When we’re not chatting with scientists or writing up our thoughts afterwards, there are plenty of great things to do here at Scott Base. One of my favourite has been to go out skiing.
[Out for a ski]
I have been out a few times, once by myself which was a neat experience and twice with people here on base. It is neat to ski through a completely treeless environment with very little on the landscape to give you a sense of scale – or how far away things are. So something that looks only one kilometre away might actually be 6 kilometres away. It is an interesting feeling – mostly it makes you feel very, very small. But at the same time, by exploring the environment around Scott Base I am starting to feel more at home and more located in the Antarctic environment, it is less out there, less unknown, a more a part of me.
[Do you remember what the green and red flags mean? - a safe route, always follow the flags]
[Skiing out to Castle Rock. It seemed so far away on my first trip here, but it only took an hour to ski to and there was a fun hill to go down on the way back]
Another great pass time here is the observation tube. Over in front of McMurdo, the Americans have set up a metal tube through the sea ice and under water. You climb down the tube using a wee ladder and emerge into a tiny room surrounded by windows. There is even a little box to sit on as you stare out through the windows into the blue, green, yellow seascape filled with fishes, krill, jelly fish and more. If you listen you can hear the rumbling boom of the big heavy vehicles as they drive over the ice a kilometre away and the voices of the people above you as they wait for their turn. After your eyes adjust to the darkness of the sea, you can begin to see the silver flash of fish, the watery shapes of sea stars on the bottom and the ghostly figures of delicate diatoms as they swim by. In Antarctica, it is the ocean where life flourishes. The greatest form of life here is the algae that live on the bottom of the sea ice, making it the glowing yellowy-green that it is in the pictures. After 15 minutes of staring in awe and wonder at the alien beauty of this flourishing environment my time was up and I climbed back up the ladder to my friends waiting for their turn down the tube.
[Anyone know why the ice looks like this?]
[Opening up the Observation tube]
[Looking out the windows]
[The algea makes the bottom of the sea ice look bluey-greeny-yellow]
[Coming back up the tube for the next person to head down]
Hi Erin,
ReplyDeleteIs it warmer down under the ice than on it?
Landscapes without measurable markers are curious, I think sometimes we don't know how we fit ourselves in place until those items are gone. Even then it takes time to figure out what we used to use and then struggle to find what we can substitute to re-fit ourselves in place. In some respects I guess the green flags are a substitute for a sidewalk as a safe place to walk. In town sidewalks are safe because cars aren't allowed on them, (and mostly they obey this rule) and I suppose the green flags are safe because someone walks on them regularly to make sure that nothing in the ice has changed to make them unsafe. Perhaps it is the social conventions or broad agreements we make in society that make place safe and therefore inhabitable.
Love,
Dad