Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
word 'Brighton' written through the mangled stub, I would never be able to escape from my mel-
ancholic nature.
This was all frightening enough, but it grew much worse when the Nomadic Thoughts arrived
at their favourite watering-hole. Everything was all right, of course, if God was in his heaven; as
the Catholic Church used to preach in the South American slums before Vatican Two in the six-
ties, 'Life in this world is a piece of shit but shut up and put up with it because in the next world
everything will be fine.' (I admit they didn't actually preach that overtly, but it was what they
meant.) I have never had any trouble with faith. I have believed in God for many years. It was a
God who constantly redefined himself as I staggered through my life, and he seemed to live inside
me, rather than in heaven or on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He did not, of course, have a
long white beard. If any of the radio journalists had asked me directly: 'What are you frightened
of?' - I could have told them immediately, in three words. 'Losing my faith.' I had experienced
intimations of it when the teabag man and the smeared window of the day centre and the AIDS
ward supply-line led me too far down the long, unwinding road of despair. All I can tell you is that
I felt the white heat of terror then, and the idea that a gang of Bolivian truck drivers could provoke
a similar response was like suggesting that if I attached wings to my skis I could take off and fly
back to McMurdo.
In Antarctica I experienced a certainty amid the morass of thoughts and emotions and intellec-
tual preoccupations seething inside my balaclava'd head. It was what I glimpsed out of the corner
of my eye. It wasn't an answer, or the kind of respite offered by a bottle of calamine lotion on
sunburn. It was something that put everything else - everything that wasn't Antarctica - in true
perspective. I felt as if I was realigning my vision of the world through the long lens of a telescope.
It emanated from a sense of harmony. The landscape was intact, complete and larger than my ima-
gination could grasp. It was free of the diurnal cycle that locked us earthlings into the ineluctable
routine of home. It didn't suffer famines or social unrest. It was sufficient unto itself, and entirely
untainted by the inevitable tragedy of the human condition. In front of me I saw the world stripped
of its clutter: there were no honking horns, no overflowing litter bins, no gas bills - there was no
sign of human intervention at all.
You might ask why I didn't go to the Yorkshire moors or the Nevada desert if 'all' I wanted
was pristine nature. It would have been a lot easier. I had been to those places, and many others,
but it was the scale, the unownedness, and the overpowering beauty that made Antarctica different
and diverted the Nomadic Thoughts. It wasn't a permanent diversion. I knew I would meet my
demons again and again before my life ended. Still, I glimpsed a world in which everything made
sense. God didn't appear to me in any particular shape or form - if anything he became even more
nebulous. But I heard the still small voice. I had never known certainty like it. I felt certain that a
higher power exists, and every soul constitutes part of a harmonious universe, and that the human
imagination can raise itself beyond poverty, social condemnation and the crushing inevitability of
death. For the first time in my life, I didn't sense fear prowling around behind a locked door inside
my head, trying to find a way out. It was as if a light had gone on in that room, and I had looked
the beast in the eye.
