Laide

What I cut out of my views over McMurdo Sound

Conditions:  Con3.  Temperature 28° (t-shirt weather).  Overcast with flurries.  Population 900


In French (feminine), laide--pronounced like the element, lead, in English--means ugly.  I have found the word to be almost onomatopoe-oid, perfectly representing it's meaning.  Lead/laide, to me, is gray, dirty, ponderous,and dull. 

I've posted many pictures of the austere beauty of Ross Island and the continent across the sea ice.  The Transantarctic mountains in the distance exhibit a harsh, frigid, ethereal whiteness.  Every time I go outside and look out over McMurdo Sound with its constantly shifting light and surface ice, I feel awed by the grandeur.  Some days, the ice seems an endless, wavy, gray-blue ocean.  Other days, the Sound is a blowing storm of pink ice-fog. Yet other days, the ivory ice fades to grey and then bursts open with a ring of gold surrounding the base of snow-covered streaked Mt. Discovery. 

Yet McMurdo itself defines laide.  When I take my pictures, I sneak my iPhone lens through the power lines that obstruct every view.  I crop out the omnipresent pipes crisscrossing the ground and the rusty metal walkways that traverse them.  I don't show the slippery, wind-swept avenues of snow and ice during the late winter that are now tire-grooved, gravel and dirt roadways striped with rivulets of mud.  I also omit the buildings that, architecturally, can best be described as military drab (with the exception of the clinic which, with its penguin greeter and red roof, has some 1970's charm).  And, since throwing away broken equipment means shipping it back to the US and potentially losing parts, much of the base looks like an abandoned junk yard, littered with old construction vehicles, wooden pallets, connex containers, fuel drums, and other scattered detritus.  I leave out those, too. And of course, pictures can never portray the background drone of the power plant, interspersed with helicopter and Twin Otter engines, thankfully punctuated by the rare but welcome squawk of a skua.

Southern Lounge (a bar) with bridge in
foreground to go over pipes

Smoking shack.  When it's warm, as it is now,
people smoke outside.  The shacks are gross.

When we arrived, darkness and snow partially hid the dingy, drab, ugliness of the base.  But now, with little snow coverage, every mud pile and dismantled fish hut is brilliantly spotlit in the 24 hour sun.

The radius of our existence here for 90% of our time is about 100 yards encompassing the galley, our dorm, the gerbil gym, the fitness center, and the clinic where I sit in a windowless room.  The remaining 10% of time includes short trips to Scott Base (Dean runs it; 1.5 miles each way) or walks up and around Ob Hill or to Hut Point.   After 100 plus days, this narrow view of an increasingly ugly environment gets tedious.

Clinic with snow

Without snow. Snow covers a multitude of sins.

It's hard not to wish I were working at Palmer Station (more about that later) or as a McMurdo grantee, out in the field.  The former, which is above the Antarctic Circle, has more space to roam, particularly out on the water, and lots of wildlife and beautiful ice bergs floating by.  McMurdo grantees may also have a narrow view of Antarctica but at least they work in outside of the base.

But enough complaining.  The ugliness of the site is more than counterbalanced by the people, the science and the sheer novelty of being here.