Zen Ice

I'm not sure if Emperor Penguins are right at the top, or the very bottom, of the karmic evolutionary scale. "Who would be an emperor penguin?" has not been uttered infrequently around here lately. Abandoned to the loneliest, coldest and most desolate ice sheet on Earth, destined to sit on an egg for four months during the coldest part of the year, starving, only to be relieved, you hope, by a fattened mate who brings up the chick whereupon you have to trek for days, weeks maybe, to find open water and seek food, which you then bring back to your mate – and reinitiate thecycle. By any beasts' standards it has been cold around here lately and it boggles the mind to think that any penguins survive at all, let alone chicks. It's a hard life.

To me, however, they are the epitome of Zen (about which I know very little). Patient, curious, animated, interested but apparently never hassled, never in a rush, strong, calm, self-aware while also totally dependant on the community for survival. I like them. They don't, it must be said, strike me as being particularly intelligent – but that really doesn't matter, they don't seem unhappy, either. The Adelies last summer were forever squawking and chirruping, placing themselves right at the foot of the lab steps and then getting in a fluster if you came anywhere near them. The Emperors seem more aloof. Upon seeing a gaggle of humans dangling down the ice cliff, a greeting party wanders towards us, curious about visitors. Walking in single file, looking in front and behind as though to check that they haven't been mislead and are suddenly on their own, they will walk right up to you. Once their curiosity is satiated, or you start walking towards the colony, they turn around and wander back.

There is a lot of anthropomorphising going on here I know, but it's difficult not to. They walk on two feet, look you straight in the eye if you kneel (when they are about chest or chin height), they chat and coo, a cross between a rattle and an eerie echo – and their cry is returned by companions. These curious ones seem to be a year or two old: fully grown but still too young to breed, adolescents to us. They walk around in groups, fight with each other and then snuggle up for warmth, show their chests off and rattle their heads and then, for no apparent reason, wander off somewhere else. They show no fear and as a spectator I did not feel that I was interfering with nature. I am undoubtedly wrong. I had no desire to get overly close or touch them, if for no other reason than that I was wearing such huge mitts that there would be no point and there was no way I was going to reveal bare skin to the elements even for the touch of penguin feathers, but also, because if you wait a short while, they come up to you. As curious as us. They, too, are living on a fairly monotonous ice shelf and are happy to see something new for a change. These are our closest neighbours.

Now the huddle, that's something else entirely. As you probably know, Emperors huddle to stay warm in winter. I had imagined a huge circular group with some kind of re-shuffle order so the ones in the middle eventually move to the edges and no-one gets too cold for too long on the outside. I don't know why, but I had imagined order. By now, I should know that nature exhibits order using chaos. Through a chaotic system, the most perfect solution to any problem will emerge. The penguin huddle was entropy embodied. No circle, no order, a number of large clumps. The ones in the middle roasty toasty, the ones on the outside burying their heads deep into the penguins in front, using that beautiful rounded back as a shield against the wind. Layer upon layer of buried-headed penguins like the centre of a sunflower.

At some point, the penguins on the outside get cold, or bored, or, I don't know, it doesn't matter, the point is, they decide to leave. So they wander off. And, I guess, that means the next layer gets cold. Heads pop up, necks stretch, lots of hustling and bustling, the odd peck, and before you know it the one-time calm huddle of heat generation has become a squawking, shrieking flurry of bristling heads shaking and pushing, confusion, ripples of movement in every which direction. I tried to watch for long enough to see what happened next but it wasn't entirely obvious. I thought the ones on the outside would start forming their own huddle with them at the core but more often than not they just walked off, single file, to apparently nowhere. A clown-like walk too since most were shuffling on their heels with their toes in the air, making sure the egg on their feet didn't touch the ice. Sometimes one would bend down and rotate the egg. A couple of them could be seen regurgitating food and stretching to their toes whereupon a tiny chick would appear from under the belly flap and stick it's head in the parent's mouth. Chirrup chirrup chirrup, you could hear them cheeping. It was beautiful. Thousands of them probably, clustered in groups of a few hundred, steam coming off the middle, heads buried on the outside. All calling, all doing their thing.

I've had an incredible week. Incredibly full, by my winter hibernation standards. I had forgotten what it was to be truly busy, at different times rushed, excited, stressed, exhausted, responsible, cold, high, low, confused and rejuvenated. I had forgotten what it was to multi-task. I am not looking forward to returning to 'normal life', whatever that is, I'm not looking forward to the summer season even. I'm not excited by the prospect of mental stimulation and the buzz of activity that I thrived on previously. It will come though, as I acclimatise to progressively more sun and more activity, when I drink my last bottle of wine, eat my last good quality chocolate bar, realise the prospect of fresh fruit is only a few weeks, rather than months away. Remind myself that with the first plane comes first post. With all of these things will my enthusiasm return. And probably my energy as well. I think this week was just a shock to the system.

It is well documented that August is often the hardest month here and I, who thought I was breezing through this whole Antarctic wintering thing, am starting to understand why. We are running out of things, I ate the last real apple on my birthday a month ago. Tinned potatoes, carrots and beans are, to my palate, fresh veg. All my clothes are tattered and holey, my hair has been dyed and re-dyed and now looks like it has a washed out blue rinse – it looks a bit how I feel. For some people, August is hard because the excitement of mid-winter is over but it is still months before the first new people arrive. For me, August has been hard because I'm sad to see the darkness go. I'm already forgetting what it looked like. It was never this dark in the middle of the day was it?, I found myself asking Frank yesterday. Even for me, it's difficult to conceive how little we could see. And I miss those beautiful, beautiful red stripes on the horizon at 2pm. Now at two the sun is well above the horizon, the world is light and white, I can see all the way to the lab and far beyond. On a good day. On a bad day I can't see beyond my feet but it's still white-mauve-cotton-wool-not-seeing as opposed to pitch dark not seeing. I couldn't see a thing today, I don't know why, but I was glad to still be falling over my feet and into unexpected valleys in the sastrugi. At night time Orion appears only to the night watchman but Scorpio still twirls his pincers around my head. The occasional aurora mists the sky with green. I love my darkness.

Anyway, I think the light has been a shock to the system. It's colder than we have ever yet experienced (approaching -50C at times) but the light misleads you into spending much more time outside, doing all those long-awaited jobs, taking your [outer] mitts off to take a photo for longer than you ever would have in June. Without question work outside is a lot easier if you can see what you're doing, even if it's cold – so we've been doing these things, and probably over-doing these things, not realising that we've just been jolted out of hibernation. In addition, where we used, during autumn, to stop activity after dark, we now see this as no hindrance, we know where the torches are kept and which clothes to wear in a gale. Everyone perhaps has been doing just that little bit more.

For me, the return of the sun means the start of spring-time chemistry. This is when it all kicks off. This is, if I'm brutally honest, the reason why I am, or my job is, here. The loss of a few weeks' data in mid-winter wouldn't be heart-breaking. A similar loss during spring-time would be quite upsetting for many. When the sun rises, all those chemicals that have been pooling in the snow and at the surface are activated, photolysed, react with photolysis products, come out of the snow, go into the snow, blow in from the coast, fly in from the plateau... different molecules in different air masses that all react and interact differently once they are zapped by the sun. This is what has not been studied before and why we are here.

When ozone drops and air comes in from the coast, we fly a blimp, we take height profiles, we align the telescope and try to measure halogens in the air. On calm days, we dig a pit and take samples of snow from different depths. On days when the air comes in from the east, we ensure the inlets are clear and compare chemistry in the snow with that in the air. My tank of helium ran low a few days ago and I haven't been able to change it since the temperature in the gas store has been below safety limits. Today the temperature warmed up but I found I wasn't strong enough to do this job on my own and will have to take a companion with me to help tomorrow. All this time, I feel the loss of data keenly.

On Tuesday morning at 3am I was woken by Steph, who was on night-shift, because the chemical and meteorological conditions we had been looking for were ideal for a blimp flight. It was 3am and our probe wasn't yet tested to perfection so we decided to wait until the morning. Still, I got up for a few hours to make some preparations in case we decided to fly. At 9am conditions were still looking good. At 10am I was told that a penguin trip, which I was meant to be on, was going ahead. We've been waiting for these for weeks but until now been prohibited by either temperatures that are too low for driving the vehicles or winds too high to abseil down the ice cliffs. What a conundrum!

I went on the trip, I had an amazing time. The minute we crossed the perimeter drum line I felt the burden of base life dissolve, evaporate, off my shoulders. It was so good to get out! Only then did I realise how captive we have been here, kept within a circular perimeter defined by empty oil drums and flags, 5km round and 2km wide. We were off to the coast! It felt great. An hour later we were there. On the cliffs! A different view, the ice, a sea-lead in the distance, sun, clouds, beautiful beautiful coast. This was enough for me, I didn't even need to see the penguins! But there they were, a seemingly small huddle on the ice below. Jingly janglies, harnesses, crampons, ice axes, hats, balaclavas, cameras, hot ribena, backpacks and sausages later and I'm abseiling down the cliff. I love abseiling, I love dangling off ropes! Look at me, this is great!!!

Once everyone was down, we spent a couple of hours on the ice, hanging out with the penguins, getting cold but never bored, taking photos, just sitting with them, walking around, flapping our arms as they flap their wings, calling back at them. When the time came to leave, people harnessed and clipped again, climbed up the ice wall, chose to either pull themselves up a rope mechanically or use a ladder for the last bit. I was going for the ladder. At the last minute, I ended up on the alternative route. I don't know why but I suspect my pride and big gob had something to do with it. It was a stupid decision. Everyone else had gone, it was -37C, I was cold and clueless. I had two crampons on my feet, two ice axes in my hands, two jumars on the rope (for pulling myself up), hard helmet, various caribeners and jangly things on my belt and a great big backpack pulling me backwards. I have never, except in practices, had to use jumars, ice axes or crampons. (You will recall that for my pre-winter field training trip I spent 9 days in a tent due to bad weather.) I knew, and the people with me knew I knew, how all these thing worked. But my brain failed me, my fingers cried with pain of cold, my pride held back tears and my legs started to feel a little less comfortable hanging off a rope, dangling in mid-air.

In retrospect it was a good experience, it is always important to know your limits and appreciate the skill levels of people around you. At the time, I felt like I was being pushed to a limit I hadn't ever yet experienced, meeting a part of myself that was so true, so deep, so cutting to my soul, I met a person who was at one moment angry and proud and arrogant and livid while a second later she was swinging upside down, laughing with the sun and penguins, giggling at her fate and her situation, being hauled over the overhang by her ever-reliant buddies upstairs.

And then the angry one kicked in again: "STOP IT, STOP IT, STO-----P, YOU BASTARDS!!! I can do it on my own damn you!" I was screaming but they couldn't hear me and they were getting cold too. It was like being utterly alive and learning who you are at the core. I know I could have got out on my own but it might have taken a while. I had figured the system out just before they haulked me over the edge. But I also know that they made the right call because they didn't know my situation and they themselves were getting cold. And that had been the deal from the start: "Don't worry, Rhian, give it a go, and if you can't do it, we'll Z-pulley you out." There was never any danger I wouldn't make it: had that been the case, I would have gone the ladder route. I am determined to return, and next time, I'll get out on my own.

Trundle, trundle. The cosy journey home. Tired and happy people. All these new experiences. See what the sunshine brings us?! When we get home, it all floods back. The chemistry, the met, the blimp – o god, conditions were ideal... o no, I shouldn't have gone... no, I went, enjoy it, remember it. But conditions were still holding and there was no reason we couldn't do a flight that night.

That night I realised for the first time how truly committed people here are. We worked from 6:30 pm to 2:30 am inflating the blimp, working on the probes, winching it up, winching it down, downloading data. It was seriously, dangerously, cold and everyone was already tired when we began. Plus, the nature of the task meant that the helpers were outside in the cold for many more hours than I was. Some people helped out to help their friends, others were interested in the blimp in and of itself, but many I discovered later were doing this for the science. This is why we're here, I was told, and if you tell us this is cutting edge stuff and important science, then we'll pull out all the stops to help you do it. It was incredibly humbling. I often feel like our work here is an excuse to have an Antarctic presence, but this week I have realised that science is still a purpose for those of us living here. It is a great honour to have this opportunity and we should make the absolute most of it. All aspects of being here.

Life is very simple here, it is remarkably free of conflict. It is rare that I have to make a decision of the type you make hundreds of during a normal day at home. Sometimes conflicts of interest arise: penguins or molecules, melt-tank or machines, scrub-out or pit-digging, dinner or the lab – but the right choice usually becomes clear pretty quickly. We are all here to do our jobs but it is also in our jobs' best interest for us to remain sane and happy. Plus, ultimately, we are all on call 24-7. Try as we might to differentiate between communal duties, work and recreation, they are all just different sides of the same round fruit. Last week the plumber had a virtually sleepless week because the sewage pipes kept bursting in the cold. And since he couldn't fix the problem alone, most of the technical staff dropped everything to help him as well. Friday night I stayed in the caboose with Frank. Saturday night I was woken by the night watchman because a science alarm was going off – that was rare, usually it's the plumber, electrician, Piggott engineer or generator mechanic who gets woken. Ultimately everything we do here is one and the same thing, there is no differentiation. It is all part of wintering at Halley.

Posted by Rhian at 21:59 EST

Comments

wonderful imagery.

how does a male penguin regurgitate food eaten four months ealier? does he keep it frozen and undigested, digesting it as the new-hatched chick needs it? or does he produce some kind of male milk-equivlaent from his own body?

Posted by: Roger at 4:50 EST, August 29, 2004

Wonderful to read Rhian. Had me all emotional. You made the right decision - Penguins (almost) every time!

Posted by: Russ at 11:30 EST, September 13, 2004