Ice, White & Blue

Redhead Amok in Antarctica

Nation of Tailgaters & Possum Roadkill

Rented a car for the day in Greymouth, thus achieving a little more freedom of travel. Had no idea what I wanted to do but someone mentioned the Pancake Rocks and I recalled the pictures I had seen of them. I knew I had to see it. Only about 40 minutes up the West Coast to Punakaiki and Paparoa National Park. Such lush green to sooth the Iced soul.

Only 40 minutes my ass. It took almost 2.5 hours to meander up that coastal highway, Route 6, partly because I stopped every 1/4 mile, and secondly because there I was driving on the left hand side of the road in a righthand drive car on a highway with no shoulders that was Not A Straight Line, hugging cliffsides. It has been over 10 years since I drove on the other side of the road and it was in a standard, not an outomatic. Driving a standard on the wrong side makes a lot more sense to me, since you have to think harder about shifting & braking than in an automatic where everything APPEARS automatic and the same. I kept on turning on the windshield wipers when I wanted to use my turn signal, and I kept on turning on my turn signal when I wanted to go from Park to Drive or Reverse (I have a history of driving in a Dodge Aries with a steering column shift). Then my seat belt was always on the wrong side.

Needless to say I probably encouraged much swearing & cursing from the drivers' of the cars stuck behind me under these circumstances, as I was being tailgated fiercely by about everyone who came up on my ass. Only a two lane highway, but enough places to pull off to catch the view or get down to the beaches. There were lots of one lane bridges crossing the river gorges that bled from the interior to the sea. I drove carefully and slowly, on starnge roads in a strange car under strangely askew driving requirements.

I believe though, with the bright sun here, and my driving on the right side of the car, I may have finally evened out my trucker freckles, achieved while driving Deltas on the Ice.  I had become a sadly unevenly freckled redhead, with scatterings of them up & down the lefthand side of my face & hand, pockets of light gold brown highlighting my temple and cheekbone.  But unbalanced.  Perhaps this is why actors always favour their Good Side. Where there is differential freckling there must be preferential facial angles. I have decided that in order to avoid this issue in the future I will do 6 months in the Northern Hemisphere driving on the right side of the road, and 6 months in the Southern Hemisphere driving on the correct side of the road, read into that as you will. 

The beaches are grey sand, very fine, but rarely exclusively sand, and often scattered with strata of rounded stones in different sizes along the tideline. The surf was quite high and several times I could have done with a pair of earplugs, what between the cicadas madly thrumming & drumming & patatapata-ing & whizzing in the bush on either side of the road, and the ocean pounding & thundering to my left. If I rolled down my windows I could not hear anything but this roar of life & tide.

I passed more roadkill on this highway than I have ever in my life, and the occasional bird of prey or seagull cleaning up the flattened bloody carcass. The roadkill was uniformly possum. Possum is a beast introduced in error to the NZ Islands from Australia and the nation is fighting a valiant battle to control these opportunistic beasties. NZ does not naturally have any land predators, making this place a haven for birds who do not fly. Of course, the Kiwi is the most well known, but there are several other birds whose populations have been decimated by the inroads possums have made into their nests, eating chicks and eggs alike. The penguins here have been similarly affected.

Possums have also caused the spread of bovine Tb around the nation. There are some areas as yet unaffected but it is about as devastating to a cattle farmer as is hail to an apple farmer, or scrapie to a sheep rancher.

So possum roadkill is not a thing to mourn about. In fact, they have possum fur this & possum leather thats available for sale all over the nation. In hopes of encouraging a profit motive for possum hunters and a decrease in the possum population, they have popularized possum products to about the level of sheep products, such as fleece & wool. Each possum fur hat or boa or pair of mittens comes with an explanatory tag, excusing the wearer from the guilt of buying & wearing fur.  If not for the cost, I would be severely tempted by the possum fur hats with the fur on the inside, that button up under your chin and wrap your face in the minklike softness.

Birders must love NZ, I cannot help but be fascinated myself by the vivid and varied avian population found all over this nation, quite outside the kiwi-obsession. I spotted many an odd bird, including Pukeko (a pheasant sized bird with a black body & a red crest found all over the fields & brush up & down the railtracks & highways), Weka (brown flightless bird similar in size & shape), King Shag (a huge cormorant that viewed from a fast moving train looked much like a penguin, white throated, low swimming bird, larger than our Maine shags), Silver Gulls, black backed gulls, and dozens of other birds I could only describe quickly. But to see that many birds from a train or a car... imagine the many birds I could not glimpse.

I have seen lots of distinctive stacked beehives, by the hundreds, and not placed among field or orchard crops as you would expect. Honey is a very protected item here in NZ, no honey products being allowed into the country at all. I will make sure to try some while I'm here.

But really, I was headed up the highway to the famed Pancake Rocks, my raison d'etre on the West Coast. I can barely describe them adequately. These are horizontally stacked limestone rocks that due to varying densities in their striations have been worn away by the relentless waves into tall columnar stacks like pancakes.  The ocean has carved away beneath them and around them in incredible ways, and Paparoa Park has created easy access to the heart of these formations. Still with the bellowing ocean mere metres downcliff from us, the cicadas were alarmingly loud. Well worth the drive.  What I really want to do is go back there and just walk along the beach for hours on end, looking at the small quiet beauty by my feet, marvelling at the unceasing perfection nature so often throws up while we humans are constantly striving for it.

Getting a rental car, to do Akaroa, in 20 minutes, I will be driving. I haven't even mentioned Picton & Marlborough Sound & Blenheim & Kaikoura & the TransCoastal Train trip back down to Chch. There's a lot to see. There's a lot to say.

Teared up today when a woman in a photo shop asked me how I liked Antarctica. Told her it was the best thing I've ever done in my life. She looked startled. Must get myself back under control.

posted by: coldwish at 01:31 | link | comments (2) |
nz 2005

Nekkid Sheep & Driftwood Goddesses

New Zealand is impossibly beautiful in a very bucolic, pastoral sense. A lot of the land is devoted to agriculture on a managable scale, unlike that of the States where farmers have had to become industrial in order to compete.

Sheep are ubiquitous with their cuddly look, all poofy & wooled up. Once sheered they look naked & happier. I wonder about sunburn. Nudists out there take note, what can be learned from a sheep unclothed.

I took the TranzAlpine train from Christchurch to Greymouth, spent most of the 5 or so hours on the outside viewing platforms marvelling at the green & the humidity & the lushness of this nation in this season. The East side of South Island gets so much less rain than the West side, all of it stops at the Alps like in the Rockies. We entered a 8.5 km long tunnel from the east and emerged into another world altogether in the west, one greener and more tropical. Fern trees and different flowers. Though much foliage is familiar to me: blackberries lined the train tracks in the west, I saw wild lupine in the east, butterfly bushes nodded gently all up & down the tracks on both sides, white morning glories crawled over all the varied greenery. All this as we whipped by at speed, in & out of quick tunnels annd looping around the sides of mountains through Arthur's Pass following a river that became the Grey River leading down to the destination of Greymouth. Some very dramatic views of peaks with just one or two yards of snow left.

The river beds in NZ, that I have seen thus far, are not hemmed in and ordered, as are many US rivers. They have broad beds of silver & grey rounded stones through which snake several rivelets, whose routes obviously change with the seasons & the years. Evidence of floods appear at the base of many trees and bridge stanchions with old roots and flood detritus wrapped around them up to 10-15 feet or higher. I can imagine that these wending silver chains become raging monsters of water when I see this. The water I do see is relatively shallow but pure, clear and crystalline the way water oughter be.

Much of my train trip was spent taking photos at speed and at random, in hopes that when the shutter slammed shut on my digital camera it might capture something of the views I was seeing. At least I didn't have to warm it up in my armpit every two shots. Though I ran through 4 pairs of AA batteries by the end of the trip. Bought a lithium battery for NZ$20 and have not had to change batteries since.

Christchurch is located on the largest area of flatland in NZ, and we travelled through people's back yards and farmland in the early morning fog: herds of cows & beef & sheep & goats & deer. Many many horses here, though not a single one being ridden that I've seen. But then I am travelling midweek at present, and perhaps the leisure time to ride these animals is only a weekend thing.

I saw hundreds of places I'd love to visit on foot or on horseback. I yearned to be off the train up that river valley, around the bend of that dirt road, up that track to the mountain peak, down on the riverbed feet in water so clear I imagined it would lend purity to all my feet did for the rest of the day. Alas & alack, train travel though fun & fast, is just that. Look quick! No, over there! Oh, you missed it! None of the time spent contemplating the dew on the grass, the texture of the ferns amid the grass, the spiderwebs hanging on fences all heavy with moisture & brightly outlined in the morning fog, filling the corners between greyed wooden posts & the wire fencing. You see it, you wish you could stop & admire it, possibly even photograph it. A tree whips by with such a stark profile of outrage & reaching, standing alone in a green field surrounded by deer whose heads whip up as you speed by, ears all facing you the noisy diesel intruder.

But this is a good way to start. Now I know where I want to go slowly. I'm getting a precis of the South Island with this trip.

I met the Tasman Sea and fell in love with the coastline: grey sand beaches colliding with rocky coastline, capes split from the land and foaming surf bellowing & thundering around the base of these slim narrow-footed tall green-topped islands. Met a few beaches where I could lose myself in my favorite activity: stone combing. Small rocks & stones in silvers, greys & greens with a few whites & reds abound on these grey sand beaches. The tide goes out and the water drains downbeach to the sea, leaving tree root like water tracks reaching for the sea, source & sustenance, interrupted by these perfectly smooth rounded stones, creating wakes around them. There was driftwood from wood unknown to me, stunningly red and gently curved. One piece lay like a stranded reclining goddess in the sand, wet & beech-coloured. I photographed this piece a dozen times in astonishment. Did not pick it up to take home. Already the day after I regret that & miss it. What would I have done with a 2 foot driftwood goddess as I travelled around NZ? I chose smaller more portable pieces to make tangible my memories and swore to return.

Looking out to sea there are no islands far off shore, it is silver blue sea as far as the curve of the earth. No ships, no boats, no nothing out there. Just ocean, with surf rolling in at my feet. How oddly quiet the sea there is, how unoccupied.

This is a lovely country, I could spend a year here and not even exhaust the possibilities of the west coast of the South Island. I could spend a year in contemplation of the stones on these beaches. Mom, wish you were here with me walking along this gorgeous seashore, the only TWO people on the beach(!!). We would carry a lot of NZ away in our pockets sorting & sifting here.

posted by: coldwish at 03:22 | link | comments (2) |
nz 2005

Wind Pants & Farting

So, the ECW Gear we HAVE to wear to get on a flight off the Ice includes wind pants.

Air travel makes me fart. New discovery to me, readily made apparent in the last few moths. Must be the change in altitude and pressurization in the cabin.

Farting in wind pants harms no one but yourself because it has no where for it to go but up. Your nose.

Wind pants should come with exhaust vents for just such occasions.

Look BUGS!!! Flying bugs, crawling bugs. Yippeee!!

GREEN. GRASS. Yes, I dove head first for it.

Omigawd! The moon!!

STARS!!!!! Southern Cross. No dippers. Sky looks weird. But the dark is so soothing to my eyes and my sensibilities. You'd think I would have slept better. But could I turn off my brain? Not.

Holy shit the humidity.

My nostrils are no longer sporting booger stalactites.

My deodorant is not as effective as I thought. I mean, really, who sweats in Antarctica? And when you do? It dries so quickly, it does not hang around your armpits seething & boiling with bacteria. Even the bacteria fails to thrive in Antarctica.

Waiting at the bus stop in the city this morning I looked up and the clouds in the sky were painted on by a pointillist. Remarkable.

I am taking a train trip across the Southern Alps (East to West), then another train to the north tip of the South Island, then a bus back down to Chch. Where I will get my camping gear in order and start the real tramping.  I'm thinking Akaroa & Dunedin (Banks Peninsula) to start with. Maybe I'll even get in a bungee jump in Queenstown, or swim with dolphins. I've been browsing the possibilities and keep on yearning to see penguins here. But I just got off the Ice and feel a bit odd about the Penguin Yearning, as if it's a leftover from the Ice, and not quite NZ. Though my chances of seeing penguins in NZ are much better than at McMurdo while B15 blocks the sound.

We'll see.

All I need now is a kitten.

I may be found strolling the streets of Chch today looking for a cat to grope.

posted by: coldwish at 22:02 | link | comments (2) |
nz 2005

Goodbye Antarctica

I leave McMurdo in less than 1 hour.

I've cried a lot these last few days & I'm crying now.

I took a walk with Jack last night and met a subtle hint of what winter will be like here. Froze my cheeks in the wind & blowing snow. Not quite frost nip. It was worth it watching the earth breath & the snow blow fast, dancing low across the stones of the Ice Pier. So alive this place, not bleak & awful, but alive, excitingly alive. You can feel the risk of a short walk to Hut Point with winds trying to knock you down and blow you away like the snow blows. Each tiny pebble had a snow drift formed downwind of it, and larger stones created landscapes like sandstone carved by years & years of water & wind in Arizona. The striations of the dust/snow/dirt layers made it look even more like white sandstone, curving gently around with the wind.

The wind here is the world's most delicate & temporary sculptor, performing miracles on the rocks & ice & snow & dirt that no clumsy-handed human could ever reproduce. I took as many pictures as I could, desperately trying to capture my last walk here, vainly trying to take it all with me in a  more tangible sense than my memory. It was cold enough that my camera battery died after 1 or 2 pictures and I had to open my coat up & stick it in my armpit to warm it up for more. My sunglasses did not seal well enough and the freezing snow blew hard & biting against my cheeks. It was too cold and startling even for me to cry, it was too beautiful.

I'll see you all in a few weeks.

Forgive me if I cry when you ask me how it went.

 

 

posted by: coldwish at 22:37 | link | comments (1) |
shuttles 2004-05

It's Lookin' Like Winter

It's beginning to look a lot like...winter, here. It has been overcast & grey & windy & cold & snowy for about 5 days now. It's gotten cold enough that the snow is not calming the grit down on the roads, it's just joining up with the grit & blowing all over town. You cannot tell what you are being slammed with when it hits you: grit or snow, it's all just blowing around. The snow is finally staying on the black hills, looking pale & anemic, not boldly woodcut patterned. The snow is so fine & it is so dry. It's not melting at all, not even to your clothes until you go inside.

So the fine grit blows & the snow blows and the result is beauty. The snow & grit mix & drift together in sedimented loops & swirls of pale reddish brown & white. The ditch, which most of the summer ran strong with snow melt in the sun, has frozen over and the sand has coloured the frost patterns into some spectacular magic.  Footprints in the snow fill with brown grit, the dirt road sports white reverse footprints. The elevated buildings conceal snowdrifts that have hung on all summer in the shade,  delicately patterned & swirled, showing evidence of the wind more blatantly than when pristine white.

This is the first time I have seen dirt on snow and not grieved the loss of the white, this odd beauty is just as satisfying as the views that have been obscured lately.  It is not a sullied beauty at all.

I did see the first sunset, glimpsed in the inch of sky showing above the mountains before the grey cast its forever pall overhead. I stood on the staircase in my jammies staring, as the sun set for less than 10 seconds then slid back up to roll along the obscured horizon.  Saw that sunset burned in my retinas for a good 10 minutes afterwards even without closing my eyes. It was not gorgeous but it was eventful and I'm glad I saw it.

Today I did Bag Drag. Packed all my gear up, checked in my check-in bags, packed up my carry-on bag, dressed up in my ECW Gear and went to Air Services to be weighed.  I cleaned my room all morning, defrosted the fridge, returned the humidifier to medical, did another laundry, vaccuumed, hid in my room crying.

There is no way to list What I'll Miss.

Tomorrow I fly to Cheech. I'll figure out what I'm gonna do in NZ once I get there.

Tomorrow I'll say goodbye to Erebus, visible or not, on my way out to Pegasus. Tomorrow the tears will freeze to my cheeks in the wind.

posted by: coldwish at 03:03 | link | comments (1) |
shuttles 2004-05

What I Won't Miss

Sharing a Room:

Can you believe this was the first experience of my life in having an actual ROOMmate? I'm 40 years old. I think I lucked out. It could have been so much worse. There are people who had to deal with the drunken roommate coming home after bars close and vomiting all over the room. Or the roomie who brought home sex partners and schtupped madly & loudly & drunkenly in the neighboring bed. Or the roomie who brought home a drunk guy who woke you up in the middle of the night swaying over your bed, saying, "Whoops. Wrong girl."  Or the loudly snoring roomie. Or the smelly roomie.

I had it lucky.

Lukewarm Food:

I'm dead tired of having meals that are no better than room temperature, when all I want is something HOT to take the chill off my bones and fill the nooks & crannies of my GI tract with satisfaction. I hate serving myself a heap of veggies and putting a pat of butter on them, and it doesn't melt. It sits there desultorily, solid & yellow, until it falls off. I have to get up & microwave my food before the butter will melt. I've had exactly ONE HOT meal here and that was after dive-tending when we asked them to save our lunches for us. It came right out of the oven hot & steaming and nothing has tasted better.  Did I mention steaming? Did I mention how much I miss HOT soup, soup that steams and makes your nose run? I want to have to COOL DOWN my soup by blowing on the soup spoon, one bite at a time.

Grit In My Teeth:

My dentist is gonna think I let some mad person with a dental drill have at me, with all the scoring & grinding that has gone on in my mouth these last two months. I don't expect to get off easy.

Wearing Shoes:

My feet are tired & white & soft. They don't want to be in serious boots with serious socks anymore. My toes want to sink into a mud puddle and feel the brown softness goo up between them. They want to sink into water and wiggle freely. They want to walk in green grass, plucking dandelions to decorate the tops of my feet.

Dry Skin:

I'm tired of the 5 minute shower followed by the 30 minute grease up, then the body dandruff showing up less than two hours later and the nightly scratching of my dry legs.

Sharing a Bathroom:

Really I just want to shit in peace without being self-conscious about how my shit sounds & smells because there's someone right next to me.  I want to get up at 3am to stagger to the loo to pee without having to socialize with the other people in the bathroom with me. I'd like to make it all the way back to bed under those circumstances without really waking up. I know, I know, if I could arrange my sleepwalking & sleeptalking to get me to the loo & back, I'd be golden. I could even socialize without waking up. But it doesn't work that way. My bladder does not cooperate with my REM sleep.

Certain People:

Oh hell, all people all the time. Just let me be ALONE. I need to be ALONE!!!! Can I sleep in a tent next year please? There are too many people in Antarctica. Some of them didn't deserve to be here.

All that said, I love it here and I've been in tears practically all day. None of those minor annoyances can destroy the experience I have had, nor lessen it. If you want to know what it was really like down here, you'd have to speak with 1000 people. I only know that I fell in love, irrevocably. I rattled my bones and shook up my life. I did it. I loved it.

posted by: coldwish at 02:33 | link | comments (1) |
shuttles 2004-05

Listening to Myself

I did my last trip out to Willie Field today; cried all the way back in to town, looking at Erebus & Terra Nova & Mt Terror. Cried in grief, cried in thankfulness, cried in awe, cried in hope. Cried & laughed. Because I actually got my ass down to Antarctica the way I wanted for such a long time. In all those tears was a lot of laughter. I've never been so happy in my life, really. I think I could win the lottery and be stunned, but this, this is ineffable happiness. Glee, joy, bliss, contentment. Explosive, calm, soothing, exciting, breathless, tearful, charming magic. I've had my ass kicked, I've fallen in love, I've been permitted to see things & hear things & do things I am already yearning to do & see & hear & feel again. It has been such an adrenalin rush.

Some of it must have to do with the euphoria of the 24 hour daylight. I can't tell you what a rush it is to walk out of a building at 11pm and have it be broad daylight. Or to wake up at 3:30 in the morning and it's so bright out your eyes ache even with sunglasses on. Part of my love of going to Willie & Pegasus is getting out there into the snowy white expanse with all that light reflecting off the snow and drilling deep into my synapses until I get a rush of energy that puts tears in my eyes & bubbles in my heart.

The constant brightness has its drawbacks, but I do not see euphoria as one of them. Its worst effect is on my sleep. Raytheon has provided blue curtains that velcro down on the windows (for those of us with windows) in order to block the light. But that light at 2am is so bright through those curtains that it's like someone left a flat screen TV on in the corner of the room. I find that very disruptive to my sleep. But that's about the only drawback.

Each day I have looked up at the world I live in here and have been utterly agog that I made it here. I really did it. I'm here. I'm proud of myself and confident that I am a better person for it. I didn't just accomplish this, I dreamed it. And it came true.

The wind picked up tonight and ran right up & down my bones and rattled my conventions. Unbelievably cold & windy. I am running around picking up people who are doing the Bag Drag up to Air Services with all their luggage (carry-on & check-in) and ECW Gear to be checked in & weighed for tomorrow's flight out. Another 140 people, my roommate among them, headed out of here. We have sent so many people north this past week that the Galley is almost eerily quiet during mealtimes. It has become quite peaceful out, fewer people on the streets. More space between waves, greetings & smiles during the day.

I can see the temptation at this point for the Winterover folks to winter over. The population decreases to 200 from 1000+ almost overnight; the sunsets go on forever; they get rid of roommates and all get solo rooms; it's quieter and less invasive; they have more privacy, and a chance to get to know people better. I also hear they get better freshies because the greenhouse is such that it can get a salad on the table for 200 people a few times a week. The Summers depend on food flown in from Cheech, and that's rare enough that a lettuce leaf is the focus of a squabble and an avocado prompts detailed sexual offers from near-strangers, often too near. Freshie lust is a powerful thing to behold. I have been very lucky that I scored an avocado lately simply by smiling (ok there was a little drooling too but I hope it was out of the side of my mouth opposite the person who had the avocado) at a passenger in my van. In fact, if you check the link list to the left of the page, you can meet the woman responsible for my avocado: Sandwich Girl. I'm afraid I may have babbled. I certainly cherished the avocado lovingly in the 24 hours before I ate it.

I hear about the nacreous clouds down here in August and the Aurora Australis during the dark months, and I know there is so much more to be stunned by than what my two short months have given me.

I could have wintered. I still could. But I won't. The position available right now, that they are desperately trying to fill, is that of DA (Dining Attendent). I've seen the DAs work, and no one on this continent works harder or longer. They are here because they needed to be here as much as I did. I am lucky lucky lucky that I ended up in Shuttles. Shuttles in comparison is daily boondoggles and views of beauty. There have been some hiccoughs: Being new in the middle of a season in a department that had already bonded tightly and was already exhausted and under incredible stress WAS NOT EASY. But no matter how hard it may have been, when I walked out that door and drove out to Willie and looked up at Erebus, all my troubles were UTTERLY INSIGNIFICANT in comparison. I hope always to measure the bad stuff in my life against such a glorious measuring stick. Put me in my place, put everything in context.

My wise sister-in-law, Karen, said the most wonderful thing to me in an email response to my Just Be Here post:

"As you prepare to leave that wondrous place - remember your own words. Just be here - wherever here is. When you are in NZ - focus on how amazing that place is and not on how much you miss your daily smooch with Erebus. When you return to the U.S. - try your darndest to just be here and enjoy all the beauty and frustration here has to offer. But, don't despair if you don't get it right all the time. Monks in Asia have spent thousands of years perfecting the art of just being."

And she is so right. I need to listen to myself and be where I am when I am and find beauty in that. So I will stop mourning my departure from paradise and start looking for paradise where I am. In the details all around us every day. I know they are there, just maybe not as obvious as here, where every heartbeat carries with it a miracle, and every breath is magic. I just have to look harder.

 

posted by: coldwish at 07:17 | link | comments (1) |
shuttles 2004-05

Private Magic

I have learned some things about myself by virtue of having a roommate for the first time in my life. I don’t snore unless I’m sick & stuffed up. I talk in my sleep REGULARLY, and I sleepwalk (or sleepmove) almost as regularly. Because my roomie, Marsha’s, schedule is so different from mine she has had the opportunity to mostly be awake for my night episodes. She & I have also started noticing that my episodes take place within the first 1 ½ - 2 hours of my sleep cycle. I think that’s where my stress shows up, in my anxieties, in my sleep.

One night, when my sleeptalking had calmed down to almost nothing (or at least not enough to wake up the ever-forgiving, ever-patient Marsha) I had some kind of dream that launched me up out of my bed to stand over Marsha in her bed and say (according to Marsha): "Donna, I don’t know how to do the shift change, can you help me?" in a really anxious tone of voice. Marsha rolled over and said "Genevieve, are you asleep?" I didn’t respond but went over to the window & pulled back the velcroed on cover to peak out and at that point, when the light hit my eyes, I woke up, apologized & went back to bed saying "I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m sorry."

When Marsha has told the story all her listeners have asked her if I was holding scissors or a knife.

But Marsha has been getting back at me, inadvertently, this week. She has been sick. Very sick. She sounds & looks like a reanimated corpse. Her terrible cough has woken me up many times in the last 4-5 nights. Even with earplugs in I’ve been woken up. I don’t begrudge her at all, she’s just so sick.

She went to medical and they gave her codeine to help her sleep. This is not unusual down here. When someone complains that they don’t want to take codeine, they are told to take it for their roommate’s sake, so the roomie can sleep.

But out of this came a beautiful moment of magic.

I was woken up on Sunday night by her coughs again, and could not get back to sleep. I didn’t have to work on Monday so I decided to get up, go to the first floor & do laundry. It was 12:30am and still light out of course, but the light was glowing orange & gold all over the town, a very cold fading light. I had never seen this light down here before so I put on my windpants over my jammies, tossed on a few more layers & a jacket, grabbed my camera & went outside.

One a.m., not a soul stirring, and the town was bathed in this cold horizontal glow with long long shadows. Hardly a speck of wind, no grit being kicked up by vehicles, no one walking around, no beep beep beeping of the backing up forklifts, nothing. Peace & quiet. I was pulled in the direction of the water, headed for the source of this golden light. As soon as I reached the edge of town at the water I could see the sun sitting half-hidden by Mt Discovery, sky gold & blue above it. The clouds of the day had parted over the mountains and were blazing precious metals silver on top gold on bottom, the horizon between us shiny broken dirty ice. It was completely breath-free silent, just a quiet hum behind me of the power plant keeping everyone warm.

I listened to this silence, entranced by the colours & the shapes of the clouds, in awe and thankfulness. I couldn’t feel my pinkies and my chin was beginning to freeze. But I stood there engulfed in this solo moment of silence. Then I heard a sound coming from across the ice, a long wet blowing breathing sound. I was so startled I braced myself on the dirt and looked around, scanning the horizon out by the channel the icebreakers had left in the ice. It sounded like a whale. I peered, I scanned, I gazed hard. I could see nothing. Then it stopped. Silence again, punctuated by nothing. I walked further down the hill to the actual ice edge, where the shattered sea ice had been heaved up & down with the tides each day & had left cracks & upthrust shards over dark holes.

I didn’t hear the sound again, but was thankful to have heard it once. I walked a bit along the shore, looking at the way the ice had broken up & down, and the dirt that had blown in from town over it. Then I heard another sound, different from the previous one:  It was a soft knocking sound, tapbump, tapbump, bump bump bump. Then right in front of me I heard an explosion of breath, then another, a gasping wet sound. I jumped. It had to be a seal somewhere. I looked ahead of me, near my feet, where the dirt met the ice, and from under a shelf of broken ice I glimpsed the opening & closing nostrils of a seal, breathing hard, less than 10 feet in front of me.

It was fishing under the ice, by the shore and had had to break through the ice that had formed on the breathing hole with its nose, thus the tapbump tap tap tap before the explosion of breath. I watched that seal. It breathed hard, then relaxed. It spotted me as I watched it, then disappeared. Two minutes later, it, or another seal was back breathing in that hole.

Thank you, Marsha, for waking me.

Thank you, Antarctica.

I leave in a week.

I’ll be back someday. I have to.

posted by: coldwish at 22:26 | link | comments (1) |
shuttles 2004-05

Combat Offload

The other day out at Willie the Air National Guard were practicing some maneuvers on the runway, for the heck of it, or because the season is coming to an end and they wanted to save time to get more fuel flights to the Pole in that day. So instead of taxiing in to the apron and parking for offload, or even taxiing in to the fuel pits and doing offload/onload there whilst fueling, they chose to do a "combat offload."

What is a combat offload? I, too, sitting out there being Willie Taxi, was curious and I'll admit, excited about seeing this. So I drove the van around to the cargo line, and peaked out through the loads lined up on the side of the apron as plane #1 taxied in and around all the other planes then taxied past the Twin Otters so it could avoid hitting them with the prop wash. It dropped the cargo bay open out the back and pooped out a pallet full of cargo. That's pretty much what it looked like. The plane shitting out the load. Then moving off. Reminded me of nothing so much as a horse in full trot around the dressage ring, looking all groomed and formal, and taking a crap while trotting past the judge.

Do points get taken off for that?

If the military insists on adding a frisson of respect and excitement to this activity by terming it "combat offload" then I'll go with their vocabulary. But I still say it's a slightly rude and freakin' hilarious sight to behold.

posted by: coldwish at 06:47 | link | comments (1) |
shuttles 2004-05

Ambushed by Erebus

Four days away from Erebus and so much has changed. I drove up over Scott Base Hill the other morning and nearly fell off the cliff all hands on board, it was so beautiful. I dunno if it's the 4-day hiatus or the fact it was just an extra special welcome back for me. I'd like to think I & Erebus have a personal relationship to that extent.

The transition between land & ice has developed a...oh hell, let's call it a crevasse, because crack just ain't enough to describe the dozer-swallowing gaping chasm of a hole that stretches up & down the road. Fleet Ops is keeping busy filling it in every day, but with the sudden drop in temperatures all hell has broken loose down there. The calm water/ice pools to the side of the transition have upheaved and rolled over, exposing these rounded pale blue boulders of ice, striped with thin black lines across the top of it (once the bottom of it). I have asked other people what the heck the black stripes are and no one thinks it's dirt, because then it would be somehow embedded in the ice itself, but this is laid on top like chocolate piping on a pastry (are you shocked? dessert metaphor). The most likely explanation for this odd beauty is an unfortunate one: oil. There are oil barrels in that part of the "sea", left there from the "old days". The occasionally turn up with the ice. It is beautiful nonetheless.

The pressure ridges near there, out front of Scott Base have slumped & risen & then come crashing down again with the pressure that is being exerted. The crevasses are pretty obvious black strips across the whiteness. One thinks about the ones that are unseen under there. This is why we do not go off the flagged routes. You never know what's going on under there.

posted by: coldwish at 06:03 | link | comments |
shuttles 2004-05