Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
aerial sweep within a two-mile radius would reveal the shelter. I didn't know that the colony had
shifted four miles since Cherry manhauled to it.
We got out and looked over the pressure ridges from the top of a hill.
'Look at that,' said the crewman. 'Forty miles of crevasse fields and cracked, craggy ice - we
could never land on most of that, and they pulled their sledges all this goddam way. Damn sure I
wouldn't do it.'
When I spotted the remains of the shelter, my heart contracted. It was as if they were going to
appear from behind a rock, their necks frozen, smiling through cracked lips. As the ground came
up to meet us, my eyes filled with tears. I pulled down my goggles. I hadn't realised how close we
had become, these dead explorers and I.
'Can you believe those suckers built a shelter in such an exposed saddle?' said the crewman
over the headset as the blades whirred to a stop and the wind buffeted the helicopter like a rocking
chair.
'They chose the site in complete darkness,' I said, instinctively springing to their defence.
They had built a kind of igloo out of stones, about seven feet in diameter. Most of it had been
carried off by the wind, but a ring of stones about ten inches high had survived. 'This is the House
that Cherry Built,' an anonymous contributor had written in the
South Polar Times
, their expedi-
tion newspaper. It went on,
This is the Ridge that topped the Moraine
That supported the House that Cherry Built.
These are the Rocks and Boulders 'Erratic',
Composing the Walls - with lavas 'Basic' -
That stood on the Ridge that topped the Moraine . . .
1
The interior of the shelter was covered with snow, and through it poked a small wooden crate
and a pair of frozen socks. People told me these items had belonged to Cherry, Bowers and Wilson,
but I was sceptical about that. It was blowing so hard that in order to walk forward we had to
mould ourselves into the wind. I found the small entrance in the crumbling wall of the shelter, lay
down and closed my eyes.
Cherry had prepared to die as he lay there. He did not rue the past; he said only that he wanted
those years over again. The comradeship between the three men never faltered, even at the worst
moments. Cherry exults in the dignity with which they emerged from their ordeal. 'We did not for-
get the please and the thank you,' he wrote. 'I'll swear there was still a grace about us when we
staggered in. And we kept our tempers, even with God.' People have said that this is an easy thing
to write, after the event, especially when no one is alive to gainsay it. This may be so - but Cherry's
prose sings with conviction. Lying in the remains of his shelter, I felt something approaching awe,
as he had taught me so much. From him I had seen that it was possible to do anything two ways,
whether a five-week dance with death or an hour-long business meeting. You could do it with dig-
nity and loving kindness, keeping your temper with God, or with ambition, self-interest and greed,
allowing the world to sweep you away like an Antarctic wind. It was a simple choice. As he said,
