Thanks to the cost centre allocations of the National Science Foundation, being an artist in Antarctica made me, officially at least, a science grantee. This meant I got ‘lab space’ (i.e. a desk) in the Crary Lab, a three-tier purpose-built science centre at the heart of McMurdo Station, whose library, on the upper floor of the main building, had panoramic windows overlooking the whole of McMurdo Sound.
My own workspace was in a windowless room which turned out to be one of the most reliably dark places in the land of the midnight sun. Being just off the main library room, every time I came or went I got an eyeful of that amazing view. It was not short of cognitive dissonance: the building was strongly reminiscent of the late-80s built-in-a-hurry school buildings where I’d spent most of my very prosaic childhood, yet the windows looked out on a view that was not only heavenly but seemingly teleported from Ponting’s century-old photos. It was two breeds of familiarity clashing heavily together.
I took a lot of photos from these windows, as I was here nearly every day, and I’d usually be leaving for the dorms around 10 PM when the light was particularly nice. So it is a photo post for you today, almost all of these taken from the Crary Library, though some were from the overlook behind the dorms, where I’d spend a few minutes on my way to bed if it was a particularly beautiful evening.
Something about McMurdo Sound attracted and held cloudcover; frequently one could see clear skies to the north and/or south, but be in shadow oneself. I particularly liked night where the sun, on its circuit, was behind the Western Mountains, making them stand out in silhouette and doing nice things with blue and orange.
Sometimes icy patches on distant glaciers would catch the light.
Out on the ice was a field biology camp known as ‘Penguin Ranch,’ run by two scientists from Scripps Institute of Oceanography, studying Emperor penguins. Those are full one-storey-tall portable sheds out there, not tents.
Mt Discovery was never dull; here it is with a rolling blanket of fog(?) – I kept expecting this to come in, but it was held almost in stasis behind the mountains.
For about three days Mt Discovery was hidden behind a very localised weather system, and came out with its stripes of exposed rock completely buried in a thick layer of snow. The same thing happened to the Southern Journey at the foot of the Beardmore in December 1911, when at the same time Amundsen was sailing through calm sunny weather.
Looking over the roofs of the Crary Lab and the MacOps building to Hut Point and Vince’s Cross, familiar from Wilson’s paintings. There were times I felt bizarrely like I’d time-travelled to the future, and this view often brought that feeling on.
One constant from the Heroic Age to Now is that everyone keeps an eye on Minna Bluff, because it is one of the most reliable weather forecasts in a notoriously unpredictable climate. If you can see Minna Bluff, the weather will remain good. If you can’t …
… then a blizzard is probably on its way, and you need to get to safety as quickly as you can. There is sometimes an intermediate stage, where Minna Bluff ‘has its cap on’, which suggests a change is imminent, but we had such idyllic weather during my stay that I never caught that one.
Some times, one couldn’t see anything at all.
These conditions still had an appeal, in a more abstract way.
When the clouds broke up, a whole new array of light effects arrived.
The sun spinning around the sky and the ever-changing sky and ice conditions made the Crary windows a landscape kaleidoscope – no two days were the same; often two consecutive hours would be substantially different. I certainly never got tired of the view, even on socked-in days. One day, when it was snowing quite heavily, the only differentiation I could see between surface and sky was a faint turquoise tinge in the sea ice – something about the diffuse light brought out only the refraction through the ice and nothing else. As a painting it would be the most obscure abstract expressionism, but in person it was almost mystical.
Good night, Pisten Bully!