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In Antarctica: An Amundsen Pilgrimage
Jay Ruzesky recalls a childhood of snow caves, literary ambitions, and a fascination with polar exploration that was ignited by the genes he shares with famed Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. As a boy, Ruzesky was captivated by Amundsen's an Antarctic exploration aboard Belgica when Amundsen was a twenty-five-year-old mate bent on earning his stripes; his historic navigation of the Northwest Passage from 1903 to 1906 where he intentionally froze in with his ship Gjoa over the winters to drift with the pack ice; and his triumph onboard his ship Fram to be the first to reach the South Pole on December 14, 1911.
Now a poet and teacher of English at a small university on Vancouver Island, Ruzesky became motivated by the approaching centennial of Amundsen's South Pole accomplishment to pursue his own quest to Antarctica--not only as a following of Amundsen's footsteps, but also a pilgrimage to a near-mythical place where heroes were made and died. He books his voyage aboard a 71-metre ice-strengthened research vessel, Polar Pioneer , bound for Antarctica.
Ruzesky skilfully interweaves three stories creatively extrapolated from Amundsen's experiences on both Belgica and Fram , and his own observations leading up to and during his voyage on Polar Pioneer . In the tradition of Bruce Chatwin and with a poet's heart, Ruzesky offers a historically accurate tale while traversing both time and place--paralleling a century of explorers' dreams from Pole to Pole with stops in Canada, Norway, Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Antarctica.
from on .
Now a poet and teacher of English at a small university on Vancouver Island, Ruzesky became motivated by the approaching centennial of Amundsen's South Pole accomplishment to pursue his own quest to Antarctica--not only as a following of Amundsen's footsteps, but also a pilgrimage to a near-mythical place where heroes were made and died. He books his voyage aboard a 71-metre ice-strengthened research vessel, Polar Pioneer , bound for Antarctica.
Ruzesky skilfully interweaves three stories creatively extrapolated from Amundsen's experiences on both Belgica and Fram , and his own observations leading up to and during his voyage on Polar Pioneer . In the tradition of Bruce Chatwin and with a poet's heart, Ruzesky offers a historically accurate tale while traversing both time and place--paralleling a century of explorers' dreams from Pole to Pole with stops in Canada, Norway, Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Antarctica.
from on .
240 pages, Paperback
First published March 6, 2013
1 person is currently reading
23 people want to read
About the author
Jay Ruzesky
8 booksJay Ruzesky was born in Edmonton, Alberta in 1965 and raised in Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, Calgary, and Kelowna. He studied at Okanagan College (with John Lent), the University of Victoria (with Constance Rooke), the University of Windsor (with Alistair MacLeod), and at the Banff Centre for the Arts.
His poems and stories have appeared in Canadian and American journals such as Caliban, Prism international, Canadian Literature, Event, Saturday Night, Descant, Border Crossings, and Poetry Northwest. His books include Blue Himalayan Poppies, Writing on the Wall, Painting The Yellow House Blue: Poems, and Am I Glad To See You.
He is on the editorial board of the Malahat Review and teaches English, Creative Writing and Film Studies at Vancouver Island University. Essays, interviews and art criticism have appeared in Brick, Poetry Canada Review, and selected gallery publications. He is currently working on another novel, a play, and a manuscript of poems.
He lives on Vancouver Island.
His poems and stories have appeared in Canadian and American journals such as Caliban, Prism international, Canadian Literature, Event, Saturday Night, Descant, Border Crossings, and Poetry Northwest. His books include Blue Himalayan Poppies, Writing on the Wall, Painting The Yellow House Blue: Poems, and Am I Glad To See You.
He is on the editorial board of the Malahat Review and teaches English, Creative Writing and Film Studies at Vancouver Island University. Essays, interviews and art criticism have appeared in Brick, Poetry Canada Review, and selected gallery publications. He is currently working on another novel, a play, and a manuscript of poems.
He lives on Vancouver Island.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 29, 2013
Took a while for the different threads of this book to grab onto me; but once they did "In Antarctica" is an absorbing and rewarding read. One thing I've noticed is that Antarctic travelers and writers easily veer off into a sort of magic realism; the landscape must be hallucinatory.
When reading about Scott and Amundsen and their expeditions, it is very easy to commend Amundsen for his inclination to learn from those polar dwellers who have managed to survive the challenges. Amundsen learned about diet, clothing and the use of dogs from the peoples of the north. The British, however, are notable for their disinclination to do so. This seems to be the heart of the differences between the Scott and Amundsen expeditions.
A quibble with Ruzesky on this point. He says that Scott buried his ponies without eating them. Everything else I have read says that Scott ate his ponies, but did not eat the dogs. Incredibly, Scott did not even feed the dead dogs to his other starving dogs.
A feature of modern writers is that their love of dogs makes them judgmental of Amundsen killing the weaker dogs to feed to his remaining dogs. The modern concept of pet dogs is just that -- a modern concept. Previously dogs were working animals. I suggest that one imagine oneself on the Antarctic Plateau, a storm or two away from death, before judging the actions of extreme explorers.
On this topic of dogs, it has been discussed that Scott was not used to dogs, and so on, but it is possible there is also a class issue here. Dog carts were common in Great Britain, but they were used by an underclass. Ponies and horses were used by those who could afford them. Scott's inclination towards using ponies could have been informed by the biases of his class. I mean, this was a man who put a divider down the middle of a four man tent to divide the officers and the men.
Anyway, I have digressed from Ruzesky's pilgrimage. Perhaps his own journey has inspired me, and permitted my own meanderings. This is one of the better of the contemporary Antarctic memoirs.
When reading about Scott and Amundsen and their expeditions, it is very easy to commend Amundsen for his inclination to learn from those polar dwellers who have managed to survive the challenges. Amundsen learned about diet, clothing and the use of dogs from the peoples of the north. The British, however, are notable for their disinclination to do so. This seems to be the heart of the differences between the Scott and Amundsen expeditions.
A quibble with Ruzesky on this point. He says that Scott buried his ponies without eating them. Everything else I have read says that Scott ate his ponies, but did not eat the dogs. Incredibly, Scott did not even feed the dead dogs to his other starving dogs.
A feature of modern writers is that their love of dogs makes them judgmental of Amundsen killing the weaker dogs to feed to his remaining dogs. The modern concept of pet dogs is just that -- a modern concept. Previously dogs were working animals. I suggest that one imagine oneself on the Antarctic Plateau, a storm or two away from death, before judging the actions of extreme explorers.
On this topic of dogs, it has been discussed that Scott was not used to dogs, and so on, but it is possible there is also a class issue here. Dog carts were common in Great Britain, but they were used by an underclass. Ponies and horses were used by those who could afford them. Scott's inclination towards using ponies could have been informed by the biases of his class. I mean, this was a man who put a divider down the middle of a four man tent to divide the officers and the men.
Anyway, I have digressed from Ruzesky's pilgrimage. Perhaps his own journey has inspired me, and permitted my own meanderings. This is one of the better of the contemporary Antarctic memoirs.
June 5, 2019
3.5 stars. Part history lesson, part travelogue. Overall I enjoyed reading this, but parts of it felt repetitive and parts were boring (mainly the history bits). I also had a hard time with it jumping back and forth between 1911 and 2011.
July 10, 2022
I love it when people look back on their ancestors and then find the importance of their family history. Jay really found that in his family. Not only that but he followed in the footsteps to experience it for himself with a modern perspective.
August 4, 2013
From the August 3 edition of the Winnipeg Free Press' books section:
On his mother's side, British Columbia poet and professor Jay Ruzesky is a cousin, twice-removed, of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen.
Ruzesky's compelling new memoir, In Antarctica, tells the story of his trip to the Antarctic a century after his ancestor became the first person to set foot on the South Pole.
Ruzesky, who now teaches in Duncan, spent his childhood dreaming of the polar expeditions. But his adult life had been consumed by writing three collections of poetry and a novel, teaching and having a family.
As the 2011 anniversary of Amundsen's achievement approached, Ruzesky tried to reconcile himself to not following in his ancestor's footsteps.
He failed. Instead, Ruzesky found himself online, booking a berth on a ship that would take him from Patagonia to the Antarctic.
What's more, he convinced his brother Scott to come along, even if his sibling's first question was, "Which one of us is Amundsen?"
Ruzesky knew he was incurring tens of thousands of dollars of debt but thought there might be a book in his trip across the ice. (Which, in case you're wondering, makes perfect economic sense to a poet.)
Structurally, In Antarctica parallels Ruzesky's 2011 trip with episodes from Amundsen's 1911 voyage on the Fram and his earlier expedition to the Antarctic on the Belgica in 1887. His title is obviously an homage to the late Bruce Chatwin's classic 1977 travel memoir, In Patagonia.
The sections from Ruzesky's point of view meld travel writing with memoir, which effectively sets the stage for the writer's month-long voyage.
For instance, though Ruzesky has called B.C. home for 20 years, he spent his childhood in the cold-weather climes of Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, Saskatoon and Calgary.
One story that would be familiar to anyone who grew up on the Prairies details how the entrance collapsed to the quinzee he and his schoolmates had built in their school playground in Thunder Bay.
This is meaningful, given that Amundsen's crew spent more than a year in a large hut connected to a series of snow caves on the Ross Ice Shelf before making their attempt on the pole.
Also interesting is Ruzesky's anecdote of a failed dog-sledging lesson in Whitehorse in 2002. Knowing that Amundsen's success in reaching the South Pole was largely attributed to his use of dogs instead of ponies, like his English rival Robert Falcon Scott, supercharges this story.
Ruzesky also includes meditations on exploration and cartography and provides context for Amundsen's journey by providing thumbnail sketches of other voyages to both the North and South poles.
The other half of In Antarctica is in Amundsen's voice, an incredibly detailed account that Ruzesky somehow cobbled together from the explorer's journals and photographs.
More importantly, these sections are very finely written. Ruzesky illuminates Amundsen's dreamy childhood and his possible motives for devoting his life to exploration instead of medicine, as his mother would have preferred.
Ruzesky's description of Admundsen's affair with the married Sigrid Castberg that preceded the 1911 voyage, however, read like the best historical fiction.
All of which is to say that In Antarctica is a bold and satisfying composite of creative non-fiction, memoir and travel writing.
On his mother's side, British Columbia poet and professor Jay Ruzesky is a cousin, twice-removed, of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen.
Ruzesky's compelling new memoir, In Antarctica, tells the story of his trip to the Antarctic a century after his ancestor became the first person to set foot on the South Pole.
Ruzesky, who now teaches in Duncan, spent his childhood dreaming of the polar expeditions. But his adult life had been consumed by writing three collections of poetry and a novel, teaching and having a family.
As the 2011 anniversary of Amundsen's achievement approached, Ruzesky tried to reconcile himself to not following in his ancestor's footsteps.
He failed. Instead, Ruzesky found himself online, booking a berth on a ship that would take him from Patagonia to the Antarctic.
What's more, he convinced his brother Scott to come along, even if his sibling's first question was, "Which one of us is Amundsen?"
Ruzesky knew he was incurring tens of thousands of dollars of debt but thought there might be a book in his trip across the ice. (Which, in case you're wondering, makes perfect economic sense to a poet.)
Structurally, In Antarctica parallels Ruzesky's 2011 trip with episodes from Amundsen's 1911 voyage on the Fram and his earlier expedition to the Antarctic on the Belgica in 1887. His title is obviously an homage to the late Bruce Chatwin's classic 1977 travel memoir, In Patagonia.
The sections from Ruzesky's point of view meld travel writing with memoir, which effectively sets the stage for the writer's month-long voyage.
For instance, though Ruzesky has called B.C. home for 20 years, he spent his childhood in the cold-weather climes of Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, Saskatoon and Calgary.
One story that would be familiar to anyone who grew up on the Prairies details how the entrance collapsed to the quinzee he and his schoolmates had built in their school playground in Thunder Bay.
This is meaningful, given that Amundsen's crew spent more than a year in a large hut connected to a series of snow caves on the Ross Ice Shelf before making their attempt on the pole.
Also interesting is Ruzesky's anecdote of a failed dog-sledging lesson in Whitehorse in 2002. Knowing that Amundsen's success in reaching the South Pole was largely attributed to his use of dogs instead of ponies, like his English rival Robert Falcon Scott, supercharges this story.
Ruzesky also includes meditations on exploration and cartography and provides context for Amundsen's journey by providing thumbnail sketches of other voyages to both the North and South poles.
The other half of In Antarctica is in Amundsen's voice, an incredibly detailed account that Ruzesky somehow cobbled together from the explorer's journals and photographs.
More importantly, these sections are very finely written. Ruzesky illuminates Amundsen's dreamy childhood and his possible motives for devoting his life to exploration instead of medicine, as his mother would have preferred.
Ruzesky's description of Admundsen's affair with the married Sigrid Castberg that preceded the 1911 voyage, however, read like the best historical fiction.
All of which is to say that In Antarctica is a bold and satisfying composite of creative non-fiction, memoir and travel writing.
September 19, 2014
I feel so conflicted about this book. I was very excited about it at first, because of the premise, and the writer's voice. In the end, I didn't finish it. I think the chapters changing back and forth between the past and present day made it less engaging, and while the idea is original, in execution it took me "out" of the story. While the connection between the original Amundsen and the author is quite interesting, I almost wish they were two separate volumes, or some sort of other solution. Too bad.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews