T A B L E_T A L K Oh those ugly Americans! Hate them or defend them in Table Talk's Wanderust area. R E C E N T L Y Discovering Petra By Maxine Rose Schur At dusk, after the tourists have left, Jordan's ancient ruin comes to splendid life (11/26/97) Marooned in Colorado By Sara Baird A type-A journalist is forced to unwind at an idyllic, isolated (accessible only by narrow-gauge railroad or helicopter) Colorado resort (11/25/97) Road Warrior Jerry Yang Yahoo's Jerry Yang shares travel secrets (11/24/97) Surreal Gourmet By Bob Blumer A turkey chicken's Thanksgiving recipe (11/21/97) Crossing Mongolia By Amanda Jones Of gers and grit on the first recorded four-wheel expedition through the Gobi Desert to Lake Hovsgol (11/20/97) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Wanderlust archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Your virtual travel agency - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -		W H I T E+D R E A M S ++|+P A G E+2+O F +2 Steve, a carpenter from Colorado, suggests looping the rope around everyone's waist and sweeping back and forth in a line, windshield wiper-style. "What if he's gone beyond the edge of the windshield?" wonders Kevin, a plumber with a Marlboro more or less permanently attached to his face. The class thinks about this for a while. Every now and again, a plaintive "help" issues from somewhere beyond the back door. Steve is plotting strategy like a high school football coach, filling the chalkboard with arrows and semicircles. "We'll cover from here to here, plant a marker, come back, untie the rope, retrace our steps to here ..." A man who studies nematodes for a living wants to know what the other end of the rope is tied to. Kevin wants to know who died and made Steve king. Someone else is proposing a "sort of backwards, lying-down human pyramid." "Help ..." "I'll go boil some hot water," says Kevin, as though perhaps McCormick had gone into labor. Ten minutes pass. McCormick's face appears in the window. It's a face that long ago signed a pact with the sun. "Remember me?" he yells through the glass. "I'm very cold." Abandoning all hope of an organized rescue effort, the rescuers don garbage pails, loop the rope around themselves and make their way out the door, lurching and groping. Eventually someone trips over McCormick, who is then rolled onto Kevin's parka and dragged across the snow. At some point, probably the point where Kevin trips over the rope and the nematode guy falls over, McCormick has flopped onto his face. "Hey, look," says Kevin. "We suffocated him." Steve wants to do CPR. Kevin is going through McCormick's pockets. Mount Erebus lounges on the horizon, puffing peaceably. Back in the classroom, McCormick delivers his critique. The words "might have been wiser" figure prominently. Had this been a real emergency, McCormick would have suffered severe frostbite. "Severe," in this case, is not merely an adjective but an official frostbite category, the other three being Superficial, Deep and Profound. In the Antarctic winter, when windchill bullies the mercury into negative triple digits, a man can get frostbite in the time it takes to find his fly. "Know your layers," says McCormick, who has a way of being superficial and profound at the same time. In keeping with the experiential nature of the course, dinner takes the form of survival bag rations. All Antarctic flights and field expeditions carry survival bags: canvas duffels with shovels for building snow shelters, camp stoves that can run on plane fuel and a few vacuum-packed backpacking meals to keep your stomach quiet while you freeze. Kevin, tackling dehydrated Turkey Teriyaki, describes the food as "a little preview of death." It's 9 p.m., time to turn in. The nematode people take the igloo, leaving the rest of the group to share a Scott tent, a bulky teepee-like affair made of bright yellow canvas that blocks most of the wind and some of the sun. (Antarctica in summer presents the uncommon and inadvisable option of tanning while you sleep.) The inside of the tent has an amber glow, like going to sleep with a yellow plastic garbage pail over your head. SALON | Dec. 1, 1997 Mary Roach has been to seven continents but doesn't own six matching dinner plates. What's your version of Antarctic whiteout survival? Tell your tale in Table Talk.