Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER FOUR
The Other Side of Silence
. . . A thousand visages
Then mark'd I, which the keen and eager cold
Had shaped into a doggish grin; whence creeps
A shivering horror o'er me, at the thought
Of those frore shallows. While we journey'd on
Toward the middle, at whose point unites
All heavy substance, and I trembling went
Through that eternal chillness . . .
Dante, from
The Divine Comedy
A SERIES
of arid valleys run off the Antarctic continent opposite Ross Island, created by the ad-
vances and retreats of glaciers through the Transantarctic mountains. These dry valleys, free of
ice for about four million years, are dotted with partially frozen saltwater basins and form one of the
most extreme deserts in the world. NASA wanted to test robotic probes there before sending them
on interplanetary missions.
'It's as close to Mars as we can get,' one of the engineers said.
At the orientation conference in Virginia I had met Brian Howes and Dale Goehringer, coastal
ecologists working at Lake Fryxell, the first of the three frozen lakes in the Taylor Valley. They had
invited me to stay at their camp, so three weeks after I arrived in Antarctica I checked out a set of
equipment at the Berg Field Center, sorting through tents, thermarests and crampons and painting
my initials on a shiny blue ice axe, and one morning I hitched a lift in a helicopter resupplying a
camp farther up the valley.
Less than an hour after leaving McMurdo, the pilot put down on a rocky strip of land between a
parched mountain and a large frozen lake. He signalled for me to get out. It had not rained here for
two million years.
A hundred yards from the edge of the lake a figure darted out of an arched rigid-frame tent known
as a Jamesway. I had heard a good deal about Jamesways. They were ubiquitous in long-term Amer-
ican field camps and constituted the heart of camp, too, like the kitchen in a farmhouse. An inven-
tion of the military, Jamesways are portable insulated tents of standard width and height but variable
length - to make them longer, you add more arches. They have board floors and a proper door, and
in Antarctica are heated by drip-oil Preway burners.
The figure trotting towards me from the Fryxell Jamesway had long straight hair the colour of
cinnamon sticks, and she was waving. It was Dale. At home she ran a lab at the Woods Hole Ocean-
ographic Institute in Massachusetts.
'Welcome to Fryxell!' she said. 'We've been looking forward to seeing you. I washed my hair
specially.' Taking my arm, she propelled me towards the Jamesway.
