Tine's Tree in the Village

As Tine settled into bed tonight with her memories of her icy walk this afternoon and with her hot water bottle, she thought how walks make a day seem so complete.

"Rubob and I only went around the block today, but I feel as though I might just as well have circumnavigated the globe," she reflected.

She thought of a tree she'd seen along the walk, of how easy it was to imagine that it was rooted in one time and place. But its roots reached deep into soil it shared with all growing things in the village, found support and sustenance in an earth shared by all creation. Its branches spread out into the village air, and beyond into infinite space. The tree shared in the life of the village just as Tine did, and they both shared in the life of the world.

Tine thought of the voyage Bill Pinkney, the Amistad captain, had taken around the world alone, and of Wave Widmar's attempt to reach the North Pole on a solo, unsupported journey.

"We're never really alone," she thought, "though it might seem that way at times. We're all taken along on the voyages of others, like on a busy canal boat filled with passengers."



"Each one of us is swept up into the world's one great adventure in time," Tine thought. "A tree in a wood, a walker on a path, a village in a county -- everything is carried along on one great exploration."

"When I take my walks in the village with Rubob, I feel like the tree must sometimes feel, like I'm at the center of creation."

Tine Travels to the North Pole, In a Nutshell

Tine and Rubob ventured to the North Pole this afternoon, braving icy terrain and 15-degree temperatures.

"It's perishingly cold," Tine said, heading down the driveway. "We'll just walk around the block. No one will know. Like Admiral Peary, we can say we went to the North Pole, and people can choose to believe us or not."

Here's a photograph of Rubob and Tine's supply hut, not far from the intrepid explorers' base camp:



"It is cold," Rubob said, agreeing with Tine, "but not nearly as cold as it was during the 1967 Ice Bowl championship game between the Packers and the Cowboys. It was minus 13 that day in Lambert Field. "

Rubob had been watching the football game that afternoon, between Indianapolis and Pittsburg, and his mind may still have been on the game.

"Where's Lambert Field, Rubob?"

"Green Bay, Wisconsin, Tine," Rubob said. "Green Bay won the game only in the last seconds, with a touchdown by Bart Starr."

"Who's Bart Starr when he's at home?" Tine asked.

"The quarterback, Tine -- one of the greatest. The Packers won five NFL championships with him quarterbacking."

"I think I'm getting frostbite," Tine said.

"I read somewhere that Starr says he still sometimes feels the effects of the frostbite he suffered that day," Rubob said. "The temperature with the windchill was nearly minus 50. But he feels the effects of the victory, too, I'm sure. They went on to win the Super Bowl."

"We'll freeze to death, but we can't turn back, Rubob. The Pole is probably just a little ways ahead. We'll plant our nation's flag."

"It'll be another triumphant moment in outdoor sports, complete with frostbite," Tine thought.

The two passed a house that had been built in the 1800s as a dormitory for the Africans from the Amistad, a ship Tine had visited not long ago in Mystic Seaport.



It was tough making headway on the sidewalk alongside the village's main thoroughfare today. Some residents had failed to shovel their sidewalks.



"Scofflaws," Tine said, breaking a trail in the fresh snow.

"Who, Tine?" Rubob asked.

"Them, Rubob," Tine said, pointing toward the entrance to the Old Burying Ground. The motto above the gate was "Memento Mori."



"They've neglected their civic duty, and there's no excuse," Tine said.

"Look, Tine, I thought at first that those were tiny Christmas lights on the tree branches," Rubob said, pointing to frozen droplets of rain from the night before.



"They'll light up at sunset," Tine said.

"Yesterday's wellsprings look frozen," she thought to herself, looking across the street.



Looking ahead, Tine was disappointed to see that someone had already planted a flag at the Pole -- not Knut Rasmussen, because it was the wrong flag, but perhaps Matthew Henson.



Henson, an African American explorer, is said to have been the first man to reach the North Pole, on April 6, 1909. He began the journey with Robert Peary, and by the time they were within 60 miles of the Pole, both were near exhaustion and suffering from snow blindness. But Henson pushed on (like Rubob's Bart Starr, Tine thought), with four Eskimos pulling Robert Peary behind on a sled. Peary's feet were frostbitten.


Matthew Henson, National Geographic

"The rest is history," Tine thought. She'd learned about Henson in a new exhibit on African American seafarers at Mystic Seaport, called "Black Hands, Blue Seas."

Peary may have found it difficult to warm to the notion that Henson was the first man to reach the Pole, Tine had read.

"From the time we knew we were at the Pole, Commander Peary scarcely spoke to me," Henson wrote. "It nearly broke my heart … that he would rise in the morning and slip away on the homeward trail without rapping on the ice for me, as was the established custom."


Robert E. Peary. Photo from:
http://academic.bowdoin.edu/arcticmuseum/biographies/html/peary.shtml

In the same exhibit in Mystic, Tine had also learned that the first captain of the re-created Amistad, Bill Pinkney, had circumnavigated the globe on his own sailboat, an 85-foot ketch named Firebird.

"We're only circumnavigating the block, Rubob, but it's still an adventure out here today," Tine said. "Our walks are always adventurous. Why is that?"

Rubob replied, "What is it that Hamlet said? 'O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.' "

"Mind is an infinite space, isn't it, Tine?" Rubob said.

"Like Stephen Dedalus' protean mind on the beach," Tine thought, harking back to yesterday's walk -- "only considerably colder."

She bustled along in her parka, fleece hat and neck warmer, and heavy boots, and Rubob was starting to fall behind, like poor old Peary.

Tine thought of a photograph she'd seen of Peary's equipment, including what was described as "everything he needed to make afternoon tea," such as a kettle, aluminum pots and a lampstove.


Kettle over soapstone lamp.
Photo by Donald B. MacMillan.
Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum,
Bowdoin College.

"Perhaps a tea cozy, too," Tine imagined. "It's thoughts such as these that keep one going," she reflected.

She passed another flag planted at the Pole, perhaps by a later explorer. She'd read that someone named Wave Widmar had attempted to become the first American to reach the Pole on an unsupported solo journey.



"It's getting quite busy at the Pole," Tine thought. "There are always adventurers among us. I wonder whether Widmar made it, and whether he carried on his sled the equipment needed to make afternoon tea."

She recalled that in one of the sailing sagas she'd been reading, it said that Peary's motto was "Find a way or make one." He'd written it in Latin above his bunk on his ship.

"That's a far better motto than 'Memento Mori,' " Tine thought. "Peary would have found a way to shovel his sidewalk, too -- or at least Henson would have done it for him. 'Find a way or make one.'"

She looked back behind her, to check that the Eskimos were still pulling Rubob on his sled, and then she moved rapidly on, looking for the best route through the snow.

"Yes, a pot of tea would be just the thing right about now," Tine thought -- "black currant from Harney's, I think."

She passed a flag that showed that cold-blooded natives, more accustomed to the climate, may have been the first to plant their flag in this icy world.



"It's not suitable weather for adventuring today," she thought, hastening up her driveway, with the Eskimos and Rubob far behind. (Rubob wouldn't be the first to enjoy a nice cup of tea at the Pole today.)

"And yet all in all, it was a very pleasant walk," Tine thought.