The Long Journey Home

 

5 weeks at sea. 8,000 nautical miles. Antarctica to Portsmouth.

 

There was a rush to get on the ship. I’d been half ready to leave for a few days. The plans had changed and changed again, all plans hampered by the wind which had picked up and was blowing large bergs into south cove. South station is where the wharf is located, and where the ship was moored. While the ship was moored it was at the mercy of these icebergs and being unable to manoeuvre it was in fact hit by one. But if the ship cast off it would have great difficulty getting back in again. So, what had been planned for the following morning now suddenly became the evening before. We had 15 minutes to get ourselves and all our bags on board. This was not how I had envisaged leaving station having spent the last two and a half months there. I’d been asleep, having a really long afternoon nap, when my roommate came in and told me that it was time for us to leave. It was one of those tired, deep sleeps that can take hours to wake up from, and I was stumbling around trying to get my last bits of kit together – still slightly confused as to what was going on. A few minutes later we were making our way down to south station, not really much of a walk at all, but in the growing darkness and with a bitter wind blowing snow and ice into your pores it felt like quite the expedition. The lights from the ship not so much guided but blinded us, but there it was, and we were welcomed onboard to what would be our home for the next five weeks, for the slow journey home. I remember saying hurried goodbyes to the winter team of 23 who would be staying behind. I remember seeing my friend Katy trying to get enough shelter from the wind to smoke a cigarette – the tiny, bright embers adding a fleeting warmth to the world. It’s a strange place for goodbyes, maybe easier somehow because they are so clear cut for a time. As things turned out, despite the rush, we didn’t actually cast off until the following morning – but at least we had the option if required. In the end it was even slightly delayed – divers were sent down to check what if any damage had been caused to the hull from where the iceberg hit. You don’t want to be heading out to sea, into the Drake Passage least of all if the ship is anything less than sound. Thankfully, it was all ok. I was very much ready to go home even if it was going to take a long time to get there. The first few days were rough, I spent hours curled up on the toilet floor throwing my guts up, hoping for even the briefest moment of relief. We were two days delayed in getting to the Falkland Islands (our first stop to refuel). The weather in the Drake Passage was so bad, the sea state showing ten metre swells, that we took shelter behind the South Shetland Islands for a couple of nights. The sea sickness pills kicked in, think I might have even overdone them, they make you drowsy and I just seemed to be sleeping all the time after that. And in sleep on the ship I would be visited by the most vivid of dreams. I dreamt that I was hurtling around the streets of Seascale in a tractor – in a mad rush to find a dentist so that I could get my covid vaccination. Another time, I was walking around the deck and got thrown overboard as the ship flipped 90° in order to give the starboard side a clean. I was adrift in the water but out of nowhere appeared Foxfield train station, Cumbria. I was able to drag myself up onto the platform from where I radioed the captain of the ship and they turned around to pick me up. The dreams and the sleep made a pleasant change from constantly feeling sick. The first week on board, the first ten days I’d say, were pretty tough at times mentally and physically. I went through periods where I felt utterly alone, and all I could seem to do was sit in my cabin and cry. I rarely cry, and certainly not like that, so I was left to wonder what was going on. Perhaps it was simply the realisation that on this journey there would be no get out, I would have no choice but to go through whatever I was going through. It’s pretty scary to face up to things and to have no option of running away. As it turns out it was all ok and I was ok. Maybe it’s that old saying that the fear of something is worse than the thing itself. I don’t know if that was true in this case, I don’t know if that was what was going on. Maybe we just need to retreat into the shadows from time to time. It’s funny in that respect, the only place we can find to exist when we feel as if there is nowhere in the world that we could possibly be. The feeling of being alone, though – well I think that may always come and go. But, after many days and nights at sea, after so much time that you reasonably come to assume that the world must be made up entirely of ocean and sky, I thought perhaps that it might just be enough that each morning I wake up and that each night I go to sleep that it’s the same endless sky above my head and the same earth somewhere far below my feet as one elsewhere in the world whom I love. It’s not much to hold onto, but what else is there in a world where it’s hard to know what’s real anymore. The longer I spent at sea the less time meant anything to me. I once asked what day it was, and although they said it was Sunday, they could have said any day, they could have even said a made-up word and it would have all been the same to me. There was really nothing I had to think about at all, and often I didn’t. I think I would have given in entirely to just watching an endless amount of mindless TV dramas if it wasn’t for deciding to run/walk a virtual West Highland Way around the deck. This was followed up by a virtual Great Glen Way. The laps of the deck numbered over a thousand by the end of the voyage. But it was something to do. Even just the aspect of counting kept me occupied. And it gave me a sense of movement when the world around me seemed so unchanging. Being outside helped with the seasickness, too.

 

I knew though, that when it was all said and done, there would be something about the ocean that I would miss. And the thing about it which I would miss would be the thing about it which I didn’t understand – which I don’t even think I could try to explain. Perhaps it’s the sheer enormity of it – ocean for as far as you could see, and even if you could see further, it would look no different anyway. And then there was the world beneath you, the world below the surface of the water. A world that we floating above it could neither see nor know nothing about. Occasionally a creature would rise from the depths, a flying fish appearing on the crest of a wave, zooming above the sea for a seemingly impossible amount of time before disappearing once more into the endless blue. Other times we would glimpse a distant whale, and we were welcomed by a pod of dolphins into the English Chanel. These sightings from the world below only added to the mystery of that place and the mystery of the journey as a whole. In a day and age which seems increasingly high speed and instantaneous, where there are so few places on the planet which you couldn’t reach within a day, it made this voyage seem impossibly long. It was a wonderful reminder of just how vast this planet is, of how much there is to treasure and protect. It’s a sense of scale so hard to appreciate unless you’re in the middle of it. I don’t think five weeks of my life have ever been played out in such distinct and stunning isolation. I wouldn’t wish to be at sea for another day, but I wouldn’t wish to take even a single day away from it. It truly was a journey of a lifetime – for all this and for all the people I was lucky enough to share it with.

Letters from the Southern Ocean

 

Letters from the Southern Ocean

 

31^st December 2020

 

I’ve been stood at the front of the ship for a couple of hours. The lightest of snow flurries in the air. Watching the sun sink slowly lower in the sky but knowing that it will never set. It is past midnight, and with that comes the somewhat strange realisation that it’s New Year’s Eve. The journey is nearly over, we will reach Rothera later today, we will reach Antarctica.

This will be my third summer season working down at Rothera for the British Antarctic Survey. Each experience has been different from the one before, even though it would be easy to presume that this year is the notable exception. Certain aspects of it may become normalised over time, but perhaps that’s just another way of admitting that we can never get our head around it.

While the past six days have been spent in a largely seasick haze, there have been moments of the surreal and the sublime which I couldn’t fail to notice. It has been to see another world, even if that world has been entirely of the sea. I have seen albatross and petrels, and I have seen whales. This evening, this early morning I have seen them blow, I have seen the tail of a humpback whale appear above the surface of the ocean. It brought a tear to my eye. I wasn’t just seeing this for myself, I was seeing it for my friends back home, especially for Mick and Rachel. We’d spoken of whales before I left, and how excited Mick was that I might see some. The sunsets, the colours in the sky have been vast and indescribable. Photos tell not half the story, and even as we stood there in the growing cold one night, Mags, Pete, Rob, Stewie, and I - it was at times a wordless moment shared.

But this night I found myself alone, alone with my thoughts, both thoughts of the future - where I was going, and thoughts of home. To some degree, Antarctica always feels a little bit like a different world - life on station becomes our entire world. It is intense, and it is focused, right from day one. But it is important to remember that it is not a world in isolation; what happens here has an impact on a global scale. In a year where our attention has understandably been elsewhere, we must not forget that the challenges that face us all, both now and in the future, come to us on many different fronts. It is critical that scientific research in the polar regions has been able to continue.

On a personal level I found myself in a world of mixed emotions. There was the obvious excitement at returning to a place and a job that I love, and the chance to be reunited with friends and colleagues from previous seasons. But it is also a time tinged with sadness, and I suppose a degree of guilt. There’s a part of me that wishes I could be going through the same tough times with friends and family back home. I don’t want to escape their darkness; I want to walk through it with them hand in hand. You want to feel like you can be a comfort to them – but maybe I can shed a little light from here.

The Necessity of Memories

 

Letters from the Falkland Islands 

Of all the houses here, of all the houses I can see that is, I have a definite favourite. The walls, the horizontal wooden boards, are a vibrant turquoise. And the roof is that rusty orange, brown of corrugated iron. It’s the nearest house to the back of the hotel, and I can just make out the painting of a giant sunflower in the front room. From what I can see, the garden is full of interesting things; there’s a little bit of dry-stone walling, and a bare tree trunk about four feet tall. There is a large hedge to one side, with a set of ladders propped up against it. On one of the first days that I was here I saw a woman wearing a sunhat standing at the top of these ladders trimming the hedge back. For a while after I was slightly concerned – the ladders were still there, the hedge trimming not completed, and I’d seen no sign of the woman since. I tried to reassure myself that someone would have noticed, her husband at least, if she’d fallen off and was lying in a heap on the ground. Nevertheless, I was quite relieved to see them both out in the garden this weekend just gone.

The house reminds me of the time I spent in New Mexico – 3 months back in 2008. It doesn’t remind me of the houses there, but of the local turquoise jewellery, the turquoise trail that runs from Santa Fe to Albuquerque. And the roof of this Falkland Islands house is the colour of the earth in that now seemingly distant US State. This is a specific house, and that was a specific memory, but I started to realise that the triggering of memories was imbedded in where I was. After a while, I noticed that this place to which I had never been before started to feel oddly familiar. It all began to remind me of something, and it was such a strong reminder - like the nostalgia of a childhood Winter. But try as I might I could not place it, and it was then I began to wonder if it was simply the memories of a few days before. While I’m not sure for certain, this idea was nevertheless an interesting one to me. It made me think about the importance of things that have happened in the past, and about the necessity of memories. We look not only for connections to each other, but connections that run and weave like water throughout our own lives. In a strange place or situation, we above all want to feel a tie to something or someone. And I wonder if, during times of great uncertainty our memories become the things we live for. When any concept of the future has been almost entirely erased, our hopes must find a place to settle elsewhere. And the only place to go is the places we have come from. We take comfort in the way things were. Our memories are our hopes, and these memories sustain us. The thought that we can be with and hold our loved ones once more.

Hold on to your memories, for one day your memories will become your dreams.

Quiet Days of The Mind

 

Letters from the Falkland Islands

I woke at 6am. It was a calm, bright morning. At some point later on the heavens opened and a hailstorm ensued. The hail set a few car alarms off. That surprised me a little; most people don’t seem to bother locking their cars here. The weather is incredibly changeable, even more so than a Scottish summer. Given the frequent shift between sunshine and showers, I was surprised that I hadn’t seen any rainbows yet. I asked Brad about it, asked how many rainbows he had seen since he moved here. I hadn’t asked him anything for a good few days, and I also had a question about MI6. He couldn’t confirm an exact number, only that he had seen some. He wondered if it was a bad thing that he hadn’t been keeping count. There was also some confusion about the photo of a gull that I had sent him. He wondered if it was a Black-Footed Albatross, or a completely new species. I hurriedly informed him that it was a pink-footed gull of some sort, it was just that I had turned the photo into black and white.

It was one of those tired sort of mornings if I’m honest, one of those days when you can’t really focus on anything in particular. Yesterday, I suppose, was a day of many thoughts, and the kind of thoughts which your brain will only let you access for a certain period. I wonder why that is, why we don’t seem to be able to keep the important things front and centre. Why is it that we continually seem to revert to a largely unintentional, unexamined existence? Maybe it’s some kind of self-protection, a way of stopping us thinking or feeling too much. Maybe the mind just needs some quiet days. Either way, I found myself quite content to watch the comings and goings of this world, watching the cars pass, and seeing a few people wearing festive jumpers. I did have a little mystery to solve, though. Well, it was more someone else’s mystery than my own. I received a message from one of my cousins, complete with a photograph of the inside of a Christmas card. “Can you confirm whether this is your brother’s writing? We think it is, but we can’t make out the name for sure.” Now, my brothers; all three of them are really pretty smart. But for all they know, and for all they have learnt, I sometimes wonder if they were ever taught how to form letters properly. It’s quite remarkable that not one of them ended up becoming a medical doctor.

I had a nice afternoon out-the-window chat with Mags and Catrin. We tried to do a back-issue Guardian magazine quiz. We consoled ourselves by all agreeing that knowledge of certain things is vastly overrated. We talked about what we had ordered for dinner, but we are getting to the point where we can’t really remember. Mags, though, had finally got around to asking for a bath robe. It was after several days of me going on about how it had revolutionised quarantine life. But there was a bit of confusion somewhere along the line, and they ended up delivering her a bathmat. Unbelievable really, given that she had described it so wonderfully as a ‘towelling sort of jacket’.

The evening wore on, and it was soon time for my second outside slot of the day. Despite a slight mental weariness, or at least no real interest in being mentally engaged, I was feeling, physically, quite energised. I went out to the sheep pen and ran the second 5km of the day. There was sunshine, and then there were showers, and with that came the rainbows which I had wondered about earlier in the day. I smiled, and it was a smile that comes from not only seeing something of such beauty, but of feeling the wonder of it in your soul.

All the Things We Cannot See

 

Letters from the Falkland Islands 

There were three books left in this hotel room. Malvina House Hotel; Its artwork and its history, the Gideons Bible, and a Falkland Islands phone book. I’ve had a look through all of them, and while I quite enjoyed reading the adverts at the back of the phone book, and trying to figure out where Gandalf the Grey fits into the creation story, it’s the book of artwork which has held my attention the most. It’s full of beautiful watercolour paintings by Richard Cockwell, paintings of various landscapes from throughout the Falkland Islands. It’s a source of great wonder and joy to me, given that I have seen so little of this country with my own eyes. It’s also a lifeline of sorts – a connection to the world outside these four walls. I’ve taken to drawing a few of the pictures, and I’m hoping to catch a glimpse of this scenery when I board the ship on Boxing Day. It’s certainly a reminder, not only of the power of art, but of just how essential it is to us.

Right from the very beginning, amidst the often-brutal battle for survival, humankind have drawn and carved their stories into stone. Creativity is integral to us as a species; it is our connection to each other and to the world. We have language and all the power and beauty that is in words; but what of the worlds beyond that, what of the words we have never spoken, and all the things we’ve not yet seen. For centuries we have encountered the same problems, time and time again. You can look back to the words of ancient philosophers and wonder if we have learnt a single thing. Perhaps language for all its wealth is limited in some fatal way; how can we possibly think up a new vision without the words to frame those dreams. But there is art, and there is music, to show us the future and to speak those wordless things.

The book has also stirred some unexpected memories; at once both sad and beautiful. Some time ago now, a friend of mine produced a book of watercolours and other artworks. That same friend took her own life a few years later. As time moves on the things that remind you of them, the threads of life which connected you, can start to dwindle and fade. Life gets so busy, and I wonder if we should make more time to spend with our memories, make more time to tell the stories of those who are missing. Especially now, in a year where separation and disconnection are found the world over. Art was my connection to this friend – it was her book which brought us together, and it’s what I would love to still share with her now. There are many things we might wish had turned out differently, and there will be many more things in the years to come. But we will never know when the time has come around, and so, as they say, love the ones you’re with.

The In-Between Places of the World

 

Letters from the Falkland Islands

I didn’t sleep well last night. It was probably the wind and rain, or something like that. There doesn’t have to be a reason for it, I suppose. As I didn’t have much else to do, I ended up taking a long morning nap. I dreamt vividly; I dreamt of home, of the river Esk, and of a series of wonderfully rare post boxes. These post boxes were always found in pairs, and usually located in the stonework of bridges. One was no longer operational, and you could see why – there was another even older post box awkwardly stored inside. Another of the boxes, which I delighted in photographing, had a heart-shaped collection plate just to the left of centre. I was with my mum, and we were supposed to be going somewhere. But as usual, it seemed that I had become distracted by water and post boxes. It’s funny how dreams can be so incredibly true to life.

I woke fuzzy headed but was glad of what I had seen beyond closed eyes. I think I’ve done pretty well to get to day eight before resorting to writing about my dreams. It’s also the first day where I’ve started to feel the effects of quarantine. I wouldn’t describe it as boredom, but perhaps a slight dulling of the mind. There’s definitely an element of feeling like we are in limbo – it’s not where we’ve come from and it’s not where we are going. It’s hard to see it sometimes as anything other than one of the in-between places of the world. It’s not really that, though. After all, there’s not a single second excluded from this life. It’s just how we come to feel about it, from time to time. Thankfully, there is a surprising amount of structure to each day here. It mainly revolves around mealtimes, and the twice daily opportunity to go outside. I’m leaning heavily on that structure, and on making myself do certain things because I know it might help. I didn’t feel like writing today, but here we are anyway. And there are other elements to look forward to; a good friend is sending me a photo advent calendar from home each day. The photos are usually of their dog, Moss. But occasionally there’s a real unexpected gem thrown in, as well. A few days ago, she sent me a photo of the boiler at the hostel where they work. It still makes me smile. I’m fully expecting to receive a selfie on Christmas Day; this friend has quite reasonably come to conclude that the only explanation for her greatness is that she is, in fact, God’s only child and the Second Coming. I’ve also got a bunch of cards and letters that I have brought with me – some with instructions to open at certain times. I’ve put them up around the hotel room, including a miniature Christmas tree from Jen. All these things, all the messages from home, make such a massive difference. For what is this, what is this life, if it is not shared?  

 

‘It’s hard to imagine the world you left behind carrying on; it’s strange to suddenly not feel a part of it. But I needed to imagine it, and what’s more I needed it to still feel real to me. I wanted to absorb the new world that I was living in, but not to become utterly absorbed by it. It wouldn’t do to lose yourself somewhere so transient.’

Crop Circles, & A Bit More About Cats

 

Letters from the Falkland Islands 

Today marks a week of quarantine completed. All that really meant was that it was the day 7 covid swab test. It was someone different from the hospital this time, and there was very little preamble about it all. How are you keeping, and then a giant cotton bud gets shoved up into your brain? I knew that it wasn’t going to be good; moments before I’d heard Mags exclaim, ‘oh fuck me’, from the room next door. We hung out of the windows for the next thirty minutes all agreeing how brutal it was. Catrin was adamant that she suddenly felt a lot less intelligent, and that it was nothing to do with the time spent in this slightly suspended existence. We caught up with each other’s news, which was all pretty interesting today. Mags hadn’t been given any jam for her breakfast toast, but thankfully she had saved one from a previous day when the little jars were in surplus. Catrin had repeatedly been left without cutlery, but we didn’t ask too much about how she coped. I didn’t have any stories of loss to share, so I just showed them how I had managed to spill gravy on the hotel bath robe. I feel like I’m going to have to leave a note at the end of my stay explaining what happened there.

After a time, a well-dressed man wandered into the back carpark. We all waved and smiled. He said it must be nice to talk to someone different for a while, and then promptly walked off. To his credit though he returned about five minutes later to honour his statement. He was jolly nice; we talked about the weather and quarantine things. He even said that if he wasn’t too busy on Christmas Day that he might come back and throw us some sweets or something. I’m really hoping that he is not the Falkland Islands’ Santa Claus. After he left, I remembered that I hadn’t told the others about the older man with the distinguished beard who I’d been chatting to the last few days. Yesterday evening when I was out in the sheep pen, he suggested that instead of running around in the same old circle I should think about mixing it up and creating some crop circles. It certainly seemed like the best idea I’d heard in days. Better even than my idea to acquire a quarantine cat, believe it or not. Catrin suggested a satanic star of sorts, while Mags went for either a ‘H’ to create a helicopter landing point, or SOS as a cry for help. Either of those might be a touch irresponsible, but we settled on SOS because at least it reads as an apology as well. The next eleven or twelve days might be oddly productive. Oddly, being the key word there. My attempts to re-domesticate the missing cat requires a little more work and patience, though. I saved a scrap of bacon from breakfast and put it on a saucer when I went out for my morning exercise. I didn’t see a cat the whole time I was out, and when I sat down quietly on the grass after my run, I only had a few moments to wait before watching a regular sort of gull swoop down and eat the lot. But that is what hope and tomorrows are for, are they not?