The Worst Journey in the World - Apsley Cherry-Garrard (online e reader .txt) 📗

or losing for your country? To face a thing because it was a feat, and only a feat, was not very attractive to Scott: it had to contain an additional object⁠—knowledge. A feat had even less attraction for Wilson, and it is a most noteworthy thing in the diaries which are contained in this book, that he made no comment when he found that the Norwegians were first at the Pole: it is as though he felt that it did not really matter, as indeed it probably did not.

It is most desirable that someone should tackle these and kindred questions about polar life. There is a wealth of matter in polar psychology: there are unique factors here, especially the complete isolation, and four months’ darkness every year. Even in Mesopotamia a long-suffering nation insisted at last that adequate arrangements must be made to nurse and evacuate the sick and wounded. But at the Poles a man must make up his mind that he may be rotting of scurvy (as Evans was) or living for ten months on half-rations of seal and full rations of ptomaine poisoning (as Campbell and his men were) but no help can reach him from the outside world for a year, if then. There is no chance of a “cushy” wound: if you break your leg on the Beardmore you must consider the most expedient way of committing suicide, both for your own sake and that of your companions.

Both sexually and socially the polar explorer must make up his mind to be starved. To what extent can hard work, or what may be called dramatic imagination, provide a substitute? Compare our thoughts on the march; our food dreams at night; the primitive way in which the loss of a crumb of biscuit may give a lasting sense of grievance. Night after night I bought big buns and chocolate at a stall on the island platform at Hatfield station, but always woke before I got a mouthful to my lips; some companions who were not so highly strung were more fortunate, and ate their phantom meals.

And the darkness, accompanied it may be almost continually by howling blizzards which prevent you seeing your hand before your face. Life in such surroundings is both mentally and physically cramped; open-air exercise is restricted and in blizzards quite impossible, and you realize how much you lose by your inability to see the world about you when you are out-of-doors. I am told that when confronted by a lunatic or one who under the influence of some great grief or shock contemplates suicide, you should take that man out-of-doors and walk him about: Nature will do the rest. To normal people like ourselves living under abnormal circumstances Nature could do much to lift our thoughts out of the rut of everyday affairs, but she loses much of her healing power when she cannot be seen, but only felt, and when that feeling is intensely uncomfortable.

Somehow in judging polar life you must discount compulsory endurance; and find out what a man can shirk, remembering always that it is a sledging life which is the hardest test. It is because it is so much easier to shirk in civilization that it is difficult to get a standard of what your average man can do. It does not really matter much whether your man whose work lies in or round the hut shirks a bit or not, just as it does not matter much in civilization: it is just rather a waste of opportunity. But there’s precious little shirking in Barrier sledging: a week finds most of us out.

There are many questions which ought to be studied. The effect upon men of going from heat to cold, such as Bowers coming to us from the Persian Gulf: or vice versa of Simpson returning from the Antarctic to India; differences of dry and damp cold; what is a comfortable temperature in the Antarctic and what is it compared to a comfortable temperature in England, the question of women in these temperatures⁠ ⁠… ? The man with the nerves goes farthest. What is the ratio between nervous and physical energy? What is vitality? Why do some things terrify you at one time and not at others? What is this early morning courage? What is the influence of imagination? How far can a man draw on his capital? Whence came Bowers’ great heat supply? And my own white beard? and X’s blue eyes: for he started from England with brown ones and his mother refused to own him when he came back? Growth and colour change in hair and skin?

There are many reasons which send men to the Poles, and the Intellectual Force uses them all. But the desire for knowledge for its own sake is the one which really counts and there is no field for the collection of knowledge which at the present time can be compared to the Antarctic.

Exploration is the physical expression of the Intellectual Passion.

And I tell you, if you have the desire for knowledge and the power to give it physical expression, go out and explore. If you are a brave man you will do nothing: if you are fearful you may do much, for none but cowards have need to prove their bravery. Some will tell you that you are mad, and nearly all will say, “What is the use?” For we are a nation of shopkeepers, and no shopkeeper will look at research which does not promise him a financial return within a year. And so you will sledge nearly alone, but those with whom you sledge will not be shopkeepers: that is worth a good deal. If you march your Winter Journeys you will have your reward, so long as all you want is a penguin’s egg.

Glossary Blizzard

An Antarctic blizzard is a high southerly wind generally accompanied by clouds of drifting snow, partly falling from above, partly picked up from the surface. In the