![]() ![]() Along the way, Freuchen encounters a name-dropper’s paradise of eclectic personalities-politicians, writers, artists, journalists, spies-and he surprises us with his early warnings about climate change (before anyone called it that) and his proximity to a pioneering series of experiments in psychic perception. His journey wanders through the Arctic, the jungles of South America, Golden Age Hollywood, the Soviet Union, the White House, Nazi Germany, the American Civil Rights Movement, a good many bedrooms, and a legendary television game show. He promised to show me around this bizarre old mansion that was still crammed with relics from the club’s faded past. He said we’d go after hours when the place was quiet and we could catch up over a couple of whiskies. My friend Josh had recently become a member of the club-its mission today is more focused on field study-and invited me to visit. Once the spinning stopped, they probably poured themselves fresh drinks before settling in next to a warm fireplace, their rich growls competing to tell the evening’s best story. I pictured them giving the globe a whirl, letting its spinning surface brush their fingertips as they reminisced. One room had an old floor-standing globe, at least four feet in diameter, that I imagined a bygone generation of impressively whiskered men standing around while regaling each other with tales of the great voyages they’d once taken. It called to mind the stories of Rudyard Kipling or the set of a Wes Anderson movie. The place was pungent with the atmosphere of a distant age: wood paneling, large fireplaces, leather club chairs, Persian rugs. The portrait was in an old mansion on New York’s Upper East Side, home to The Explorers Club, an organization founded in 1904, when large portions of the globe were still unmapped. When I approached the painting to get a closer look, I spotted the man’s name on a small brass plaque on the bottom of the frame: “Peter Freuchen” (pronounced “ Froy-ken“). Everything about his appearance implied a good story, maybe even a fantastic story. But despite the awkward craftsmanship, the man in the portrait demanded my attention: he was impeccably dressed but sported a wild beard, a pirate’s peg leg, and had a mischievous, slightly amused expression. I first encountered him in an oil painting, a bizarre rendering that looked like it was painted by a drunken sailor aboard a storm-tossed ship-the brushwork was amateurish, the proportions clumsy, the perspective askew. As the grim reality sank in, his heartbeat had the same erratic rhythm as a fish flopping in a net. He started thinking of ways he might escape. He thought about what all this meant-about her, about his children, about their reactions when they learned of his disappearance. Already his foot was succumbing to frostbite, a creeping numbness that would slowly take over the rest of his body. There was little chance, laughably small, that anyone would find him before he froze to death. I first encountered him in an oil painting, a bizarre rendering that looked like it was painted by a drunken sailor aboard a storm-tossed ship. The frozen walls pushed cold clouds of his damp breath back into his face. The space he now occupied wasn’t much larger than the interior of a coffin. Then he realized the blizzard must have pushed an unmovable mound of snow up against it. He tried to move the bag by kicking it, but it didn’t budge the soft thud from his boot told him it was wedged there tight. When he finally woke up, he was unsure how long he had slept. Crawling inside, he covered the exit hole with a sealskin bag before grabbing a few winks of sleep. ![]() Needing shelter, he created a makeshift igloo by digging a shallow depression in the snow and flipping his dogsled over it. He was sledding across the snowy expanse when he got caught in the sharp teeth of a sudden blizzard. Besides, he was the kind of person whose mind was at peace only when his body was in motion. During expeditions like this, little delays accumulated into big delays that could disrupt everything-a risk he didn’t want to take, even though the weather was fifty-four degrees below zero, cold enough to turn spit hard as a pebble before it hit the ground. But the group couldn’t afford to lose them permanently, so he’d headed back out as soon as possible. The supplies had been left because the sled dogs needed their burden eased in the heavy snow. It had been foolhardy to leave the camp, all alone, to retrieve the supplies his traveling party had abandoned the day before. He was lost in the Arctic wilderness, miles away from his basecamp, buried alive under the snow. In this particular moment, though, even he was nervous. He was like the hero in an action movie: cool under pressure, always ready with a quip.
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