Jay Ruzesky recalls a childhood of snow caves, literary ambitions, and a fascination with polar exploration that was ignited by the genes he shares with famed Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. As a boy, Ruzesky was captivated by Amundsen's diaries: an Antarctic exploration aboard
Belgica
when Amundsen was a twenty-five-year-old mate bent on earning his stripes; his historic navigation of the Northwest Passage from 1903 to 1906 where he intentionally froze in with his ship
Gjoa
over the winters to drift with the pack ice; and his triumph onboard his ship
Fram
to be the first to reach the South Pole on December 14, 1911.Now a poet and teacher of English at a small university on Vancouver Island, Ruzesky became motivated by the approaching centennial of Amundsen's South Pole accomplishment to pursue his own quest to Antarctica—not only as a following of Amundsen's footsteps, but also a pilgrimage to a near-mythical place where heroes were made and died. He books his voyage aboard a 71-metre ice-strengthened research vessel,
Polar Pioneer
, bound for Antarctica.Ruzesky skilfully interweaves three stories creatively extrapolated from Amundsen's experiences on both
and
, and his own observations leading up to and during his voyage on
. In the tradition of Bruce Chatwin and with a poet's heart, Ruzesky offers a historically accurate tale while traversing both time and place—paralleling a century of explorers' dreams from Pole to Pole with stops in Canada, Norway, Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Antarctica.
In Antarctica Book Trailer from Jay Ruzesky on Vimeo.