Ice Diaries

by Jean McNeil

  You can make what you fear happen simply by focusing on it. This is a cherished idea of New Age thinkers, but it has been around for a long time. It is what anthropologists call magical thinking, the belief that thoughts have agency, that how you think about an event can affect its outcome.

  It was Xavier who reminded me what Ernest Shackleton said, after the crushing debacle of the Endurance expedition: “A man must shape himself to a new mark directly the old one goes to ground.” The secret of Shackleton’s flexibility, and his ultimate survival, might be that he was always looking for the next challenge, and he was able to quickly put disappointments behind him.

  In Shackleton’s conseil there is a message, for all of us, in dealing with the conundrum of ice and its loss, and of global warming. We must shape ourselves to a new mark, to carbon emission cutting. But even with cuts, our planet will go on warming, and we must adjust. This will test the limits of our ingenuity, our tolerance and compassion, our flexibility.

  But meanwhile we seem sufficiently besotted with apocalypse that we are projecting it into the future. There is a reason why so many apocalypse-mongers are religious: at heart there is a spiritual yearning to be done with it, for the world to be razed, so that new beginnings can take hold, but these new beginnings are usually of their design. Religious people have a longing for release, for the single event which will encompass and explain everything, like an explosive matrix which, in a flash, reveals its architecture.

  Subconsciously, all civilizations seek decimation. We are aware of the caustic design in the machine, the bad debts, the ruthlessness, the ends-justify-means-ness of human life. We want to be absolved, cleansed, and so to begin anew. Every apocalypse advocate assumes that in the painful nightmarish sorting of the wheat from the chaff, they will somehow be preserved as kernels for the future. Human beings have the genetic arrogance to manufacture this delusion. Fed on diatribes of obligatory heroism, we don’t imagine it will be us who will fall at the first hurdle.

  You can feel it, as you approach. Its presence is like that of nowhere else on earth. The monumental self-absorption of the landmass acts like a cold vortex, pulling you in. But the allure of its independence, its lack of need, is so attractive. The Antarctic lives outside our narrative, like an extra planet moored at the bottom of the ocean. It does not belong to us.

  Sea ice is the most accessible of the ices: you can watch it drift by, crystal and sure, an ice ship at sail in these underworld waters with its scars — the stigmata of stamukha, rivered with sastrugi. From its windscoop peaks, seracs hang in suspended flux. In other places, raked by katabatic winds, firn is exposed, its metal gleam ablated. Heat competes with a deep, monumental cold. Soon the albedo cannot resist the sun’s broiling gaze, and melt begins. The process is not gentle, as a stream might melt in the spring, gurgling and trickling, but a frozen volcano erupting from within. The shear and stress of melt is that of any transformation, achieved only through a spasm.

  That Monday morning in early April when the Ernest Shackleton headed straight out into the wild, open seas of the western Antarctic Peninsula, is my final moment of departure from the Antarctic, despite my attempts to give myself another chance, a second experience in the continent that holds its acolytes rapt for years afterwards, mesmerized by a shimmering inner horizon they did not know existed before they went there. We were in a rush to get to the Falklands, and there would be no scenic route home. Sometimes paths are not meant to be re-taken. On the Shackleton that morning, I didn’t know yet how in less than two years’ time I would try to return, but that fate, knowing me done with this place, would repel my attempt. I will never come this way again.

  For years I had Antarctic dreams. In one, I fly to a remote colony with clapboard houses and spruce trees where we drive 1980s cars down battered streets much like those of that town I lived in during high school. The Antarctic has become a proper country with a settlement, and this hardscrabble town will be my home but also a prison; there is only one flight a year, in the dream, a Continental flight via Houston.

  In another, the Twin Otters and the Dash 7 are stored in an iceberg, not in an aircraft hangar. There is a secret door to the iceberg, a code you must know to open; I press it and find them again, gleaming under the hangar lights like reposing dragons. In another, icebergs menace the Falkland Islands far more effectively than the Argentine government ever could; they crash ashore, submerging the islands in a tsunami of instant melt.

  Eventually the Antarctic released its grip on my subconscious. The dreams have stopped now, but for one.

  Tom is flying me to Bluefields on the Ronne Ice Shelf. “I don’t know who was possessed to call it that,” he says, his mouth curving into his characteristic disapproving tilt. I know what he means — despite its lovely name, like so many “places” in the Antarctic, Bluefields is no more than coordinates on a GPS, just a few fuel drums marked by rickety bamboo flags, their red triangles ripped open by katabatics. There is no blue, there will be no fields.

  We approach the shelf, banking in the Twin Otter over the gauzy muslin of frazil ice on the surface of the Weddell Sea. We land, skiing to a graceful stop on an ice sheet with the consistency and reflective power of chrome.

  We get out and stand beside our little carmine plane, scanning the horizon. Sea ice. Loose pack. Ice pans. Glare ice. A steep descent toward open water.

  We stare into the horizon and its barking, infinite light. The convection heat rays of the sun beat down with such intensity the landscape sashays. We stare at the white snowfields, fields of such deep, pulsating blankness they pass through an invisible colour barrier to become cerulean, indigo, tourmaline, turquoise.

  After a while, Tom drags his gaze away, and we blink into each other’s eyes. In the dream we are still friends. We look at each other, astonished. We say it in tandem: Bluefields.

  SHORT GLOSSARY OF ANTARCTIC TERMS

  albedo: the extent to which an object — here, ice — diffusely reflects light from the sun.

  avtur: aviation turbine fuel. A kind of paraffin which has been specially treated to withstand low temperatures.

  bing-bong: the popular name for the Stentofon PA system used on base.

  bergschrund: a crevasse that forms where a moving glacier ice separates from the ice above. An obstacle for mountaineers.

  col: the pass in between two mountains, from the Old French, col — neck.

  CTD: in oceanography, an instrument used to measure conductivity, temperature and depth of the water column.

  field: away from base. Working “in the field” means living in a tent unless at a big field camp. “Deep field” means living and working a long way from base.

  field assistants: mountaineers charged with helping to look after scientists in the field and on base.

  firn: crystalline or granular snow, especially on the upper part of a glacier, where it has not yet been compressed into ice.

  frazil ice: cinder-like accumulations of ice.

  gash: general cleaning and housekeeping duties of the day on Antarctic ships and bases. A Navy term.

  HF/VHF: high-frequency radio.

  hummock: a mound or hillock of pressure ice.

  iceblink: a white light seen on the horizon, especially on the underside of low clouds, due to reflection from a field of ice.

  Iridium phone: satellite phone.

  JCB: a construction vehicle such as excavators and backhoes, made by J.C. Bamford Excavators Limited in the UK, universally known as JCB.

  katabatic wind: a wind that carries high-density air from a higher elevation down a slope under the force of gravity. A katabatic wind originates from the cooling by radiation of air atop a plateau, a mountain, glacier, or even a hill. Most commonly found in Antarctica and Greenland.

  manfood: as distinct, originally, from dog food. Manfood boxes are wooden boxes that contain ten days’ supply of dried and tinned food for
two people.

  melon hut: an oblong-shaped fibreglass hut used for field operations.

  met: the meteorologist; weather forecasters seconded by the UK Met Office to base.

  nunatak: an isolated hill or mountain of bare rock rising above the surrounding ice sheet.

  parhelia: bright spots in the sky appearing on either side of the sun, formed by refraction of sunlight through ice crystals high in the atmosphere.

  p-bag: personal bag containing a sleeping bag, sleeping mat, and sheepskin, for use in the field.

  pit room: accommodation; bunk-bed-style dormitory rooms on a (UK) Antarctic base.

  PNR: Point of No Return. The point at which there is no longer sufficient fuel for the aircraft to return to its point of origin; PNR means the airplane is committed to land at its destination.

  RIB: Rigid Inflatable Boat.

  sastrugi: wavelike ridges of hard snow formed on a level surface by the wind.

  serac: a pinnacle or ridge of ice on the surface of a glacier.

  sit rep: situation report, a weekly briefing given by the base commander on base matters.

  smoko: mid-morning and mid-afternoon tea break. A Navy term.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This book has had a long genesis. While working on it, I have been the fortunate recipient of several grants and awards. I wish to thank the following organizations, institutions, and ships for their generous assistance in the research and writing of Ice Diaries: the British Antarctic Survey; Arts Council England; the Shackleton Scholarship Fund; the Royal Literary Fund; the Canada Council for the Arts; the Natural Environment Research Council; the Environment Institute at University College London; the A.W. Mellon Foundation in South Africa; Galleri Svalbard in Spitsbergen, Norway; and the officers and crews of the RRS James Clark Ross, especially Jerry Burgan, and RRS Ernest Shackleton. These organizations also gave me valuable assistance and support in the writing of three other titles: The Ice Diaries — Antarctic Work in Progress (2006), The Ice Lovers (2009), and Night Orders: Poems from Antarctica and the Arctic (2011).

  I would also like to thank the friends who kept me company in the Antarctic, the Arctic, in London, and in Norwich during the writing of this book: Layla Curtis, Gabriele Stowasser, Jerry Burgan, Silje Hørunges, Julia Bell, and Rachel Sieder. Henry Sutton has been a stalwart and supportive colleague at the University of East Anglia, as well as a perceptive reader of my work. Andrew McNaughton has provided a home, stability, and support in tropical Kenya, where much of this book was written and edited. As always, my special thanks goes to Diego Ferrari, photographer, collaborator, friend, fellow traveller.

  This book brings together the expertise of many scientists and logistics people who spoke to me in the Antarctic, including many knowledgeable experts at the British Antarctic Survey, the Scott Polar Research Institute, Durham University, the University of Cambridge, Edinburgh University, the University of Southampton, and the University of East Anglia. Special thanks go to David Walton at the British Antarctic Survey and to Mark Maslin, professor of Climate Studies at University College London, for his collegial support and the clarity and concision of his published works on climate change.

  I read many excellent books on the history of exploration and the polar regions generally in the research and writing of Ice Diaries and would like to acknowledge in particular the ones I quote from: The Spiritual History of Ice: Romanticism, Science, and the Imagination by Eric G. Wilson (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); The Ice by Stephen J. Pyne (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003); I May Be Some Time by Francis Spufford (London: Faber and Faber, 1996); Farthest North by Fridtjof Nansen (London: Constable, 1897); and South by Ernest Shackleton (London: Penguin Classics, 2004). The ice terms which preface each chapter of this book are taken from the World Marine Organization “Sea Ice Nomenclature,” which can be accessed at aari.nw.ru/gdsidb/glossary/p1.htm.

  An extract from this book won the Prism International creative non-fiction competition in 2012; I thank Prism for its support over the years. It is one of North America’s best literary journals, and I feel very grateful to have been published in its pages.

  The images reproduced here are mine unless otherwise indicated. My thanks go to Jerry Burgan, Donald Campbell, and Rob Smith; to the Scott Polar Research Institute for permission to reproduce the image from the Terra Nova expedition “Captain Scott and group taken on return from the Southern Party” by Herbert Ponting, and to Hereford Cathedral for permission to reproduce the image of the Hereford Mappa Mundi.

  I would like to thank my agent, Veronique Baxter at David Higham Associates in London, for her sound editorial advice, her tenacity, and commitment to my work. Susan Renouf at ECW Press has been the best editor possible — knowledgeable, insightful, and skilled. I am lucky to have found her. Thanks also go to the enthusiastic and efficient team at ECW: David Caron, Jen Knoch for her superb copy edit, Erin Creasey, and Crissy Calhoun. Natalie Olsen has created an elegant cover, which expresses so well the dual character of ice, that of serenity and threat. Finally, for the support, time, and space to write in South Africa, I wish to thank the late Stephen Watson, Steven and Denise Boers, the A.W. Mellon Foundation, Pieter le Roux, and Meg Vandermerwe for their generous friendship, and for giving me a lasting home in Cape Town.

  PHOTO CREDITS

  Unless otherwise noted, photos are from the author’s personal collection. All page numbers refer to the print edition.

  Antarctic Peninsula map (x) from NASA.

  The Wedding of the Bohemian, Munch Seated on the Far Left (41) by Edvard Munch, 1925.

  Hereford Mappa Mundi (60) courtesy Mappa Mundi Trust and Dean and Chapter of Hereford Cathedral.

  The Great Wave off Kanagawa (134) by Katsushika Hokusai, 1829–1832.

  Canned food — Port Lockoy, Antarctica (170) by Serge Ouachée. In the Wikimedia Commons.

  Dash (196) by Donald Campbell.

  Halley platform (284), plane over ice sheet (319), Twin Otter (350) by Rob Smith.

  Scott expedition (290) courtesy Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge.

  Loki with a fishing net (317) as depicted on an eighteenth century Icelandic manuscript.

  Force 12 seas (334) by Jerry Burgan.

  Cracked ice texture background (throughout) by Ian Mackenzie (flickr.com/photos/madmack).

  TRY ANOTHER GREAT READ FROM ECW PRESS...

  SUMMERS IN SUPINO Every summer Maria and her husband, Bob, went to their little house in the Italian village of Supino, and every year it was a new adventure. Only in Supino would you find a pizzeria in a sheep pasture, a seafood restaurant hidden in the woods, or an electrical cord draped from one balcony to the next so neighbours could share power. In Supino, they celebrate the first figs of the season; host watermelon, azalea, and artichoke festivals; and take pleasure in the magical view of the stars in the summer sky.

  Full of wonderfully vivid stories of Italy, Summers in Supino also explores loss, grief, and the restorative power of community.

  ECW digital titles are available online wherever ebooks are sold. Visit ecwpress.com for more details. To receive special offers, bonus content and a look at what’s next at ECW, sign up for our newsletter!

  Copyright © Jean McNeil, 2016

  Published by ECW Press

  665 Gerrard Street East, Toronto, on m4m 1y2

  416-694-3348 / info@ecwpress.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encoura
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  To the best of her abilities, the author has related experiences, places, people, and organizations from her memories of them. In order to protect the privacy of others, she has, in some instances, changed the names of certain people and details of events and places.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  McNeil, Jean, 1968-, author

  Ice diaries : an Antarctic memoir / Jean McNeil.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77041-318-4 (bound)

  ISBN 978-1-77090-875-8 (pdf)

  ISBN 978-1-77090-876-5 (epub)

  1. McNeil, Jean, 1968- —Travel—Antarctica. 2. Authors, Canadian (English)—Travel—Antarctica. 3. Authors, Canadian (English)—20th century—Biography. 4. Ice—Antarctica. 5. Ice—Social aspects. 6. Ice—Psychological aspects. 7. Antarctica—Description and travel. I. Title.

  PS8575.N433Z85 2016 C813’.54 C2015-907305-7

  C2015-907306-5

  Editor for the press: Susan Renouf

  Jacket design: Natalie Olsen | kisscut design

  Cover image: © schnee von gestern/photocase.com

  Author photo: Layla Curtis

  Page design: Rachel Ironstone

  The publication of Ice Diaries has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country, and by the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays. Ce livre est financé en partie par le gouvernement du Canada. We also acknowledge the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,709 individual artists and 1,078 organizations in 204 communities across Ontario, for a total of $52.1 million, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation.