Over My Head

PROLOGUE from OVER MY HEAD
Balanced on a slippery rock ledge somewhere near the bottom edge of the Earth, my back was pressed hard against an overhanging cliff face. There was nowhere to go. I didn’t have the radio, the boatman sped off with it, and he was miles away in the sheltered lee of the “mother ship” Hero, no doubt enjoying a nice hot lunch and a nap. The tide was rising at an alarming rate. Soon the frigid seawater would reach the top of my leather boots. 
“Damn these boots!” 
My favorites from many hiking trips, they were not waterproof and the soles were too rigid to grip the slime-covered rocks. I should have picked up rubber fisherman’s boots back in port. Port was two days sail from this island. 
Out in the bay, a stiff wind stirred up a frothy green surf in waters deep enough for two cavorting killer whales to leap and turn. Fortunately, a wide, underwater curtain of kelp fronds dampened the waves to a low swash before the whales’ splash-created tsunami washed me off the rock. There was no sound other than from the waves gently lapping my shoes: no birds, no chattering colleagues, and no sound of a boat engine bringing the launch back. 
How did I come to be here: alone on a sinking knife edge in Tierra del Fuego, halfway between the Beagle Channel and Cape Horn, 7,000 miles from New York? 
“Oh, come on, you wanted to come more than anything. You leaped at the chance.” 
I flinched at the sudden sound of my own voice, bobbled on my perch, and grabbed the rock wall to regain my balance. 
I had flown down to the Beagle Channel with several fellow geologists from Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin, all of whom had previous experience in remote regions. An opportunity of a lifetime, it was my chance to sail into the channels and land on the islands Darwin had revealed to the world in his Voyage of the Beagle, and to explore the forests and coves that E. Lucas Bridges wrote about in The Uttermost Part of the Earth, two of my all-time favorite books. My doctoral advisor, Ian Dalziel, a veteran of many Antarctic expeditions, told me that if I proved myself capable of working in wilderness, I could start collecting field data for my thesis: creating a new geological map of both sides of the Strait of Magellan. 
The stakes were higher for me than for the others: I needed to prove myself as a woman scientist in the macho world of geology --- the last redoubt of male exclusivity in the sciences --- in the most macho specialty within the subject: field geology. And that didn’t mean fieldwork like I had already done in the Appalachians, where I had driven around to road outcrops or hiked a mile or two in stream beds or across open fields. Geologic mapping in Tierra del Fuego meant penetration of road-less, trail-less wilderness in foul weather, with no back up or safety net. Indeed, outside of a few isolated towns of a few thousand souls in a land the size of New England, nothing much had changed in Tierra del Fuego since Darwin’s visit a century and a half before. After we flew down to the Beagle Channel, even our mode of transport was much the same as Darwin’s, a 110-foot wooden ship with a big sail, although the Hero did have sonar and a radio. And two puny-looking diesel engines. 
My father encouraged my outdoor explorations from a young age, as a sort of insurance policy, he probably thought, against my becoming agoraphobic like my mother. In my earliest memories of him, as we walked in the sun and rain, he told me about his adventures as a jazz trumpet player in Depression-era coalfields and his service in the South Pacific during WWII. Although he married late in life and settled down to a dull job in a bank, his often repeated motto was: 
“Life should be an adventure.” 
All my life I had run from my mother’s fate as a heavily tranquilized depressed housewife who jumped at every noise. The image of her confined to her arm chair in a dim corner --- afraid to answer the phone, to climb stairs, or even to open doors --- filled me with a dread possibly greater than her own. Throughout childhood, I plunged into the woods and abandoned strawberry farms --- which were rapidly turning into suburban housing developments --- re-enacting alone or with friends the dramatic scenes from Antarctic and Himalayan expeditions I read about obsessively. 
Yet, here I stood, in the fabled place called Tierra del Fuego, trembling from head to foot, too paralyzed to move or think. Until this moment I hadn’t allowed myself to acknowledge the fierce battle going on inside between my father’s fantasies and my mother’s neurochemistry. A shadow of recognition brought sudden tears, which I pushed away with a muddy glove. It was time for some self-talk in my heartiest voice: 
“Hey, didn’t you backpack alone two hundred miles of the Appalachian Trail? No bears or armed rednecks to worry about here!” 
If they didn’t return, I could swim over to Navarino Island and hike to Puerto Williams, couldn’t I? Sure. How long would I last in 34 degree water? Maybe fifteen minutes? 
Channeling my inner Shackleton of Antarctic fame, I said in a booming voice, 
“We’re all in this together, mates.” 
Speaking of mates, where the hell were they? The last I saw of them were four muddy rumps wriggling for butt-holds fifty feet up the cliff. Pressed against the same cliff I had failed to shimmy up, cold green slime running inside the collar of my rain suit, I started to hum, "I whistle a happy tune, ......" 
A shower of rocks and uprooted bushes heralded the return of one of the guys. Ron Bruhn, a great bear of a man from Alaska, landed on his feet, and slipped a little as he turned to face me. 
“Aren’t you coming?” 
I could never tell when he was teasing me. I shot back in an over-loud, but squeaky voice, “You mean up that two hundred foot cliff?” 
He shrugged. “We can’t get inland from the cliff top, anyway, he said. “Maarten contacted the boat.” 
More rock slides and grunts accompanied the arrivals of Maarten de Witt, Bob Dott, and Bob Winn. We teetered and sloshed about on the slippery submerged rocks, jostling each other to find stable footholds big enough for all of us. Unlike me, even without their bulky clothes and packs, three out of the four guys were built like line backers. 
In a few minutes, the buzz of an outboard engine grew louder, and the Zodiac cut through the kelp and angled toward us. As soon as the rubber bow bumped against the rock ledge, I dove in head first and crawled through the swill and boat gear to a sheltered spot under the bow. The guys jumped and fell in after me. We sorted out the complicated tangle of rubber-clad legs, ropes, and spare engine parts to the muttered curses of the boatman, and braced ourselves for the bouncing roller coaster ride back to the Hero and sanctuary.