The Dominion of Winter

 

Snow; it falls in tender, tiny flakes
of crystallized stars, patterning
winter on this northern geography.
It punctuates the atmosphere
with its extraordinary icy fragrance
its certain promise of an altered
landscape, chill and softly bright.

Even as snow drifts gently below
the sun soon erupts, shattering the
landscape with arrows of light
before receding again under
steel-hued and snow-purposed clouds
leaving the wind to scatter the
lofty coverlet. Last night a

renascent wind emulating an
earlier wind-day phenomenon
on the penultimate day of January
blasted February into the new
calendar with fierce squalls
of snow in dominion over a densely
black sky, moon bright, suddenly

obscured by yet another capricious
winter delight, guiding the shy
landscape in transition to
mysteriously disappear
from temporary human sight.

Mankind's hubristic conceit of
challenging nature dissolved by
random acts of magisterially
showcasing power. Assumption
of benevolence set casually aside.

 

Psychopaths Among Us

 

The White Supremacist's rights to
freedom of expression under Canada's
priceless Charter of Rights and Freedoms
have been inexcusably tampered with;
his parental obligation to lovingly inspire
his young children to the belief that blacks
"must die" to ensure the future remains
bright with dignity and promise
and security for white children.

The Muslim woman whose husband
ensured that an earlier, childless
righteously-spurned wife swell their
household to help raise their three
daughters as her own, had her revenge
when she, her husband and their dutiful
son successfully conspired to murder
those three girls, along with their
guardian. An obvious necessity to
ensure the girls remained biddable to
Islamic ideals of purity and honour.

The elite-ranked military commander
whose professionalism was directed toward
stimulating and enhancing the courage,
integrity and patriotic aspirations of
the country's finest, the while officiating
with the durability of rank and regard;
welcoming home slain soldiers, lives
taken in the line of national and
international duty, relieves his personal
stress by discreet acts of vicious rape and
gruesomely sex-deranged murders.

These exemplary failures of the larger social
contract pursue their missions, leaving
that great legal compact submitting to
justice, while a reeling public mourns
loss of collective belief in the celebrated
Goodness of Humanity. Their frenzied
lunacy; our grievous tragedy. 

The Rising Phoenix of Jew-Hate

In 1930s Germany, Fascist Brownshirts marched 

in the streets, calling out 'Juden Raus!' Jews were 

heckled, threatened, disenfranchised, schools

closed to the very citizens who proudly thought of

themselves as Germans first, Jews second, for whom

German culture and values were prized; Jews among

whom were world-renowned scientists, writers and

artists, financiers and business leaders, soldiers and

housewives, workmen and the social elite -- all

destined for premature death by whatever means it

took. This crime against humanity in a genocide of

unprecedented scale and dimensions troubled the

conscience of an aloof international community

which to the present day avows commitment to that

pithy oath: Never Again. In 21st century Canada 

crowds of Jew-baiting terrorist-supporting Jew-haters

march in the streets, block thoroughfares and bridges

hang banners decrying the Jewish State of Israel and

threaten Canadian Jews in a reprise of history. The

Brownshirts were doing the bidding of the Third Reich

but in Canada, Palestinian Arabs perfecting the art of

propaganda while calling for the death of Jews have

manipulated the Trudeau government to do their

bidding and non-interference in the ransacking of

history, conciliatorily bowing to the raging hate of

the antisemitic mob replaying history in real time. While

Canada's Prime Minister visits Poland memorializing

the Holocaust and gravely intones 'Never Again', the

fate of Jews once more hangs on the balance of hate.

 

And .. No One .. Cares

It behooves the powerful of the world to gather

as one at a significant memorial of man's inhumanity

to man, as a demonstration that they are concerned

not only with securing their nations' advantages

when they regularly appear at convocations to

discuss the state of the world economy, their security

and international relations. They gather on grave

occasions of remembrance as well, to recall the

sacrifices made when World Wars roiled the globe

and when the most extraordinary effort at genocide

occurred within living memory, on its way to receding

from the world's notice altogether. There they are

their august presence signifying grief and consolation

for the unfortunate target of a totalitarian government's

obsession to obliterate Jews, despised, isolated and

disenfranchised, strident propaganda preparing their

population for a culling of a people unsuited to live

among them. The architecture of a vast scheme meant

to free Europe from the grasping, mendacious Jews

proceeded apace with stunning regularity and success

the knowledge of which was acknowledged yet not one

country in the 'free world', much less a coalition of any

determined to save whom they could did other than close

their borders. Yet that lazy indifference to the plight of

Europe's Jews lingers  and the same nations that decried

the enormity of the genocide, gathered at Auschwitz to

polish their concerned credentials supporting human rights

once again do nothing as the same Jew-hating forces from

a variant source infecting populations everywhere are once

again at full throttle. And .. no one .. cares. The rampant

hypocrisy on display as Jew-hate marches triumphantly

through the streets of Europe and North America despite

stringent laws forbidding such fore-runners of solutions

to the ancient problem of what to do with the Jews...when

all Jews want and long for is to be unrecognized and safe.

 

Silent Suffering to Appease Jew-Hate

At last, a solution. It was there, all the while

but overlooked for perhaps it was too simplistic

and in its simplicity held no allure for the victims

of Jew-hate. The answer to which is to suffer, for

in this Jews have acquired a skill, one of dire

endurance. Suffer, preferably in humble silence

for is that not your proven destiny? Even though

observations of contempt that under threat of death

Jews met their destiny in silence, as lambs to the

slaughter. For the fate of Jews when Europe became

a charnel house dedicated to annihilation by edict

of Nazi Germany was surely preordained. And 

the excruciating mass slaughter of a people scorned

and rejected throughout history earned empathy

from a global community that sat by unmoving as

the caravan of death proceeded. A horrendous

event that is yearly memorialized by the survivors

(every Jew on Earth) and by sanctimonious heads

of state intoning grief at that cataclysmic epic of

slaughter unimpeded and triumphant. Hushed

respect for those millions who perished by those

who witnessed genocide at a safe distance, the 

very same global communities that disown the

Jewish experience on the recreation of that people's

ancestral home, where Jews no longer submit to

'fate' but respond to the lethal violence unleashed

by their enemies, meeting terrorism by meting 

out punishing self-defense to all those who seek

to recreate the Holocaust. And in so doing risk

(and welcome) the censure of those who prefer 

Jews in their traditional role of silent suffering.

The Power Of Her Mind

 

Do not think it, she urgently
cautioned her mind. Do not begin
to think it, her growing awareness
counselled her; schooled, entreated,
cautioned her. The irresistibly
growing realization that her mind
was the fount from which events -
sordid and sorrowful grew, impinged.

Frail and innocent she may appear
in her advanced years, but what
has been revealed to her is the
power dwelling deep within.
Think of some misfortune and someone,
somewhere, will suffer. Imagine a
catastrophe and it occurs. Idly
contemplate a life-shattering
occurrence and there it is, a living
manifestation of her dread power.

She knows now, with a startling
clarity that she is the ineffable
instrument of disaster; from her mind
leaps atrocities, misery, hopeless
surrender to nature's and humankind's
evil design incarnate. She represents
the means by which a malign force
exerts its vicious domination over
all that exists, as a plaything to
relieve the tedium of its existence.

She can no longer live within the
impossible weight of her guilt, and
imparts her dread knowledge to all
who will listen. But they doubt her sanity
and proffer tender concern for her
aged plight of what they term dementia.

And this finally destroys the pain
of her living guilt, leaving her free
to permit her imagination free rein.
After all, she forewarned them all.
She told them so. Was that not so?

 

Lovingly Shared

 

As inner-city children of a certain ethnic demographic - it was not all that surprising, given what she often mused was a kind of precocious inquisitiveness not quite of the same enterprising quality she saw around her now - they were thrown together through mutual exposure within a larger circle of acquaintances. Friends they might be in the most casual sense, but she never felt she belonged. Anywhere. She felt herself to be an impostor, an outsider, felt nothing comfortably in common with all those others.

She had been accustomed to social contact with the children of her parents’ friends, and found social acceptance there. But never completely relaxed comfort; even then non-conformist in a social manner. He had been caught in a larger net of young boys and girls meeting within a more institutionalized framework, where the community established casually-encouraging friendship centres to assist their young to make unconscious future commitments to those within the ethnic group.

They recognized in one another attributes that made each attractive to the other. Bringing them into a tandem that would result in their interior compass setting a direction that would take them through life together. They had much in background commonality, yet even within similar backgrounds there were enough traditional differences of social custom to ensure that they discovered in each other an awkwardly opposite heritage and tradition of customs. There was a certain intrigue in that.

It was not the shared portions of their backgrounds that drew them to one another, but the compulsion of a boy emerging into adulthood meeting a girl practising adulthood, both curious and willing to learn about the greater mysteries of life. And, incidentally and instinctively seeing in one another the potential answers to some of their questions. That, perhaps more than anything drew them together. Was it not ever so? Along with the fact that he, like her, felt socially clumsy, awkward, not nearly as unselfconscious as their peers. In one another’s company they felt the comfort of relaxed security.

He had the rough and awkward edges of a boy and she had already left that stage of a girl’s groping for the future against the inconveniences of the past far behind her. His clumsiness occasionally troubled her, but that was weighed off against the fascination she felt for those experiences he had in his life that had been so different from hers. Together they experimented with life in all its dimensions.

What better time to begin than as young people barely into their teen years? Those were the socially formative years, and they grew together, in spite of their often different perspectives; his already inclined to social conservatism, hers touched with a legacy of social justice. Despite, it might be added, their parents’ aversion to their inconvenient closeness to one another. Too young, they clamoured, as though in unison, never having yet met. Get out, meet others. How can you compare if you’ve nothing to compare with?

Even at that young age she had already invested herself in a kind of intellectual snobbery and his lapses into occasionally sloppy street vernacular offended her. She would tartly correct him, and he would grin sheepishly, accepting the verbal slap-down. Nothing about her bothered him.

They were in many ways like brother and sister. The bond they developed was that close. Sharing confidences, concerns, aspirations. But if their relationship was like that of siblings, then it was that of siblings engaged in covert incest. Chance offered them those opportunities and they grasped them, and with little damage to their conscience. They hungered for one another like fervid, adult lovers at a time when they still played children’s board games in quiet moments together. What they had most obviously in common though was their shared love of literature, and reading.

He played football at his school, she took part in some theatrical productions at hers. They went to school dances and showed up on other social occasions at community centres. They regularly walked together in public parks, and just as often went together to a local library, browsing among the stacks to select what they each preferred in reading material.

His was an omnivorous reading habit, consuming short fiction, history, detective fiction, Arctic exploration and the classics. She was absorbed in reading the classical Greek myths, Egyptian and general Mid-East archaic discoveries, autobiographies. In that sense, for their age, they were in a class of their own, she always felt.

They married while still in their late teens. Among other things that absorbed them was finding a place of their own after completing high school studies and finding jobs commensurate with their education levels. And joining a book club since they moved themselves to the outer stretches of the city where libraries were absent.

Four years later when their first child was born the city began to grow up around where they lived, at first slowly, then with renewed vigour as the general population increased and the search for adequate housing was unabated by a continuing influx of immigrants from abroad.

When their children were young, he discovered in himself a flair for design and a desire to produce objects of artistic expression. Over the years he developed a myriad of interests, all self-taught, all progressing to the stage where his output was both varied and energetically expressive -- from building furniture of classical design, to painting of watercolours, and designing and producing stained glass pieces.

For her part, literature remained her expression and she developed a facility for placing words in conjunction with one another where they agreeably formed poetry, short stories, essays. While his output decorated their home and made them both feel proud and appreciative of the beauty that surrounded them, hers lay secreted away in a bottom drawer. Eventually she made some tentative efforts toward publication, and eventually over the years her poetry, short stories and essays made their way into small, independent-press literary magazines and academic journals.

Their children, unsurprisingly, adopted their parents’ interests, and all of them displayed their own abilities over time, both creative and academic.

Over time, for reasons of her own, she withdrew from the immensely satisfying acknowledgement of her literary talents and wrote no more. She had at first exposed her early work to her husband, feeling he was in as good a position as any critic to evaluate the quality of her work. He read a few of her stories and congratulated her, and that was the extent of his interest. He was pleased she was busy and immersed in doing something that had value to her. It was not his habit to enquire whether she had anything he could read preparatory to sending an item out for possible acceptance for publication.

She eventually wrote a few longer manuscripts, completed them, one as a novel the other as a social commentary, then put those away, too. Out of sight but never out of mind, not completely, although their life together continued to evolve and to cocoon them in a cradle of mutual gratification of all that they experienced together.

The fruit of his exuberant creativity increased over time and they were hemmed in with aesthetic objects that gave them both great pleasure. Eventually, their children began to accept the excess of their father’s artistic output to adorn their own homes.

After they both retired from the workforce, his creative streak began to take on a frenetic tone, and he applied himself more vigorously than ever to his multi-talented pursuits. Every wall of their home was covered with paintings, every window was covered with stained glass, every surface held some quaint object he had designed, every bit of floorspace proudly stationed furniture he had crafted.

She carefully dusted all these treasured and beautiful objects and began to realize that she too had a need to create, not merely to admire and to languish within a odd dissonance of ennui.

She began writing again. For herself. To re-create the inevitable reward of satisfaction that flooded her on the completion of a poem, a story of her imagination. She relished the feeling she felt while conspiring with her muse to expand on a thought, something that stimulated those long-in-abeyance creative impulses.

A sense of accomplishment soothed her and encouraged her to continue. She became besotted with the impulse to write. He knew she was absorbed once again in writing, and he teased her about it, and embraced her at every opportunity for her soft and loving continuity. Their shared complacency in their loving regard for one another was obvious to them, not only a comfort but an inspiration sparking both of their creative compulsions.

With each new piece of creative work he accomplished she praised his effort and enjoyed living with it. With each new piece of creative work she produced, she mentally hugged herself and teased her mind to help her muse form yet another. She became so obsessive a writer that no single day elapsed without its quotidian creative writing piece.

She felt assured; her creative legacy was there, no longer shut away in a dark drawer no one might ever access, but in bright, living language, tenderly posted each day on the Internet, on her very own publishing site. Hers a mute, unanswered cry for recognition of the expressive bounty of her fevered mind - - resounding in that great indifferent space of Time-and-the-Wired-World.

 

I Feel So Shamed

 

I waited till later that evening to go and see my friend. I wanted to take some flowers to her but the flowers there were too tiny to gather. I looked through all my things: I felt I had to take something to her as a token of my friendship. The only thing I had was an ornamental egg coddler. It seemed a ridiculous gift to give, but it was very pretty with delicate paintings of flowers and birds on it. I wrote a little note saying how very much I felt for her. I had not enough words in Inuktitut to tell her what I really wanted to say. I wrapped the small parcel in tissue paper and put it in my pocket.
Inside Nauja's house the children were playing quietly. The usually tidy house was littered with clothes and unwashed dishes. A spilt cup still lay on its side on the table, the liquid splattered over the plastic cloth. Cigarette ends strewed the floor and a few empty bottles were sitting in a corner. the air smelt fetid.
I tiptoed into the bedroom. Nauja lay on the bed facing the door. Her jersey was stained with blood. Her eyes were open, but barely flickered when I approached. Her face was swollen and ugly. I could hardly recognize the attractive woman of whom I had grown so fond. I sat on the chair beside the bed and smoothed her brow. I had nothing to say, yet I wished to say so much. there was nothing I could do. I put down my poor offering and left. An impenetrable barrier separated me from my friend. She was the victim of the most dreadful violence and because of this she suddenly represented that violence. I felt utterly desolate. From: The Snow People; Marie Herbert

Her normally boisterous children became instantly deadly silent. Quiet pervaded the room. She tried not to look directly at the children, she focused in lock-grip, her eyes holding fast, captive with her husband's. His face the mask of drunken rage. His face suffused with dark, brooding red that boiled his blood and made hers run cold.

She heard the door click behind the children's backs as they silently fled. She had spent enough time in sober hours patiently repeating to them the necessity of leaving at the first sign of impending troubles.

He would be a good provider, her mother had tried to assure her, when she was informed of her father's bargain with the large, stolid hunter she and her girlfriends had giggled about, even in his presence. He seemed to take no notice of what silly young girls did, how they behaved.

So why had he eventually settled on her? Because, said her best friend, you are the prettiest among us. Because, said her mother proudly, you have been well schooled in domestic work. Because, said her father, I willed it to be so. What option had she but to submit?

Life was hard for everyone. Everyone suffered equally. And among them there was that social contract that meant no one interfered with someone else's business. Relief from the tedium and the hardship arrived once each month. And then, everyone -- almost everyone -- took refuge in that opportunity to briefly leave it all behind. In their insensibility they became other than what they were. Most, later, regretting that, but none willing to do anything about it.

In Thule, the 'disease' of civilization's evil liquor brought to the Eskimos is not so virulent as in other parts of Greenland. An otherwise-peaceful society becomes other once each month when authorities permit thirty points each month to each adult and there is a choice of a) 30 bottles of beer; b) one and a half bottles of hard liquor; or c) three large bottles of wine - or mix and match.

But that is the truth of our life here in Greenland. We worry for our children. We warn them of the dangers of the breaking sea ice. We tell them that our huskies are not playthings, even the pups; they are trained to be sled dogs, not house pets. Those dogs are supposed to be tied securely, tethered so they will not eat everything they come across; harness, leather mukluks. They are kept safely away from those places where children play, but even though they are warned, the older kids are so bored, not yet old enough to be independent; the girls with their own places, the boys out hunting with their fathers, they look for amusement. And they tease the dogs. How can you punish kids who have nothing else to do? We talk to them.

That makes no difference, they get bored, they begin teasing the dogs again, laugh at their antics, at the dogs' frantic efforts to free themselves. They think the dogs want to play with them, and it's true, some may want to, but not all. They've forgotten what happened to Taitsianguaraitsiak's oldest boy, just six. Older boys, it was rumoured, had let loose a pack of the dogs. They tore that boy apart, and by the time he was discovered, he was half eaten. No one had heard his cries, the wind had been howling so loud, we were in the midst of a storm.

After that, the children were quiet, confused, shaken. They woke at night often, screaming. But memories fade as children grow older. They had refused to speak about it, would not release any information if they had it, about how that pack had got loose. Children are resilient. Far less so their elders.

I don't know what I am going to do. Inugssuak gets worse all the time. I don't know why he has become so fierce. He tells me nothing.

The children, none of them, understand fully what happens the first of every month. It's always been like that, so why would they wonder about it? When the liquor quotas are released, people claim their share, and they don't stop until it's all gone. My friend Marie, the white woman staying here for a while, tells me it's called bingeing. That it is not healthy to drink so much alcohol all at once. I can see that, I can understand what she means. It changes people so badly. Nice people get mean.

The children are careful, then. But once everyone is full of the drink and they sleep, the children get up to mischief. They enter houses where the elders live, to gape at the old men and women sleeping, snoring, in disarray, their clothing half gone, their wrinkled faces with their droopy, toothless mouths hanging open. The kids find it funny, they laugh, they poke at the drunken people, they pull their hair, pinch their noses, and laugh.

Sometimes they run, when one of the drunks wakes up. And roars with anger at the children and chases them out of their house, down the street, where the children scatter and race for the protection of their homes. I try to teach my kids it's wrong to do these things. But they say to me all the other kids do it, why shouldn't they too have fun?

The Thule tradition (which lasted from about A.D. 1 to A.D. 1600) includes the Old Bering Sea, Okvik, Punuk, Birnirk, and Thule cultures. It represented a new kind of adaptation to the Arctic environment, based on the hunting of large sea mammals in open water through the use of drag floats attached to the harpoon line. Large skin boats and the use of dogs to pull large sleds were other Thule innovations. Winters were spent in sometimes large communities of semi-subterranean houses, subsisting on a stored surplus obtained most typically by hunting Bowhead whales.

Last night, when he beat me so badly I couldn't even think straight. The kids were asleep. They were in their beds, maybe not asleep, maybe listening. I tried not to cry out, but maybe I did, I might have meant not to, but maybe I did scream. After, he passed out, his head on the table, and I left the house. I went away, I told myself I would run away, I would never come back. He would never, ever beat me again.

I hurt all over. He kicked my stomach, my chest is sore, and there is blood all over my clothing. I know I have some bad cuts around my face, my neck. It was hard to walk, but I did, I went away from the village. It was cold and it was foggy, and I wasn't wearing my parka, but I didn't feel cold, only hurt. I went to the meltstream, up in the hills. Then I made my way down to the marsh, near the shore.

I was hungry, and I felt faint, and I didn't know what to do. Where could I go? Where could I run to? I had no warm clothing, no food, no shelter. I stayed there, at the marsh, for a little while. I was crying, felt sorry for myself. But then I felt worse, thinking about the children. Who would look after them? I went back to the house. He was still sleeping there, sprawled on his big chair, head on the table.

When I awoke it was day, and the children were outside, I could hear their subdued voices. I could hear them speaking to someone; it was my friend Marie. I hoped they would tell her I was sleeping, that she should not waken me. Instead I heard them ask her to go into the house and to see me, because I was 'bad'. I wanted nothing other than to burrow myself out of sight. I hoped she would ignore what they said.

She did not. She came into the house. She pushed open the door of the bedroom. She spoke my name. She sat beside me. She stroked my forehead. She left a little package beside me. And then she left. I feel so shamed. 

 

Duty Above All

May 31st, 1884 The gale continued all day and was accompanied by a heavy snowstorm. We were not only held close prisoners in our shelter, but also in our bags, as drift over a foot deep covered us. We were unable to cook and consequently had nothing to eat during the day, not even a swallow of water. Of all the days of suffering, none can compare with this. If I knew I had another month of this existence, I would stop the engine this moment. *

He might never have been able to imagine, even in the most feverish of his dreams, that he would himself experience such desolation, fear and privation. There is nothing, he thought grimly to himself, like living through such a nightmare to bring a human perspective to the heights to which human resources might aspire, and the depths to which the human spirit could plunge. It was only through the desperate cauldron of facing death on a daily basis that each man’s strength and weaknesses surfaced, so one could finally know what lay beneath the carefully maintained and structured façade of civility that society demands of its creatures.

This was a society he was familiar with, not the kind which also existed in the world of those with scant resources, ruled by tyrants who made short shrift of human values and rights belonging to others. In his world, occasions abounded for individuals to recognize and make the best of their opportunities, and those who strove to find satisfaction in their lives thrived, while those who merged their inertia with society’s constraints remained maladapted to the vision of their very future attainments.

For him that vision encompassed adventure, glory, serving his country as an educated, astute military man gifted with certain attributes that made him the perfect selection to help lead an expedition into the frozen distances of the globe where animal life abounded despite the severity of the atmosphere, the geology and the weather, but human life could not.

So here he was, on Ellesmere Island. Two winters of it. That was the assignment. Collecting weather data, scrupulously reporting on atmospheric conditions. So his country would have a record and an understanding of conditions there to advance the science and knowledge of the geography and the hostile-to-humankind-environment. It was past time they left.

The understanding was that after the two years they would be relieved. Short of food, their equipment in a failing state. Tired of waiting. No option but to have faith, to hope for relief. Stoicism was their current lot in life. One that began slowly ebbing, as some among them became ever more disoriented, dysfunctional, minds and bodies severely malfunctioning.

It’s not easy living with that kind of cold. It is a beautiful environment. Aloof, pristine, lovely beyond belief. But even a clear day with full sun does little-to-nothing to alleviate the dread cold. The men are tired, underfed, on the verge of starvation, ailing and desperate. Some of them lie in their virtually warmth-useless sleeping bags, refusing to rise. Preferring to invite death through surrender of their imprinted imperative to survive. They have admitted to themselves that they are incapable of flailing against imminent death.

They are, however, my responsibility, he sternly reminded himself, and one I do not take lightly. I go out every day and do what I can to obtain some element of nutrition to help keep us all alive and hoping for another day. I am by no means the only one to attend to these mutual duties, but it has fallen to me and me alone to gather as much shrimp as I can manage with my inadequate nets and failing store of bait, to keep death at bay.

June 1st, 1884 Breakfast consisted of three ounces of shrimp and a cup of weak tea to each man. We were without food for thirty-six hours. Lieut. Kislingbury became unconscious at 8 a.m. and breathed his last at 3 p.m. Before he lost consciousness he begged piteously for a drink of water, but this the Doctor denied him. He then sang the Doxology in a clear but weak voice and, falling back in his sleeping bag, was soon in the embrace of Death. *

We’re all progressively weaker. But some of us do our utmost to remain of good cheer in this cheerless atmosphere, despite the beauty surrounding us. Some of the men, those whose physical condition is far worse than those of us who still go out every day to find edible mosses and lichens, or shrimp as I do, say nothing, do nothing, appear to have closed down their minds.

Awake, they lie limp and unresponsive. Some have close at hand photographs of wife, children, mother. And stare at these photographs unceasingly. Occasionally mumbling names and perhaps reminiscing about happier times. They have utterly given themselves over to the prospect of never again seeing their loved ones. The visages of their wives, mothers, children, will be the last their eyes see before they glaze over in death.

June 2nd, 1884 Salor died at 3 a.m. I was lying by his side in the same bag at the time. Not having the necessary strength to remove him and not feeling inclined to get up, I went to sleep in the same bag with the remains and did not awake until breakfast was announced at 9 a.m.
Doctor Pavy was making some rather absurd prescriptions this evening and talking incoherently.
For weeks I have noticed Linn’s feet protruding from the gravel heaped over his body. Day by day the elements have reduced the scanty covering until Linn’s feet are fully exposed to the gales sweeping over Cemetery Ridge. I have often thought that I would replace that which had blown away, but my waning strength has caused me to defer this for so long that I cannot think of attempting it now. *

Each dawning day appears more beautiful than the one it succeeds. In any other circumstances, we would be transfixed with awe at the wonder of nature’s paint brush. This morning there is but little wind, a decided relief from previous days’ incessant blowing. We have had good hunting today for a change. Along with the shrimp I have managed to gather, a dovekie was shot, and it will be cooked slowly to produce a hot, nutritious soup for all of us. We require something like that to restore a trifle of capacity to our failing bodies and a modicum of hope for the near future. For if we survive the near future it is entirely possible that the ship will sail through and bring us the relief all of so dearly hope for.

Some of us have been able to eat the rock lichens that have been collected, and found some nourishment in them. Others, however, suffer greatly from the after-effects of eating these unpalatable lichens.

The Sound, because of lack of the usual high blustering wind storms, looks calm, smooth and wonderfully blue. A calming, restorative sight for weary eyes, tired of tearing from the cold and the wind.

It’s come to this; our medical man is so weak and dispirited we may soon lose his professional capabilities. He refuses to any longer partake of our communal shrimp stew. He will now agree only to taking weak tea and as anyone might know, most particularly a man blessed with medical knowledge, no human body is capable of surviving long without adequate - or even in our parlous state - a minuscule amount of nutriment.

We continue to realize that one among us is a predator, caring little for the common weal in our miserable situation. Lieutenant Greely, after some brief consultation has been forced, by unfortunate circumstances, to issue an order:

Near Cape Sabine, June 5th, 1884 To Sergeants Brainard, Fredericks and Long:
Private Henry having been repeatedly guilty of stealing the provisions of this party which is now perishing slowly by starvation, has so far been condoned and pardoned. It is, however, imperatively ordered that if this man be detected either eating food of any kind not issued him regularly, or making caches, or approaching any article of provisions, you will at once shoot him and report the matter to me. Any other course would be a fatal leniency, the man being able to overpower any two of our present force.
(signed) A.W. Greely, Lt.5th Cav.A.S.O.& Asst. Comdg.Lady Franklin Bay Ex. *

We simply have no other choice but to this grim task of sentencing one of our own to death in the hopes of securing the lives of others of us. I find, despite my assiduous attention to the tedious work of fishing for our little life-saving shrimp that they are no longer taking to the bait. My strength is steadily diminishing and I have little appetite for further strenuous attempts beyond my present state of energy-depletion.

As it is at the present, it is all I can do to muster the energy required to stagger toward the shrimping grounds, remain there for the hours required to attempt to fish out a goodly portion of what remains and then painfully pull myself back up with my catch to the camp.

My mind and thought processes are dulling. My brain appears to be refusing to work as it should. I cannot recall what I should automatically be doing in the performance of my duties. My obligations to the men partially under my command are foremost in mind, but what, precisely, I should be doing, to ameliorate their condition, is now eluding me.

This is a most unfortunate situation. I cannot quite conceive of the reason why our rescue party has been so agonizingly tardy. Surely they must realize the situation we are in? Surely they have some intuitive knowledge that our situation is parlous? Perhaps it is better that we do not torture our minds by these useless conjectures.

We must acknowledge that something disastrous may have occurred to our relief party. That, or somehow conditions leading to their being able to reach us have somehow conspired to leave us in our present state, and they in a worried consternation over our situation.

Near Cape Sabine, June 6th, 1884 Sergeants Brainard, Long and Fredericks:
Notwithstanding promises given by Private C.H. Henry yesterday he has since acknowledged to me having tampered with seal thongs, if not other food at the old camp. This pertinacity and audacity is the destruction of this party if not at once ended. Private Henry will be shot today, all care being taken to prevent his injuring anyone as his physical strength is greater than that of any two men. Decide the manner of death by two ball and one blank cartridge.
This order is imperative and absolutely necessary for any chance of life.
(signed) A.W. Greely, 1st Lt.5th Cav. A.S.O. & Asst. Comdg. L.F.B. Ex. *

This is a sad and sorry business. But duty insists it must be met. As honourably, given the circumstances, as humanly possible. No one is the better for the situation.

After the execution was accomplished, a search of the poor man’s effects revealed him to have availed himself of a pair of seal boots, a coil of seal skin thongs, various knives and other items, some of which could be rendered down to edible product, some of which could be silently chewed in his sleeping bag in the dark of night, empowering him to a greater state of bodily comfort than has been afforded the rest of us. God save his soul.

We do know, however, that his was not the only such sin among our desperately suffering men. There are others suspected of indulging in the same, or like conspiracy to obtain for themselves certain advantages toward prolonging their lives.

Had we a trifle more strength between us we could undertake to bury the most recent dead. It is not at all decent that their bodies lay there, just beyond the camp where we have managed to drag them, away from our immediate presence, frozen and silently condemning our inaction in providing them with a resting place where they may meet eternity with equanimity.

June 7th, 1884 Biederbick and Connell gathered a few lichens and a little reindeer moss. This evening we dined on a stew composed of a pair of boot soles, a handful of reindeer moss and a few rock lichens. The small quantity of shrimps which I furnish daily is sufficient only for the morning meal.
We dressed the bodies of Dr. Pavy and Bender for their graves, but were unable to bury them. *

It is simply soul-destroying to witness the swift deterioration of the men’s earlier inspirational will to live. We who are in relatively better health than those gravely ill unto death do what we can to instill a little bit of cheer by commenting about the break in the weather and the beauty of the sky and the full sun, the import of which confuses us as we derive no benefit from any of it.

But there we are, all things being relative; we can, should we wish to do so, drink in the loveliness of our surroundings in this brief respite between storms.

Scurvy is plaguing the men, and little wonder. We celebrated the birthday of one our men by permitting him - and he alone - a spoonful of rum. Spirits are normally retained for other, more medicinal purposes. It was hoped that allowing that poor man a respite from his misery by a mere taste of what in other circumstances is taken for granted and taken in abundance, will momentarily bring cheer to his fading life. And he but 32 years of age.

We have found black rock lichens stew up nicely enough. Certainly not to everyone’s taste, as the result is rather gelatinous and tasteless, but we are certain, possessed of slight nutritive qualities. Everything we can manage to recognize as possibly nutrient-rich in some manner helps. We have taken to carefully and slowly chewing bits of seal skin cut from garments. This is not possible for those with advanced scurvy, and their end, we feel is lamentably nigh.

June 12th, 1884 We had only a cup of tea for breakfast. I found a new shrimping place this morning near the tent. After several hours’ work I returned with two pounds. Our evening meal - a few boiled lichens and a cup of tea.
Connell’s face appears full and healthy, but it is only swollen. He expressed a wish to work, cook and live by himself. This request Lieut. Greely would not grant.
Gardiner died at 5 p.m. Patience and fortitude have characterized his sufferings. He clung to life with a wonderful pertinacity and only succumbed when physical weakness had crushed his will. *

I try not to think overmuch of what I cannot do much about. We fumble and stumble through the long days of agonizing descent into hopelessness. What we remain aware of, those of us still capable of some minimal functioning, is that we must not convey to the others whose state of health is extremely delicate, our own sense of descending hope. We do what we must. And we do what we can to ensure that a small glimmer of hope remains in the wounded minds of our men.

The high winds have finally resumed. Resulting in our having had to remain close to camp, rather than venture further in our everlasting search for nutriments. I have been unable, of late, to catch more than a few ounces of shrimp. I did construct a nominal net to replace those washed out by a brief but sturdy spurt of ice-melt swelling the stream, but somehow lost the shrimp caught in it. And watched, helplessly, as they washed out of the utterly useless net and made their way downstream, depriving us of even that small portion of food.

We have no more tea left to us. We must now consider utilizing some of the lichens as the stuff of tea-making. The taste of which will doubtless be unpleasant to those still anticipating our own tea of a morning.

June 17th, 1884 The sense of hunger appears to have disappeared. We eat simply to preserve life. Crumbs of bread at our winter quarter which are occasionally exposed through the melting of the snow are picked from heaps of the vilest filth and eaten with relish. Henry ate ptarmigan droppings; Bender ate caterpillars, worms, etc. Saxifrage, lichens and other vegetation together with the intestines of animals would now be luxuries. I worked several hours in the raw, chilling winds and caught little more than a pound of shrimps. *

Some things are indescribable. How to describe to an interested ear the folly of a venture to which no ending can be visualized, but which must be embarked upon to obey orders from superiors who have their own reasons for the successful completion of a venture they themselves will never have to suffer the hardships thereof? In any event, those who have never undergone the travails which we have been exposed to, can never imagine how dreadful the assault on human endurance can conceivably be. Even those who have experienced such deprivation and exceptional danger to body and soul and survived the ordeal, cannot find words adequate to paint a picture with complete verisimilitude.

Perhaps this is just as well. For if those whose spirit takes them toward exploration and the adventure of discovery, those who fall under the spell of that great white presence of the frozen north were to completely understand what lies awaiting them, why they might never venture into the enterprise of discovery. And then, perhaps, the world would be a poorer place for lack of intelligence relating to the data thereof derived.

Now, to other more intimate things. Which have been gently pushed aside in my mind, heretofore. For I now find myself in that situation where I too, must think about that which is most precious to me.

What will I say when I greet my beloved wife? I will look deep into the wells of her soft eyes and I will absorb her love for me into the wellsprings of my soul. I will feast my tired eyes on her loveliness, her familiar face and presence. I will breathe the fragrance of her hair, the aroma of her being, and fill my tired lungs with her essence. I will carefully listen to the soft, sibilant tone of her voice expressing her undying love for me. I will embrace her and hold her and tell her I shall nevermore leave her.

My destiny approaches but my ultimate duty yet awaits me.

*From Six Came Back - David L. Brainard

 

Last Night, This Morning

 

Last night the huge velvety vault
of the sky was aglow as rarely seen.
Dimpled with hugely-gathered
snow crystals becoming bright
sparks of crystalline, light-refractive
distractions billowing languidly.

Softly evanescent clumps of snow
crystals languorously drifted
through the earthly atmosphere
luminously illuminated by ambient
sky-diffused light from the
vastness of the citscape below.

In bright, soft shadings of melon,
mauves and pinks, shedding their
own borrowed brilliance, the
binary snow-gatherings made their
journey, finally assembling into a
vast, all-encompassing comforter
contouring the landscape.

As dawn sent its dim waking light
over the horizon and into the
soft new arras, birds stirred,
lifting heads from under recumbent
wing-havens to view their
brilliantly altered landscape.

 

It's Not Your Fault

"Don't cry Enid", he said anxiously. Awkwardly attempting to wipe away her tears.

"That wasn't fun! You said I'd like it. Well, I didn't!" she whimpered, pushing him away, tears fully released, washing down her pale face. "You said you love me! You hurt me!"

"I'll never do that again to you, I promise", he said, meaning every spoken word, struggling with himself for composure; needing he knew, to reassure her. To re-establish trust.

There was a strained silence, broken by her hiccoughing attempts to gulp back her sobs.

Then normal life resumed. Their respective school buses taking him off to his second year of high school. Hers to another small town located near the family farm, to her mid-elementary-school years.

Their mother was pleased with his recently-renewed willingness to attend Sunday sermons. Didn't know what had gotten into him to begin with, to stubbornly resist the family's weekly faith outings. Resented that her husband sided with the boy. When what he needed was a good smack across the face from time to time.

Sitting in the pews alongside the other pious-orderly parishioners, he was able, surreptitiously to hold his sister's hand and she did not, this time, rebuff him.

"Why're you hurting yourself like that?" her best friend gasped, recoiling in fear and disgust when Enid shared her new secret, shoving her sweater-sleeve up to reveal an angry, still-seeping slice on her upper arm.

"I'm not!" she denied. "I don't want to hurt myself. It feels good, that's all. It makes me feel good!"

"You're punishing yourself" her friend accused angrily. "You feel guilty. It's not your fault!"

Enid lifted her delicate blond head to appraise her friend. She shrugged, grimaced, fought back an odd smile. Looking straight at the other girl, she mimicked her concern, repeated mincingly: "It's not your fault", and then barked a sharp, bitter laugh. "What do you know, anyway? Think you're so smart? Got an answer to cure everything, haven't you?" And she walked away, leaving her friend incredulous, gasping for air.

"But I want to help you!" her friend shouted after her receding back.
Didn't ask you to, dummy. Don't want your bloody concerned help.

They'd known one another since they were eight, friends from elementary school. Spent their spare time together. No. That was true once, a few years ago. Not so much, more latterly. Erin had become detached, moody, uninvolved.

Her best friend was, in fact, her only friend. She was aiming for none.

Dr. Pearson keeps telling her she should talk, talk, talk. Talk about anything that enters her mind. Talk about her relationship with kids at school, with her teacher. Give him her impressions of their characters, what she liked about them, what she didn't. Did she even like her teacher? Doubt it. Casually, he said: talk about your family, your mother, father. How about your brother? Your other brother, the one your family took in? Him too. He wouldn't interrupt, wouldn't ask any questions. He'd just listen. Make no comment. Just there for her to kind of relax about things, get things off her mind. It would help, he told her. Help her to feel better ... about everything.

She had cousins, two girl cousins. Not cousins exactly, but close. Extended family. Her own age one, the other younger. Their father was her father's nephew. They didn't get along, never did. They thought they were superior to her because their father had inherited the better farm.

Her father had inherited their hardscrabble farm. The family, all of them, had lived in that rural neighbourhood so long the road was named after them. There were other family members on other farms, none as successful as the one owned and operated by her cousins' father, though.

But they did operate as genuine farms. Erin's father kept a few highland cattle, a goat, some laying hens, a donkey and an old swayback horse. He didn't do any farming, though. Erin's brother, now he was older, helped her father's nephew at his farm. It was located just up the road. Erin's brother's ATV was handy for getting around. He sometimes let her ride on it with him. But he preferred to be with his friends, racing around, rather than let her hang around.

That was outside. Inside their house, that was different, then he was approachable, amenable to her presence, teaching her things she might never have imagined left to her own devices.

Erin had developed a habit of telling people matter-of-factly, as though she thought they might be interested, that she hated her father. People rarely asked her why, just brushing it aside as a curious way for a young girl to speak of her father. A good man, well liked in the area. He worked at a factory to support his family. His farm was a farm in name only, not actually worked. But if anyone did pursue the statement by questioning her, Erin would reply "because he's mean to my mother".

Odd that, in most peoples' minds. Those who had some knowledge of the family. Erin's mother happened, as they knew from first-hand observation and rural gossip, a sharp, unforgiving whip of a tongue and she lashed her husband at every opportunity. He responded by shouldering it all. His shoulders, over time, became narrower and narrower, hunched, as though he could somehow protect his tender chest with its wildly beating heart from the onslaught that diminished his self-regard so irremediably.

Her friend, her best friend who lived a mere few miles' distant that sometimes slept over at Erin's house. As Erin had at hers, for they had been best friends, hadn't they? Her friend remarked to her own mother who questioned her that she had never noted anything out of the ordinary, he'd always been kind, and nice to her. She did mention Erin's mother's belittling tirades directed toward her husband. Thought little of it.

Her friend's mother thought how odd it was that the child who in her younger years would embrace her at every opportunity when she played with her own little girl, had become reserved, standoffish in the last several. Although, she noted also, she readily lost herself in the childish joy of being with a friend, doing things that friends, young girls, do together.

Dr. Pearson said softly, Erin, do you feel badly about what happened to you? Do you blame yourself? Don't, Erin, you're not responsible. You were a little girl when it started. Hardly knowing what was happening. Someone you trusted and felt comfortable with kind of disappointed you, didn't he? All right, you don't have to respond to that.

Probing, he's always probing. Sometimes she feels better, most often not. But everyone says it's therapy, it'll help her, she's got to continue going to see him. He's a nice man. She doesn't mind him. But really, what's the point? There's just no point to all of it.

On her 12th birthday her brother took her into town, in their father's pick-up. He wanted, he said, to do something special for her. He knew how much she wanted pierced ears; he'd cleared it with their mother. Excitement! You bet, she really, really wanted pierced ears, so she could wear gold hoops. She wanted neat, symmetrical gold hoops. And that's just what he got for her. She hugged him, her face radiant. And his face, looking fondly down at her, happy for her.

As far as their mother was concerned, it was a display of worldly vanity; the limit, as it happened, to which she would agree. She would allow Enid to wear short-sleeved tee-shirts, but only so long as she wore long-sleeved hoodies over top. Her mother needn't be informed that, at school, the hoodies came off in the classroom, even through the winter months.

She had nothing to hide, anyway, unlike most of the other girls. She remembered a birthday party at her best friend's house a few years back, when she and the other invited girls had gone for a dip in the pond out back behind the house. When Mrs. Haig came out with a camera to take some shots, she had impulsively pulled down the top of her bathing suit, and posed in an exaggerated position, much to Mrs. Haig's consternation. The other girls were giggling, hiding their faces behind their hands. Now if they'd done that ... she was the only flat-chested girl there. So, big deal.

By then someone else had joined their household, a young man whose parents had disowned him when he hit rock bottom, addicted to drugs and alcohol and living on the street. From whence her mother's church had salvaged him, given him temporary shelter, encouraged him to take advantage of addiction counselling, and then proudly produced him at a gathering of the faithful as yet another symbol of Christ's merciful redemption of feeble humanity. Her mother had sat straight up to attention, her eyes riveted on the bashful young man. Inspired, her mother had offered the youth, through their pastor, a permanent home with them. Erin's father was appalled, fearful, his faith not as deeply entrenched in the restorative capacity of agape.

"We've got a developing girl at home!" he protested.

"What!" his wife shot back. Questioning the judgement of her Christianity. "He's redeemed himself", she barked. "More than I can say for you ... think I don't know about those bar stops?" She needled him about his "bad habits", his "sinful ways", his lack of contrition when she found him out.

"He'll need to be shielded from your influence", she huffed. "But as good Christians this is our duty. I've pledged to take him in, can't retract, what would everyone think? How would that make us look?"

In the end, the argument was hers to triumph, always was, and he mutely acceded. In the end, the young man, several years older than their natural son, proved his gratefulness, mollifying Enid's father's unchristian doubts. While earning him additional contempt. Was that remotely possible? Why yes, it was.

Enid's mother's generously capacious mental storage where she meticulously filed all of her husband's failures, incapacities, incoherent responses justifying his existence and her misery, proved more than equal to the task.

Enid, suspicious of her new 'brother' (she was severely schooled to regard him as an older sibling) soon relaxed in his presence. He was an introvert, unlike her 'real' brother, but quietly courteous, helpful to a fault. He even went out of his way to sit with her after dinner and help her with her math and science and geography homework. She was grateful. He had a neat sense of humour, leaning heavily on dryly casting aspersions on himself. She became very fond of him.

And so did the entire family, finally. Although Enid's father would wince every time his wife reminded him bitingly that the job the young man eventually found paid more in salary than his own hourly-waged one, helping her to begin decorating and furnishing the old house rather more graciously than they had long been resigned to.

A year and a half later, the grateful young man left, to strike out on his own, to reap opportunities awaiting him in Toronto, as a budding, ideas-rich entrepreneur. Six months later, Enid, accompanying her mother by train, visited their lost sheep in prison where he had been remanded awaiting trial for dealing drugs.

It was on their way back home again that Enid casually mentioned to her mother that she knew all about sex. It was no mystery to her. Her mother turned in her seat, regarded her daughter with an air of disbelief, lifted her hand and slapped her face.

"It's true, Mother", Enid said. And guess who? My brother. Not once, not twice, but over and over and over again. She watched her mother's face blanch. "Steve....?" her mother burbled. Enid laughed. She twisted her fingers. Wondered why she was doing this. What was wrong with her? "No, not Steve, Mom. It's Kevin."

Her mother turned away from her, stared out the window at the moving landscape. A heavy silence moved between them and Enid felt she could feel her mother's ... furious anger toward her. She would blame her. She knew she would.

"Don't tell your father", her mother finally said, turning back to Enid, pleating her own fingers in her skirt. "I'll look after everything", she said. "Are you all right? Poor kid, all this time..."

"It's all right, Mom. It's all right" she said softly back to her mother. And then she began to worry. "What'll happen now?"

"I've got to think", her mother said. "We'll work this through, somehow. Did you ... did you ... provoke him, your brother? Did you do something to ... make him do this?"

"I don't know. I love him. He loves me, he said he loves me."

"He's your brother!" The agony in her mother's voice startled her.

"What's going to happen to him, Mom? Can we kind of forget what I said? Maybe I'm not serious. Maybe I'm making all this up. Mom?"

"No", her mother said, heavily. "We can't forget it. Have you had your period?"

Later, at home, when her mother was busy in the kitchen. That's when she informed her father. She still doesn't know why.

Enid hates this about herself. 

 

Dauntless Spirits, Great Adventures

 

Those people who willingly, eagerly venture into unknown territory, geology- or weather-hostile regions of the Globe present as a puzzling anomaly in basic human psyche for Nature has genetically hard-wired us with an irresistible urgency to survive. Yet these dauntless - some might venture -- deliberately heedless adventurers -- seek out danger, defy fear in the intent to confront their inner daemons opposing inherited existential caution.

How many among us is willing to expose ourselves to extremes of danger, privation, disease and the vagaries of chance and happenstance? Do they value life any less than we do? Or has nature tricked them into the belief that some spiritual power, within themselves or beyond, hovers protectively over them?

What irresistible siren of compulsion calls them to their destiny? What indomitable will and iron-strength of purpose propels them to forge on in the very face of Grim Death in defiance of their biological imperative?

They embark on their search for meaning and purpose, meeting head on the capricious neutrality of their maker; Divine Nature. Some live on to marvel at their escape from the uneven contest, some write inspiring narratives of conquest and the majesty of nature; the curious needs of humankind fulfilled.

There are solemn, respectful obituaries recognizing the mortal fallibility of aspirants. And account after revelation of those consumed by their need, who wander from ascent and encounter one after another as though awaiting and inviting the inevitable, leaving mourning loved ones behind, their supra-human exploits their legacy.

This bespeaks an urge of conquest vastly dissimilar to that which took Europeans to horizon-less oceanic stretches fearful to the imagination, in search of wealth and adventure: land, natural resources and the capture of people they thought of as sub-human, in a campaign to enrich their nations by the enslavement of others, through the creation of empire-building.

Leading inevitably to wars and massive blood-letting of both indigenous peoples of those conquered and devastated lands, and competing armies of ascendancy-determined conquerors.
In these searches for discovery and adventure into the great frozen places of the Earth, there is rare intention to discover sources of material wealth, but rather perhaps for some the achievement of fame.

Onlookers, awed by the trials and tribulations facing those resolute souls who venture into those isolated, weather-hostile places wonder who, in their right minds would deliberately seek to inflict excesses of physical misery upon themselves, let alone the psychical torment involved in achieving goals that sometimes elude, sometimes succeed, only to result too often in broken spirits and occasionally death.

Mountaineers face the potential of succumbing to acute mountain sickness which can be morbid depending on the depth of their symptoms, requiring immediate descent. Retinal haemorrhage can result from prolonged high altitude exposure. Diarrhoea related to food poisoning; giardia, amoebic dysentery can be problematic.

Pole trekkers can be exposed to snow blindness, frostbite, boils, bedbugs, fleas, scabies, leaches and blisters, which at extremely low temperatures can be quite different than otherwise. Modern-day mountaineers and pole trekkers have high-tech communication devices and gear and clothing to aid them, but this was not always so.

Douglas Mawson, 1912 expedition to the Antarctic: The awful truth was a blanket of cold fear, invisible, but falling over his entire world, filling the tent, flooding his mind with the terrible, haunting fact. He was alone. All that was human in this accursed place, all that had been alive - friends and dogs - were dead and gone. Loneliness was in the vast wasted land outside in the soughing wind, in the corners of his mind, in his anguish and in the fear for his own safety. He was himself sick, famished and so weak he might collapse at any moment; and he lay stretched out on this floor of snow with the heart-rending truth pinning down his body and his mind. Mertz was dead.
What would he do? What chance had he of living? Very little, he decided. This spot was some 100 miles direct to the hut; ahead ranged the heaving wind-swept-plateau ice, the great, broadly-fractured bed of the glacier, many miles of wicked winding crevasses, and then the long grinding, backbreaking climbs up the steep slopes and ice ramparts to the escarpment near The Crater - to be in sight of Aurora Peak, to leave some record there where they might come seeking his missing party. Yet he was so emaciated that the bitten, snow-clad peak seemed a million miles away. Lennard Bickel

Apsley Cherry-Garrard, June 1911: The horror of the nineteen days it took us to travel from Cape Evans to Cape Crozier would have to be re-experienced to be appreciated; and anyone would be a fool who went again: it is not possible to describe it. The weeks which followed them were comparative bliss, not because later our conditions were better - they were far worse - but because we were callous. I for one had come to that point of suffering at which I did not really care if only I could die without much pain. They talk of the heroism of the dying- - they little know -- it would be so easy to die, a dose of morphia, a friendly crevasse, and blissful sleep. The trouble is to go on ...
It was the darkness that did it. I don't believe minus seventy temperatures would be bad in daylight, not comparatively bad, when you could see where you were going, where you were stepping, where the sledge straps were, the cooker, the primus, the food; could see your footsteps lately trodden deep into the soft snow that you might find your way back to the rest of your load; could see the lashings of the food bags; could read a compass without striking three or four different boxes to find one dry match; could read your watch to see if the blissful moment of getting out of your bag was come without groping in the snow all about; when it would not take you five minutes to lash up the door of the tent, and five hours to get started in the morning...
But in these days we were never less than four hours from the moment when Bill cried "Time to get up" to the time when we got into our harness. It took two men to get one man into his harness, and was all they could do, for the canvas was frozen and our clothes were frozen until sometimes not even two men could bend them into the required shape. From: The Worst Journey in the World

Viscount Milton and Walter Butler Cheadle, 1839: Masses of ice, the size of a man's fist, formed on Cheadle's beard and mustache - the only ones in the company - from the moisture of the breath freezing as it passed through the hair. The oil froze in the pipes we carried about our persons, so that it was necessary to thaw them at the fire before they could be made to draw. The hands could hardly be exposed for a moment, except when close to the fire. A bare finger laid upon iron stuck to it as if glued, from the instantaneous freezing of its moisture. The snow melted only close to the fire, which formed a trench for itself, in which it slowly sank to the level of the ground. The steam rose in clouds, and in the coldest, clearest weather, it almost shrouded the fire from view. The snow was light and powdery, and did not melt beneath the warmth of the foot, so that our moccasins were as dry on a journey as if we had walked through sawdust instead of snow. The parchment windows of our little hut were so small and opaque that we could hardly see even to eat by their light alone, and were generally obliged to have the door open; and then, although the room was very small, and the fire-place very large, a crust of ice formed over the tea in our tin cups, as we sat within a yard of the roaring fire. One effect of the cold was to give a most ravenous appetite for fat. Many a time have we eaten great lumps of lard grease - rancid tallow, used for making candles - without bread or anything to modify it.
Before sleeping, however, it was necessary to secure out of reach of the dogs not only provisions, but snow-shoes, harness, and everything with any skin or leather about it. An Indian dog will devour almost anything of animal origin, and invariably eats his own harness, or his master's snow-shoes, if left within his reach. From: The North-West Passage by Land

Jon Krakauer, 1997: From The Balcony I descended a few hundred feet down a broad, gentle snow gully without incident, but then things began to get sketchy. The route meandered through outcroppings of broken shale blanketed with six inches of fresh snow. Negotiating the puzzling, infirm terrain demanded unceasing concentration, an all but impossible feat in my punch-drunk state.
Because the wind had erased the tracks of the climbers who'd gone down before me, I had difficulty determining the correct route. In 1993, Mike Groom's partner - Lopsang Tshering Bhutia, a skilled Himalayan climber who was a nephew of Tenzing Norgay's - had taken a wrong turn in this area and fallen to his death. Fighting to maintain a grip on reality, I started talking to myself out loud. "Keep it together, keep it together, keep it together," I chanted over and over, mantra-like. "You can't afford to fuck things up here. This is way serious. Keep it together."
I sat down to rest on a broad, sloping ledge, but after a few minutes a deafening BOOM! frightened me back to my feet. Enough new snow had accumulated that I feared a massive slab avalanche had released on the slopes above, but when I spun around to look I saw nothing. Then there was another BOOM! accompanied by a flash that momentarily lit up the sky, and I realized I was hearing the crash of thunder. From: Into Thin Air

Hugh Brody, 1987: Do Inuit live in snow houses? Do they travel by dog team? Do they hunt seals with harpoons? Do they move about, from camp to camp, in a round of seasonal activities? Do they eat raw meat? Do they dry fish in the sun? Do they make igunaaq, "high" meat? Do they wear caribou-skin clothing? Do they speak of weather as the presence of Sila, the air spirit? Do the Dene track moose through the woods on foot? Do they use snares and deadfalls? Do they believe and follow a shamanistic spirituality? Do they think that muskrat played an important role in the creation of the earth? Do Naskapi follow the caribou herds, far inland? Do they dream their way through time? Do they travel in dreams? Do they have summer gathering grounds? Do the Cree move on to winter trapping grounds each year? Do they rely on snowshoes to move through the bush? Do they make hunting cabins each season, and lay spruce boughs as mattresses? Do they make medicines from herbs and roots? Do they use medicine power in spiritual life? Do they trap beaver under the winter ice? Do Innu prepare skins on stretcher frames and boards? Do they depend on the fur trade? Do they wear moccasins? Do they prepare dry meat each autumn as a supply of concentrated protein for the coming seasons? Are children seen as elders reborn?
A simple answer to all these questions is yes. From: Living Arctic; Hunters of the Canadian North

Dr. Jerri Nielsen, 2001: After a few stabbing gulps of thin air I was quickly reminded that I had gained almost two miles in altitude during the three-hour flight from McMurdo. While the plateau was flat as a griddle, it was also as high as the Austrian Alps. The South Pole station rests on a nine-thousand-foot thick slab of ice soaring ninety-three hundred feet above sea level.
...The temperature on the plateau was plummeting. By now it was minus 90 F. and falling, a new record for mid-March. One night I was watching a video with a friend when we heard the most horrible booming noise.
"What's that?" I said.
He said, Oh, it's just the building settling."
It sounded more like the building collapsing. We heard more of these ungodly booms over the next few days as the ice heaved in great cracks under the Dome. People were having more trouble sleeping. Sometimes it sounded like the roof was falling in or the floor was caving or people were stamping their feet overhead. Sometimes it sounded like guns or cannons.
The ice was breaking around us everywhere. Large cracks ran from the front of the galley and then spider-webbed out to the Dome perimeters There was a foot-wide crack over the ice road and a crevasse split what was left of the skiway. From: Icebound

Warriors of a Savage Cult

They have mastered the arcane art of bestial

savagery, tinctured with sadism of a type not

imagined in the annals of barbaric rituals 

where an enemy's pain through the twisting of 

entrails in the morbidly horrifying mutilation 

of disbelieving and fearful girls and women 

are carefully documented for display in a

sinister gamble of displaying to the world

what rage-demented minds are capable of

for the act of violent rape in and of itself

must require an accompanying degradation

of vicious lust paired with torture and pain.

Such unspeakable crimes have few equals

other than the immolation of infants and

their parents, although they have mastered

that too, documenting all for posterity in

pride of performance, such that prostrates

loved ones with grief and anguish, yet 

elicits admiration from a wider appreciative

audience whose hatred of Jews equals that

of the perpetrators whom civilization has

not yet claimed as their own despite empathy

for despicable deeds they dedicate to their

faith in the divine and sacred scriptures.

 

'Breathing Her Last

 

The strident metronomic tick of the old

clock's pendulum sifts through the room

as you replace the telephone receiver from

an incoming call via cellphone from a distant

hospital to hear a familiar voice telling you 

her breathing has become shallow and laboured

a sign the end is near and your sister dying 

for there was no hope when the second

stroke arrived and her brain bled without

surcease. In a coma, she hung on for days

life slowly draining leaving not even the

barest awareness of time and place or a

farewell sigh. Over a decade younger than

you, long years had gone by estranged. Her 

husband mourning at her last bedside recalling 

that which cannot be and will never be again 

and you mourn at your distance for what 

might have been but was not destined.

Winter-Silent Woods

Yesterday's snow has covered the
ice on the frozen creek. Tiny animal
prints in to-and-fro patterns
mark the fresh, smooth blanket.
Conifers are once again brightly
limned with glaring white, clinging
to branches and needles sheltering
chickadees and companion nuthatches.

The broad silver-grey bowl of the sky
looks down on a transformed landscape
yet promising additional surprises.
Ice fog envelopes the forest, arrived
on secret, solemn, slippered feet padding
through the atmosphere, soft white
aspect ephemeral; veiled loveliness.

In the rough grey crotch of a fine old
ironwood overlaid with crusted ice and
fresh snow, leavings of a pine-cone
meal informs of spare feeding and
winter scarcity for the small animals
waiting out thin diet's dearth.

The woods are still, and tranquility
reigns, yet intercepted by the brief
overflight of a whistling, searching hawk.