Joseph Campbell Foundation

Frozen Bliss
By Joe

I was first acquainted with Joseph Campbell's work through Bill Moyers' PBS special in 1990. The anecdote Joe told about following one's bliss--the young boy being admonished to eat his peas and the father saying, "I have NEVER done anything I wanted to do--" that resonated with me. I knew there were things I could do better than a lot of people, and time disappeared when I did them. Somehow, those things were never in the path of the career I had fallen into that paid the bills, fed my family.

To me, it seemed the hardest thing to determine was what my "bliss" was. And I suppose it is the same for many others.

So let's start here. I have always wanted to go to Antarctica. I have no explanation for this impulse. As a child I read and reread the stories of Shackleton, Scott, Amundsen, Cook, Mawson, Greely, and Hall.

As I grew older the impulse became a terrible impossible desire. I have always lived in reasonably temperate climes, and later, in the sun belt of the United States. I had flown over Greenland in commercial jets, but the furthest north I had set foot was Ottawa, Canada, on a business trip, and the furthest south, Key West, Florida.

My profession is electrical engineering. I work in Silicon Valley. I have a wife and three children. I am not a mountaineer or an explorer.

In fact, I'd never been camping in my life.

A few years ago I had the idea to write a novel that involved Antarctica. I knew all about the Antarctica of the early 20th century explorers, but I had no idea what it was like in modern times. And I was shocked to find out that in the year 2000, there was internet access to people on the ice on the continent, and so I sent e-mail to several people who had their addresses on the web to ask for information. I managed to start conversations with a few of them. I got a lot of data for my book, which in of itself was a bit of the story of following one's true life's purpose. (Because I've always want to write, and so spent my free time penning my novel in the hope that someday I might turn out lucky enough to sell my book. Alas. That has not happened.)

After writing some chapters, I ran into--completely by "chance" -- whatever "chance" might be, a scientist who had a grant from the National Science Foundation to do research in Antarctica. He was a one-man operation. One day he grew tired of my endless questions: What does it smell like? Where do you go to the bathroom? Do men and women share sleeping bags? -- and he said: "Come with me."

I didn't know how to react. Go with him to Antarctica?

The strange thing about being confronted by your bliss is described by the old Chinese chestnut--be careful what you wish for. Because as soon as your bliss stares you in the face the human reaction might be one of sheer terror. Mine was. I was embedded like a tick in my miserable engineering life. I was VP of Engineering at a small startup company during the great stock market bubble (we were all going to become hideously wealthy) and riches were soon to be upon me. What the hell was I doing considering Antarctica--going there? It was a childish dream I'd harbored 45 years along with the idea of becoming an Astronaut and President. How ridiculous can one get? Go to Antarctica for a month? I didn't have a month's vacation to take. I couldn't spare the time.

So I told him no.

But at one point during the Moyers' interview he asks Joe--did you ever feel like there were invisible hands? And Joe says emphatically, "YES!"

And there were. My scientist friend would not take no for an answer.

And then the world events helped me out. The stock market crashed. That precipitated a series of terrible financial events which caused the slow ruination of my company. During this time the idea of Antarctica grew clearer and clearer until one day I realized that my company was going to cease to exist, and that Antarctica would not.

And then every single person I knew--even those who had the most to lose by my going asked me--"How could you turn this down? You can't. You MUST go."

So I did. I accepted the spot on his team. I had to relearn a lot of my college level electronics that I hadn't practiced for 20 years. I had to relearn my computer programming. I had to do "grunt" work I hadn't done since I was in my 20s.

And then, to cut off the long story, one Sweet Thursday afternoon I stepped out of a military C-130, ski-equipped cargo plane onto the sea ice on McMurdo sound and saw Mount Erebus with my own eyes. I saw Ob Hill and Hut Point and Winter Quarters Harbor. The mental map I'd built as a grammar school kid studying Robert Scott's failed expeditions was before me. I knew where everything was.

At that moment I felt like I had been blessed by God himself. As if out of the billions of people on Earth God chose those moments to stand next to me, watched me as I looked at the Erebus's blue slopes and volcanic plume and said, "So, kid, whatta ya think? Pretty cool, eh?"

Those moments of life were a prayer. They were the essence of all the love I have ever felt in my life and I wanted to thank my parents for conceiving me, my friends for supporting me, and myself for trusting a strange idea that I needed to be on the seventh continent.

A passing scientist pulled my camera out of my hand and snapped my picture. He said, "Look at this next year. You will not believe how you look."

And what I found in Antarctica were hundreds of people like me.

Hundreds of people who had been somehow "called" to that place. And they didn't know why but they all felt as I did--blessed. Fortunate.

And the work there was hard and the living conditions miserable. I had to attend survival school and learn to sleep in trenches dug into the ice. I had to learn how to be happy eating nothing but chocolate bars and freeze dried muck. I had to learn how to keep my mind occupied for weeks in small tents while pinned down by storms.

It was terrible. It was hard and uncomfortable.

Best thing I have ever done.

I had to come home, of course. Eventually, the economy improved and I had to get a "real" job to support my family. I've been to the ice 3 times now. I know the places very well. It's imprinted inside.me. I feel like Antarctica is a big part of my life now and I'm happy with it. I hope that someday I can figure out how to make a living writing about the ice. I think that's my "calling", that I use my ability to write and my love of the ice to bring those experiences to other people.

But in the meantime, I have a daughter attending college this year and two others behind her. So I will go to work in my miserable engineering job with that brilliant spark of Antarctica inside me.

Because I have been there, and it has been in me.

When I see God I am personally going to thank him for my life.

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