My Last Continent: A Novel(20)
AS I DRESS in the dark, what seemed like a good idea earlier now seems silly, impractical. I fumble to find my sunglasses and hear my roommate turn over in her bunk, and I’m thinking about taking off my cold-weather gear and getting back into bed myself.
I tiptoe to the door and, in the ray of light from the hall, I glance back at my roommate—still asleep, thick orange earplugs filling her ears, a slumber mask over her eyes—and slip out of the room.
At Keller’s dorm, I knock quietly, hoping his roommate doesn’t answer. I wait, then knock again, wondering if I’ve overestimated us, to be so certain he’ll welcome a middle-of-the-night surprise wake-up call, that he’ll be willing to sacrifice one of the more precious resources of McMurdo summers: sleep.
Finally the door cracks open, and he stands there blinking as the hall’s fluorescent lights hit his eyes.
“Get your coat,” I whisper.
He shuts the door and a few moments later opens it again, fully dressed. We slink through the dorm. Outside, we shade our eyes from the nighttime sun, still high in the sky and obscured by a veil of wispy clouds. It’s about twenty degrees out, maybe colder.
I love that Keller hasn’t asked a single question about where we’re going, why he’s out in the broad daylight of three in the morning. He’s just letting me lead the way.
We walk toward Hut Point, a little more than three hundred yards away. The land under our boots is black and white, volcanic earth and frost. The ice-snagged waters of McMurdo Sound stretch out in front of us—and before that: a plain, weathered square building.
The hut that Keller has been so eager to see was built in 1902 for Scott’s Discovery expedition. For months it’s been closed and locked to all but the conservation team that’s finishing its restoration—except for tonight.
I dig into my jacket and pull out a key. I let it dangle between us.
His still-sleepy face breaks into a smile. “How’d you get that?”
“I’m well connected.”
He grins, and I hand him the key.
Under the awning Keller pulls off his hat, pushing his sunglasses up over his head. He unlocks the door, and we step inside, standing still as we wait for our eyes to adjust to the dim light coming in through the building’s small, high windows.
I watch as Keller walks carefully through the hut. I follow his eyes around the soot-blackened room: boxes and tins of oatmeal and cocoa, biscuits and herring; rusted frying pans on the brick stove; shelves scattered with cups and plates, bottles and bowls; oil-smudged trousers hanging on a line, a dog harness from a beam. A pile of dark, oozing seal blubber drips with oil; seal carcasses hang, well preserved, on one of the walls. A large box labeled LAMP OIL reads, SCOTT’S ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION 1910—one of several other parties that once inhabited this place.
It’s eerily noiseless—the hum of the station gone, no penguins outside, no petrels above. Instead of the diesel fumes of the station, we breathe in the thick, musty flavors of hundred-year-old burnt blubber and the dusty artifacts of men whose time here was both celebratory and desperate.
Keller knows not to touch anything, and he moves as little as possible, taking in everything he can. I hadn’t thought to bring a camera with me—but then I realize, in all our time together, I’ve never once seen him take a photograph.
“Remember the lost men?” Keller asks.
“You’ll have to be more specific.”
“The Ross Sea Party,” he says. “They were right here—in this room—never knowing they’d devoted their lives to a lost cause.”
“They knew the risks.” In 1915, ten men from the Ross Sea Party, the group Shackleton had tasked with laying supply depots for his Endurance expedition, had gotten stranded when their ship lost its moorings and drifted. Not knowing that Shackleton’s crew had been forced to abandon their own ship, the men kept going, completing their mission, but three of them didn’t survive.
“That’s exactly what I appreciate about being down here,” Keller says. “You know the risks—the hazards are tangible.” He takes another look around, as if what he’s trying to say is written on the time-scarred walls. “Back in Boston, I was living this so-called normal life, blissfully ignorant of the dangers all around us. That’s so much worse. Because when something does happen, you’re not prepared for it.”
I move closer, and he pulls me into a long hug, so long I feel as if maybe he’s afraid to let go—as if by clinging to me, in this hut, in this faraway place, he can preserve his memories and leave them behind at the same time. I want to assure him that he’ll find a balance, that it’s the same fine line as going from here to home and back again, but I know he’ll learn this soon enough, in his own time.
At last he pulls away, kisses my forehead. “Thank you for this,” he says.
We go back out into the summer night and walk around the other side of the hut, facing the sound. Clean, cold air freezes through my nostrils, carrying the faint scent of ocean and iced rock.
In the water, flat fragments of ice float around like puzzle pieces; in the distance beyond, thin layers of silver glisten over the light blue of large bergs. As a breeze begins to stir, I lean into Keller, a chill biting through my clothes.
He pulls me closer, staring over the top of my head. “Sea leopard,” he whispers, using the explorers’ term for the leopard seal that is passing within fifty feet of us, on its way to open water. We watch the seal, a full-grown male, as he propels his sleek gray body forward, focused on the sea ahead.