September 10, 1975: Wednesday

I dreaded having to go out into the tent and try to sleep. I’ve never slept well out in the open (except when we were hitchhiking in Kansas), especially when it’s cold. I almost froze to death at Chadron.

But for some reason, it’s tolerably comfortable in this Italian tent in a Bowers bag, next to Jim. I find out Jim is Officer in Charge at Scott Base. He owns one third of a construction company and is forty-two.

More clues to Dr. Treves’s age. He was a grad student at Ohio State when Jack Nicklaus was there. Have to ask Dad about that one. He fought in World War II as a foot soldier.

Anyway, I don’t know why I didn’t freeze, out in 30 below zero winds, isolated, on the very Continent of Antarctica. This is the boonies. You can’t get much farther away. But it was so calm, peaceful, delightful. I didn’t freeze either because of a better sleeping bag or it was all psychological.

That doesn’t mean that I slept well.

My back hurt.

I dreamed. See, the moon was a silver crescent on the eastern horizon when we left. When we went to sleep it was an orange crescent on the western horizon. It never got overhead. It just kind of rolled around the Horizon.

Anyway, I dreamed. The kind of dream of stark emotion. This one was amazement. The kind that you’re not sure you’re asleep, and when you realize you are, you’re relieved. I dreamed about hitchhiking. Me and Berzel on this farm by a lake on the 4th of July, watching the moon grow from a crescent to full, then burst into a thousand sparkling twinklers and fall to earth as another moon appeared in the sky above and to the right. At anyone time you could see three moons ascending to the zenith, like a time-lapse picture of changing phases.

In the morning I had to take a piss. (I think the word is onomatopoetic). Told Jim I had to or I’d float away. When you go in snow, your body’s fluid (at 98.6º F) melts the top powdery layer until it hits the hard, cold ice and just lays there in a yellow pool of steep walled snow.

We (Dr. Treves, Jim, and me) went out to drill holes in the ice to see how thick it was, if it could support a drill rig. We went off to find the sites, got the drill stuck in the ice, had to dig it out, and went home. Jim and I walked over to Gneiss Point to look for rocks. I picked up some amphibolite. We told Dr. Treves what we saw (he mapped this region, once) and it turned out I knew what I was talking about (half the time, anyway).

We ate lerps. The things cost six bucks a piece. Then we have a general discussion about Politics in which a California used-to-be-radical, Arizona construction worker, three Nebraskans, and a Kiwi were pitted against each other. It was diverse.

Jim didn’t like our Constitution and our three branches of government.

I learn about some tricks the helicopter pilots play. They put a plastic tree by a wrecked ‘copter in the Dry Valley. They tell people it crashed while carrying experimental seeds. Only one tree survived, Pinus antarcticus. They tried to steal something off of a Navy ship. A sailor stopped them. They told the sailor they were CIA and had a miniaturized camera in their wrench. They took the sailor’s picture and the sailor gave them what they were after. When the Captain found out, he demanded it back. It showed up one night in the officer’s mess.

Time for bed.

While I was away, they had a fire. The other Jim burned two fingers. Nothing serious was damaged.