still, cold blank video

The ice shelf is an expanse of permanently frozen ocean; 40 meters of packed snow and ice floats on 120 meters of the ocean water. I rode a shuttle, which I regularly drive, out to ice shelf. The air was perfectly still that day. I chose a spot just off the snow road where a simple perfectly straight line divided the snow from the sky. When the van drove away, a silence unlike any silence found in inhabited places, hung in the cold afternoon air. I sat the camera down on the ground and stood unmoving next to it for 20 minutes, tape continually running. This cold sit is a physically trying experience, even on a moderate day in Antarctica.

Then with a few crunches I entered the framed landscape. The camera still rolling, I mindfully stopped. Dropped to my knees—again perfectly still, I rested there. For five minutes the camera records the silence.

Even to people here on the ice, they perceived the video to be a still photograph until I entered the frame.

………………

I miss, so much do I miss, the smells of “bio-matter”, and the rustle of wind dancing through leaves-the sounds trees, and cardinal’s song.

But no doubt, I will long for this vastness and silence once I deploy.

………………

The US Coast Guard Icebreaker has just broken a passageway, The Channel, through the ice shelf.

Last week I took a cruise down the channel.









A fuel tanker and a large vessel full of supplies will sail in next week. We prepare for ship offload, an event that our entire existence here depends on. Without a doubt the next few weeks will fly by.

(And it did. The Fuel Tanker, and the Nathanial B. Palmer research vessel both arrived while the Coast Guard Icebreaker circled in the bay for days!)



Soon our Air National Guard Chariot-a C17 bomber--will take me off the Ice.

Then, I will bask in natural darkness, with stars above.