Go around by the door! I hope
straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be we seem as endearingly stupid to God-bumbling down
wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers into lamps, running half-wit across the floor, banging
and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For for days at the hinge of an opened door. I hope so. It
the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, does not seem likely.

40 An Expedition to the Pole 41

 pi

PENGUINS at my feet "ice," for I could see where it began. I could

distinguish, that is, my shoes, and the black gravel shore,
According to visitors, Antarctic penguins are. . . ador­
and the nearby frozen ice the wind had smashed ashore.
able. They are tame! They are funny!
It was this mess of ice-ice breccia, pressure ridges, and
Tourists in Antarctica are mostly women of a certain ,t standing floes, ice sheets upright, tilted, frozen together
t~
a.ge. They step from the cruise ship's rubber Zodiacs "II and jammed-which extended out to the horizon. No
wearing bright ship's-issue parkas; they stalk around on "

matter how hard I blinked, I could not put a name to

the gravel and squint into the ice glare; they exclaim ,I~'!Pf: any of the other stripes. Which was the horizon? Was
over the penguins, whom they find tame, funny, and
I seeing land, or water, or their reflections in low clouds?
adorable; they take snapshots of each other with the pen­
Was I seeing the famous "water sky," the "frost smoke,"
guins, and look around cheerfully for something else to
or the "ice blink"?
look around at.
The penguins are adorable, and the wasp at the stained­
In his old age, James McNeill Whistler used to walk
glass window is adorable, because in each case their im­
down to the Atlantic shore carrying a few thin planks
personations of human dignity so evidently fail. What
and his paints. On the planks he painted, day after day,
are the chances that God finds our failed impersonation
in broad, blurred washes representing sky, water, and
of human dignity adorable? Or is- he fooled? What odds
shore, three blurry light-filled stripes. These are late
do you give me?
Whistlers; I like them very much. In the high Arctic I
thought of them, for I seemed to be standing in one of
III them. If I loosed my eyes from my shoes, the gravel at
my feet, or the chaos of ice at the shore, I saw what
The Land newborn babies must see: nothing but senseless varia­
tions of light on the retinas. The world was a color-field
Several years ago I visited the high Arctic and saw
painting wrapped round me at an unknown distance; I
it: the Arctic Ocean, the Beaufort Sea. The place was
hesitated to take a step.
Barter Island, inside the Arctic Circle, in the Alaskan
Arctic north of the North Slope. I stood on the island's
There was, in short, no recognizable three-dimensional
ocean shore and saw what there was to see: a pile of
colorless stripes. Through binoculars I could see a bigger space in the Arctic. Ther~ was also no time. The sun
pile of colorless stripes. never set, but neither did it appear. The dim round-the­
clock light changed haphazardly when the lid of cloud
It seemed reasonable to call the colorless stripe over­
thickened or thinned. Circumstances made the eating of
head "sky," and reasonable to call the colorless stripe
meals random or impossible. I slept when I was tired.
42
An Expedition to the Pole 43
 -- .

When I woke I walked out into the colorless stripes and painted in shopwindows, and when many thousands of
the revolving winds, where atmosphere mingled with dis­ Londoners jammed the Vauxhall pleasure gardens to see
tance, and where land, ice, and light blurred into a a diorama of polar seas. Our attention is elsewhere now,
dreamy, freeZing vapor which, lacking anything else to but the light-soaked land still exists; I have seen it.
do with the stuff, I breathed. Now and then a white
bird materialized out of the vapor and screamed. It was,
The Technology
in short, what one might, searching for words, call a beau­
tifulland; it was more beautiful still when the sky cleared In the nineteenth century, a man deduced Antarctica.
and the ice shone in the dark water. During that time, no one on earth knew for' certain
whether there was any austral land mass at all, although
the American Charles Wilkes claimed to have seen it.
The Technology
Some geographers and explorers speculated that there
i
,
It is for the Pole of Relative Inaccessibility I am search­ was no land, only a frozen Antarctic Ocean; others pos­
ing, and have been searching, in the mountains and along ited two large islands in the vicinity of the Pole. That
the seacoasts for years. The aim of this expedition is, there is one continent was not in fact settled until 1935.
as Pope Gregory put it in his time, "To attain to somewhat In 1893, one John Murray presented to the Royal Geo­
of the unencompassed light, by stealth, and scantily." graphic Society a deduction of the Antarctic continent.
How often have I mounted this same expedition, has His expedition's ship, the Challenger, had never come
my absurd barque set out half-caulked for the Pole? wrthin sight of any such continent. His deduction pro­
ceeded entirely from dredgings and soundings. In his pre­
sentation he posited a large, single continent, a specula­
The Land
tive map of which he furnished. He described accurately'
"These incidents are true," I read in an 1880 British the unknown continent's topology: its central plateau
history of Arctic exploration. "These incidents are true,­ with its permanent high-pressure system, its enormous
the storm, the drifting ice-raft, the falling berg, the sink­ glacier facing the Southern Ocean, its volcanic ranges
ing ship, the breaking up of the great frozen floe: these at one coast, and at another coast, its lowland ranges
scenes are real,-the vast plains of ice, the ridged hum­ and hills. He was correct.
mocks, the bird-thronged cliff, the far-stretching glacier."
Deduction, then, is possible-though no longer fash­
Polar exploration is no longer the fashion it was during ionable. There are many possible techniques for the ex­
the time of the Franklin expedition, when beachgoers ploration of high latitudes. There is, for example, such
at Brighton thronged to panoramas of Arctic wastes a thing as a drift expedition.

44 An Expedition to the Pole 45

 When that pair of yellow oilskin breeches belonging four Soviet scientists drifted for nine months while their
to the lost crew of the Jeannette turned up after three floe, colliding with grounded ice, repeatedly split into
years in Greenland, having been lost ·north of central ever-smaller pieces.
Russia, Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen was inter­
ested. On the basis of these breeches' travels he plotted
the probable direction of the current in the polar basin. The Land
Then he mounted a drift expedition: in 1893 he drove I have, I say, set out again.
his ship, the Fram, deliberately into the pack ice and set­ The days tumble with meanings. The corners heap up
tled in to wait while the current moved north and, he with poetry; whole unfilled systems litter the ice.
hoped, across the Pole. For almost two years, he and a
crew of twelve lived aboard ship as the frozen ocean
carried them. Nansen wrote in his diary, "1 long to return The Technology
to life . . . the years are passing here . . . Oh! at times A certain Lieutenant Maxwell, a member of Vitus Ber­
this inactivity crushes one's very soul; one's life seems ing's second polar expedition, wrote, "You never feel safe
as dark as the winter night outside; there is sunlight upon when you have to navigate in waters which are com­
no other part of it except the past and the far, far distant pletely blank."
future. I feel as if I must break through this deadness."
The current did not carry them over the Pole, so Nansen Cartographers call blank spaces on a map "sleeping
and one companion set out one spring with dog sledges beauties."
and kayaks to reach the Pole on foot. Conditions were
too rough on the ice, however, so after reaching a record On our charts I see the symbol for shoals and beside
northern latitude, the two turned south toward land, win­ it the letters "P.D." My neighbor in the pew, a lug with
tering together finally in a stone hut on Franz Josef Land a mustache who has experience of navigational charts
and living on polar bear meat. The following spring they and who knows how to take a celestial fix, tells me that
returned, after almost three years, to civilization. the initials stand for "Position Doubtful."

Nansen's was the first of several drift expeditions. Dur­

ing World War I, members of a Canadian-Arctic expedi­ The Land
tion camped on an ice floe seven miles by fifteen miles; To learn the precise location of a Pole, choose a clear,
they drifted for six months over four hundred miles in dark night to begin. Locate by ordinary navigation the
the Beaufort Sea. In 1937, an airplane deposited a Soviet Pole's position within an area of several square yards.
drift expedition on an ice floe near the North Pole. These Then arrange on the ice in that area a series of loaded

46 An Expedition to the Pole 47

 cameras. Aim the cameras at the sky's zenith; leave their

and compass, see the ice so wide it arcs, see the planet's
shutters open. Develop the film. The film from that cam­

peak curving and its low atmosphere held fast on the

era located precisely at the Pole will show the night's

dive. The years are passing here. I am walking, light as

revolving stars as perfectly circular concentric rings.

any handful of aurora; I am light as sails, a pile of colorless

stripes; I cry "heaven and earth indistinguishable!" and
The Technology the current underfoot carries me and I walk.
The blizzard is like a curtain; I enter it. The blown
I have a taste for solitude, and silence, and for what

Plotinus called "the flight of the alone to the Alone." I

snow heaps in my eyes. There is nothing to see or to
have a taste for solitude. Sir John Franklin had, appar­
know. I wait in the tent, myself adrift and emptied, for
ently, a taste for backgammon. Is either of these appropri­
weeks while the storm unwinds. One day it is over,' and
ate to conditions? I pick up my tent and walk. The storm has scoured the
air; the clouds have lifted; the sun rolls round the sky
You quit your house and country, quit your ship, and

quit your companions in the tent, saying, "I am just going

like a fish in a round bowl, like a pebble rolled in a
outside and may be some time." The light on the far
tub, like a swimmer, or a melody flung and repeating,
side of the blizzard lures you. You walk, and one day
repeating enormously overhead on all sides.
My name is Silence. Silence is my bivouac, and my
you enter the spread heart of silence, where lands dissolve

and seas become vapor and ices sublime under unknown

supper sipped from bowls. I robe myself mornings in
stars. This is the end of the Via Negativa, the lightless
loose strings of stones. My eyes are stones; a chip from
the pack ice fills my mouth. My skull is a polar basin;
edge where the slopes of knowledge dwindle, and love

for its own sake, lacking an object, begins.

my brain pan grows glaciers, and icebergs, and grease
ice, and floes. The years are passing here.
Far ahead is open water. I do not know what season
The Land it is, know how long I have walked into the silence like
a tunnel widening before me, into the horizon's spread
I have put on silence and waiting. I have quit my ship
and set out on foot over the polar ice. I carry chronometer arms which widen like water. I walk to the pack ice edge,
and sextant, tent, stove and fuel, meat and fat. For water to the rim which calves its floes into the black and green
water; I stand at the edge and look ahead. A scurf of
I melt the pack ice in hatchet-hacked chips; frozen salt
water is fresh. I sleep when I can walk no longer. I walk candle ice on the water's skin as far as I can see scratches
on a compass bearing toward geographical north. the sea and crumbles whenever a lump of ice or snow
I walk in emptiness; I hear my breath. I see my hand I bobs or floats through it. The floes are thick in the water,
some of them large as lands. By my side is passing a
I,
48
An Expedition to the Pole 49

I
 flat pan of floe from which someone extends an oar. I but it takes me several sleeps to get there. I am no longer
hold the oar's blade and jump. I land on the long floe. using the tent. Each time I wake, I study the floe and
the ocean horizon for signs-signs of the pack ice which
No one speaks. Here, at the bow of the floe, the bright we left behind, or of open water, or land, or any weather.
clowns have staked themselves to the ice. With tent Nothing changes; there is only the green sea and the
stakes and ropes they have lashed their wrists and ankles . floating ice, and the black sea in the distance speckled
to the floe On which they lie stretched and silent, face by bergs, and a steady wind astern which smells of un­
up. Among the clowns, and similarly staked, are many known mineral salts, some ocean floor.
boys and girls, some women, and a few men from various At last I reach the floe's broad stern, its enormous trail­
countries. One of the men is Nansen, the Norwegian ing coast, its throngs, its many cooking fires. There are
explorer who drifted. One of the women repeatedly opens children carrying babies, and men and women painting'
and closes her fists. One of the clowns has opened his their skins and trying to catch their reflections in the
neck ruffle, exposing his skin. For many hours I pass water to leeward. Near the water's edge there is a wooden
among these staked people, intending to return later and upright piano, and a bench with a telephone book on
take my place.
it. A woman is sitting on the telephone book and banging
Farther along I see that the tall priest is here, the priest out the Sanctus on the keys. The wind is picking up. I
who served grape juice communion at an ecumenical ser­ am singing at the top of my lungs, for a lark.
vice many years ago, in another country. He is very old. Many clowns are here; one of them is passing out Girl
Alone on a wind-streaked patch of snow he kneels, Scout cookies, all of which are stuck together. Recently,
stands, and kneels, and stands, and kneels. Not far from
I learn, Sir John Franklin and crew have boarded this
him, at the floe's side, sitting ona packing crate, is the floe, and so have the crews of the lost Polaris and the
deducer John Murray. He lowers a plumb bob overboard Jeanneffe. The men, whose antique uniforms are causing
and pays out the line. He is wearing the antique fur envious glances, are hungry. Some of them start rough­
hat· of a Doctor of Reason, such as Erasmus wears in housing with the rascally acolyte. One crewman carries
his portrait; it is understood that were he ever to return the boy on his back along the edge to the piano, where
and present his findings, he would be ridiculed, for his he abandons him for a clump of cookies and a seat on
hat. Scott's Captain Oates is here; he has no feet. It is the bench beside the short pianist, whose bare feet, per­
he who stepped outside his tent, to save his friends. Now haps on account of the telephone book, cannot reach
on his dignity he stands and mans the sheet of a square the pedals. She starts playing "The Sound of Music."
linen sail; he has stepped the wooden mast on a hillock "You know any Bach?" I say to the lady at the piano,
amidships.
whose legs seem to be highly involved with those of
From the floe's stern I think I hear music; I set out, the hungry crewman; "You know any Mozart? Or maybe

5°
An Expedition to the Pole 51
 1ilI
il.
II~I
:ii
'How Great Thou Art'?" A skeletal officer wearing a black
,1'1
"

silk neckerchief has located Admiral Peary, recognizable

from afar by the curious flag he hoMs. Peary and the ,11
,;II

officer together are planning a talent sh0!V and skits. :,1 '
il
lit
When they approach me, I volunteer to sing"Antonio '0'
1
Spangonio, That Burn Toreador" and/or to read a piece jil
of short fiction; they say they will let me know later. ':11

Christ, under the illusion that we are all penguins, is

crouched down posing for snapshots. He crouches, in In the Jungle il

,i
'I

his robe, between the lead singer of Wildflowers, who

is joyfully trying to determine the best angle at which
to hold his guitar for the camera, and the farmer's wife,
who keeps her eyes on her painted toenails until the
Filipino godfather with the camera says "Cheese." The
country-and-western woman, singing, succeeds in press­
ing a cookie upon the baby Oswaldo. The baby Oswaldo
is standing in his lace gown and. blue tennis shoes in
the center of a circle of explorers, confounding them.
In my hand I discover a tambourine. Ahead as far as LIKE ANY OUT-OF-THE-WAY PLACE, the Napo River in the
the brittle horizon, I see icebergs among the floes. I see Ecuadorian jungle seems real enough when you are there,
tabular bergs and floebergs and dark cracks in the water even central. Out of the way of what? I was sitting on
between them. Low overhead on the underside of the a stump at the edge of a bankside palm-thatch village,
thickening cloud cover are dark colorless stripes reflecting in the middle of the night, on the headwaters of the
pools of open water in the distance. I am banging on I
.~
Amazon. Out of the way of human life, tenderness, or
the tambourine, and singing whatever the piano player the glance of heaven?
plays; now it is "On Top of Old Smoky." I am banging I A nightjar in deep-leaved shadow called three long
the tambourine and belting the song so loudly that people notes, and hushed. The men with me talked softly in
are edging away. But how can any of us tone it down? clumps: three North Americans, four Ecuadorians who
For we are nearing the Pole. were showing us the jungle. We were holding cool drinks
and idly watching a hand-sized tarantula seize moths
that carne to the lone bulb on the generator shed be­
side us.

52 In the Jungle 53