Transcripts For CSPAN2 David Grann The White Darkness 202407

Great stories in the new yorker or books such as lost city of z, elizabeth flower moon, but we are here to discuss the most recent work the white darkness published last year by doubleday. About that credited the new york story. A fellow named aband determined to replicate them or surpass them. Its spare and beautiful book a lot like the terrain it describes. In the images are so riveting i hope its no disrespect to another to say that i couldnt tell if the images and company tech accompanied the images. Well talk about the book and if you come up to either the microphone you might be included in videotape of this event. You will be immortalized and replayed at some later date. First off, david, who is Henry Worsley and what do you do want to tell his story. Henry is one of those most remarkable people id written about over the years. He was a special forces officer very decorated army officer was also almost a throwback to another age he was renaissance man who wrote poetry who painted who sculpted it was also this adventure. A collector. And an amateur historian who became a leading expert on shackleton. I had always grown up reading stories about polar explorers about people like shackleton who would venture into what is i think undoubtedly the most inhospitable environment on earth may be some people some of the places might disagree but its freezing with temperatures that reach below 100 degrees and Hurricane Force winds that the British Army Officer Henry Worsley then 55 planned to do or attempt to do what his hero Ernest Shackleton had failed to do a century earlier which was to walk from one side of antarctica to the other. More than a thousand miles. And where shackleton had attempted to do it as part of a large expedition Henry Worsley was gonna try to do it alone. And he was going to try to do it without any kind of aids. No sales or kites or dogs to help propel him along the way. I was immediately intrigued. In the book you critical two main expeditions the one youre talking about was the second. There is one he attempted it previously. Yes. Worsley was somebody who from his early ages he actually had a distant relative who was part of one of shackletons expedition he had always dreamed of becoming a polar explorer but had he become a polar explorer especially when its the 1980s and 70s and 90s is not something you figure out how to do. He followed his father and joined the army so then in about 2008 he teamed up with two other descendents of shackleton expedition. This expedition by shoup abit was shackletons attempt to walk to the south pole in which he came within 97 miles of the pole before turning back. Worsley and these two other defendants of the party one was a direct descendent of shackleton and one was the descendent of the second in command on an expedition. One was pudgy banker and the other was a scrawny shipping layer. They decided to try to reenact this expedition. Worsley wrote a memoir called in shackletons footsteps you recited a few times. He wrote that he was mesmerized by her chips that the past explorers endured. Wheezing made him mesmerized by suffering . Is a difficult question to answer. What ill met Henry Worsleys wife joanna who thinks antarctica is the most dreadful place on earth she asked me the same question, why do you think henry wanted to do that . I think there are various forces. Part of him chasing the ghost of his father webb in this revered army officer i think henry wanted singular achievement of his own. I think he also like a lot of these polar explorers there was an inward element to these requests. Shackleton spoke of piercing the veneer of outside things and reaching the naked soul of man and i think for worse the expedition was almost a monk like spiritual quality of abnegation and i just want to give you a sense a little bit of a sense of what that appeal because its hard to fathom. They would hold all their supplies on sleds behind them so he was pulling a slide of about 320 pounds you are burning between 6000 to 8000 calories a day you are essentially reduced to little more than a meal. Almost kind of a primitive almost metronomic. Just one step after the other. You are caught in wideouts in which you cant tell what is in front of you or what is behind you. You could become c6 and those wideouts. You dont know which way is up or down. And you are dealing with temperature that reach below hundred degrees to 100 degrees fahrenheit. Headwinds that can reach up to 200 Miles Per Hour its in abnegation thats almost unfathomable what they will put them through. Henry would lose easily between more than 40 pounds on his expeditions. One thing that struck me following the idea of abnegation at least in the First Expedition you describe after each incredibly arduous day and they would go for a walk at night. His two fellow explorers were huddled in the tents trying to keep warm and he would go walking kind of like clear his head. He writes that he was like a mystic pursuing enlightenment through self abnegation. That sounds very elevated. It almost sounds insane. What did he learn . He would go about on these walkabouts. They would sometimes walk up to 12, 13 hours a day through that and then they would literally collapse in the tent you could not expose yourself you would get into your tent you would start a aboil the ice to melt it and henrys two companions on that first athey would just clap and then henry would get into the tent and say, all right made someone to go for a little walk and even then pretty naughty he would say thats nuts. He would go for these walks and i think for him there was something in the isolation of that landscape because there are no living creatures, none, once you get to the interior of antarctica. You dont see a field, you dont see a bird, theres nothing. A little bacteria apparently that grows in some places but thats it. And he would comment and write in his diary about the head sense of feeling intensely aware of his existence because he could feel every breath he could feel the cold he could feel every step and yet feeling completely alone while looking out into this endless whiteness part of this consciousness of himself and disappearing within this world had the spiritual quality. It is important to understand that, expedition henry and his companions were trying to reenact the expedition. They wanted to reach the point of 97 miles what shackleton had reached 100 years earlier they wanted to reach it on that day. And they go through this walk for days and days of suffering and wideouts henry is increasingly weak and they finally get to the spot, henry takes out this little gps he holds it up to look like he was holding like a teakettle. Walking around like this and then he hits the coordinates exactly in the spot that shackleton had reached and he takes his pole and slammed it into the ground and he says, here. This is the spot and he and his companion who have almost sacrificed their lives to attain this to reach this spot look around that and whether they see . Absolutely nothing. The grill was no more than a geographical data point in an endless ice skate. You write that over expedition serve as a laboratory for testing human dynamics. What dynamics did Henry Worsley test . Thats a great question. It was one of the reasons that interested me in this project was that polar exploration and expeditions really are this strange almost Experimental Laboratory of human conditions. Essentially throwing people together for days on end through extreme suffering extreme deprivation hunger, frostbite, cold desolation and how you behave . And over history expeditions had been started with accounts of parties in which the members had turned upon each other backstabbing sometimes mutiny even murdering sofer worsley who rarely looked at shackleton of his model of how you manage a party under this kind of interest he would try to apply those techniques of leading by example when he was with this party henry had been in the army but even when he was in the army he tried to learn these lessons, which was to a standard military hierarchies. To make sure that everybody who matter what your standing was participated in the same tasks. You linger up mingled with everybody you didnt separate yourself from the party. These were approaches that shackleton had done and its one of the reason shackleton has become so revered over time with these management techniques that were applied within a party and worsley certainly tried to apply it on that First Expedition when they Work Together when they were holed up in a white out for days. They started a whiskey club one of them had brought a little bit of whiskey. They played cards. Shackleton who always insisted upon optimism within these conditions and that is something worsley really strongly believed in as well. On his solo expedition when he was trying to cross antarctica by himself is caught in a storm that breaks one of the poles of his tent. I think this was in his diary he said it was a solitary reminder of just who was in control around here. Trespassers will be punished. Was he a trespasser . Did he belong there . By we i mean people its interesting. When it reached that 97 mile mark in the First Expedition and i had asked worsleys companions about what it was like abhe said what is antarctica other than a blank space in which a blank canvas in which you try to impose your will on. I think for explorers this cuts to the real rub of your earlier questions. What are you trying to do on these expeditions . Theres really nothing there. You are in a sense trying to impose your will on most uninhabitable, unconquerable environment. Henry and his companions were always very respectful of the environment. They were very strict rules about antarctica they would clean up their waste they could leave nothing behind you not allowed to remove anything. I dont know if it is a question of whether people belong there but it is incredibly uninhabitable and i think henrys expedition in the expeditions of shackleton, this is what drew me to the story because its not just about extreme endurance. It deals with overly deep philosophical question about failure. About can you impose your will upon such a place. At what point do accept your human frailties . Do you turn back or do you keep going and for worsley on that last expedition to solo expedition, he reaches a point where he has been going for more than 60 days. He has lost more than 40 pounds. His wife said it was about 60. He is frostbitten and some of his fingers. He has hemorrhoids. His tendons on his achilles are swollen and bulging. Every part of his body throbs. He has a miserable stomach ache. He is suffering from malnutrition. And yet he has willed himself to within about 100 miles of his goal to what he referred to as his rendezvous with history. Whenever worsley was in a situation where he faced peril, he would always ask himself what would shackleton do . In that moment he faces more peril than he had ever been and he asked himself that question. On a lesser extent we all face that question in our lives, hopefully not in the middle of antarctica unless you are a nut but we all face a private antarctica is about pushing ourselves and accepting our limitations and what do we do . For me that philosophical question which runs through the story runs through shackletons life it runs to the life of raul donat Robert Falcon scott another polar explorer who died after reaching the south pole, which he referred to as the most miserable place on earth. Seeing what he got there his rival elements in a norwegian flag realizing it been beaten to the pool by 33 days and then dying on his return with his men. It is a question that shackleton faces as that worsley faces as well. The level of detail in the book is extraordinary. About the terrain. I was struck as the varieties of ice. I cant remember the name of it but theres ice that is essentially sculpted into waves by the wind. The book leads as if you were along with them. And you work. How did you capture that detail . Do the diaries to the images . How did you get the material to tell the story . I will say that this is the first time where i had written about a subject or somebody and i did not go to the place. If you read the story abwhen you read the story you will understand partly why. Additionally in some ways the hardest thing for me in writing the story was wrapping myself around the landscape because its so alien and iconic first sketched out it was almost like a psychological journey which just have this white blanket and this wonderful editor daniel book that said can you tell us a little bit like ab and then looked down and try to understand antarctica and i would just read about the geography and it was just kind of nuts. Its an area thats about 5. 5 million acres. Its nearly doubles in size in the winter because the water around it freezes. It has the highest elevation of any continent. Its the windiest continent. It is of course the coldest continent but then the fact that really clearly when i ai kind of always imagined it snowed having never been there and then you realize, its the driest continent as well. Its a desert it contains 70 of all the fresh water on earth more than 90 out of 80 or Something Like that. Its such dry precipitation. So i had to wrap myself around it but what was interesting about this project is i felt closer to the subject in any subject read about because he was like a throwback to the victorian and one of the explorers that he worshiped worsley. He meticulously kept diaries on the family, share the diaries with me even though they had not looked at them before. He made audio recordings in the evenings when he was there in his tent he would perform this modern magic by calling a friend in london on his satellite which would then record and post on his website. Lots of people were following the expedition as it was happening. He took recordings, audio recordings and as you mentioned, photographed became integral to the story. And i really did see it as both a book of photography and apical tax that really integrated in a way that i had fully done something before and maybe at some point i did bring some images so we can queue them up. Yes. So good. See if we can pull this off. We will skip around a little bit. Thats a picture of scott pulling somebody out of a crevasse. This kabbalist is crazy, they can be just the norm as the whole car could fall through. In the greatest physical danger or one of the greatest physical dangers to worsley on a solo expedition if he felt angry crevasse there would be no way to pull him out. Thats my favorite photograph of all time. I was very happy when somebody was visiting bolivia sent me graffiti of this photograph on a wall. Thats Henry Worsley. Thus from shackleton but gives you some beauty. Im going to skip a little bit around, heres shackleton, this is the picture of Henry Worsleys relative descendent part of shackletons famous expedition. Thats a picture of henry in the army. Thats a picture of him with scott. Thats always the status photograph. Ssl pole when abskip past some of shackletons expedition from its endurance, i can talk a little bit about that. I want to get to some of the pictures. This is a picture from henrys First Expedition and these are the two other descendents from shackletons expedition setting out at the beginning of their journey. That is one of the members of the expedition descendent, boyd, who was a second in commanded the expedition. This is henry, worsley, and kao training for the expedition dragging tires across the field. This is them in greenland further training for the First Expedition. And this shows you a little bit of the route and you can get a sense of where they went and now we will start to get to some of these remarkable pictures. One of the things they had to do on that expedition to reach the south pole was to cross the transatlantic group aits almost impossible to get across, shackleton on his expedition found one of the only or few possible places which was a glacier but the glacier, which looks like a highway is utterly ai just talked with crevasses. On the rock ice shelves is where the expeditions began. Its the largest frozen body of sea ice in the world. Its about the size of france. They would have to cross that on the beginning of the expedition. With this kind of crazy photograph. Great moment. Its just a crazy moment. When henry and his companions are on the First Expedition they go on to ross island and they see in the shallow part of the island this little hut and they instantly abit was the hut that shackleton had built during his expedition where they have stated before they set out and so kao who was the greatgrandson, the greatgrandson of his ancestor he found the bed where he had slept in that hot and of course worsley felt like he could never get any closer to his mentor the only thing left to do was to walk to the south pole and here you can see them walking across that ice. The photographs are a part of that question that carlos asked of how to direct my brain and described the area the documentation of it is kind of mesmerizing. You can see those small little threads in that awesome landscape. This is a picture from outside their tent. This is what is called abso many different forms of ice and you become an expert on the ice. Henry became an expert on the ice theres blue eyes, the soft eyes, the sludgy eyes, the powdery eyes and then there is the aband this truly is its so cold and the wind scope the ice and freezes and for literally i dont know, tens of hundreds of miles all you see is this ocean it literally looks like an ocean of waves and its hard ice its really hard to get over. They each would come up with their own tactic do you pack it up or sidestep over it. That gives you a little bit of a sense like that gives you a little bit of sense. The images in the book are tremendous. The last question i want to ask you before we open it up to audience questions, you write early on in the book that heroes are a reflection of the societies that better meet them. In Henry Worsley a hero of our time . Should he be . Not to go too far back in history it gets to the nub of shackleton. Shackleton was interesting. Shackleton was in many ways a failure. He made several attempts and they all failed. Trying to reach the south pole twice both times he felt and then tried to walk across antarctica with his famous endurance expedition and the ship got frozen in ice. The kind of lived on the ship trapped in the ice. Eventually the boat sinks in the