Preface:
"With a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye, I sailed south across the Antarctic convergence toward the frozen continent.  This, my fourth time, would be very different from previous visits, as my husband, Finn Ronne, was not with me.  I had not thought it would be such a traumatic occasion.  Finn had been gone for fifteen years, but in the Antarctic, I discovered he was still very much with me.  Nostalgia engulfed me, remembering how he loved it so, how familiar he had been with every view and how surprised he would be to know I was there.  I missed him deeply.  As the pain of my loss intensified, I watched form the bow of the cruise ship “Explorer”.  We picked our way carefully through the pack ice.  My tears obscured the intimidating icebergs floating majestically in open water just beyond.  In the distance was the outline of the spectacular snow covered Antarctic continent.  I had never expected to see it again.

We were attempting to make a landing at the Base where I had spent a year with my husband and which had now become the first American Historic Site in Antarctica.  My daughter Karen, representing the family’s third generation to visit the Continent, carried three large plaques she had made to place in the small museum depicting the Ronne Expedition’s extensive exploration and scientific investigations of the area.  It was good to see the buildings were still standing, including the twelve-foot square hut I shared for a year with my husband.  But I viewed the once substantial base with very mixed emotions.  Vandals form visiting ships of many nationalities during the intervening years had removed everything but the bare walls and floors.  It was very sad and I fought for control of my sentiments and anger.

People have written many unkind things about my husband but I have always been proud to be his wife.  I thought about the accomplishments, which made him one of our greatest polar explorers, as I walked around the scenes of one of his most important achievements.  As one of the few people who truly knew him, I knew that he characteristically was a very disciplined Norwegian.  Finn wanted things done his way, at times, considered to be rigid and intolerant.  But more often than not, he was proven right.

I kept a very complete diary for that year but it took me forty-seven years before I had the desire or courage enough to read it again.  The experience was too close to me.  After many years had passed, as I peered into those huts again and realized that as the wife of the expeditions leader I was the only one who could tell the story of this place.  When I finally mustered the courage to face the day to day occurrences which passed in those walls and were written in my diary and how I felt about them at the time, I found my observations and reactions to the things I lived through far more fascinating now than the day I recorded them.

This is my account of my observations, what I lived through and how I felt about it.  But not only is this a historical account of the human triumphs and deficiencies of men and women in isolation on this particular expedition.  It is an example of the breakdown of human relationships between people in isolation on expeditions past and present throughout history."

- Edith M. "Jackie" Ronne

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