Tuesday
12th December 2000
From
Paolo Calisse.....
Today's most noticeable
event, after John Storey's flight away, was the arrival of
a "bird".
 Yes,
a bird. There are a lot of things specific to life on a Scientific
Station placed on the Antarctic Plateau. Some of these are
related to life away from a civilized place, some others to
life in a cold place, others to being in the driest - yes,
it is - desert of the planet, and so on.
I arranged a tentative
and chaotic list of them, hoping to share with you, dear reader,
my deep feelings.
1) You spend all your
time within a region with a radius of 200 meter for months
To live on the Antarctic
Plateau is something similar to life on a wedding cake. Except
there is not a huge blade coming down soon or later to destroy
everything and cut the landscape in slices.
You look around and your
sight easily reaches the horizon, as the atmosphere is incredibly
transparent. Apart from the station, the horizon is a perfect
circle, about 4.7 Km away from your eyes - actually, a bit
less for John - that could leave you thinking there is a cliff
just over there, like the Ancients thought about the ocean.
Everything, up to the horizon, is white, flat ice, with the
sastrugi, continuously remodeled by the winds, shadowing the
surface and the view.
Well, if you leave the
station behind you, walking away from the station in any direction,
you feel a bit uncomfortable, thinking that you are going
to the actual "nihil arbor", or Null Harbor, as the Australians
call the most desolate regions of their country.
I noticed that noone likes
to feel like this way without good reason. There is just too
much silence when away, a feeling of "lack" and "emptiness"
that everybody dislikes. The consequence is that nobody will
try to just walk out of the Station without reasons, and you
will spend all your stay, that means 2-3 months, if there
is not a reason to get out, like to get ice samples, within
a 200 meter radius around the station.
2) There is no life
except you
That's obvious, but this
is something which can puzzle you. You leave a piece of cake
on the table, but no ants will come to get a bit. No cockroaches
to be cracked on a corner to annoy your woman, no noisy flies,
no cats or dogs barking in the neighbor's yard. No yards at
all. The Chef, as a joke, put a cat bed on the ground in the
kitchen, to prompt novices like John and myself complain about
it, as to bring animals or plants here is strictly forbidden
by the Antarctic Treaty, in order to avoid potentially catastrophic
consequences on the local fauna and flora (which flora, you
ask? Just a bit of lichens and moulds on the coastal region,
so far as I know). You see a shadow or a shine on a building's
wall, but it can't be, as your brain immediately suggests,
a rat or a cat.
There is nothing alive
except you on the Antarctic Plateau. And also you do not always
feel that you belong completely to the "life" category,
sometimes.
This is why, as I wrote
at the beginning, it has been a great experience to see a
bird (a petrella, or a skua according to others) fly over
the station, heading South. We are about 1000 Km away from
the sea, there is a "dead circle" surrounding us, about
this size.
What would a bird want
to do here? Probably he is annotating exactly the same in
his dairy, about a strange encounter with busy, red, unknown
mammals during his yearly flight to visit grandma.
3) There is no money
This is the common opinion
about scientific research in Australia, but I mean, in this
case, that we do not use money at all in the station. Everything,
at least in the Italian-French station of Dome C, is free.
At the South Pole you have to pay for alcohol, but the Italian
don't get drunk easily, or, perhaps, they put all their efforts
towards reducing excesses on this of the three classic vices.
Or, as somebody seems to think, they are just always drunk.
Think as you like, but
alcohol is free here.
4) You see the same
people every day
Every morning you get
the lift to your office, and meet different people, incredibly
interested in the screws that are holding in the lift button
panels, or to some invisible detail on the overhead light,
or just with the typical expression of "Well, I can't really
come out of that incredibly complex and important problem
I have been involved with for the last few weeks?".
Here, it can't happen.
Not only because this is the only continent with no lifts
(right, I haven't noticed it). The problem is that, apart
from people boarding out of the Twin Otters quite rarely,
you already know all the people you can meet here. Everybody
is available for a chat, all the people will ask if you want
to share an expresso when they are about to prepare it at
the Saeco Express machine.
Simply, there are no unknown
faces for two or three months or your life, and this, in my
opinion, removes some uncomfortable stress provided by civilization.
5) there is a huge
amount of light in summer
Yes I know that you know
that during summer there is no night around the polar region.
What I mean is that the common feeling is that the sun, ever
low above the horizon, just can't provide enough light and
you are embedded in a permanent dim light, in Antarctica.
Nothing is more false
than this. Summer Antarctica is the realm of light. You could
use welding glasses all the time and still naturally tighten
your eyes. Outside is the triumph of the light, with an incredible
UV excess that makes it impossible to withstand direct sunlight.
Think that everything around is white for thousands miles,
and that the atmosphere is outstandingly transparent, and
you'll understand what I mean.
The problem is that a
photographer may come to Antarctica and take pictures. Then
they have to sell them, but nobody will pay a buck for apparently
overexposed pictures. Moreover, a shadowed landscape looks
hundreds times more mysterious and fascinating than a place
looking like a beach at noon in August (in the Northern Hemisphere,
I mean). Automatic cameras, too, "normalize" lighting on any
pictures, making the rest of the game.
Not a real diary today,
but I hope you will enjoy it.
Paolo
 
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