Redhead Amok in Antarctica
La Luna La Bella Luna
The difference outside between when we have no moon and the stars blanket the black skies above us like phosphorescence in the ocean, and when the moon is up and full white in the sky is significant. Both are beautiful and peaceful, regardless of the temperatures. The light of the moon fades the stars and dims the auroras, but what it sheds on us, this tiny station of humans struggling to survive the harsh winter in the centre of the polar plateau, is miraculous. There is so much light that it reveals details of the snowscape I cross, the sharp edges of sastrugi, the rounded scales of snowdunes and textures scoured into the hard and soft snow beneath my boots. There are shadows cast before me long and detailed, advancing across the silver blue of the snow in the shape of me like company I have not seen in a long time. I navigate exclusively sans headlamp, my ability to perceive details and objects and direction much enhanced. My eyes catch peripherally on the tiny shadows of the rough landscape, imagining the dark patches are strange runaway human debris, or some small crouched animal, or mysterious holes in the snow.
It is bright out with the moon full and white lit, the sky clear and the winds calm. I have not seen the sun, let alone twilight, in so long that my imagination fails to recall this landscape in it, it has been forever in my memory and thoughts this darkened place of peace and fewer people and less industrial activity and noise. I cannot imagine the light of the sun, the heat of it, I cannot bear to think how bright and invasive it will be, forcing the return of tinted goggles, and more people. I have existed for months now seeing only between the slit of fabric of my hat pulled down low and my gaiter pulled up high, alone outside in the dark.
Some days the wind picks up, like today. We are about 30 knots of wind at its peak, and this windy day has picked up snow and ice crystals and blown them around us like a ferociously shaken snowglobe. I walked outside between the LO (LOgistic Facility/Arch) and the Dome (the old station, now empty), in the valley there, or pocket in the snow, and the wind struck like fierce sharp explosions of ice, striking my eyes dartlike and painful, but from no one direction, just a swirl of white. I walked out the LO door and judged the 10 metre distance between structures and walked until I found myself close to climbing the dome. I navigated along the edge to the door, then upon opening the giant barn door into the dome, got blown hanging on the door inward with the wind. I rode the door to its inner limit, placed my boots back on the snow and leaned my entire weight into it to close it against the wind and snow blowing in, until I could latch it.
Inside the Dome for Food Pull with Erin, I found artificial light and a reprieve from the wind as I helped hunt down the food items we'd need in the station for the next few weeks. But soon we were done, the motley crew of volunteers, and I had to venture outside to check my waste line at DZ: Which triwalls were full, which were getting full, which ones had covers still on in the brisk winds that funneled beneath the elevated station and blew out the backside where my triwalls sat, getting deeper and deeper in the drifted snow every day.
Visibility was amusing. The moon is bright and light in the sky, but the snow blowing at ground level, up to about 4 metres, softens everything to a glowing grey blue silver mist. Distant lights on buildings, by which I navigate and orient myself in the dark, appear hazy and indistinct. I could not make out my feet with any ease, let alone the footing. In front of my triwalls grow constant drifts and valleys and cliffs of snow and I fell frequently to my knees, unable to judge how high to lift my boots to climb. A few times I stepped off one of these 2 foot edges and landed with a jarring right up my leg, through my knee and up my spine to my head to make my teeth clack. If I was facing into the wind rushing from under the narrow space under the station I was blinded instantaneously by needles of ice hitting my eyeballs, if I pulled my hood down to protect my face I knew not where I was going except into the wind.
Yet when I stopped my pathetic struggle of trying to make blind headway, and I looked up, there was the sky, and the moon grinning benevolently down on my efforts. Clear and easy hung the moon in the dark sky.
I love this place more than anything I have ever known. It frequently shaves off layers of my emotional defense system and peels my perceptions of myself and my place in the world back to naked and vulnerable. At times it is unbearable to be so forcibly opened up like that, to respond so viscerally to this environment. I am frequently splayed out on the snow breathing hard in my efforts to contain the shrieking joy and bubbles of light that threaten to explode from me in tears and shouts of astonishment to be such a lucky person.
I am no adventurer. I'm just a small middle-aged woman counting the stars and counting them as blessings. I realize my luck to be here. I recognize the often hard journey it took to get here, and I pay fealty to the many gears that have turned to land me on my back under the polar moon light at the South Pole, smile on my face under my frozen gaiter, tears in my eyes freezing into balls of ice on my eyelashes that go plink plink as I blink upwards into the night sky in the dead of winter.
posted by: coldwish at 06/12/09 15:29 |
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south pole waste winter 2009
