Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and the dimpled Taylor Glacier at the end of the lake was lit up above the dark, brooding opacity of
the moraine. In front of this scene shimmered the lake, sheets of cracked and rippled frosted blue,
and ribboned crystals imprisoned in the ice glimmered like glowworms. It was swathed in light
pale as an unripe lemon. The scene said to me, 'Do not be afraid.' It was like the moment when I
pass back the chalice after holy communion.
It had taken five-and-a-quarter hours, though we had stopped regularly for ice-inspections, and
by 9.30 we were picking our way along the soft mud on the edge of the lake towards the camp,
diminutive in the distance.
When we arrived, a tall figure carrying a case of beer stopped and leant against the door frame
of the Jamesway. 'Here come the explorers!' he shouted, and Ed called back, 'I found a writer!'
The man was the project leader at Lake Bonney, and his name was John Priscu. I had met him at
the conference in Virginia, and he had immediately invited me up to see his camp. It was his elev-
enth season at Bonney, and he said that when he got out of the helicopter, it was like coming home.
He had officially named a number of the topographical features after colleagues who had worked
with him there, 'so they're still here'.
We all shook hands, and he ushered us inside. Four people were sitting around a large table, and
the sound of taped jazz and peals of laughter filled the Jamesway. If it had been in an advertise-
ment, a log fire would have been roaring in a grate and a large sheepdog snoozing on a rug.
John was a veteran Antarctic microbiologist, and he was studying the plankton in the lakes.
'These lakes are unique all the way from the ice on the top to the plankton at the bottom,' he
said, handing me a beer. 'I can't figure out what's going on down there. Some of these lakes are
frozen all the way to the bottom, for God's sake, and we don't know why. I'm going to keep com-
ing back until I understand it.' He paused, and slurped at his own beer. 'We probably never will
understand it - but we're learning.'
He was forty-two, had gone to school at Our Lady of Las Vegas, and played guitar in a rock
band. I found out later that he also plied a trade as an Antarctic tattoo artist and ear piercer. He had
tattooed three people at Bonney using a needle for repairing Scott tents, and pierced four ears.
'So, what's it like being a Fingee?' he asked me when I sat down.
'What's a fingee?' I asked suspiciously.
'Fucking New Guy!' said John. 'Like Ed here.'
'I'm not a guy, to start with,' I said.
'Everyone's a guy here!'
He had chosen the site for the camp himself, in 1989. His Jamesway had been used in the Korean
War, and he claimed that the holes in the canvas at one end had been made by bullets. A notice
over the door said, 'Good morning scientists! It's a good day for science!', and next to a dartboard
beneath it someone had duct-taped the label from a tin of California Girl peaches. All over Antarc-
tica people stuck up images of heat, sunshine and tropical landscapes. They reminded me of the
call of whales for a lost world. The debris of human occupation had spread all over the Jamesway
like creepers in a greenhouse - postcards with curling edges, bits of rope on old hooks, broken
mobiles, Larson cartoons (indigenous to the American academic community), baseball caps, foot
powder containers filled with plastic flowers, an inflatable sheep called a Lov Ewe and Christmas
