I'm from Tennessee. A town called Knoxville. My name is Arnold S. Dipthenbotter. Arnold is a family name. I don't know what 'S' stands for. Samuel, I think. My ancestors are from...I don't know where they're from. But no one calls me Arnold anyway. Everyone called me Dipinbutter. Because I dip everything in butter. Actually, I don't know which came first-- me dipping things in butter, or the nickname.
Let's see. I've been here at least two years and three months. In Antarctica.
I don't know the exact coordinates. All I know is I'm alone.
I came here with a team. We were shooting a documentary with some scientists. But we got separated in a storm. I got all turned around. I tried my radio but the thing broke. By the time I made it back to camp, well, there was no camp. I mean the outpost was there but the people weren't. They must have presumed me dead and left.
I fixed the radio eventually, but they were all out of range. So it's been two years that I've been living alone in Antarctica.
You're probably wondering how I've survived this long. I don't like to talk about this, but I used to be in the Marines. I moved around a lot to different countries and met with various hostile terrains. Besides that, as a kid, the wilderness was my playground. I did rock climbing, backpacking, mountain biking, foraging, hunting, fishing, and river rafting as hobbies. I reckon you could say I made a hobby out of survival too. I studied as many species of plants, animals, insects, and fungi as I could. Not that there are many of those species here.
Where was I...? I don't know. Anyway, so I come here with this documentary crew and I was interested to learn what it would be like in this new hostile terrain. I reckon I got much more than I bargained for.
I miss home. Not as it is now but just how it was as a child. I had a slew of aunts and cousins. I remember that they were always over at the house-- either ours or Meemaw's.
I had two siblings, but we didn't play together much. My sister was always sick, and my brother preferred to play indoors. So I reckon he must have been sick too.
Either way, I spent my boyhood days at the creeks and in the woods with my older cousins, Skyler and Mastiff. Mastiff is a family name. I don't remember where our ancestors are from.
And my Ma and Meemaw and aunties were always there to give us hugs and scoldings and a warm meal at the end of each day. There was always someone around.
That's home, I reckon.
In the military I was far from home but I didn't think about it too much. I was too focused on work to think about much else. I didn't make many close buddies there either. Everyone told me I'd make friends for life in the Marines, but I got reassigned every few months so I quit trying to make any.
Once that was all done, I still struggled to make friends. I moved back to Knoxville for a while, but my Ma was sick and she passed not even 5 months after I came home. I moved to Nashville-- not my scene. I moved to Atlanta and somehow met this film crew going to Antarctica.
I trained with them for a year, and then we embarked on our journey.
I think up until now, the coldest place I've been is Pennsylvania. But I climbed a lot, so I've experienced colder temperatures before. However, Antarctica is not cold. It's cold in Pennsylvania, but in Antarctica you are cold. You are devoid of heat. You're not human any more, you're more like an Icee slush on ice in an icebox at the bottom of a frozen river. It's so cold inside you that you want to die. You think you did already. Because everything is dark and you're deprived of your senses. Your skin is too numb to feel, your nose is too cold to smell, it is too dark to see, and there is nothing to hear.
At first I tried talking and singing to myself to give myself something to hear, but I gradually stopped and now I don't know whether I still have a voice at all. The last two winters I barely left camp. Just too dark. I ate the MRE's left behind. Rationed them considerably. I reckon I went into hibernation like a bear. In the summers it was ice fishing at the warmest part of the day. Sometimes caught one, sometimes not.
Some evenings I fiddled with the instruments at the communications center trying to make use of what was left behind, trying to figure out a way to let someone know I was here.
But no one found me. If a man hollers in Antarctica and no one hears it, did he holler at all?
Make sense of it, please.
If no one knows a man in Antarctica is alive, is he alive at all?
If I get mauled by a polar bear tomorrow I reckon no one will know, no one will care.
What's the point of living all by my lonesome?