Wintering Over (V)

Richard W. Frank

Wintering Over (V)

The world outside our own seems all the more distance and chimeral despite our phones and live television feeds. Anything outside our daily rituals and our simplified, stripped-down life has become akin to reading a history book about a far-off culture. This is only brought into further focus by the celebrations here for Easter. I woke up at 3am and went through the normal daily motions of entering working life. Five assorted people appeared at 5am and made 156 Easter baskets constructed of paper food service hats and surgical hats. Inside were crudely decorated eggs, M&Ms, and a package of peanuts. They decorated the white paper of the baskets and distributed them in the two dorms and upstairs 155. We made eggs Benedict, omelets, and a turkey roast for brunch. The Party World Easter Bunnies put up all over the walls in garish spring colors only added to the surreal nature of being in Antarctica. It all seemed so out of place. Only a scant 365 days earlier, I was in Catholic Central America for the myriad Semana Santa celebrations. 365 days before that, I was homeless in Seville, Spain sleeping in parks and participating in lavish colorful parades and the rising of their Lord.

The kind of beauty that exists in this part of the world is not of such a kind. This beauty is one that has to grow in the subconscious and is a more harsh and hard-edged beauty. There are thousands of different hues to snow and ice that change imperceptibly with the change in the sun's orbit. A different beauty exists inside the buildings of McMurdo Station. It is in the knowledge of knowing that everywhere around you there are people that know you and see you through the good times and the bad as they experience them also. It is in the sunset on the white mountains so far away and the fallen snow on an aged orange truck. It is the appreciation of warmth that can only be fully appreciated after coming in from a cold that searches out the slightest chink in your armor to sear flesh and take your breath away.

Sometimes, one finds himself donning the many layers of protection from the elements in order to walk aimlessly amidst the fury and cruelty of this weather. All the other animals have gone north for the winter; we remain. Went out today to watch the long sunrise colors on the mountains, and spent hours in the greenhouse tending to the ph levels, conductivity, temperatures, and such. I whiled away the afternoon swinging in the hammock inches away from rows of lettuce, my mind thousands of miles away. I finished reading Maugham's "The Moon and Six Pence" based on Gauguin’s life, and I felt the warm Tahitian winds and the smells of a port town.

Life is life wherever you spend it, and you make of it what you will. How this winter will change my view of the world remains to be seen, but I look forward to the ride.

To Winter Over (VI)

Back to Antarctica

Back to Wintering Over (IV)

The Navy lowers the flag for the last time for several months