Cold Thoughts, Warm Clothes, Uncertain Directions, and Time

(Gentle Reader:  This is kind of a strange post, really just a set of thoughts and gleanings that I can’t really fit into a good narrative story.  Hopefully there’s some nuggets of interest in there for you.  If not, feel free to move along.  And thanks to Miss Manners for the salutation.)

How do you tell the time when the sun is always up, and you can’t use markers like sunrise and sunset to track the movement of the sun across the sky and differentiate morning from evening?  That’s a real problem at the South Pole, where Apollo’s chariot doesn’t race through the heavens, but instead rotates in a plane about a point.  It does so because during the austral summer, the earth’s axis is tilted such that the southern hemisphere is closest to the sun.  At the equator, the earth is large enough that its’ daily rotation takes the more temperate latitudes out of view of the sun for at least part of each day.  At the Pole, the diameter of the earth is smaller…down to a single point at the Geographic Pole…and with no bulky planet to block the sunshine, the sun never falls out of view.  (This same principle explains why days are longer in summer and shorter in winter anyplace you go, and why the seasons are reversed on either side of the equator as the tilted planet completes the solar year.)

So what you learn to do is to tell time by noting the position of the sun with reference to fixed points on the ground.  If I was to stand directly in front of the station, and think of a clock face centered on me with 12:00 being straight ahead, 3 AM might find the sun at 9:00 on my clock face; 3 PM might find it at 3:00 on my imaginary dial.  Further thought…usually induced by a lack of sleep because 3 AM and you forgot to put cardboard over your window…makes you recognize that the designation of time here is relative.  While we work on New Zealand time, there is absolutely no reason we could not wake up one day and decide to be on Tokyo, Mumbai, or London time, and apply our clock analogy the very same way without the disharmony between the hours of the day and the physical presence of day and night that would occur if we decided the time in Shanghai should be the same as in Jacksonville.

The sun doesn’t rise and set over the course of a day, but the solar plane does gradually rise and fall.  As winter approaches, the pole moves away from the sunlight on the “backside” of the tilted earth, and the planet blocks the sunlight from reaching us at the extreme. Eventually we’ll hit sunset; here we use a specific definition of sunset, which is when the upper rim of the sun disappears below the horizon when viewed over a flat surface.  Even after “official” sunset, there is still a gradually fading light (twilight) until the sun’s rays are fully blocked by the planet’s mass.  The process works in reverse at dawn; after roughly twelve weeks of darkness we hit twilight again, with a soft solar glow peeking over the horizon until the sun’s rim itself is seen back up in the sky.  The polar year is a single day, one sunrise, one sunset; the two “seasons,” winter and summer, are defined not by snow on one hand and greenery on the other, but instead by the inclination of the sun over the horizon and the ability of solar radiation to provide warmth to the surface (the magic number is about 13.5 degrees elevation in the sky).  Most of the sun’s warmth is actually reflected off the white snow and ice, and the thinner blanket of atmosphere at the Pole contributes to the colder climate.  Warmth, of course, is a relative term, but it does mean that we can speak of a “balmy” -20 F on a fine summer’s day.

(Interestingly, the air here is not only thinner due to altitude, but the centrifugal force generated by the earth’s rotation also pulls the atmosphere towards the equator and away from the pole.  The result is that while the elevation here on top of the ice is 9,300 feet, the effective altitude is closer to 11,000 feet above sea level. And even higher when the barometric pressure is low.)

It turns out that there’s three kinds of twilight, that period of time between sunset and night.  Civil twilight is when the geometric center of the sun is below the horizon, but there’s still enough light that artificial illumination isn’t needed (about six degrees below he horizon).  Nautical twilight and astronomical twilight designate a further range of times when the sun is below the horizon (twelve and eighteen degrees, respectively).  No idea where Bella, Edward, and Jacob fit into all this, and while I never read the books, I just think werewolves are better than vampires because doggies are more fun than bats.  The Offspring of the Empress has a friend named Jacob who occasionally spends the night playing Dungeons and Dragons.  I should check to make sure we have extra canine chewies just in case.

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While we’re on the subject of confusing things like day and night and summer and winter, let’s talk about direction.  Technically, everything radiating in any direction from the South Pole is north, and there is no east or west.  The farther you get from the pole the easier it is to navigate about the continent, as the four cardinal points of the compass become relevant.  But here directions only get you so far without reference to something else, like a building or marker.

In order to navigate near the Pole, and artificial grid system (the “local grid”) has been laid over the terrain.  It’s center is the South Pole Station itself rather than the Geographic Pole, because while the station and its’ environs constantly shift relative to the pole with the movement of the ice sheet upon which it sits, the built structures remain fixed relative to each other, so the grid doesn’t need to be re-surveyed each year.  What we might think of as north…zero degrees on the compass…is aligned with the Prime Meridian that passes through Greenwich, England.  East, south, and west are laid out at 90, 180 and 270 degrees from the baseline respectively.

In addition to establishing directions, the immediate landscape around the Pole has been divided into sectors.  Lying grid northeast us the Clean Air Sector.  Atmospheric research is the order of the day here, and as the wind is predominately form the northeast the breeze keeps exhaust and other contaminants from Station activities way from the laboratory.  On the northwest side is the Dark Sector, where radio telescopes search for Big Bang era cosmic background radiation and neutrino detectors search for the building blocks of the universe.  It’s called the “dark sector,” not because of any lack of light, but because radios here need to be turned off (“go dark”) to avoid interference with scientific instruments.  Grid southwest is the Downwind Sector, which is in fact  downwind from the northeast breezes, and serves as the site of the aircraft skiway.  Finally, the area southeast and just beyond the last station outbuildings (called the “South Forty” or the “Backyard;” the more remote structures and storage are at “The End of the World”) lies the SPRESSO Quiet Sector.  This is the home of seismology and radio detection work, where radio transmission and vibrations are minimized to enhance the accuracy of the data.

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I'm guilty of talking about ice and snow as features of our landscape, but what I should really be talking about is ice.  Ice is water frozen into a solid state; snow are ice crystals that grow while in the atmosphere and then fall to the ground.  Here at the Pole, the climate is so cold that water vapor literally precipitates out of the air as ice; the ice crystals don’t get a chance to grow into snow.  And when we talk about the Pole being one of the most arid places on earth, with relative humidity approaching zero, it’s because the water vapor doesn’t stay in the air but immediately comes down to earth as ice.  (One interesting side effect if that when liquid is on the floor in station, like when you’re mopping, it evaporates more quickly than normal because the air is starved for water vapor.)

The practical implication of all this is that you can’t make a very good snowball, because a good snowball requires the right mix of liquid moisture in the snow to hold it together.  If you try to pack a bunch of ice crystals together in your hands, they just fall apart.  I tried to throw a snowball at someone early in my sojourn.  Didn’t work, and now I know why.

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I’ve been surprised by how little I feel the cold while I’m out and about during the late polar summer.  No doubt much of my unanticipated comfort is due to the multiple layers of clothing I have on during my daily jaunts, and that the sky is clear, the sun is shining bright, and there is relatively little wind.  Still, the fact that I took nearly a two hour walk around the complex in -29 F cold with a wind chill of  of – 51 F seems unfathomable, especially in light of noting that halfway through the walk I was feeling quite warm and was ready to shed my various pelts at the earliest opportunity.  The only parts of me that seem on edge in the cold are those that aren’t covered, namely a small strip of skin between the edge of the balaclava over my eyebrows and the foam barrier of my goggles, and a similar stripe between the rim of the balaclava hugging my cheekbones and the lower rim of the visor.  I’m told that winter temperatures approaching -100 F with a whipping breeze is a whole new world of pain.  But for now, I’m kind of enjoying my rugged-guy, cold-weather many bragging rights.

Going outside has become a ritual of sorts.  There’s really no emotional weight that goes with long underwear, jeans, and a flannel shirt, but the enormity of what you’re doing sets in when you add up the other gear.  There’s a specific order to follow.  First you put on thin wool sock liners, then heavy merino mountaineering socks.  Next is the thick bib overalls, fastened at chest level by slotting metal tabs through small narrow eyelets.  The “bunny boots” follow, adjusting the valves to make sure they’re open, and typing them tightly to the next-to-last eyelet with the gusset folded towards the midline for the best deal.  (The “bunny boots” have a reservoir of air within their lining that separates any wetness on the side of the boot from your sock, and adds another layer of insulation for your feet.  The valves are there because if the reservoir was a closed space, the air within the lining would expand with changes in altitude, putting pressure on your feet and causing extreme pain.)

These last steps have likely caused your pants and thermals to rise up your leg, leaving the area just above your boot poorly protected, so your reach up towards your knee and pull these layers back down until the jeans overlap the top edge of the boot.  Then you rest for a moment before taking on the challenge of Big Red.

Big Red refers to the parka used by the USAP as an integral part of their Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear.  It’s thick, heavy, and in my case it comes with a quirky zipper that doesn’t want to line up easily, meaning it can be a fifteen minute tussle to try to get it on, like a little boy who still hasn’t quite figured out how to zip up his pants after he pees.  So what I’ve done is leave the bottom third zipped up at all times.  The trade-off is that I have to enter Big Red from the bottom, flailing away with my arms in the hope that I hit the right holes while I steer my head towards what I can see of the light.  Once the coat is in place, there’s a final adjustment of your thermals and shirtsleeves that have ridden up your arms.

(I just re-read the penultimate line of that paragraph, and I think I’ve provided inadvertent fodder for Human Resources.  Don’t know any other way to say it, so I suppose I’ll take my chances.)

Then you sit.  It’s somewhat related to the exertion of donning the ECW and the added weight, but to me it seems like the extra gear is transformative.  It’s suddenly become clear that you’re about the enter an alien environment that would be just as happy to never see your smiling face.  But because you have a mission to do, something to accomplish (even if a recreational goal…you never go outside simply to linger in a chaise lounge and tan), you wind up having this moment of contemplation, a time to muster the energy for the finishing touches before going outside and the task at hand.  Mentally renewed, you put on your glove liners; then your balaclava, hat, and goggles, taking care to insure a tight seal between your balaclava and goggles lest your exhalations sneak up between the visor and your face and coat the insides with ice. The heavy gloves come last, and you stiffly lurch down the hallway to the freezer door.  You’re outside.

(And this is just in summer.  I understand that in the winter you add another layer of fleece just below the outerwear, stick some packets of chemical toe warmers in your boots, and wear thick “bear paw” mittens over your gloves.  You might also use some sachets of finger warmers thrown in for good measure.  We’ll let you know.)

I’ve noticed is that while I’ll often feel short of breath and anxious while prepping to go walkabout, once I’m clear of the building this breathlessness seems to go away.  Maybe it’s simply in my head, knowing I’m going someplace where I physiologically don’t belong.  (I’ve been trying to figure out what’s churning around in my skull since Day #1.)  But I also walk at a steady pace, I don’t hurry or run, I take strides less than my usual length, and don’t talk as I walk, because I’ve learned doing these things will surely bring back my dyspnea (the clinical term for shortness of breath).  I do stop a lot, and I suspect my walking companions might construe this as a physical failing.  But it’s really because I take pictures of anything and everything…sometimes three or four pictures of the same thing, just to make sure I get it right…the same way my Mom and I ask the same question over and over to see if we get the same answer.  I’m worse than a tourist at Disney World.  When you take a picture outdoors here, though, there’s an entire procedure that goes with it.  Take off your heavy gloves.  Turn on your phone (if you leave it on, the cold drains the battery).  Set your back to the sun so the glare doesn’t obscure the screen.  Enter your pass code.  When the plastic fingertips on your glove liners don’t work, take that off too.  Enter your pass code.  Open the camera app. Take the picture.  Reverse before your hand starts to feel the cold.  A single picture becomes a three minute process, and you get a nice little rest as a bonus.

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It’s now the middle of March (about a month since I put the first few thoughts together), we’ve been locked in for a month, and a few things have changed.  The sun is much lower on the horizon and is not giving us much heat.  The temperatures are dropping to -60 to -70F, and even a fairly light breeze gives us a wind chill factor of -100 F or slightly below.  Sunset happens next week, then another month or so of twilight before the cold and darkness come to stay.

(It still feels awkward to talk about “big numbers” like - 100 F as something that we can still be “below.”  Below zero, I get.  Below 100 below 0 is still confusing.) 

The Station itself seems a chillier as well, especially for those of us fortunate to have a window in their offices and berths as I do.  I’ve gone and pilfered a second comforter from the laundry room to supplement the first polar duvet and the weighted blanket I brought from home (the latter of which has been an absolute a godsend, not only for the comfort factor but because the weight stops me from kicking off the other covers in the middle of the night).  I’ve started to wear a fleecy jacket most of the day, and using fleece-lined jeans to keep my skinny little legs warm and toasty.   

Outside, I’m doing surprisingly well.  The numbers should keep a rational person inside, but with the bright sunshine I keep getting fooled that it’s still a relatively warm day.  (And relative to what it’ll be like when the sun goes down, it probably is.)  The cold feels like it infiltrates the layers of clothing just a bit more, especially around the openings of the balaclava and where my snow pants fall over the top of my boots when you walk into the breeze, but it’s still not uncomfortable to be out and about.  The most burdensome part about going outside is getting dressed to do so.  I’ve dumped the heavy overalls in favor of some lined ski pants; when I wear the goggles, they become quickly coated with frost so they mostly stay in my pocket.  (As my breath rises, some moisture gets through the foam where the goggles meet skin and a layer of ice forms on the inside).  I’ve also found that my heavy work gloves need to be replaced with mittens, as individual fingers get colder than the hand as a whole.  When I take my hand out of my mitten and thin glove liner to take a picture, I’m good for about a minute and then my hand is filled by a burning sensation, by followed by a feeling of numbness and then cold; after a minute or two more, you notice your hand turning a dusky purple, and it’s then that pain beings to set in.  The weather charts tell me that at a wind chill factor of -100 F, you have less than five minutes before exposed flesh develops frostbite; when I first arrived in late January, that window was 15-20 minutes. Even after you put your mitten back on, the pain lingers.  You learn very quickly that you don’t need that many pictures after all.

(Do you recall that scene in A Christmas Story where the kid got his tongue stuck on a metal flagpole?  I did my own version of that here.  We were walking through the ice tunnels…passages cut out of the ice below ground shielding pipes that bring water to the station and take sewage away…at a balmy -58 when for whatever reason, I stuck my tongue out.  Having bunched my Big Red up high around neck and face, it immediately adhered to the zipper in front of my face.  Fortunately, I did not have to call the South Pole Fire Department for assistance as was done to poor Flick in the movie; I heard a bell in my head, went Pavlovian, and a little extra body temperature saliva got it loose. But it goes to show that not everything in the movies is fake.)

While I’m still able to stay warm, walking itself has become more difficult.  The lower then sun on the horizon, the more difficult it becomes to see the varied contours of the layered snow and ice as it drifts across the ground.  Several weeks ago in summer you could easily identify the well-traveled and snow-packed paths around the Station, now those routes are obscured by the drifting snow.  So walking is more hesitant, because you never quite know when you’re going to be treading on firm surface with minimal give, or plunge your boot into a half foot of snow (walking in snow and leaving deep human tracks is called “postholing.”)   So walking to an outdoors destination takes linger, and requires more exertion, which is especially felt at altitude.  But the reward is to see the patterns of the snow, looking like one white wave upon another, cascading across a pristine white beach in a tableau frozen in time. 

I’ve also changed my walking routes just a bit.  I try to get outside at least every other day, if for no other reason than just to be outside and remind myself of the uniqueness of where I am, and to not get stir crazy before the middle of winter forces insanity upon me.  My usual routine is out the main station entrance, touch the mirror ball at the Ceremonial Pole, walk around the world at the marker for the Geographic Pole, and then lap back around the station and home.  It’s a twenty-minute walk, about the same time it takes to put on your cold weather gear before going outside and then getting rid of your extra layers once back indoors.  But the other day as I was strolling about the globe I remembered that the ice sheet upon which I live moves about ten meters each year relative to the Pole.  That meant that if the current marker was placed in January, and about a quarter of the year has gone by, the actual Geographic Pole is about two and half meters behind and to the right of the sign behind the marker.  Since then I’ve been haunted by the through that I may not have actually been at the Pole, so now when I walk I’m sure to step twenty paces beyond the marker in the proper direction to make certain I can claim to have walked to the South Pole and circled the planet.  And it gives me a certain amount of vengeful satisfaction to know that when the six-figure tourists drop by, they won’t realize this, and even if they go to the Geographic Pole marker and take their Glory Shot they’d still be short. 

(“Glory Shot” means the picture you take to show friends that “I was there” without any appreciation for what it means.  You should be ashamed of yourself for thinking otherwise. You know who you are.)

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The other thing that’s happening is that time seems to have more dimensions than I knew.  I’m not quite sure how to describe it in words.  Time itself doesn’t change, of course.  There’s still sixty seconds to a minute, sixty minutes to an hour, twenty-four hours to each rotation of the earth.  But the usual time cues fall apart after that.  The cycle that characterizes a single day elsewhere takes a full year here.  The sun rises in October, sets in March, and rises again the following fall.  The twilights of dawn and dusk last for weeks at a time.  I’ve been here just shy of two months and have yet to see the moon or stars’ when I wake up during the day, at night, or in the morning I have no idea what time it is because even though I use overs and shades on my window, the sun always comes through. It’s always light out.  My circadian rhythms (such as they were after many years of ER nights) are totally shot, making sleep all the more difficult.  I’m tired all the time, tired of being tired, and looking forward to night, all four months of it.

There’s also a sense of being suspended in time.  Some of this is related to the unchanging scene outside and that the people you see and work with are stuck in that same loop; some is also related to the fact that fortunately, a doctor at the South Pole doesn’t have much to do.  I’m here for contingencies, and in this mostly young and healthy over-winter population there are relatively few who come in for care.  I’m not complaining by any means…I don’t want anyone to become ill or injured simply to occupy my time, and I enjoy the opportunity to be lazy more than just about anyone.  But the usual things you do during the day to break up routine, things like letting out the dogs, fixing meals, and running errands, are gone.  The usual interpersonal interactions that take up the day are gone as well; while everyone here on station here on station does something, their work seldom crosses paths with mine.  As everything is provided, and there’s no place to go, it often feels like I’m in a repetitive loop; life becomes a matter of waking up, killing time until lunch, killing time until dinner, and back to bed.  I wonder if others feel this way, and if maybe this is one of those factors that might induce behavior changes as our time here goes on, the need to feel as if you’re doing something, or anything.  One of our group who has spent prior winters here tells me that most people follow a cycle of enthusiastic large group participation just after station close, followed by breaking into small groups and cliques, and then self-imposed isolation before re-emerging when the sun rises and departure looms.  Maybe this feeling of stasis starts the process.  (If nothing else, the past weeks have taught me that I would be a rotten retiree.)

There’s also an impression that time, while invisible on a daily basis, can be seen on a larger scale.  If you look at a landscape, you know from school that the mountains and valleys have been shaped over eons by the forces of wind and water, but you don’t have any innate sense of what that means in time.  Thousands or millions of years are simply an abstraction.  It’s somewhat different here at the Pole, where you can witness a microcosm of geologic time.  Where we currently enter our Station or many of our laboratories is not ground level (technically ice level, as ground level lies two miles below the ice); the base of the stairways are buried nearly twenty feet below the current entrance.  Heavy vehicle tracks plainly seen just a few weeks ago are now gone.  Forty-foot high storage arches for supplies and fuel, initially on top of the ice, are now covered by feet of snow.  Even looking at recent photos, you can note how the Station has shifted relative to the Geographic Pole as the ice sheet at its’ base continually moves, and if you listen closely at night you can hear the Station itself crack and pop as the ice under its’ foundation moves and settles.  The landscape changes up north, of course, but so rapidly that it makes no lasting impression; one day there’s snow on the ground, the next it’s melted and you have only dirty brown slush in the streets.   Here the changes are slower but nonetheless visible, giving one a sense of how terrain changes over time within what seems an unending permanence.

Time seems to have changed for me on a personal level as well.  I’ve already mentioned the sense of suspended animation that ensures when the usual markers for the progression of time are gone, and when the activities of life that occupy you daily are gone.  But running alongside of this is a second realization of both how much time there actually is, and thus how much time I’ve wasted, and how little time I may have left.  Being one of the oldest on station certainly doesn’t help, especially when I hear this eclectic group of young people think about the lives ahead of them, where a life of travel with no fixed abode seems the rule rather than the exception.  Born thirty years to soon, these are opportunities my generation didn’t have, and it’s not that I begrudge anyone these chances; I recognize I had more options for travel and adventure then they did.  But I do feel more acutely than before that I’m in the winter of my days, and that I don’t have much time left.  I can’t pull my weight with some of the more physical jobs, and I walk slower than the others.  Things crack and pop in the morning, and ache in the evening; it’s the age where things start to go wrong, where everything takes longer, where everyone is nice to you in the exercise room because they know you’re trying.  How much more time does the treadmill buy me?  How much time do I lose with the altitude and isolation?  You try to use time better, in my case to write and exercise, things I’ve always wanted to do but never found the time nor the willpower; now that I have time and focus (I think it was Samuel Johnson who noted that"when a man knows he is to be hanged, it concentrates his mind wonderfully"), it all seems beyond my grasp. 

But sometimes I look out the window at the unbroken plains of ice and snow, or stand outside with the chill finding its’ way inside my layers, or just look at a picture of the BGFE or get a text from my son or talk to my parents, and I’m not saddened by the transience of it all, but in awe and appreciation of the fact that this place, these people, and I even exist.  The feeling is warm, whole, and maddeningly fleeting.  It’s active and peaceful at the same time.  It’s a sensation that is overwhelming and admits no other thought, but when it’s gone it can’t be resurrected.  We each have our own version of it, be it the feeling of being near  to someone, taking in a view, holding a child, bonding with an animal, the moment of success or the moment of loss.  Maybe the point of the next eight months is to learn to hold onto it all.