And tonight Sergey suggested I stay on here to name the mountains of Antarctica.
I have this feeling, a strange sense of something unfolding, opening in front of me. Bergs in our bay and bergy bits on the beach just in today with the strong wind—it’s going to be neat to watch how things change. It’s so quick.
10:55 p.m. Still light out—why did we bring flashlights?
11:00 p.m. Carol to me—feels like we’ve been gone for two years now.
DECEMBER 16, 1995
CDThe phone woke me up. I knew it meant the Multanovskiy was here and, I hoped, our food and equipment. Blue sky, warm day, blue ship on the bay. Wendy and I ran to the Zodiac driver and asked him to take us to the ship. Bill the expedition leader is friendly. We discussed cargo. I was pleased he said he’d love to do what we are doing.
We waited on the ship for the last items to be sent to shore, then, like skuas, scavenged from the ship’s bar. One case Moosehead, one case Quilmes beer, one case white Piat D’or and one bottle of Grand Marnier. Wendy scored food in the meantime from Marco’s galley—eggs, pork and phyllo to have something to make for the first volunteer groups.
There on the shore to help us was one Russian guy in the Cartier shirt. We don’t know his name yet. At the storage room were eight of the Russians and Lena, waiting for my instructions about what to do with the ten massive unidentified orange crates loaned by the Canadian government Arctic program. They contain tents and a stove. We’ll unpack the stove. The Russians are helpful and kind.
Have to be careful not to be an environmental narc. Not a hypocrite. Some of the Russians are feeding the skuas. I am tempted to criticize but I hold back. The soft sell works better. I pick up a rolling beer can. Lena says, “That will be the best example.” We don’t want to be a band-aid and do futile things.
To work on:
•recycling process/waste disposal
•covering food
•not feeding skuas
•returning trash to Russia or somewhere with good disposal practices
•stop open burning
It is a privilege to live here, get insight into the scientists’ and staff’s Antarctic life and routines. Meals: tasty unfresh potatoes, zucchini, meat.
We go to the radio house where Sasha makes us coffee. Lena pours it out. At lunch we are reprimanded for not wearing enough warm clothes although we are fully suited up. The Russians are going to care about us no matter what because we are women, we’re young and we’re their guests. They are incredibly generous to us; when they learn about our provisioning problems they offer us surplus staples. Noodles, sugar, flour.
Soon we must visit the Chilean and Chinese bases.
I met with base chief Sergey Potapov. Lena helped translate. The table had a flowery doily and on it two ashtrays. I took a cigarette he offered—Argentinean—but couldn’t smoke it; too strong and it was 9:00 a.m. Sergey is kind and concerned about our well-being and that of our groups. I explained our goals and thanked him for the chance to work here.
We couldn’t manage without Lena. A few younger guys like Dima know English so we converse a bit but most don’t speak more than a few words of English, like Sergey.
He showed us the sauna and shower room, recently built and in fine condition. It’s available to us every day but Sunday.
Sergey said we can use their vehicles for work and excursions but the amphibious tank they call the PTS (“plavayushchij transportyer sryedniy”) is in demand and we’d have to let the drivers know in advance. We said we didn’t want to use the vehicles except when necessary.
The scientists at Bellingshausen are doing:
•Aerology (upper atmospheric studies): daily balloon launch at approximately 6:15 p.m. Temperature, humidity, wind direction and speed monitored throughout flight. Altitude gained varies between twenty and thirty km.
•Meteorology: six hourly observations of temperature, wind speed, cloud base, precipitation. These results are compiled and transmitted to Moscow.
•Sea ice monitoring: Four or five times per day infrared satellite imagery is recorded showing coverage and density of sea ice in the area of the peninsula and continent. Every ten days results are compiled and mapped.
•Seal population and distribution monitoring: A weekly count is conducted on the Fildes Peninsula area throughout the summer season. Elephant seals are the main source of interest. However, all other seal populations are also recorded.
After our lunch it was women’s sauna time. It was lovely, a sauna and shower. Wendy ran to the stream and jumped in! We walked to Frei to use their radio to call Ushuaia and make sure the volunteer flights and ship schedules are okay.
Lena and I planned a site orientation for the volunteers and did a waste audit. We found:
•welding rods
•scrap metal
•nails
•paint spills
•cloth
•plastic
•cigarette butts
•abandoned fuel pipes, fridge and metal objects
We decided we’ll start with the pipes at the abandoned fuel tanks as that could take time and we’ll get it out of the way with the first groups of volunteers.
We got their rooms ready in the block next to the Russian’s main accommodation block. Sergey gave us five empty rooms to use. The rooms are well-heated, austere, clean and furnished with two single beds. Shared bathroom. It’s clear in the station’s heyday there was capital for the base. In each room we put a brochure “Guidance for Visitors to the Antarctic” and an info sheet on safety, water conservation and recycling.
Waste plan in accordance with Annex III of the Scientific Committee of Antarctic Research (SCAR) Bulletin, July 1993
•All our waste is returned by Marine Expeditions vessels to Ushuaia for further disposal
•Waste materials are centralized and divided and bagged. Burnables: paper, cardboard; plastics: bottles, pvc packaging, sweets wrappers; organics; glass; metals: drink and food cans, silver foil
•Human waste is disposed of using Bellingshausen’s existing facilities
WTBig day. Concern over our lack of provisions. Must be confusion about which ship will deliver to us. Out to the ship with Carol to see what I can pull from their hold. Marcos is obliging and provides me with whatever I need to tide us over.
Sasha radioed the Petrov, but it was out of range. Eventually got through to the radio operators in Moscow to ask them to contact the ship. Message later from Tomas on the Multanovskiy, “Yes, perishables will arrive on the Petrov.” Until then, stone soup anyone?
Funny scene unloading the PTS. The ship’s crew and Bellingshausen team put as much energy into preventing us from lifting as they do into moving crates. I feel a little useless, but they seem happy helping. We follow Lena’s lead and don’t mess with the rhythm trying to prove ourselves.
Wendy in her kitchen in Canada House, Bellingshausen, 1995
{Carol Devine}
Sergey assigned the Sasha that lives on the hill to be my go-to guy for set-up and this evening Lena reported he waited all day by his phone for me to call with a job. And Doc Sasha ordered us not to work because Lena has a cold. I’m not sure I’ll get used to being on someone’s radar like this, but the warmth and playfulness in their eyes makes me feel glad to be a part of it and fortunate to do what I do.
Relieved when Sergey gave us a tour of their provisions and offered me anything I need to make our camp work. It’s dark tonight and I think I’ll be able to sleep.
Ideas:
•Shoot portraits
•Whalebone/landscape/berg drawings on weathered boards with nails from Bellingshausen—art lesson—environmental lesson—composition/prints/nothing
•Map of King George Island
•Ice map
•Satellite
•Replica of secret door
•Photographs of interiors/equipment, vignettes—smoking/games/potato-peeling
•Crates
•Seal pathways
•Penguin prints
•International opening—foods
•Canada House—white paint embedded with thread
•Inukshuk
DECEMBER 17, 1995
CDA brilliant morning. Sun turns berg in bay into gold. We had breakfast early with the Russians. Hot bowl of kasha—earthy-tasting porridge.
I am sitting on a rock. A skua is begging, waiting for food. This morning Sergey fed the skuas chicken legs. Bad. What can I say? He knows it is wrong. But the bird is his friend.
Lena asked me for tomatoes.
We went to the base camp of the glaciology project. Invited us to their kitchen tent for coffee. A handwritten label on the sugar lid in four languages: caxap, zucker, sucre, azucar.
The glaciology study is on hold. Dead equipment batteries. When the weather is good they work day and night. Well, there is no night. There are some dangerous crevasses near the extreme camp, closer to Arctowski.
It is cold but sunny. Never get hot, never get cold. The Inuit know how to stay the right temperature. Gerry Spiess said this.
Everyone here pulls his weight and is busy. I’m surprised at the amount of science going on. What happens to the results I don’t know, but these guys are working hard. While some research seems tedious and archaic with the men sending up meteorological balloons at 6:30 every day of the year, these guys take their roles seriously. Everyone takes shifts: Sasha the satellite operator sleeps five hours per day. The two scientists, Vadim and another Sasha, do the daily meteorological studies. Everyone does something of everything: dish duty, working a day in the kitchen.
We went where biologists Dima and Vlad were counting and studying elephant seal migration from the Drake Passage to the Bransfield Strait. Although the seals could swim around the Fildes Peninsula, they migrate through the station, slithering, heaving up and down the station through the stream, past rejected pineapple rings, into the sea.
We drove up to Volchevno, which means something like The Magical Place. The tank carried us up and down hills. Sasha was deft manoeuvering it. I thought about the Greenpeace report of tracks everywhere. But this is economics; this is the vehicle the guys have for now, besides Sergey’s little car, the Niva. It fits many people and is all-terrain.
“Look left,” said Sasha the mechanic.
I popped open the tank’s door. The side was painted with the word Russia in Cyrillic.
Overcast. Windy. Spied humongous elephant seals. Then smaller, smoother ones, still big. They had doglike faces, scary mouths with purple tongues.
The seal colony. They stared at us at first but carried on as if we were irrelevant. Scratching their “arms” with their fur-covered “hands.” Two seals were hugging each other. One put its arm over the other’s back and made like a kiss. Then some seals scrapped—males with teeth-marks in their skin, chopped-up fur. We are all seals perhaps.
We moved from the seal colony to a hut for the biologists. Another exquisite experience. The shack was a wagon-like trailer now held not on rocks, but whalebones! It was a shabby hut with green oil paint chipping off in big chunks—sundried cracks all over. Inside were two beds.
Nature mirrors nature. A rock sitting high on another rock looked like an elephant seal.
This is a lesson on minimalism. Every hut is a treasure, is useful. Recycled. How often does McMurdo, the big U.S. station, buy more stuff to take down? At least the machines here get full use and are kept in good condition because they are all the Russians have.
I realize I want to write about this experience after I leave the VIEW Foundation when I’m unattached to work politics. I want to move onto a new challenge but I am proud of what we’ve accomplished in a short time.
We had come to the hut so the Russians could fix the hinges on the door. I was cold so I went inside and sat on a bed, wrapping found blankets around me. The men hung the door loosely and smiled, closing me in for some time. I started singing “Milen’kij ty moy,” a folk song I’d learned in Sochi. It had a male and female part. Two of the men joined in: me inside the hut, them outside.
“This is nice,” said the biologist Vladimir.
On the way home I sat in the back of the tank. Meteo Sasha said, “Look out the window. China.” There stood five Chinese men in red expedition coats against the white glacial backdrop. We stopped; Wendy and the mechanic/driver Sasha got out. I felt I was in China for a moment. The men were smiling and chatting, although I couldn’t hear them.
When the Chinese scientist handed Wendy a chunk of petrified wood, she said she felt insignificant. It was from the time before Antarctica was ice, before the ice age. It was forty million years old.
We will leave the piece of wood here. This is where it belongs.
And day turns into day. The light now at 7:00 p.m. is like 2:00 p.m. light at home.
I had an urge to open my Christmas presents early.
Wendy and I have great discussions. I suggested ecology needs a human face. Greenpeace serves as a good watchdog for the planet, keeping expectations high and reporting on infractions of rules or principles. But Russia is in a transitional stage, Russia is poor, Russia was closed off for forty years.
Bellingshausen factors: 50 percent funding cut from Russian Federation government since perestroika. Station from 1968 hardly upgraded, in time warp running with old machinery. Well-built base then, strong buildings with high ceilings and thick doors like a ship. In them I still feel like we are moving. Neighbours China, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Korea, Poland, Brazil. Language is a barrier to developing a rapport with other stations. Economic inferiority complex; Iron Curtain didn’t come down that long ago. Isolationism.
Late at night: Sergey told Lena that the guys told Maxim and Yuri that they had to “stay away from our girls.” They had noticed them flirting with us. Group dynamics.
Lena told us about being at Novo station and cutting a man’s hair. He was so stimulated he couldn’t sleep for nights. She had to stop giving haircuts.
“Rules of Thumb” I found in Greenpeace papers:
•Stay at least 200 metres away from giant petrel nests
•Do not feed skuas or other wildlife
•Do not approach leopard seals; if you are not sure of the species, stay away!
•Try not to come between a fur seal and the sea, and do not approach fur seals (they can move surprisingly fast and their bites are painful and often become infected)
•Avoid stepping on all vegetation (including mosses and lichens) as well as on sensitive soils and soil features
•Make sure that all rubbish and other wastes (except grey water and sewage) are taken out of the Antarctic
•Stay out of Protected Areas (if in doubt, ask)
•Always give the benefit of the doubt to the environment
Dima, Hilltop Sasha, Radio Sasha, Sad Vlad (left to right), Lena (in front) on the radio hut steps, Bellingshausen, 1996
{Wendy Trusler}
WTClear, no wind, sunny, plus 4°c. Highest temperature yet this season, we are told.
Tractor ride to Stoney Cove. Moss a completely different colour today.
Found whalebone
Clean stove
Bellingshausen Team:
•Sergey Potapov: Base commander. Fifty-something. Looks like he has lived a little. Stern at times, as if he is trying to make up for being a one-of-the-guys kind of leader. Laughs easily. Kind.
Five Sashas (Diminutive name for Alexander):
•Driver Sasha (Sasha Diesel): Diesel Power station chief. Forties or fifties. Paul Newman eyes. Don’t think he has much hair under his longshoreman’s hat. Speaks a bit of Spanish.
•Hilltop Sasha (Aerology Sasha): Meteorologist. Lives with Vadim. Think he is 29. Has a three-year-old. Intense and on the case. He’s making trivets for our dining room table. Speaks English. Actually most of the scientists speak some, at least the younger ones.
•Doctor Sasha (Doc): Fifties—could be older? Salt-and-pepper beard with crazy eyebrows. Seems a
bit nervous, trying hard to make us feel at home. Tomorrow he is going to open the operating room to perform surgery on my stuffed Panda. Speaks English and Spanish.
•Radio Sasha (Sasha Radio): Unflappable camp communications guru. Forty-something. Leprechaun-like Ukrainian, if that’s possible. Marital status unclear. Speaks some English.
•Meteo Sasha: Burly, keeps to himself. Hasn’t said a peep to any of us, but seems nice enough.
Four Vladimirs (Diminutive name: Volodya):
•Satellite Vladimir (Sat Vlad, Sad Vlad): Meteorologist. Forty-something. Bearded, with bright blue eyes and an athletic build. The word is out about my stuffed bears—he confessed he brought a stuffed pig his 15-year-old daughter made for him for 1995, the year of the pig. Speaks a bit of English.
•Biologist Vladimir (Bio Vlad): Works with Dima; otherwise seems to be a bit of a loner. Fortyish, fit and very friendly. Has offered to teach me Russian. Speaks a bit of English.
•Diesel Vladimir (Volodya Driver, Diesel Volodya): Works in Diesel. Has been driving us around. Forties or fifties. Brawny and balding with a big moustache. Seems a little grumpy.
•Cook Vladimir (Cook, Volodya Cook): Fifties? Welcoming, salt-of-the-earth kind of guy with a shock of white hair. Gregarious and tall.
•Vadim: Aerologist. One of the camp elders. Grandfatherly beard and moustache hide his smile, but I can tell one is in there.
•Vassiliy: One of the support guys. Forties or fifties. Wears a classic Russian fur hat. Can’t miss his gold tooth when he smiles. Does so often. He’ll be in charge of delivering water to Canada House. Speaks Spanish.
•Anatoliy (Diminutive name Tolya): Support team mechanic. Forties or fifties. Dark, wiry and compact. Everything about him is quick. Speaks a little Spanish.
The Antarctic Book of Cooking and Cleaning: A Polar Journey Page 4