Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the crew and I were about to set off for Rothera, the British station on the Antarctic Peninsula. The
Otter's route, straight across the continent, was about 2,000 miles, whereas mine was ten times
that as I had to leave the ice and find my way to a military airstrip in the south of England before
starting all over again. I was obliged to take this absurd and deeply frustrating course of action as
there is simply no way of travelling from one side of the Antarctic continent to another - short of
manhauling, that is. I couldn't hitch a lift on the Otter, as it didn't have an inch of space available.
Furthermore, it was too expensive, time-consuming and complicated to attempt to fly from Christ-
church to the Falklands on commercial airlines. In the end I had no choice but to buy the cheapest
return ticket between Heathrow and Christchurch, and rely on the Royal Air Force to get me down
to the Falklands in time to meet a Dash-7 plane from the British Antarctic Survey.
Looking down at the earth from 12,000 feet, I felt then that my life was in perfect perspective.
It was a sense of oneness with the universe - I belonged to it, just like the crystals forming on the
wing tip. At that moment I knew that all my anxieties and failures and pain were shadows on the
wasteland. Admiral Byrd, an unbeliever, experienced something similar in Antarctica, in his own
way. He described it as 'a feeling that transcended reason; that went to the heart of man's despair
and found it groundless'. It seemed to represent the ultimate destination of all our journeys.
