December 22, 2002. McMurdo. 12:30 PM. 23 deg. F, -3 deg F with wind chill.

"What an evening!  The sun is high in the heavens in spite of the late hour. Over all this mountainous land of ice, over the mighty Barrier running south, there lies a bright, white, shining light, so intense that it dazzles the eyes.  But northward lies the night.  Leaden grey upon the sea, it passes into deep blue as the eye is raised, and pales by degrees until it is swallowed up in the radiant gleam from the Barrier.  What lies behind the nigh-that smoke-black mass-we know.  That part we have explored, and have come off victorious. But what does the dazzling day to the south conceal?  Inviting and attractive the fair one lies before us.  Yes, we hear you calling, and we shall come.  You shall have your kiss, if we pay for it with our lives. " —Roald Amundsen

It is the austral summer solstice today. After a while, you get used to this continual light that never dims. As long as you can close your curtains a little in your room, you can sleep. But, if you wake up during the night, it’s hard to go back to sleep. No matter when you wake, it looks like morning. Your mind doesn’t believe that it’s 3 A.M.

I did not sleep well and woke early on a Sunday morning. Finally gave up on sleeping and read for a while. No use getting up early on Sunday because brunch doesn’t start until 10 A.M. Sunday brunch is the best meal of the week. Handmade waffles with berries and whipped cream, smoked salmon with cream cheese and bagels, sticky buns, omelets. Everyone is relaxed and sits around chatting and reading the weekly newspaper, the Antarctic Sun. Then it’s laundry time or a couple hours of hiking or skiing. Monday morning comes all too soon for most folks

December 23, 2002. McMurdo. 2:30 PM. 24 deg. F., -2 deg F with wind chill. Today is Daisy Picking Day. Nobody can tell me where the name originated in this continent that doesn’t even have a dandelion, much less a daisy. It’s a station-wide initiative to pick up trash outside before the wind takes it out over the sea ice. Anything you find goes in one of the dumpsters, which are neatly labeled: Burnables, Food waste, Heavy metal, Wood, Glass, Plastic, Biohazard, Construction debris. Since all solid waste is recycled and removed from the McMurdo, proper sorting is essential. All the dorms have labeled containers for different kinds of waste and elaborate lists of what kind of trash should go in which bin. Aluminum foil it turns out goes into “Burnables,” rather than Aluminum (which is reserved for aluminum cans). You can often see someone with an object in hand standing in front of the bins, puzzling over which is the proper container for it.

December 25, 2002. McMurdo, 10 AM, 24 deg. F, 0 deg F with wind chill. Christmas Day in Antarctica! From my window I see the white of the sea ice and the white of the sky with a thin line of blue mountains floating between them. It’s as empty a landscape as any ever painted by a Japanese sumi-e master. Not a single tree, bird, or even vehicle occupies the foreground. It is as if the background had been painted but the artist never got around to painting the subject.

Much of our Christmas happened yesterday. Dinner took place at three sittings in the afternoon. The kitchen staff once more outdid themselves. Bowls of shrimp for an appetizer, stuffed salmon, and a rib-eye roast of beef for the main course, accompanied by mashed potatoes, roasted vegetables, salad, homemade rolls, and a giant table of fruit, cheese, and desserts. How the kitchen manages to cook so well for so many is a mystery, but this meal was worthy of a fine restaurant anywhere. All of us pulled out our best clothes for the second time (after Thanksgiving). For most people, that amounted to a clean shirt and pants rather than overalls. The wine flowed. People sat with friends at long tables. For old-timers, McMurdo is their family, and they haven’t spent a Christmas back in the States for years. In a place without shopping malls or Muzak, buying gifts is irrelevant. Much of the pressure of traditional Christmas is gone. For newcomers, it is sometimes an uneasy respite, a time to be concerned about family back home. One man I talked to had married shortly before coming down to work, and his wife was fed up with being alone and threatening to leave him. For another friend, her mother is so worried about her coming here that she breaks into tears whenever she calls home. Despite such stresses, for everyone here, Christmas is the most laid-back two-day period of the work season.

As we ate our bountiful meal, I couldn’t help but think of Scott, Wilson, and Shackleton struggling toward the South Pole in December, 1902, a hundred years ago. Their dogs were too weak to pull loads, and the men were struggling to pull 170 pounds each across the plateau on meager rations of pemmican, biscuit, and seal meat. They were hungry all the time and suffering from scurvy. Their eyes stung from snow-blindness, and their skin was dry and cracked. Yet somehow they were determined to enjoy Christmas.

“For a week we have looked forward to this day with childish delight. When we awoke to wish each other ‘A merry Christmas’ the sun was shining warmly through our green canvas roof.” For the first time in weeks, they ate all they wanted—a breakfast of biscuit and seal liver fried in bacon and pemmican fat, followed by a large spoonful of jam. Later in the day they made a Christmas stew with a double serving of everything. “Meanwhile I had observed Shackleton ferreting about in his bundle, out of which he presently produced a spare sock, and stowed away in the toe of that sock was a small round object about the size of a cricket ball, which when brought to light, proved to be a noble ‘plum-pudding.’ Another dive into his lucky-bag and out came a crumpled piece of artificial holly. Heated in the cocoa, our plum-pudding was soon steaming hot, and stood on the cooker-lid crowned with its decoration.”

Later in the evening, I joined a party given by the Hofmann fish group with many friends from the biology and Crary community. They had strung Christmas lights in the coffee shop, which is in a Jamesway that the Navy carefully paneled inside with wood strips sometime in the distant past. It’s one of the old cozy buildings that the NSF keeps threatening to demolish even though it has character because it isn’t efficient; meanwhile, it’s a great place to go in the evening for a cup of good coffee or a glass of wine to chat with friends. In addition to several of the field groups studying fish and diatoms, our group included the head of Crary lab, the head of lab computer support, a Coast Guard captain, and Anne, who is a heavy equipment operator but once skied to the South Pole. One of the special joys of this community is the social mix of people doing different kinds of jobs. About twenty-five of us chatted, drank wine, and talked of anything other than work.

Everyone brought a small wrapped gift for a “White Elephant” gift exchange. When you put your gift down under the little artificial tree, you take a number. Then as each number is called, the person comes up and chooses a gift and opens it. Gifts are whatever each person has to share… from a partially drunk bottle of gin and a bottle of tonic (enough for 2 gin-and-tonics!) to a handmade hat to a tiny bottle of Essence of Polar (a faux perfume of made from lab alcohol by one of the scientists). You can also choose to steal what somebody else has opened if it is your turn, so often the best gifts go to several different owners before settling down. Someone suggested that if the wrapping or present included any red or green that everyone would take a drink… so with the cries of “Ooompah,” it became a decidedly festive occasion. Being an early riser, I made it through a round of “Pin the Beak on the Penguin,” a bit later in the evening, before calling it a night.

December 26, 2002 McMurdo. 7:30 P.M. 22 deg. F., -5 deg F. with wind chill.
Christmas day is a day of rest here, since our main celebrations were yesterday. In the afternoon, I walked over to the gym to watch a production of the “McMurdo Christmas Carol.” Everyone brought pillows and blankets or sat on a parka on the gym floor. The story was a topical McMurdo telling of the familiar story. Scrooge worked at Fleet Ops and had been coming down so many years to McMurdo that he had not only forgotten the excitement of that first visit but had plans to commercialize the experience and bring in tourists. Needless to say, the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future, showed him the error of his ways and with much laughter, the audience applauded the local talent. One of my friends from the power plant played the Christmas present ghost, dressed as a polar bear imported by the commercial scheming of Scrooge.

After dinner, I walked over to the bowling alley. Quite a number of friends had told me that I needed to stop in and photograph some evening. It is one of the few surviving alleys with hand-set pins. It evidently came to McMurdo in the 1960s but I suspect that it was acquired as a used system from an even earlier time. One of the bowling companies wants to buy it as a museum piece and has offered to give McMurdo a brand new alley in exchange. Fortunately, the deal has hung up over who is to pay the transportation costs. Kevin showed me around. It is quite a trip. It has 2 lanes with a funky ball return that runs down the middle. Since it was a slow night and only two women were bowling, Kevin was handling everything from collecting $3 per person for shoes and balls to setting pins. The machinery for setting the pins is quite ingenious. Kevin sits up on a ledge above the pins while the player bowls. The ball careens back with a bang and knocks over pins. Once it is safe, Kevin dashes down, picks up the pins and puts them into the machine, and returns the ball. After the second bowl, he lowers the pins, the metal sleeves release, and he pulls the machinery back up again. When someone bowls a strike, he has a wooden drum stick that he uses to strike a cymbal. Every week or so, they have “Cosmic bowling,” where they use florescent pins and balls and turn on black light and a fog machine. I haven’t bowled since high school but I’m coming back to try that!

Beaufort Island. Today was a special day. I wasn’t sure whether I would make it out to Beaufort Island, even though it was listed on my projected itinerary for my time here. Very few people have ever set foot on the island. Only a few penguin researchers go there for a couple of hours several times during each season. The NSF did not want to give me a permit, since it is a specially protected area. They told me that there were no structures there and no human activity, so I should have no reason to photograph. I pointed out that it is a site of long-term penguin research. If scientists visit, it is relevant to my proposal. After lengthy consideration, I was added to a pre-existing permit and allowed to enter the penguin colonies at Royds, Crozier, Bird, and Beaufort Island, as long as a penguin researcher was present. Researcher David Ainley was kind enough to include me with his group visiting Beaufort Island today to check out the state of the colony.

Beaufort Island is a small island some 45 miles north of McMurdo in the Ross Sea. Its center is a tall volcanic mountain which extends nearly to the ice edge on all sides, leaving only a small rocky beach. On this beach the Adelie penguins have been living for centuries. On the far side of the island, where we did not go, is a small Emperor penguin colony living on the sea ice. Where the sea ice meets the land, large pressure ridges have formed, gorgeous blue jagged jumbles of ice. The Adelies pass through these ridges on their way to the water to feed, walking in long lines or pushing themselves down blocks of ice with their flippers.

We flew by helicopter from Cape Royds, where I had been delegated to try and obtain a sample of the mushroom I photographed several weeks ago. Several science groups here are anxious to identify the mushroom and determine where it came from. They were quick to point out to me that my photograph, of which I was quite pleased, did not show the underside of the mushroom, which has the most salient characteristics for identifying which species it is. Then, they need a sample so they can check out its DNA. I could have at least taken a mirror and shown whether or not it had gills, they told me. Well, I practically had to stand on my head to get the shot I took and I don’t carry a dentist’s mirror around with me… and I wasn’t about to pluck the mushroom from a protected historic site like Shackleton’s hut. So, I promised them I would take sample bottles with me since we were stopping at Cape Royds to pick up Dr. Ainley and see what I could do. Sadly, after three weeks, no trace remains of the mushroom. It appeared to me that several feet of snow had fallen on top of it.

From Cape Royds, we flew to Cape Bird, where there is a small penguin colony. Three Kiwi researchers climbed aboard, and we set off for Beaufort Island. During the twenty-minute ride, we could see many seals below sunning themselves along the cracks in the sea ice. As we approached the island, it was clear that the sea ice has melted completely from the north side of the island and it is surrounded by water. On the south side near the penguin colony, it is impossible to land on the beach because of the penguin nests. The sea ice seemed solid but the helo pilot took no chances. After reconnoitering for several minutes back and forth across cracks, he very gently set the copter down on the ice near the shoreline. We remained buckled in while the co-pilot jumped down and drilled several ice holes to check out the depth of the ice. Finally, he shut down. The researchers grabbed their boxes of gear, I put on my backpack and took the tripod, and we all made our way gingerly across the cracks and pressure ridges to the beach.

The Beaufort Island Adelie colony is large—some 50,000 birds—and much healthier than the one I saw earlier at Cape Royds. It is not far for the birds to walk to get to the water to feed. About 20% of the birds have nests, some with eggs, most with two healthy chicks. The chicks are tiny and gray and spend most of their time well covered by their parents. It is not easy to get good shots of them or the eggs because the adults are very protective. No wonder, with skuas flying constantly over the colony looking for available eggs or chicks to grab and eat. Broken eggs and the remains of penguin skeletons are scattered on the ground. Life here is not easy.

The skuas struggle for survival, as well. Several of them must nest further up the mountain because they dive bombed me as I got close to the upper edge of the colony. Four of them soared down, one after another, aiming for the top of my head. With their wings spread, they were like kamikaze pilots coming in for the kill. I put up an arm and they veered off at the last moment. After a very brief consideration, I decided that retreat was preferable to the picture I might get if I walked further up the hill, and as I moved away, they let me go without further assault.

We stayed on the island for several hours. The researchers weighed and tagged birds. The Kiwis attached an antenna and tracking device to a few nesting females to learn more about their feeding habits when they are feeding their young. I wandered along the edge of the pressure ridges, photographing the birds as they went out to feed and then walked slowly through the colony to photograph the adults feeding their chicks. As long as I didn’t poke my lens right in their face, they ignored me. Small dramas played out in front of me—courtship displays, thievery, skua assaults and penguin defenses. I shot all the flash cards I had with me and wished I had several more.

Beaufort Island is Antarctica as portrayed in National Geographic, the Antarctica that most folks who work in McMurdo never get to see. Most workers consider themselves extraordinarily lucky to see a lone penguin out on the ice runway, lost and searching for the rest of its colony miles away. Most only see a picture of a penguin in the town newspaper. Much of what appears in National Geographic is a result of careful framing to eliminate traces of our ongoing incursions into wildlife areas and less materialistic cultures. Beaufort Island is a magical place, a truly wild place. So few humans have been able to visit it that it has not been altered by their visits.

When I got back to my office, I was tired and very happy. I felt I had received a very special gift. I also smelled awful. The office stank so that one my friends who stopped by wrinkled up her nose at the doorway and asked me, “Are you sure you don’t want to put that into the freezer?” Nothing like walking around in a penguin rookery for several hours to acquire a distinctive aroma. I washed my boots off in the sink and took all my clothes back to my dorm laundry to wash.

December 28, 2002. McMurdo. 9 A.M. 27 deg. F., 11 deg. F. with wind chill.

The Hofmann fish group took a little time off last night to make ink prints on tissue paper of Pagothenia borchgrevinki, one of the most common fish that lives beneath the ice in McMurdo Sound. The fish is placed in a Styrofoam cradle with its fins spread carefully out. Then we painted the body lightly with a heavy oil-based drawing ink. A piece of tissue paper (rice paper would be much better but we don’t have any) is then carefully pressed down on the fish and then peeled off. The fish’s outline with all of its gills and scales and fins appears on the paper. I loved pressing down lightly on the fins and head and feeling the details of the structure of the fish through the paper.