I have seen other Antarctic blogs showing photographs of people seated
in jump seats over the cargo netting as they endure flights on C-130’s
to or from the ice, but they did not prepare me for this. We are packed
in so close that there is room for our butts but not our elbows. There
are four rows of seats running fore and aft, two pairs facing each other,
and my knees are almost in contact with the person facing me. Our boots
are definitely jammed toe to toe and there is no room for anyone to take
a step. And the sound is unbelievable. They issued ear plugs, but that’s
not enough. I brought my own sound-deadening earphones, and that’s not
enough. This crate roars, it squeaks, it rattles, it reverberates so loudly
that no one even tries to converse. The vibrations put a buzz through
my feet and bottom that is notably uncomfortable.
Add to this the fact that RNZAF personnel need to get by to check things
like snarls of hydraulic lines on regular rotations and, because there
is no place to step, they climb over us holding on to overhead bits and
jamming their feet wherever they can, usually onto the edges of the seat
racks in between my knees and the person’s next to me.
I look around at the other passengers. Most have their eyes shut, or
have put a shirt over their heads. Did I mention that it is boiling hot
in here, and that we are all by requirement dressed in ECW’s? The heating
in this aircraft is either all the way off—the Polar Pucker setting—or
all the way on—call it the Sahara Blast. Each time I give up and start
to peel the heat goes off again within two or three minutes. I am their
best thermostat.
I stare longingly at the flight deck, where a RNZAF man is warming goodies
in a microwave oven. I plan to make a bid for a few minutes on the deck,
if only to stand up for a while, but I will wait until there’s something
to see. There is one small porthole over the head of the woman seated
across from me and there is nothing out there but whiteness.
I try not to look aft toward the luggage bay and the latrine. The former
is a huge wooden crib stacked full of our duffels, eight feet high and
almost as wide as the airplane. On top of the load are several RNZAFers,
stretched out, all comfy looking. The latrine is downright scary: it is
about as complicated as a five-gallon bucket bolted to the wall of the
aircraft, and if I want privacy when the time comes I get to wrap a plastic
curtain around myself and hold on tight. The more experienced persons
around me knew to dehydrate themselves before flight by quitting drinking
anything but whisky and coffee about 24 hours before takeoff. There are
notably few people heading toward that choice little exercise in humility.
This is the fabled C-130 on which I so dearly wanted to ride. In fact
I wanted to fly on an LC-130, the skier. New Zealand’s craft lack the
Daisy Duck ski-feet. Were I flying with our guys, I’d be on the flight
deck by now, swapping lies with my pals up there, but the Kiwis kept to
themselves in MacTown, so I did not get a chance to befriend them.
I close my eyes and contemplate my last week on the ice…dreaming…
remembering why I am doing this….
That week was filled with adventures of various sizes which now sit as
disordered images in my mind: Serious clouds eating the Royal Society
Range as a 50-knot storm meted out its majesty from the south. Riding
out to my final field deployment in a helicopter so crammed with cargo
that I could only see the emergency exit through a slit between two duffels.
Final dinners and breakfasts with some of the friends who had come to
fill my heart. Not being able to find others to say goodbye.
And the night the smoke alarm in my room began to emit an intermittent
beep. Unable to get the thing to shut up, I dialed 2555, the number of
first and last resort, which is among other things the McMurdo Station
Fire Department.
“Hold a moment.” I heard her speaking to someone else.
“Should I call back?” I inquired.
Thirty seconds later I opened my door to the sounds of heavy boots and
the squawk of two-way radios to find two men in turnouts carrying axes
and talking to their shoulder mikes. Doors opened up and down the hallway.
I grinned sheepishly. I tried to whisk both of the boys in Nomex into
my room, but one insisted on standing in the doorway while the other entered,
some sort of regulation. His radio ruckus continued.
One firefighter poked at the smoke alarm. It chose this interval to
be silent. The firemen radioed for an electrician.
Also a man of action, the electrician swept into the room and climbed
onto a crate underneath the errant alarm. “It’s not the battery,” he announced,
pulling the whole unit out of the ceiling. “They’re all hard-wired.”
Duh.
As he stood there holding my smoke alarm in his hands, the beep once
again sounded…from somewhere else in the room.
The electrician eyed me patiently. “Do you have a beeper?” he inquired.
“No….” The winds of his superior knowledge jostled the veils of fatigue
that hung about my brain. “But my roommate does. Is that what they sound
like?”
My final field deployment almost didn’t occur. I was slated for ten
days of field work in Arena Valley, which is in the southwestern corner
of the Dry Valleys, but a procession of storms first kept Principal
Investigator Jaakko Putkonen and his crew in Christchurch and then fogs
and compressed flight schedules kept us all in McMurdo. When at last
we arrived in Arena Valley, erupting from that tightly packed helicopter
like a clown act, I found myself in a place that looked oddly familiar,
yet fundamentally different from any place I had been. From the waist
up, Arena Valley is graced by steep rock slopes and towering vertical
cliffs that screamed Grand Canyon. From the waist down, it has the classic
U-shape of a glaciated valley. There are no glaciers there now, only
a very cold desert pavement and a few minor snow fields.
Jaakko proved something of an ascetic as compared to Karl of the glaciers.
He planned to move his camp about once a week, and was therefore content
to sit on wooden food boxes and cook plain rice over a single Coleman
stove. My parsimonious old New England sensibilities had no complaint
with this, but the rest of me was about done in. I had been in Antarctica
for six weeks dealing with the cold and dehydration and endless daylight
and my body was screaming for rest and rehabilitation. I had stopped
by the McMurdo General Hospital to interview personnel a few days before,
and, when I asked what sorts of things people most often needed to be
treated for, the head nurse had described my exact physical state: flu-like
sweats and chills, crankiness, fatigue, trouble concentrating. I had
a classic case of T-3 syndrome. It was time to let go and begin to think
of home. I had given Antarctica and my research ambitions everything
I had and that would have to be good enough. Job One was to leave the
ice safe and sound.
Jaakko’s crew was by contrast fresh and eager and bursting with energy
to run up and down hills like a herd of gazelles.
Arena Valley |
After setting up the camp and collapsing for a night’s sleep, I accompanied
the bounding boys out through the magical landscape on a reconnaissance.
This involved alternately moving fast enough to get a bit sweaty and
standing still in a pervasive wind. I had that day chosen hiking shoes
over the big blue boots. This was a sensible decision as regards walking,
but a bad decision as regards staying warm. My ankles felt like they
were in a fridge. I had always thought them a small part of the body,
but now I discovered that they were connected to everything else. I
was getting colder than was sensible, so I commandeered a radio, headed
back to the camp (which was neatly tucked into a wind shadow), climbed
into my nice, warm tent and big, fluffy sleeping bag for a long nap,
then moved into the cook tent, where I created a huge stir-fry of prawns
and veggies for the returning heroes.
Before turning in that “night,” I stood outside my tent and absorbed
my surroundings inch by inch, adoring its timeless presence, its astonishing
beauty, its endless light. The sun was now high in the sky all day and
all night, describing a lazy circle, devoid of its value as a reference
point. I rarely looked for it, no longer tracked its arc across the
sky as I had every day of my life before coming to the ice. In Arena
Valley I was aware only that in the morning, the soaring cliffs to the
east were in shadow, and in the evening, this pattern lay to the west.
Elsewhere on the ice, where slopes were shallower, there were no shadows
except my own, and on overcast days, the world was simply bright.
On my second morning in Arena Valley, Mac Ops announced via barely audible
HF radio that my flight back to the World had been moved up a day and
I was being pulled out of the field camp that afternoon. “Helo for Whiskey-Two-One-Eight
[my “event” number] at 1300. But it’s on weather hold. Fog in McMurdo.
Check at 0900 for update.”
“Copy that,” Jaakko replied.
Stick a fork in me, I decided, I am done. It is time to go north where
it’s warm and gets dark at night. I can sleep and let my thyroid hormones
settle down. I can see my husband and son. It’s time, definitely time.
At 0900, the weather hold had extended my pickup to 1500 hours.
“Well then, you can come with us today!” said Jaakko. “It’s a beautiful
view from up there.”
I followed his gaze to where ‘up there’ was: another steep slope littered
with loose rocks. Oh, joy. But this was my job. I consulted my innards
and concluded that I was good for one last strenuous hike, but I would
have to do it in the big, marshy blue boots that had been issued to
me in Christchurch. I had been issued those boots so that I could stay
warm standing still on flat ice, not so that I could keep up with five
human antelopes in proper hiking gear. I had brought the hiking shoes
for New Zealand.
Note to self: Next time someone says they will completely outfit you
for Antarctica, thank them kindly and do further research.
Jaakko added, “But don’t take down your tent until you are sure you
are leaving today.”
Copy that. Digging the dead men that the guy lines were attached to
out of the snow field on which we were camped would be a lot of work,
and I did not wish to do it twice.
Arena Valley heroes |
Greg Balco (a second PhD on the crew; he calls himself “the stealth
PI”) kindly elected to hike at my pace and return early with me in case
the helicopter made it out of McMurdo to pick me up that day. We set
out to follow Jaakko and his jackrabbits up the slope. As I had come
to expect in Antarctica, the distance was greater than my eyes suggested.
What initially looked like a twenty-minute climb took an hour and a
half…or so….
We caught up with the sprinters at the top of the rise and noshed
on energy bars and beef jerky. Greg whistled up a radio connection on
his hand-held unit. The weather hold continued. Jaakko and his team
lined up for a hero portrait, then scampered off across the landscape
in search of a rock outcrop on which they could mount a GPS unit.
Greg and I stood awhile taking in the splendor of Altar Mountain,
the Beacons, Arena Valley and the Farrar Glacier beyond. Imagine looking
down a side canyon toward the “temples” of the Grand Canyon, except
that it has not a stitch of vegetation, and the main gorge is miles
wider and half filled by a vast river of ice.
Neither of us said anything for a while. The job of doing geology
requires such moments of contemplation. We take in so much information
on so many channels at once that conversation can become both unnecessary
and, at times like this, a match in the wind.
Finally Greg said, “It looks like we’ve got time to go the long way
around back to the camp. It’s kind of interesting, and it should be
an easier slope.”
Roger that.
We started back down the hill, Greg trooping along ahead of me explaining
what he saw and what it meant vis a vis the geomorphic and climatic
history of the landscape. I was there to learn why they were there and
interpret that to everyone else, so I listened intently. Greg, Jaakko
and the students were gathering data to unravel a mystery: how did this
landscape form, and how old is it? The answers to these questions provide
clues to some of the larger puzzles that face Earth scientists as we
move toward a comprehensive understanding of the interactions between
the Earth, ocean, and atmosphere and the climate and environments they
beget.
Greg and I hiked for hours, stopping only to swig water and take photographs
of interesting features in the crumbling sandstone slope we were descending.
Halfway down, a tendon in my left knee began to burn. I swiveled my
body to the right, trying to adjust the punishment my shock absorbers
were taking with every step in the glorified bedroom slippers I had
on my feet. Greg called to me from farther down the grade in his search
for a way down over a precipice. “I think this is the crux,” he said
soberly.
Roger that.
Eroded rock formation |
If that cliff hadn’t been made of gorgeous sandstone filled with cross-bedding
and fossil critter burrows, I would have figured I needed my head examined,
and I’ll admit that I wondered at several junctures whether my knees
were going to go the distance. I’d pause a moment to let the muscles
around those joints settle down and remind myself that a helicopter
couldn’t get close enough to put me out of my pain anyway, so I’d better
keep going. Then I’d begin again, taking increasingly greater care with
every step. At last the slope shallowed and the scramble eased, but
the rocks we encountered there had eroded out in weird shapes, like
the hollow wooden instruments percussionists hit with sticks. Not for
the first time since coming to Antarctica, I was half certain I was
on a foreign planet.
We had to detour around a long, sloping snowfield that proved to be
made of blue ice, but eventually Greg got me back to camp alive. He
wandered off to lie down for a moment, or just be by himself. I fired
up the stove and swilled water and ate fried bagels encrusted with melted
cheddar. When Greg reappeared, we sat over steaming mugs of tea discussing
the ins and outs of their field objectives. At the appointed hour, he
fired up the HF radio and made a call to Mac Ops. “Can you patch me
to Helo?” he shouted, enunciating each word to be understood over the
sketchy connection.
“Stand by for Helo Ops.”
A few moments later, a second voice came over the connection, stating
loudly, “Helo in one-five minutes!”
I stuffed my notebook into my pocket and ran for my tent. How was
I going to get it down and my gear packed in fifteen minutes? My big
floppy boots hit the snow like something out of Dr. Seuss. I felt like
I was running through molasses. I wasn’t halfway to my tent when I heard
the distant thud of rotors. As I reached my tent, I dropped onto my
suffering knees and started yanking gear out into a duffel. Greg appeared
beside me and went at it, unclipping the fly.
“I’ll just cut the lines,” he shouted. “Helos don’t like to shut down;
it costs fuel.”
Ten seconds later, the helo roared in overhead, exploding into view
over the nearest hilltop less than fifty feet off the deck. The rotor
wash hit with the force of a gale. I threw myself onto my gear to prevent
it being blown to Australia as the snow around me began to dance like
it was in a blender. Then, as flying white stuff insinuated itself into
every duffel, pocket, and crevice, the pilot feathered the rotor and
shut down the engine. He popped open a door. “Take your time!” he called
merrily, as his other passengers hopped out to take a look around this
seldom-visited corner of the Dry Valleys. “It’s gorgeous here!”
On the C-130, people are beginning to stand in the aisles, eyes closed,
just hanging on. Everyone on this aircraft has the following particulars
in common:
- We have all been to Antarctica.
- None of us were born there.
It is still the unconquered continent. It is still not a place where
children go.
I have topped up my tanks for experiences to be had without my family.
I shall exult in seeing my husband and son as they step off an Air New
Zealand jet in Christchurch tomorrow. Their embraces are an essential
element of my life. Yet Antarctica has been so generous in its offerings
that it has broken my heart open. I shall think of it through all the
days of my life.
But first I have to survive the rest of this flight. I get up and
stare out the porthole, hoping for a hole in the clouds. Aha, the clouds
are breaking….
The last 36 hours in McMurdo were simultaneously sublime and ridiculous.
I “closed” the Coffee House wine bar both evenings with friends. On
the first of those two evenings, that establishment hosted a Dr. Seuss
poetry bash, in which patrons were exhorted to read their own poetic
creations—preferably in the style of Dr. S—or read from any of quite
an impressive collection of his fabled children’s books. My personal
favorite was a recitation of the importance of having an acronym, elegantly
presented by Ron Smith, commander of the Airlift Wing. I weighed in
with a selection of limericks which I had written while on the ice,
including the following, which I wrote for Doug MacAyle, a glaciologist
from the University of Chicago who was there studying icebergs:
Consider the mighty iceberg:
When it cracks off it makes quite a surge!
Though the top’s quite a mass
From the firn to crevasse,
Fully ninety percent stays submerged.
Others discussed the connubial predilections of single-celled Antarctic
organisms, the excreta of penguins, or scientific particulars which
take quite a bit of space to explain, so I shan’t print them here, but
I also presented one written for Lisa Sheffield, who had helped me at
the penguin colony on Cape Royds:
Biologist Lisa imparts:
Watching penguins is quite a high art!
Rockhoppers, Gentoos,
Any crested will do,
But Adélies are next to my heart!
The last evening I again sat in the Coffee House, this time just being
silly with the flyboys and women firefighters of the infamous Tractor
Club. Gary McClanahan from Fleet Ops came along and was duly voted in
as a member, having correctly answered the question, “Do you like tractors?”
Heck, he loves them! He drives one eight hours a day out there on the
ice and snow runways, and never gets tired of it, or if he does, he’s
too optimistic to let it bother him. Gary had taught me to drive the
Caterpillar Challenger during the traverse to Black Island, and we had,
over the ensuing weeks, become good friends, often dining together.
“Things are always bound to get better,” he’d say, as he quietly enjoyed
everything Antarctica had to offer him. It was a big adventure for him,
and he embraced it with a kind and open heart, like so many other good
people I met on the ice.
(Finished back home in the U.S.A., January 9, 2006):
On the C-130, I moved toward the flight deck and looked hopefully up
around the corner to where the Kiwis were lounging on upholstered seats.
They ignored me. I turned and look at Chris, a biologist who sat next
to me on the C-17 the day I flew south. He looked up wearily, patiently
enduring the flight. The day before I had seen him in the galley, and
we had discussed how odd it was that we might sit next to each other
both ways. “In fiction writing, you call that a frame,” I told him.
“It’s a way of bringing the readers back to the place it all began,
so they can see where they are now and feel more complete.”
Thoughts of the book I shall now write were interrupted when a man
from the flight deck leaned down and tapped me on the shoulder. “Ye
want to go up?” he shouted over the din.
I nodded eagerly. The next problem was figuring how to hop up onto
the chest-high deck without missing and falling back into the laps of
the people seated below it. With no grace whatsoever, I managed this
in just three attempts.
The C-130 flight deck |
Up on the flight deck, I found a crew of young men and women eating
small pizzas and tapping time to their MP3 player. They gave me a set
of headphones linked into the intercom so I could talk to them. I played
the pilot card and then the author card, vying for as much time as possible.
It was warm up there, and not as noisy. I was more comfortable standing
up behind the pilots than I could ever be sitting in my so-called seat.
This was a cargo plane, not a passenger craft, there was no way around
it.
As I stood making small and medium-sized talk about what I had been
doing in Antarctica and what they continued to do in Antarctica, I began
to hear radio calls from far, far away coming in over the HF radio,
which they were monitoring. A familiar port-of-call was mentioned repeatedly:
San Francisco, the airport from which I had departed so many weeks before.
“Are those calls really coming from San Francisco?” I asked.
The navigator nodded. “They’re skipping off the ionosphere. It happens.”
I glanced at the flight engineer’s wristwatch and smiled a private
smile. At that hour far on the other side of the ocean over which we
were flying, my husband and son were boarding a jet that would bring
them to meet me. We would get used to being together again in the gentle
paradise of New Zealand, swimming in warm surf on Christmas day and
then zipping over to Australia to ring in the New Year before returning
to North America, our home, and our lives.
The Kiwis were kind to me and let me stay on the flight deck for two
hours. In that time I saw the southernmost islands appear over the curve
of the Earth, presaging the appearance of Ao Tao Aroa, the land of the
long, white cloud, the Maori name for New Zealand. As we reached the
point in the sky from which the plane was scheduled to descend into
the landing pattern for Christchurch, the head pilot turned to me and
said, “Sorry, but you’ll need to take your seat.”
I smiled and thanked him and hopped back down into the cargo hold,
where most of the passengers had now stripped to blue jeans and T-shirts.
I sat down next to Chris for a moment.
He smiled a friendly, “we were there together” smile which had not
been on his face the first time I’d met him over breakfast at the hotel
in Christchurch so many weeks before. Then, he had not known me, and
he had been coming down with a cold. Now, we were colleagues, even what
the Kiwis call comrades: mates.
“We have completed the frame,” he said, leaning close enough that
he wouldn’t have to make himself hoarse by shouting.
“Yes,” I said, “We’ve completed the frame.
The plane touched down, taxied, and emptied us out. We turned in our
ECW’s and caught shuttles to our hotels. As we whizzed past trees and
bushes and flowers of every color and scent into the gathering darkness,
I expected to find everything exotic, but I had not, after all, been
gone that long. Later, taking a bath, a good, long soak, was what felt
that strange and wonderful. And the next evening, as the sun again set
over the land of the long, white cloud, Damon and Duncan stepped cheerfully
off a jet into that humid warmth, and warmed me to the bone.
Sarah
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