Richard E. Byrd Alone

Richard E. Byrd (Corbis/Getty Images)

We dream of the tabula rasa, the blank slate, a place where we can begin again without the pollution and corruption of society and endeavor to live on our own terms, learning as we go, and coming to an understanding of ourselves and our place in the universe.

Richard E. Byrd put this dream into action in his second expedition deep into Antarctica in the middle of 1934 during the darkest months of winter to study climate and the aurora australis.  He wanted to be by himself and “taste peace and quiet and solitude for long enough to find out how good they really are.”  He longed for a place to reason and take inventory of his life.  He desired “to study and think and listen to the phonograph; and for maybe seven months, remote from all but the simplest distractions” he would be “obedient to no necessities but those imposed by wind and night and cold.”  Arguably, he got exactly what he wanted, although he did not count on his life being threatened and needing emergency rescue.

Alone (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1938) is Byrd’s story of his near fatal attempt to live in extreme cold and darkness at the bottom of the world in his aptly named Advance Base.  Originally, he was to be accompanied through those seven months with two other scientists.  However, the limit on the sheer tonnage of supplies and space made this impractical, so he had to settle for being there alone and in the end, only made it to five months before he was nearly poisoned to death by the carbon monoxide fumes from his stove and the generator powering his radio.  It is a harrowing tale that grips the reader and never lets go.

Among the many things Byrd learns on this sojourn is “how closely a man could come to dying and still not die…”  A scientist and a career Navy man, Byrd writes quite poetically and philosophically.  “The stars were everywhere,” he writes of the long winter’s night sky.  “A sailor’s sky, I thought, commanded by the Southern Cross and the wheeling constellations of Hydrus, Orion, and Triangulum drifting ever so slowly.  It was a lovely motion to watch.  And all of this was mine:  the stars, the constellations, even the earth as it turned on its axis.  If great inward peace and exhilaration can exist together, then this, I decided my first night alone, was what should possess the senses.”

He comes to see the sky as a mirror to man, the ultimate “period between life and death.  This is the way the world will look to the last man when it dies,” he writes about the winter’s sun that barely peeks over the horizon.  Byrd discovers a kind of peace that the world goes on, as it has for millions and millions of years, most of the that time without us.  As he spends his days collecting data from his weather equipment, his gauges and graphs, he begins to feel that universe overhead.  Change was coming—light dropping below the horizon to leave behind only cold and darkness.  He is not scared by this coming dark and the challenges of being alone.  “The day was dying,” he writes, “the night being born—but with great peace.  Here were the imponderable processes and forces of the cosmos, harmonious and soundless…That is what came out of the silence…the strain of a perfect chord, the music of the spheres, perhaps.”

None of the poetry is eclipsed by what happens as the winter’s night falls.  Byrd’s sanctuary, his Advance Base, is a prefabricated shack buried in the dry snow with an elaborate tunnel system housing his food and fuel.  His gas stove and the generator he uses to power his radio have ventilation but the new snow and ice constantly obstruct the air flow in the shack to the point where the air becomes poisonous.  Byrd manages to wake himself and take emergency action, but he is badly injured by the build-up and although he tries to sound normal when checking in by radio, his colleagues realize something is wrong and launch a rescue mission, something Byrd was adamantly against because it would be dangerous for his rescuers to travel through the darkness and ever-present crevasses to get to him.

Byrd’s journey does not end well; he had hoped to last the winter, but he is too badly injured and must call on every resource he has to survive.  Even in his jeopardy, he appreciates what his stay has taught him, that “a man can live a lifetime in a few half-dreaming moments of introspection between going to bed and falling asleep:  a lifetime reordered and edited to satisfy the ever-changing demands of the mind.”  Man does not need rampant materialism to survive.  Byrd follows Thoreau in that “the body is all sentient.”  In the midst of death and darkness, Byrd has never felt more alive.

There is so much here to learn and absorb from Richard E. Byrd’s experiences in the winter darkness of Antarctica.  This is the ultimate story of man versus nature, but also man with nature.  Byrd faces his demons, his fears, and most importantly, his own death.  He is tested the way few of us will ever be, but we can learn from his experiences:  to be alone, to seek solitude, to live on one’s own terms.  Byrd comes to believe that “A man doesn’t begin to attain wisdom until he recognizes that he is no longer indispensable.”

Quite simply, this book is exhilarating, beautifully written and sacred.