Everyday Things at the Bottom of the World: Part 2

 

A Co-Pilot to Fossil Bluff

There is an excellent view from the Rothera kitchen window of the north end of the runway – a narrow strip of crushed rock extending out into the sea. And it never gets old, pausing from the washing-up to watch a BAS Twin Otter coming into land or taking off; a brilliant pop of red against the blue, white, and grey of the sky and of the land. Every now and then we get the chance to experience this from a different point of view – we get to sit in the co-pilot seat of a plane on a flight out to Fossil Bluff, Sky Blu, or even the deep field. This requires no formal training – the Twin Otters can operate here on a single-pilot licence, but a second person is required due to the nature of where the planes are operating. If you are at a remote depot two people are required to refuel the plane, and help is always required with digging, and you may also be asked to take the controls for a short period of time while the pilot fills in some paperwork or gets their flask out to pour a mug of tea. Some people take to this part more easily than others – on my first ever co-pilot, Andy V explained that it was a bit like playing a computer game, which was absolutely no use to me at all! While I do enjoy the sheer madness of it all – to be at the controls of a plane above Antarctica – there has never been that moment for me where you realise that want to change your career entirely and train to become a pilot. But that does not take away from the magic of it all one little bit, and I will treasure the memories of these flights for long after I stop coming South.

I think that it is often the intensity of the experiences down here which means that the people you share them with creates a bond which time and distance do little to diminish the memory of. And the most significant of all are not moments of individual success but a collective effort, team work, and the wonderful and enduring warmth of the friendships formed in this most unhospitable of lands. This place is transitory in nature – people do not stay for ever, but there are those we meet with whom the bond of friendship will endure even when our lives go their separate ways. One such person for me is Dutch – A BAS Twin Otter pilot since 2019, and down here this season for the last time. I spent numerous days with Dutch quarantining in the same hotel in the Falkland Islands in 2020. We were on the same ‘outside time’ schedule for a while, so we often kicked a football between us across the small patch of grass that became known as the sheep pen. Dutch also witnessed my attempts to obtain a quarantine cat – I would save a bit of bacon from breakfast and put it out on a dish, but it only ever succeeded in luring the Turkey Vultures in. He also took a photo for me of the main post box in Stanley with his long lens camera. I could only just make it out with the naked eye from the far corner of the sheep pen. Even if he thought my love of post boxes and post was a little odd, he never made me feel odd or small because of it. He is the kind of person who builds you up. In the 2019-20 season he was the winning seeker in the annual Rothera Quidditch match (which I had started organising the year before). He has delivered many letters out into the field on behalf of Antarctic Postal Logistics – but we only seem to remember the one that he forgot! In 2020 he asked if he could put my drawing of Jenny Island on the back of the Air Unit T-Shirt, and thus begun a three-year collaboration completing the series with Sky Blu and Fossil Bluff. Neither of us made any profit from this project, but £5 from the sale of each T-Shirt went to a charity of my choosing. This season we raised over £1000 for Mind. Dutch, in putting my artwork on a T-Shirt gave me the belief to get my drawings made into art print cards. Until this season though I had never flown with Dutch – and in a place where logistics so often have to trump sentimentality, sentiment prevailed (or the logistics aligned) and on a glorious Sunday in November I went flying with my friend. Station life can seem all encompassing at times, and it’s incredible how within seconds of leaving the ground it suddenly seems so small, and so far behind. We flew south over a glittering Marguerite Bay – that bright Antarctic sun lighting up everything it touched with diamonds. We chatted, and we marvelled at the snowy peaks that lined the King George VI Sound as we headed to Fossil Bluff (an advanced Field Logistics and refuelling station to support deep field science). The purpose of the flight that day was to re-supply Fossil Bluff with fuel. We had about 30 minutes on the deck – time to offload the cargo, and to have a bit of a catch up with Rosemary and JP who were manning Fossil Bluff that week. It was our lucky day – Rosemary had been baking some cinnamon buns, and she gave us a couple to eat on the flight back to Rothera. We chatted about this and that whilst taking in the view. I always try to savour those moments – stood with three friends looking out across the Sound with absolutely no other sign of life. No trees, no wildlife, no construction vehicles – just mountains, ice, and snow to capture your gaze. It always seems like the most improbable thing in the world that we should be there, and yet there we were. And despite the improbability of it we had no words for it and so our words were just the same as we always use – how has the weather been, what’s happening on station, are you cooking anything good for dinner tonight? Time and time again in Antarctica I have been struck by the feeling that it is a place beyond words, and that silence is more than simply the absence of noise, and that when that silence comes our ears cannot process it, but our souls can.

Part of me wished that I could have stood there for longer and listened for longer - both to the chat and to the silence. But I couldn’t tell you how long exactly would have felt like enough. Maybe there is not enough time in the universe for that. We said our goodbyes to Rosemary and JP and took to the Antarctic skies once more. It was about an hour and forty-minute flight back to Rothera, and we arrived in time for dinner. Everything on station was carrying on just the same – on the surface it was as if we had never been away. But for me, something had changed – I don’t think such experiences can fail to change you. It was a breathtaking reminder of how incredible this place is and what a privilege it is to be here. But even more than that – it was a chance to treasure and to appreciate a friendship, and by doing so to treasure and to appreciate the wonder of all friendship in a life that would be worth very little without it.

Everyday Things at the Bottom of the World: Part One

 

The Nightshift Week

In the days leading up to my second nightshift week of the season I came down with the bug that had been doing the rounds of station. Whether it be a cold, the flu, or Covid, something like that spreads like wildfire here. It was unavoidable, and even to be expected in these post-quarantine years. On one of the days, my voice took on a deep, gravelly quality which someone told me sounded sexy. I decided that it would be a shame not to test out my new found powers, and so I set about trying to chat up the Chilean Airforce who had arrived in a couple of Twin Otters that day*. Even with my limited Spanish, ‘yo no tengo mascotas’, and, ‘yo tengo muchos boligrafos’, I thought it was worth a shot. Unfortunately, it all seems to have backfired somewhat. We were hoping that they would be staying just the one night (simply because we need the bedspace), but it’s a week later and they are still here.

Perhaps as some sort of divine retribution, the following day I lost my voice. Which wasn’t too much of a problem as I would shortly be heading onto the nightshift where the need to talk to anyone would be vastly reduced. However, there was the problem of what to do in the event of an emergency. A large part of the nightshift job involves performing three complete checks of vital station infrastructure. This includes checking all the boilers, the Reverse Osmosis plant, and the generators which keep the station operational. If any problems are detected with these, it is then my job to wake up the relevant person or people. So, in the event of my voice not being loud enough to do this, I decided that the best option would be to carry an emergency tin whistle around with me, and then I could play a dramatic tune in their ear to stir them. My musical repertoire is not particularly vast, but I can just about conjure up Hot Cross Buns and Concerning Hobbits. The tin whistle fit just nicely inside the chest pocket of my high-viz jacket, while other pockets were given over to the usual supply of post-it notes and whiteboard markers. These items are for me as essential as making sure you’ve got your gloves on to go outside. Most buildings and offices on station have a whiteboard, and you never know when you’re going to need to leave a post-it note for someone. These messages can range from, “Hello Logan and Scott, one of the boilers in NBH has locked out. Everything else is fine. Thanks for keeping the water flowing. Have a wonderful day, with love from, K x” to “Dear Aurelia, truth be told: I just can’t stop thinking about Alan Rickman’s voice box, and how much better my life would be if I could sound like Hans Gruber every once in a while. That aside, not much to report. Have a wonderful Monday. Take care, with love from, K x”. Sometimes there is a backstory and some context to these messages, but sometimes there is not. It has become a nightshift ritual of sorts to leave messages all around station, and none more so than in the Operations Tower. I’ve left them a post-it note message every night on every night shift week I’ve ever done. That’s five and a half seasons worth of post-it notes, and they’ve kept every single one. There’s a lever arch file to the left of the map board which has ‘K Archives’ written on the spine. I’ve never been quite brave enough to look back through them though – it would be like delving straight back into my brain from another time, and nightshifts are often the strangest of times!

Alongside the checks of station, and leaving messages around the place, there are also a number of cleaning jobs that need to be done on the nightshift – things that can only realistically be achieved when the busyness of the days falls quiet. Even then though, unexpected things still tend to happen. And last Saturday night was no different. I thought everyone had left the building and gone to bed, it was now long passed 1am. I set about cleaning the boot room and the entrance foyer. I picked up all the indoor shoes, mostly a colourful variety of Crocs. Some mysterious soul had been adorning the Crocs with those little jibbitz that sit neatly in the holes. I wondered if it was Addie again. Last season everyone with a pair of Crocs found that they had a Minion attached to them. No one knew who was doing it until Addie either fessed up or was caught in the act. I’m not exactly sure how it went down. Apparently, her mum had wanted to order one for her, but didn’t realise that ‘Quantity 1’ actually meant one pack of seventy odd. This season it was Mario Kart characters and various different Pokémon. I got Charmander and was pretty happy with that. I vacuumed the boot room floor and into the foyer – the world gets incredibly dusty here at this time of year. Most of the snow around station has melted away, so folk are walking about on gravelly rock which has a mind of its own and gets everywhere especially in the dry, dry Antarctic wind. Then it was onto the mopping – we have a small quantity of Zoflora on station, a disinfectant that comes in Winter Spice and Clementine and something-or-other. It’s a delightful fragrance, and for a while it even makes a boot room of a hundred shoes smell quite nice. But if you don’t do this in the middle of the night, the sense of having cleaned somewhere would not even last 5 minutes. So, imagine my disappointment when the previously mentioned Chilean Airforce, along with Jose and Tania, appeared from upstairs and walked out onto the freshly mopped foyer floor. Naturally, I attacked them with my mop. A string of apologies came from Jose and Tania, while the Chileans had retreated to one of the mats and were huddled there insisting that they would wait until the floor had dried. Let’s not call it a diplomatic incident, lets call it international collaboration and an advancement of their military training. The following night, amidst much laughter and broken Spanish and broken English, they asked if they could help in anyway, so I put them to work clearing away the remnants of the late-evening dishes. I’m not sure that a day ever goes by down here that hasn’t been some strange mix of the surreal and the mundane.  

 

 

 

 

*This is not the entirety of the Chilean Airforce. Nor were they in Antarctica for military reasons – their Twin Otters are used to support and enable the Chilean Polar Science operations.

Early Season Storms & The Calmness to Be Found Within

 

I’ve been back on station for just over a month. And I’m once again amazed at the apparent contradiction of how fast the time goes, but also how long some things seem to last. In those first few days there was a feeling of having never been away – the summer in Eskdale and cycling round Ireland a strangely distant memory now. But despite the familiarity of this place and the all-encompassing nature of station life, I perceived a newness to it all – an awesomeness to the landscape that had a greater depth than the wonder that came at seeing it all for the very first time. The grandeur of the mountains, the icebergs, the ocean, and our small, tiny base amongst it all. I could life a thousand different lifetimes and never end up here again. The improbability of it all makes me smile and shake my head – these expressions are the only way of adequately explaining it, even to myself.

The day after arriving I went for a walk around Rothera Point – there was a quiet and a sense of peace that was more than simply the absence of sound. The Antarctic Terns were frantic in their calling, and in contrast, around the corner a Giant Petrel swooped silently by. The wind had dropped, and the sun shone, and I found that the walk grounded and settled my thoughts somewhat. It made me conscious of wanting to tread gently and think calmly in those first few days – as perhaps I always should. But it is easy to quickly lose the intention of that. Life on station gets very busy very fast, tiredness can creep in within days, and finding that little bit of space can be tough. I remember waking up one morning in that first week, and sleep had settled so heavily in my eyes I wondered if they might be sealed shut. A lot of that early season tiredness though comes from adapting and re-adapting to life on station and getting used to sharing that space with so many different people. I can only begin to imagine what it must be like for the Winter Team who had the place to themselves for over 6 months, and all of a sudden, the summer season begins, and people sit in their seat in the dining room or take their peg in the boot room. It’s easy to dismiss these things from afar as being insignificant – and of course in almost every way they are – but life down here is not always straightforward, and even the most incredible scenery in the world cannot simply make everything ok.

 

But it’s not just the social dynamics which present a challenge, the outside world and the weather have a huge impact on daily life here. It was late October when I arrived on station, and there was still a significant chill to the air, and some of the buildings were almost entirely buried in snow. Apart from the odd, nice day, one storm followed another, and before too long we were all pronouncing that this had been the worst few weeks of early summer weather that we had ever known. Folk were starting to stack up in Punta waiting for things to calm down enough to fly, while those of us who had made it down already were battling 60 knot winds and waist deep drifts of snow just to go and get a cup of tea. For a short while there is an excitement and a wild beauty to all of this, but it does get demoralising fairly quickly. Especially on my week of nightshifts where I was digging my way in and out of buildings at 3 in the morning to check that the boilers etc. were working, when all you really wanted to be doing was sleeping in a nice warm bed. But, after what seemed like a small eternity the winds settled, and the weather calmed. I remember waking up on the first of these calm mornings and thinking that it was the best day of weather that had ever existed anywhere in the world. In fact, the days that followed were so calm and still, with the mountains and icebergs reflected perfectly in the sea that I had this overwhelming urge to dip the tip of my finger in the water just to see if the tiniest of ripples would cause the whole image to shatter.  

 

Although we are surrounded by this amazing scenery, much closer to us than those snowy peaks is the unmistakable reality that we are actually living on a construction site. This has been part and parcel of life here since my first season in 2018. Back then work began to build a new wharf to accommodate the Polar Research Ship the Sir David Attenborough, and once that was finished the construction of the Discovery Building began. This is still very much an ongoing process, and new projects are beginning this year as well. From 7am until 7pm the heavy vehicles are on the move, they pass just metres from your bedroom window, and there are few places you can go to escape their noise. It’s possible that the bleep from a reversing dump truck has scarred my eardrums for life – and I’m sure I’m not the only person who has told one of these machines to kindly shut the *u*k up. It’s not at all what you’d imagine life in Antarctica to be – and of course it’s not all of what life is here, but it’s a large part of it and fundamental to the day-to-day experience of living at Rothera at the moment. It’s not something you’ll see a lot of photos of, not because we’re trying to hide it, but why would you take a photo of a big yellow crane when you could take a photo of the sun setting over a bay full of icebergs? Although, I suppose that there are some people in the world who really like cranes (get in touch and I’ll post some photos of cranes in Antarctica). There are times when I resent all the construction, and moments when I wonder whether it is a compromise too far for me, but I usually settle on a mindset of acceptance and then seek and treasure those fragments of utter calm when they come. And they always do. And I have never known a calm like it – when everything is stripped back, and you believe it might even be possible to hear the universe itself breathing.

The Journey South

 

I find myself pondering the passing of another U.K. summer - as the leaves begin to turn and my mind turns with them to thoughts of going away. I’ll once more be swapping the onset of autumn for the early days of summer in Antarctica. It’s a slightly strange time – that last week or so before deployment. I am looking forward to the season ahead but there is also a reluctance to leave behind my life in Eskdale, and a desire to hold onto all those things that cannot possibly be held on to. But as hard as it is to say goodbye for another year, I know deep down that it is the going away that makes me love those special places and those special people all the more. The nature of all things is to change, and maybe it is that impermanence which gives them great beauty and gives us great joy.

 

I usually spend the immediate few days before departure at my mum’s, and this year was no different. I treasure that time so much – it’s relaxing, and full of laughter and much tea drinking. I was also able to visit my sister and her kids (who were a good deal more hyper by the time I left, and all their footballs had been lost to next door’s garden). My younger brother came up to stay for a few days, and it was so lovely to see him as well. He was also able to drop me off at Heathrow for my flight which I was extremely grateful for – both for the company and for practical reasons as well. It’s a considerable faff taking two big kit bags and hand luggage on trains and then the underground, and last year when I got a hire car it took me a full 10 minutes to work out how to turn the engine on. My 09-plate van does not even have electric windows, and all this new car technology utterly baffles me!

 

In order to get to Rothera we fly commercially to Punta Arenas in the south of Chile via first Sao Paulo and then Santiago. From Punta we then take the BAS owned Dash-7 plane across the Drake Passage and down to station. Even if everything goes smoothly it’s a long old journey, and right from the very start of this trip things were not quite going to plan! We boarded the plane at Heathrow on time, and started to taxi to the runway but promptly returned to the gate as it was announced that there was an issue with the left engine. This problem was eventually resolved, and two hours later we were underway and airborne. We had however given up all hope of making our connecting flight in Sao Paulo – but that was something to concern ourselves with in 12 hours’ time. I had watched most of the movie Chevalier while the plane was being fixed and had watched the rest of it and fallen asleep before the evening meal was served. The redeeming factor of needing to take travel sickness pills is that they make you slightly drowsy. Even so, the sleep was only as good as plane sleep can be, and I woke up to the realisation that I had missed one of the exciting moments that break up the monotony of a long-haul flight! Quite miraculously, we landed in Sao Paulo to discover that they had held our onward flight to Santiago, so the 12 of us ran across Sao Paulo airport and tried to look apologetic rather than delighted when we boarded the plane. But it turns out we needn’t have either worried or have rushed. This plane also had an issue with the left engine, and we sat motionless for two hours before everyone had to disembark. We were then told to return to the gate a few hours later, only to be told that the plane wasn’t flying anywhere. So, we went through Brazilian passport control and customs where we were issued with a 10-day Brazilian visa, collected our bags, and waited in a queue for nearly 5 hours to try and rearrange our flights. We passed a crossword book around, we took it in turns to go outside and step foot on Brazilian soil, we played some make-shift football with a crushed up plastic water bottle, and we drank cold, cold beer with no thought as to what time of day it was. We were fully expecting to spend a night in Sao Paulo, but they ended up putting an extra flight on that would get us into Santiago at about 11pm, and then boarding the onward flight to Punta at 3.30am. The tiredness was starting to creep in, but I think we were all largely managing to remain accepting of the situation rather than being frustrated by it. And the upside of the whole thing – for me at least – was getting a Brazilian stamp in my passport, and bumping into the Brazilian baseball team who were also trying to get to Santiago (for the PanAm Games). Not that I’m remotely a baseball fan, but it added a small element of excitement and I found myself wishing them well and determined to check on their progress (they were surprise finalists and lost to the equally surprising finalists, Colombia). We arrived in Punta at 9am and checked into the hotel in time for breakfast. I had a shower, and then lay down on my hotel room double bed for several hours – not really sleeping, but reading, dosing, and above all delighting in the fact that I was neither on a plane nor at an airport. We were staying at a hotel in the centre of town, and I had a nice room on the fourth floor overlooking a tree-lined square. I could see a tall church spire with its red roof and hear its bells. I could also see the hills beyond which still had patches of snow on them that the spring has not yet thawed. That evening I wandered down to the front with Jacob to play some chess on the chess boards painted onto concrete tables. I had brought a travel chess set with me, and the pieces looked tiny on the enormous squares and moving a pawn to e4 has never seemed so bold. It was a beautiful, still night with the sky tinged a gentle pink. It felt good to be back in Punta, and to know that we had at least another full day there before the weather looked good enough to get into Rothera. In the end it was the best part of a week, arriving on the Monday morning and departing on the Saturday. Within that time, we had to move hotels once, to the Patagonia B&B. We were told by someone who had stayed there previously that the bathrooms are very nice, but if you’ve got a room on the ground floor keep your window closed if you don’t like cats.  I was quite glad of a few days to rest and recover after the journey down, and to be able to appreciate the things which would soon disappear from my life for the next four months. Simple things like wandering aimlessly around the streets of a town, and probably the biggest thing outside of family and friends that I miss when in Antarctica – green and trees. A few of us went up to the Magallanes National Reserve one day – a twenty-minute taxi ride to the park entrance. Some of the trails were closed – presumably because of snow, but there was still plenty of walking to enjoy. I absolutely loved being amongst the trees, and hearing the wind move through the branches, and feeling the chill of it above the treeline. I was conscious of wanting to savour those moments; the sounds, the smells, and the sense of freedom that comes from being in a land not bound by ocean, ice, and snow. But of that icy land – there was so much I was looking forward to, the stunning snowcapped peaks, the wildlife, the warmth of my friends, and the sense of community on base. In fact, I found myself quietly looking forward to the season more than ever before, and as the Dash-7 came into Rothera I felt a few tears welling up at the wonder of it all. It felt so very good to be back.