Isolation Camp Log, Day 1072

Somewhere above the 45th parallel. Christmas Day.

In retrospect, a Winter Solstice celebration was maybe not the best idea. It all started with good intentions. Given the multicultural makeup of our crew, I decided we would opt for a midwinter fête tied less to a specific religious tradition. Hedberg, our lone Swede, offered to organize the event and I put him in charge. His enthusiasm was contagious back in those heady days of early November, and I authorized the use of some potatoes from the ship’s stores to distill a modest batch of aquavit in time for the shortest day of the year. How I miss those potatoes now. In truth, more than I miss Hedberg.

Given our lack of the herbs needed to infuse the aquavit—dill, caraway and such—Hedberg led a shore party across the ice to the peninsula where a few meager wildflowers pushed through the frozen soil. With no botanist left alive (Reeves was disemboweled by a polar bear last spring while cataloging moss), nor a guidebook to edible plants (burned for stove fuel) it was largely guesswork. Hedberg assured me he could identify some suitable aromatics with which to flavor the spirits. As it turns out, what he thought was wild Arctic caraway (Carum carvi arcticus, if memory serves) was, in reality, Zigadenus elegans—Tundra Death Camas.

Hedberg’s sudden death following his tasting of the aquavit should have been a clue, and I now regret erroneously scolding Patel, the chef, for serving undercooked pigeon, which I deduced was the cause of the Swede’s violent excretions. Then again, that pigeon happened to be the ship’s sole homing pigeon and our only remaining hope of getting a distress message back south, so perhaps Patel’s lashes were deserved. He should have known better.

We slid Hedberg’s remains through a hole in the ice after a brief ceremony and I ordered the men to carry on preparations for the Solstice gala. We were badly in need of some cheer, Despair grows in equal and opposite proportion to the length of the days this time of year, as I well knew now in our third winter stranded on the ice. My attempts to cheer the men often came up short, such as the spoon carving class I thought might bring some welcome diversion. As it turns out, whittling in the dark with blunt blades led to numerous puncture wounds and even a severed artery (God rest Watson’s soul).

So, on the longest night of the year, I had the stokers shovel extra coal into the boilers for some added warmth and we laid the long mess table with our finest pewter, lit the tapers, and Patel began to send out fragrant yet unrecognizable platters of food. It was not much to look at, and when one man found what he thought was a toenail (Watson’s?) on his plate, I ordered half the candles snuffed, for “ambience.” No need to look too closely at what we were eating. Willis found a small remaining stash of pipe tobacco in the larder that hadn’t gone terribly moldy and those of us who smoked enjoyed passing a pipe around, whilst singing the few songs to which anyone knew the lyrics. Finally, out came the aquavit.

If there was one saving grace to the evening, it was our lack of glassware, which forced the men to pass a pewter tankard of the fragrant spirit around the table instead of using individual glasses. By the time it was passed to the sixth man, our ship’s doctor raised the alarm. The first five to drink were convulsing under the table, and quickly—mercifully—expired. The smell of vomitus inspired further, well… vomiting, and our celebration came to a hasty conclusion. I ordered the bodies of the deceased to be quickly burned on a funeral pyre on the ice, thinking it was somehow befitting the pagan origins of the Solstice celebration.

For now, the only glimmer of hope is that the days are finally getting longer. Next year—if we still find ourselves in this godforsaken place—we will go back to Christmas celebrations. In the immortal words of Captain Scott (I think), “don’t mess with Christmas.” Then again, look at what happened to him.

Merry Christmas.