Cold truth warmly told: Stories from Antarctica

COEUR d'ALENE — David Grann admits — he hates the cold.

"I like to read these stories, preferably by the warm comfort of a fire," the best-selling author and award-winning journalist said at the opening of his speech Friday night.

This dislike for frigid temperatures did not stop him from diving into the harrowing, heroic and heartbreaking stories he discovered while researching his non-fiction book, "The White Darkness: A Journey across Antarctica."

He was drawn to this subject not only because this was one of the greatest feats of endurance with a family love story at the center, he said, "but it's also a story about leadership and the choices we make."

"I think something, which is central to our theme of the humanities, it teaches us something about the human condition," Grann said.

Grann was the honored speaker at the 17th annual North Idaho Distinguished Humanities Lecture at The Coeur d’Alene Resort. Idaho Humanities Council executive director David Pettyjohn said Grann was booked for 2020, but his appearance was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We knew his stories and his ability to tell those stories would be of great interest to citizens of North Idaho," Pettyjohn said. "David is a non-fiction writer. He shows how the truth can be stranger than fiction and very interesting. He is an incredibly talented speaker. He connects in so many ways; he brings history to life in a way few authors can."

Grann shared pieces of the true story of British explorer Henry Worsley, a man determined to cross Antarctica on a solitary, unaided quest. Worsley went on this journey hoping to achieve what his hero, Ernest Shackleton, had failed to do 100 years earlier. Before the solo mission, Worsley led an expedition and found the hut Shackleton and his party had built and stayed in before heading to the South Pole in 1908.

"Shackleton had called the shelter 'the Mecca of all our hopes and dreams,'" Grann wrote in a passage in his book.

He said like a general developing a plan of attack, Worsley studied Antarctica and mapped out routes for the expedition.

"The more he studied it, the more forbidding this place seemed," Grann said. "The continent — and I really was not aware of this before I began researching this story — it's nearly 5 and-a-half million square miles, it's larger than Europe and it doubles in size in winter when the coastal areas freeze over. Approximately 98% of Antarctica is covered in an ice sheet. Antarctica is classified as a desert because there is so little precipitation and nothing lives there."

As Grann told of Worsley and his ill-fated adventure, he spoke with compassion and amazement, with a sense that only writers know as they follow along the trail of information and feel a closeness with their subjects.

"One of the real lessons in Shackleton was that in failure there can be triumph and that there are always elements of our lives, probably the Antarctic more than anything else, that are not conquerable," Grann said. "In that failure, when you have that triumph, you recognize one of those triumphs is the triumph of life itself."

Worsley died shortly after returning from the solo mission, which he was unable to complete. Grann said Worsley and his family would want his spirit for life to be remembered and for his life to be studied.

"It's a tragic story, a very sad story," Grann said. "But I think we all in some ways confront these moments in our own conditions, in our own lives, where we have to accept our own limits and the questions we make and the decisions of leadership we make."