Read Antarctica for Free Online Page B

about Nietzsche or about game show hosts. Relationships form quickly and can break just as quickly. Some of the contract workers here have ‘ice husbands’ or ‘ice wives’, couplings that seem no less committed for the fact that they only exist when both partners are down here together. Even though the station has twenty-four-hour internet access, the outside world barely interferes.
    The world of Antarctica, however, can make itself felt even for those who rarely get the chance to leave town. With regulation gear, the cold isn’t so hard to deal with. But once in a while the winds will whip up into a ‘condition i’ storm, in which visibility is zero and it’s dangerous even to feel your way the few metres from one building to the next. During a condition i all outside travel is forbidden, and wherever you happen to be is where you have to stay. ‘Hurry up and wait’ people say to each other, with a shrug, wherever they are trapped. They will break out the playing cards, switch on the stove, and start one of the ubiquitous coffee machines.
    This applies even more during the winter, when the permanent darkness falls, and the winds rise, and the cold gets into your bones. If winter storms sweep into town, you stay where you are. And if you’re outside, you’d better be near a shelter.
    The animals near here have learned this, especially the true Antarcticans, the ones that don’t leave for the north no matter how bad things get. When winter approaches, Antarctica’s Weddell seals stay in the water, trapped under an ice lid that can be metres thick, gnawing holes that are more like tunnels to enable them to breathe, spending months on end swimming, feeding and resting down there in the darkness, sheltered by the freezing water from the even harsher outside.
    Nobody has ever seen these seals during the winter; the best clues for how they make their living come only in summer, when the females at least haul out to give birth, and moult and prepare again for the coming ordeal.
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    The sky was enormous, flecked with clouds that pointed like an arrow all the way to the horizon. Between them was bright blue sky and sunshine, a glorious day. I was driving one of my favourite Antarctic vehicles—a ‘Mattrack’—which would be a perfectly normal red pick-up truck except for the triangular wheels. They made me laugh. From a distance it looked impossible, as if the wheels themselves should clunk awkwardly round. It was only when you were close that you noticed they were actually individual caterpillar treads, their triangular shape ensuring the best possible grip on the slippery sea ice.
    The pace was faster than walking but not by much. I wound down my window, the better to see the view. The air that crept in was sharp but not unpleasant; the temperature couldn’t be far below freezing and already I’d stripped off my parka.
    A set of sea ice ‘roads’ branched away from McMurdo like a family tree. All were bright white, scored with skidoo or caterpillar tracks, and flanked on the right with a long row of flags, most red, a few green, fluttering from bamboo poles every few metres. The flags looked absurd, like overkill. Why did we need so many? But I knew that Ross Island could deliver a storm with a quick, casual sideswipe that would turn this big bright view into snow and confusion.
    The weather forecast looked good but before being allowed to come I had to learn exactly what sized cracks I could safely cross, and how to pitch an emergency tent, in the lee of the vehicle, using ice screws that take painfully long to twist into the hard grey sea ice. I was also forbidden to travel alone, so beside me in the passenger seat was Mike from the heavy shop, whose name was next on the list of contenders to get out of town free, and who was quietly pleased at the outing.
    We were going to meet Bob Garrott, a researcher from Montana State University who I