Lessons from the South Pole: keep the joys simple
• Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge draws on a 50-day solo journey
At home “I enjoy large helpings. Down here I’m learning to value small pleasures. The subtle shades of the snow. The light wind. Hot drinks. Cloud formations”.
I wrote this on day 22 while walking alone to the South Pole. In the course of three weeks I’d not seen nor heard a sign of life. No people, no animals, no aircraft. I’d put about 500km behind me and had more than 800km to go. When I began that journey I felt that everything around me was completely white and flat, all the way to the horizon, and that above the horizon it was blue.
But over time I’d started to see things differently. The snow and ice were no longer just white but myriad shades of white, with glints of yellow, blue and green. I slowly began to see variations in the flatness — formations that on closer inspection were like works of art, in different shades of colour.
“It’s a clear day. The hugeness of the landscape and the colours of the snow make me happy. Flatness can be beautiful too, not just mountains. I used to think that blue is the colour of poetry, white of purity, red of passion, and green of hope. But here such classifications don’t seem natural. Now all of them stand for poetry, purity, love and hope. And tomorrow blue and white might stand for storm and frost.”
Your experience of your surroundings can change dramatically over time, even if your surroundings don’t. What alters is what’s inside your head.
“What in truth is sublime must be sought in the mind of the judging subject, and not in those objects of nature which give rise to the mood,” wrote Immanuel Kant. What is beautiful lies in nature, but for our surroundings to be truly sublime, a transformation has to occur between our ears rather than in what we see..
What seemed beautiful to me at the outset of my trek to the South Pole became in time sublime. It was all about details: a mountain on the horizon, the wind, a snow crystal, a formation in the ice.
The Antarctic stillness is more profound, and can be heard more clearly than almost all sounds. Silence is eloquent. At home there’s always a radio on, a packed metro, a phone buzzing, a car passing by. There are so many sounds on a normal day that I barely hear them. In the Antarctic, when there wasn’t any wind, the stillness was far more powerful than back at home.
In my journal for day 26 I wrote: “Here stillness is allabsorbing. I feel and hear it. In this endless landscape everything seems eternal and without limit. The soundless space does not feel threatening or terrifying, but comforting.”
If I had enough energy for it, I made new discoveries every day. I was isolated from anything beyond my horizon, so I could relate only to my nearest surroundings. As the weeks passed, my impressions of them became stronger. Gradually I worked up a dialogue with them that was dependent on what I could contribute. It was not a conversation, but an exchange nonetheless, in which I sent out thoughts and received ideas in return.
THE ANTARCTIC STILLNESS IS MORE PROFOUND, AND CAN BE HEARD MORE CLEARLY THAN ALMOST ALL SOUNDS. SILENCE IS ELOQUENT
Towards the end of the journey, on New Year’s Eve, I wrote: “Just as I have felt my own smallness in relation to the natural environment, I’ve also felt an inner greatness. I’ve experienced terror and joy, known relief and disappointment, beauty and pain, have asked questions and found some answers, sensed closeness to the elements, _given of myself and received, had the joy of physical exertion, and been strengthened in the view that there are still challenges and dreams worth giving one’s all for.
“Although the great truths have not been revealed, I can understand that time in the desert was decisively important for great leaders like Jesus [Christ] and Buddha. Here one may experience what one cannot elsewhere.”
To be quarantined, as we have been in Norway since the middle of March, reminds me of the solitude and silence I experienced in the polar regions. When the world expects us to be available at all times, grounding yourself in nature can be hard.
I forget about it sometimes, and when I look around, I get the feeling that many people forget about it all the time.
The past weeks have been different. In suburban Oslo, I have again started to listen to nature. If you listen closely, you’ll hear that the air, the birds, the grass, the wind, the sun, the trees have their own language and consciousness. They tell us where we come from and what may lie on the road ahead.
When I think back, it’s that closeness to the environment which made the greatest impression over the 50 days I was alone in the Antarctic. At times, culture and nature can be contradictory, but not on a journey such as this. My imagination and language were good tools for creating a bond with nature rather than distancing me from it. I became a part of the ice, the snow and the wind over the course of that journey, and that environment gradually became part of me. On the ice and oceans, and in the mountains and forests, I learnt that less can be more.
Perhaps 30 was late to be coming to this realisation. I remember as a child how a small piece of cake tasted better than a big piece —“Little tastes good, less tastes more,” as the Swedish poet Wille Crafoord writes — but I never drew any conclusions from that. Each new spoonful tasted less good than the one before, and if I ate enough I felt sick. That’s what economists call the law of diminishing returns.
“Less is more” is a principle attributed to the German architect Mies van der Rohe. This might be a tad unfair, considering the expression was familiar in architectural circles in Germany before it was officially credited to him. He was, however, one of those who really applied the consequences of this philosophy, and in so doing became one of the groundbreaking powers in modern architecture. He showed that the function and beauty of every object could be highlighted through the omission of certain elements. Its strength as a whole was increased by using less.
In the Antarctic, I had the freedom to choose what I wanted at any time, much as at home. But, unlike at home, I had only a few options to choose from. When I wasn’t on skis, I tried to do at least two things at the same time: to prepare lunch and fill thermoses while reading and eating, and so forth. By and large these duties were routine and on my to-do list. There was nothing more to choose between or think about. All in all, I was very efficient on the ice and got done everything I had to in the course of the day. If it was not too cold I tried to read a little every evening. To save weight, the books I brought had as many thoughts and ideas as possible per gram. Later, I recirculated the pages I had read as toilet paper.
At home, I value options and being able to pursue things at will. The more I’m involved, the more I feel I am getting from life. The problem is that at times it can be limiting to have so much to choose from. It’s lovely to think of being faced with a choice of three jams at breakfast, but it can also feel excessive and, therefore, wasteful.
On expeditions I don’t miss the alternatives; I simply eat the same thing — oats, dried meat, chocolate with extra calories, honey, dried fruit, different sorts of fat, formula milk — and I feel I have earned my meals.
The more exhausted I am, the better it tastes.
The secret to a good life, seen from the ice, is to keep your joys simple. That doesn’t mean my goal is to live simply all the time, but nor do I believe it’s best to be faced with infinite choice. It’s about having enough options to feel that I can choose the one that works for me, but not so many that I feel unable to assess the merits of each one.
On the eighth day of my journey to the South Pole, I discovered that the oatmeal soup tasted rancid. I was afraid of becoming ill and had to throw it away. In my journal I recorded: “I look down on the snow in front of me. The soup has filtered through the snow.
The grains of oatmeal and the dried apricots are lying on top. Haven’t the heart to let the apricots just lie there.
“I take off my right glove and pick them up, one by one. It’s cold and laborious work. Stuff them into my mouth. Get my glove on. A bit of the sweet taste is left — I relish it.”
I remember that taste even now, and how those apricots felt in my mouth, and I’m in no doubt that they are the best I’ve ever tasted.
I’m not going to tell my three daughters that their lives will be better if they eat a couple of freezing apricots for breakfast. But I hope they won’t grow up believing that life is most pleasurable when every meal is a feast. Or that they should sit inside and live in images of the world rather than in the world.
If they should ask me how they can balance the great and the small in life, I won’t have an inexhaustible supply of answers for them. But the virus that has changed their lives for now has given them an answer they didn’t learn at school before it was closed: you will not experience a golden mean for long, your goals may be different the next day, the world has changed, but it’s good to strive for them nevertheless.
Quarantined, I have been thinking a lot about life on the ice — because, in its simplicity, it was uncommonly rich. Not unlike these past two weeks. /©
AT HOME, I VALUE OPTIONS AND BEING ABLE TO PURSUE THINGS AT WILL. BUT IT CAN BE LIMITING TO HAVE SO MUCH TO CHOOSE FROM