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.  

A note from South America

 

I’m still in Punta Arenas. There have been a few delays with the plane. All fixed now, and we are hoping to fly to Rothera this afternoon. It has been nice to have this time to explore - I’ve only ever had one full day here before. Yesterday, I went for a run along the front, and happened upon two King penguins taking a stroll on the beach! Not a common sight in Punta - they hang out elsewhere. Other wildlife sightings include a hare, a horse, and a parakeet. That was up in the Nature Reserve. I’ve enjoyed wandering through the town as well, I love the colours of the houses here, and seeing the dandelions amongst the sun-dried grass. It’s often very windy, but the sun has some warmth, and the long hours of daylight are delightful. 

We’ve moved hotels three times in the week that I’ve been here. Punta is obviously the place to be at this time of year. The last two nights I’ve been staying at a hostel in the Croatian Quarter of the town. It’s a lovely little place, and today they are putting up Christmas decorations in the lounge. There’s a gramophone in the corner, and a sign that reads ‘Save water. Drink beer’.  We are waiting for our lift to the airport. If this weather window holds, we will be in Antarctica by the end of the day - hopefully arriving on station in time for dinner! 

The Things People Leave Behind

 

It must be a law of nature that things get left behind in hostels - particularly in hostel drying rooms. Odd socks stuffed down the back of a radiator. Walking boots that have fallen apart. Walking poles that have broken in half. And other such items which cannot be classed as lost exactly, it’s just that their owners have not managed to locate the bin. We also find ourselves retrieving a various selection of shower gel and shampoo bottles from the communal showers, and I’ll not mention the considerably less pleasant things left behind. Most of these items go unclaimed. But every now and then we get a phone call or an email, asking if such and such has been found or handed in. Returning these items to their owners is a job which falls to me. Or rather – it is a task actively selected by me. I have a real love of sending letters and parcels by post, plus I’m passing the Post Office in Eskdale Green on my bike most days.

 

What follows is a description of some of the items which I have returned to guests this year.

 

The first lost item was a Samsung Galaxy tablet with a blue case. It was found in the self-catering kitchen. It belonged to a woman who was in the middle of a walking tour of the Lake District – going from hostel to hostel across the fells. I wrapped it in bubble-wrap, and then created a nest of balled-up scrap paper within an empty Nestle ‘Big Biscuit Box’. I wrote a note explaining that I’d had to eat all 71 biscuits within to free up the box for postal use. I think she must have believed me. A week later a package arrived for me at the hostel – it contained a vast selection of M&S Swiss chocolates as a thank you present for safely returning the tablet.

 

The second item was a teddy bear, left behind after a school residential trip. We found it during the clean-up operation, along with the usual mounds of Haribo and chocolate wrappers dropped down the side of bunks. This one took a while to be claimed – sat on a shelf with other bears in the upstairs laundry cupboard. But eventually we had a phone call, and this teddy bear which their son had had from birth could be returned to him.

 

The next item was a 2012 Olympics towel. Each event from the Games was depicted within its own colourful square. The towel was left in the female dorm. This is the first time since starting work for the YHA in 2016 that I have known a left-behind towel to be claimed. It’s also the only forgotten towel which I’ve hoped wouldn’t be claimed! But that very same day, in the evening time, we received a phone call enquiring after it. And so, I duly parcelled it up in an empty carrier bag and posted it off to an address in Reading. The owner was extremely grateful for its return and explained that while it might seem like a lot of fuss for just a towel – the 2012 Olympic Games was the year and the time that her daughter was born.

 

After that it was a watch. I found it whilst vacuuming under the beds in Room 1. The rooms here are not only numbered; they are also named. They are named after places along the river Esk – from Sea to Source. Room 1 is named ‘Glannoventa’ – the Roman Fort down at Ravenglass. On this occasion, I already knew who the watch belonged to – the guests who had checked out of the room earlier that day. Upon contacting the person in question, I was informed that the watch was a gift from her sister, and that it lights up in the dark. I created a bespoke box to send it in. The boxes that our jam, honey, and marmalade breakfast portions come in have incredibly robust corners. One box on its own would have been far to big for this watch, though. So, I cut off two of the corners and slotted them together to make a much smaller box. I packaged the watch in enough bubble wrap to fill the space. I covered the exterior of the box in brown paper and wrote the address so that it was small enough to leave room for the postage sticker, but neatly and big enough to read. A few days later I received a card in the post with a note inside to cover the cost of posting the watch. The woman in question had been staying with her husband and their grandson. She wrote to say thank you, and to say how much their grandson enjoyed their stay – and that they hope it will set him off wanting to explore more. Then the card finished with this: “We all loved the hospitality we received – the lovely welcome and meal when we arrived, and the friendliness of all the staff. It’s the stuff of memories shared.”

The most recent item that I’ve posted back was just a few days ago in fact. A small men’s Berghaus down jacket in dark grey. This had been left in the drying room a couple of weeks ago. They didn’t realise that they were missing it because the weather had since become so hot. This was one of three jackets that had been left at more or less the same time – all forgotten for the same reason, I suppose.

The Subtle Art of Running in Small Circles

 

We’ve been in the Falklands for 26 days now, and we are still very much here.

 

Onward travel to Antarctica has been delayed due to the runway conditions down on station. We have no choice but to wait for the 6cm layer of consolidated ice to melt out. There’s a sense of irony in the fact that, on this occasion, it’s the ice which isn’t melting that is causing us the problems. We must remain in group/bubble quarantine, but at least we have had a change of scene – we moved out of the hotel a week ago. The ten of us (known as Dash 3) have been split across three houses in Stanley. I’m at 9 McKay Close with Dee and Poppy. The outside space/garden is bigger than the exercise yard at the hotel – we can now run a continuous 100-meter loop. We can also go outside whenever we like, there is no rota, and there is a trampoline. It is a self-catered house, so we get food ordered in and cook for ourselves. Life has the feel of being a little more normal here. Sure enough though we still get looks from the neighbours and passers-by when they see us running and walking in endless circles around the garden. The looks always seem to be somewhere between pity and amusement. They always wave though, and that cheers us up. Everyone waves here – in part because they seem to be friendly folk, and because with an island population of around 3,000 there’s a fair chance you’re going to know the person. It’s a warmth that reminds me of being out and about in Cumbria. We are hoping that the owners of the house don’t mind too much that we have created a new feature – a perimeter garden path. Even after the first 5km run, after 50 laps of the garden, we had made a noticeable dent in the mossy grass. It seems that over the past couple of years I have had to learn to perfect the subtle art of running in small circles. Some of them have been very small indeed. I have now spent 45 days in quarantine in the Falkland Islands, and then there was the 5-week journey home by sea earlier this year. That’s a lot of laps of gardens, exercise yards, and ships. It’s good head space, but it’s not good thinking space. Perhaps that’s the reason why I’m so compelled to push through the monotony of it – because it’s a time to switch our brains off amidst so much time where it’s easy to overthink. I’ll listen to music, I’ll focus on the movement, focus on each step, and count the laps. I usually change direction after every kilometre. If I chose to walk instead of run, then I’ll listen to a podcast. I downloaded a whole selection before leaving the UK. Perhaps my favourite is a podcast called ‘Never Strays Far’ (in all its different guises) by Ned Boulting and David Millar. It follows the world of professional cycling, the Grand Tours, the Classics, the Worlds, etc. You get to hear what the weather is doing in Spain, you get the latest traffic updates from Brittany, and what the hotels are like across Italy. You get to hear about Ned’s dreams, and David’s interpretation of them, and every now and then you’ll even get to find out what has been going on in the bike race. I like the tangents, the segues, I like the observations and details from a world which is currently so different from my own. All those things seem utterly fascinating to me when I’m quarantine, when I’m down on station, when I’m on a ship for days on end. It’s a reminder, and a perspective of a life beyond your own. It’s easy to get caught up in wherever you are, and it’s easy to stop looking - not just outwards but also beyond. In fact, it feels like I’ve reached a point here where it seems easier to stay rather than to go on. It’s hard to imagine life existing in any other way. We were talking about this the other day – that it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility, certainly not beyond the realms of imagination, that we might just get forgotten about here. We would carry on much the same, just waiting for updates, and it would only be months later, even years after the travel corridor had opened again, that they remember we are still here. We joked that it would be some big news story, on the same sort of scale and interest as when they discover a human who has been raised by wolves.

While I do miss having more and varied social interactions, while I do miss riding my bike or putting on my running shoes and just taking off somewhere, I wouldn’t say that I’ve been bored. I am quite happy in my own company, happy losing myself in a book, or in a drawing. We’ve also found other ways of keeping ourselves amused. Once we had completed the 14 days self-isolation quarantine at the hotel, we were then able to spend our outside time together as a group of ten. I’d brought a football down with me, which on the slanted, tussocky exercise yard made us all look utterly useless. I’d liked to have seen how Messi would have coped with it – it was worse than a cold, wet night in Stoke. I think there were very few of us, perhaps even just one of us, who would even dare to venture to describe ourselves as a footballer. Catrin, for example, while not lacking in enthusiasm, could frequently be heard saying, “I just can’t work out which leg I should use to kick it with.” It’s something of a miracle that we never lost the ball, broke a window (sorry Hannah, Sam, and Pete), or broke ourselves – although competitive crab football came pretty close. Meanwhile I was there still holding onto the wild dream that someone would walk past and scout me for the Falkland Islands’ international football team. I was fairly certain that I’d been in the country quite long enough to qualify. Hopes and dreams are interesting things, and they come in different forms. For some, hope is bad for they hope but never do, or never say, and so their lives are wished away. Others pin too much on it, they may even build their world on it, but what then when it comes crashing down, and all they are left with is disappointment. For others still, it may be entwined so closely with their breathing you couldn’t say which of the two was keeping them alive. And a hope like this, a hope so enduring, it may do as well to call it love - for what else is there in this world that could never falter? And then there’s the hope, where hope is a luxury, when nothing too much depends on it, but a great joy is found in the belief that just about anything might be possible and you go around with a smile of wonder fixed upon your face.

The Quarantine Gallery

 

The story of how the most exclusive art gallery in the Falkland Islands was created.

 

It can quite quickly feel like a soulless place. You get told the number of your hotel room, pick up your bags, walk along the corridor, and shut the door behind you. And save for two 25-minute slots outside in the tiny exercise yard, that’s it for 14 days. There would be people who you travelled down with, people you’d spent 19 hours with on the same MOD flight who you now wouldn’t see for two weeks. The outside time was definitely something to be grateful for, though. It gave a little structure to each day if nothing else. We were buddied up for that time, keeping strictly two metres apart - absolutely forbidden from licking each other. But even that social interaction was short lived – each of us left again to shrink back into our own isolated existence. While of course I can only speak with authority about my own experience – an authority which became murky at best – I think it would be generally true to say that most people had good and bad days, and on the bad days one of the prevalent feelings was that of being disconnected. I find it interesting to think about the fact that there was nothing actually stopping us from walking out of our room, of walking out of that hotel, and finding ourselves down by the sea, saying hello to every passing stranger we meet. The barriers and the walls we put up were therefore effectively all in the mind. We knew that if we broke quarantine, we would have to start the 14 days again, and if we couldn’t face that, then we would have to go home – there could be no onward travel to Antarctica. There was also the added incentive not to break the 5-day test-to-release quarantine imposed by the Falkland Islands Government – that came with a hefty fine, a prison sentence, or possibly both. In our darker moments we wondered if they would knock the days already spent in quarantine off our prison sentence. Any sense of humour we had left to muster became a little warped. It made me think about and question how I defined freedom, and in doing so I was hit by a realisation which I felt physically in my core. What an incredibly fortunate life I have lived that I have not had my freedom impinged upon enough to ever need to really define what freedom is. Of course, the word comes with vague and general ideas – some of which may have become somewhat lazy in their meaning and application. I do not believe that freedom is the same thing as doing whatever we please, or at least not without both accepting and taking responsibility for the consequences of our actions. We are also responsible for how we deal with and cope with the actions of others, and we are responsible for how we respond to external events and things. I suppose it all comes down to the choices that we make, to have the freedom to chose between one thing or another, and sometimes the choice that we make is not the one that makes us feel the most free.

 

I have noticed, over the past 18 months, that the times which have been characterised by unusual levels of isolation and disconnection have brought out a greater need to express myself creatively. It was during the first lockdown of 2020 that I really started drawing, and I would write letters to friends and family with greater frequency than before. I found the communication and connection offered by social media, while not entirely useless – was largely inadequate. But in times of uncertainty, and in times of feeling scared, we reach out for anything, and in social media we get quick and easy words. You’re desperately searching for what you want to hear – something to give a sense of meaning and to restore a sense of place. They are words which are easy to be misinterpreted though, and words which can be misleading. This invariably leaves you feeling just as empty as before - in fact, it sometimes deepens the sense of separation and despair. So, while not abandoning social media entirely, I do find that I am spending less time on it in favour of slower, more thought-out forms of communication - in search of better, and more human ways. The beauty of a handwritten letter for example, is that you have captured a moment of your life on a physical piece of paper, and that moment and that piece of paper ends up in the hands of someone else. It is not hidden behind a screen, it’s not to a world which you can never see or feel; it is a tangible thread which joins two people, and the magic of it is – you just have to pull that thread towards you. It may be as simple as that to regain a sense of our humanity, and our connection to other people.

And so, in reminding myself of this and rediscovering my conviction for it, after a few days had passed in quarantine I unpacked my pens and started drawing. I was also left a whiteboard and a pack of whiteboard pens outside my room for the purpose of writing messages for everyone in quarantine to read. This has become something of a regular fixture down in Antarctica over the past couple of years – and while it is something which on occasion can feel quite time consuming and almost a burden, I know the difference it has made to people, and therefore how important it is. It’s also something which I usually enjoy doing – both the process of doing it, and the conversations and connections it creates. Initially it was just the whiteboard which I planned to leave by the entrance/exit to the exercise yard – the one place where every individual person would get to pass by and see. Gradually though I started to put up some of my drawings as well, and the occasional thought which I had jotted down on a scrap piece of paper. I asked and encouraged other people to get involved, to add and to contribute their own material. I thought that it might help people to feel less disconnected, I hoped that it might bring a little soul to the place. And so, The Quarantine Gallery was formed – perhaps the most exclusive art gallery in the Falkland Islands. It was wonderful to see it develop over the days and weeks; there are drawings, poems, crocheted animals, and the latest addition was a ship made from tin foil (saved up from the meals which are left outside our rooms three times a day). And there’s no end point to it – it is left to grow and develop throughout the Antarctic summer season, something for every person who comes through quarantine in the Falklands to see and to be a part of. Perhaps, it’ll still be there even after we all start to head back north again, as we head home for the northern hemisphere spring.  

 

A Return to Spring

 

Day 15: Some thoughts from quarantine

 

Although we have completed our minimum 14-day self-isolation quarantine period and returned 3 negative Covid tests, we have now entered group/bubble quarantine, and this will remain in place until we reach Antarctica. There are 10 of us in this bubble – we travelled down to the Falklands on the same MOD flight.

The thoughts that appear in this post are loosely based on the content of a letter which I recently wrote to a friend. I trust that he will not mind. Sometimes, it is only afterwards that we even begin to understand.

 

It occurred to me recently, that by the time I fly into Rothera this season I will have spent close to, or even just over 40 days in the Falklands during the past two years. It is somewhat strange to have spent so long here and yet seen so little (save for the inside of this hotel room). Or at least, that’s the face value way of looking at it I suppose. The truth is – when viewed in a different light – I have seen a lot, I have seen something that no one else in the world has. I’m aware that, in taking this view, it requires tilting one’s head at such an angle that will almost certainly incur a strain to the neck. And it’s an outlook that on some days has seemed so clear, but for a good proportion of the time I simply haven’t bothered to look.

The view is slightly different from this hotel room to the next, and whoever was here before me and whoever follows after will see a different world, a slightly different time of year. I must admit, that I was fully expecting it to be the same and to feel the same as last year – I was here for 18/19 days then. I even spent Christmas Day here, in hotel room by myself. And to really add to the occasion I had succumbed to food poisoning late on Christmas Eve. Thankfully, it was only a 24-hour bout, and we were able to board the ship on Boxing Day as planned. Not that a 5-day journey which included crossing the Drake Passage did much to improve my stomach. And while I hoped that particular episode would not be repeated, I couldn’t imagine that the oh so small existence of life in quarantine could be any different one year to the next. It had not even crossed my mind as a possibility – there simply could not be the scope for it to change. I came into it this year believing that I knew exactly what to expect. But too many different things and too many different people have passed this way, and I myself have passed through many different days and different places since. It’s not the same world, not the same as I found it then, nor the same as anyone else will find it from now on. If nothing else – we’ve grown a little older, and perhaps a little wiser, too. But what is this wisdom that we speak of – surely, it’s nothing more than the realisation of all that we do not know.

There is always so much to see. From the birds that peck at crumbs in the carpark, to the dandelions which open wide and brightly in the sun. And then there are the daily habits of where people park their cars, and which of them get locked and the many that never seem to worry. Without a doubt though, my favourite thing to look at and watch is the garden across the way - the garden with a few pots of daffodils. I forget most days what time of year it is here having left the U.K. in early October as the first signs of autumn were well underway. In normal, pre-Covid years, we would pretty much be straight down to Antarctica, save perhaps for a night or two in southern Chile. This transformation was easier to make sense of; it made sense to leave in autumn and to head into colder (albeit it much colder) climes. It won’t surprise you to learn that a summer in Antarctica bears absolutely no resemblance to a summer back home. It rains less for starters. Anyway, I keep forgetting that it is spring here, and the daffodils are such a delightful reminder of that. Every year, when the spring unfurls, I say to myself and to those around me that daffodils are my favourites - such a happy looking flower. And while this is the absolute truth, I then say the same thing when the bluebells appear and turn large swathes of woodland and the low reaches of the fells a vibrant purple. My truth changes yet again when the wild poppies and oxeye daisies colour the Eskdale valley road.

The house that the garden belongs to is the house which I picked out last year as being my favourite, and that is still the case. It has walls of a delightful turquoise, and the roof is the colour of warm terracotta earth. Most days, you can usually see the couple who live in the house pottering about in their garden. The man, who has a distinguished white beard, puts on a red coat when the weather turns colder in the wind, and he looks every little bit like Santa Claus. One weekend day will stick with me more than most, though. It was a Saturday morning, and the woman picked a bunch of daffodils and took them back inside the house – to put in a vase on the kitchen table, or on a windowsill, presumably. To me, it seemed as if she was carrying the most valuable treasure in the world – and I could not take my eyes away - not even for just a moment. And although that treasure did not belong to me, to simply witness it felt like treasure enough alone. In fact, I’m thinking now that perhaps true worth is seeing it in the hands of others rather then our own. Possession can seem so incredibly cheap sometimes – the things of greatest worth are, after all, impossible to own.