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.