Today I looked at the seismometer output and the geologist told me there was an icequake here last week. Pretty big. Shook the station. Freaked out everybody. The story everyone wants to believe is this: just a little way away is the icecube project. They're pumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of hot water into the ice and it's leaving huge voids that settle. Although drilling like this has been done before and there were no quakes.

And then the guy who tells you that tells you they drilled down to the pyramid.

Seems everyone has seen that movie but me. And there really was an icequake. Maybe the polar plateau is falling off the continent. If that's happening I'm not sure where it would be better to be: riding the ice to the sea or waiting for the tidal wave to destroy all known life.

Something is happening. Don't know what. Global warming? Climate change? Earth change? The magnetic poles are moving. Volcanos are waking. The pole is rumbling. Everything static is mobilizing.

Get ready, and by ready I don't mean you have to prepare to be inundated by tidal waves or pyroclastic flows rolling down from the mountain tops. Because you can't stop the ice. Kyoto be damned, what's happening is happening. So pray to your gods and hug your children. That's your preparation. You can't hide in basements and hoarding guns and food won't help you. Your preparation is to practice not screaming when it comes.

While I am here I feel that not a moment should be wasted. These are precious hours. Something will happen I will tell my grandchildren about. Something will happen I will be sorry I missed. The sundogs flank the sun. The snow underfoot growls like a distant locomotive.

Today I spent two hours chatting with the station doc over dinner. Will Silver was the doc who Jerri Nielsen replaced. He's the one who came back when she was medevaced for breast cancer, and we all know that story now. Seen the movie. Nobody likes who played them. They're all mad down here over Jerri and her movie. And the book. Mostly the book.

Polies have an ethic that doesn't map well into life we know up north. Winterovers are an ad hoc family existing in the brutal boredom of nine months of darkness and temps colder than dry ice. They have rules. One of the rules is that you don't go out and write a book about your trials that makes you the central figure in a ballet that involves the family risking their lives for you. You don't discount their bravery. You don't tell family secrets.

Other people have had more serious problems than Jerri. People have died, and are dying. People have been medevaced under more treacherous conditions and the medevac actually saved their lives (Jerri would have been fine a couple more months). Much more dramatic things have happened at pole than Jerri's breast cancer lump.

I have previously reported talking to others who were involved in that adventure and they all say the same. Jerri is available as a motivational speaker for $25,000 and none of the others could fetch more than a free lunch. There is bitterness. The family reconvenes without her.

I have never been in Antarctica so close to the end of the season. The winterovers are all here and they're anxious for us to leave so they can get on with their nine months of solitude. Even so, they're a smiley upbeat lot.

I used to think I wanted to try it. Nine months on this vast ice plane would change me in ways I don't like to think about. Maybe better, probably worse. Part of me wants to know who's inside. Who would be released when the burden of society is lifted and only survival matters. And wouldn't I be better off, live more comfortably not knowing?

Station closes in twelve days, and I leave in ten. I will be on that Herc. I will leave this tiny dot on the vast ice plane and think of all the souls who remain behind. There will be days in midsummer I think of the polies in the darkness. I will think of them during rainstorms they will never see. I will think of them when I see the ocean or a stand beside a river.

I've thought about the polar winter a lot. To me it's a terrifying nothingness. The terrifying darkness from which the first spark of life emerged. Looking into it means going back into the empty mind of the creator, the horror he faced that made him build the universe. Could any mere mortal withstand that blast?

I feel like I'm at its front porch. It's behind a door they'll close behind me and seal themselves off from the world. They're a family I've eaten with, shared space with, cleaned plates with, shoveled ice with. But I'm leaving and they're committing to the loveless nowhere. In truth, the pole is so much nothing it exists only in our minds. What we bring here in our hearts is more than God left behind when he built the place. We are everything here.

They'll hug us when we leave. They'll sigh and smile like hosts escorting the last dinner guest to the door. Then they will be the south pole. I will wish

...that I could have such courage.

And for the rest of the year I will remember them and admire the way they were all afraid and so happy for it.





- South Pole Station - Feb 3, 2006