The North Pole
In 1997, I took part in the First All Female Expedition to the Geographic North Pole. Below is a picture of me with a resupply plane and my team mates, Penguin Delta, up in the high arctic around the middle of May 1997:
From left to right: Caroline Hamilton, Andre Chadwick, Rose Stancer-Clayton, Juliette May, Sarah Jones
As we were due to head off the ice and head back to base camp in Resolute Bay, Cornwallis Island, NWT ~ Canada, I had some time to reflect on what it was I had just achieved … here is a snapshot of that reflection, caught a couple of days later ….
Hello to all those who keep themselves updated on this fabulous machine. It is very strange being back here in Resolute. Life has been very different to me since I last wrote on the internet. It is hard to know where to start in order to describe the beauty and wonder of our experience. I cannot deny, that when I first caught a sight of the twin otter [the plane], I lept for joy. But as I was sat on the plane a few hours later when we were preparing to take off, I had lump in my throat and was wondering if I would ever see this extraordinary ‘land’ of contradiction and fantabulous beauty again.
It’s a strange time for me now, being in the in between stage of life on the ice cap and life as I normally live it in England. One has time to reflect on what has just happened and it almost happens unconsciously. On the ice you spend long periods of time plodding out the miles and thinking of many things. Some of the time you long for home and pine for your loved ones. Yet now, now that we are here in this in between land, whilst longing to see those loved ones, you crave for the adventure of the ice still.
As I wrote yesterday in my diary, “03.00GMT and as I look out on the sunlit snow, I remember my last few nights ~ sleeping outside of the tent, feeling the snow falling on my nose and seeing the snow crystals shimmering across my bedroom floor. The only noise was of the air whistling the antennae and the only feeling was of the light breeze across my cheeks.” If a never never land exists, then I was in it there ~ and now I must make the painful transition between there and another reality …. a reality which forms the majority of my life ~ a place that I have missed and dreamed about during the difficult days on the ice, but which seems as far away to me now as does the ice cap.
I look back on that entry in the group journal and I cannot begin to imagine how I might portray to you all the beauty of that environment, what the journey meant to me personally and professionally and how my life has since been shaped by the experience. That year, 1997, we were invited to No.10 Downing Street, where the Prime Minister greeted us at a special reception and we were all voted UK Women of the Year … but these two last bits are the easy items to verbalize.
The Right Honourable Tony Blair and Ms Sarah Jones, No.10 Downing Street, June 1997
