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Has there ever been a literary journal dedicated solely to Antarctica? If so, it has escaped our thorough Antarctic and literary experience. Welcome to IceTongue, the southern-most literary journal on Earth, and the first place for new fiction and poetry for the seventh continent. The human presence in Antarctica is young. One estimate holds that fewer than 200,000 souls have ever visited the place. Yet even before Ross or Scott set foot on the continent, we made it the subject of our literary imaginings. Unlike continents that support permanent populations, there is no autochthonous literature of Antarctica. But those who have traveled to the last continent include artists and writers who bring forth original work out of proportion to the Antarctic population, work that enlarges our understanding of our selves and the place, dazzles with poignancy or perspective, and sometimes quite simply entertains fellow Antarcticans. So we begin with three fiction writers and seven poets writing about Antarctica. Some of them are professional writers who have traveled in Antarctica. Others write to express what they have encountered as they work on the seventh continent. They are scientists and computer technicians, poets, dishwashers and teachers. All of this work is new. Some of the authors are published here for the first time. Several visual artists contributed imagery for this issue. Alan and Colin Campbell are the first father and son duo to be awarded a National Science Foundation Artists and Writer's Grant. They spent the austral springtime of 2005 painting and photographing the area around McMurdo Sound. "The most amazing things in Antarctica are what's in front of you and what's under your feet," Alan said about the images he photographed and painted this year. For Alan, the trip represented a return to a place that has inspired his painting on previous trips to the continet. For Colin, who has recently worked as a video game animator, Antarctica was an entirely new experience. The trip also provided a chance to work side by side with his father in oils, watercolors and photography. Bob Champoux took a sabbatical from teaching surveying at the University of New Hampshire to come to Antarctica. He says that working as a surveyor for the United States Antarctic Program during 2005 and 2006 also gave him a chance to exercise his passion for photography. "I'm happy to have discovered all of the striking detail in the snow and ice," he says. "Usually, it's thought of as just that: Vast amounts of snow and ice. But, looking closer, it's wild to see completely different patterns only a few thousand feet apart even though the areas are exposed to the same natural forces. Our description of the continent is evolving: From the common belief that Antarctica was a 'vast wasteland' to numerous generations, to 'a large mass of snow and ice that holds the bulk of the world's fresh water,' to a place of great beauty." In addition to the harsh conditions that make protecting cameras difficult, Bob says the light brings special consideration as well. "...during the austral summer, there is 24 hours of daylight, so bright snow and high contrast scenes are the norm. Unlike photography in most other parts of the world, one can't wait for better light. So, the harsh light has to be embraced." Photographer Michelle Ott began a project of removing imagery from the prints she created while working for the NSF support contractor at McMurdo Station. Her images of the Antartic landscape with human objects cut out prompt reflection upon how we alter the Antarctic landscape even as we study it. She is also the only photographer in this issue who works with traditional prints rather than digital. "I like the tactile nature of photographic prints," she wrote via email. "Cutting them and peeling emulsion off of them is sort of the reverse - or my response - to the way that we place things here in Antarctica. Although all the buildings and containers are useful and purposeful, they alter the landscape in a way that is distinctly human. By removing these human items, I look at what it's like here with out us. Ultimately, even with out the actual structures, evidence of us remains." Finally Ariana Owens, of Riverside, California, worked as an air traffic controller for the US Navy before she came to do the same job for the US Antarctic Program this year. She photographed a skua's battered feet at the control tower outside McMurdo Station. The editorial board for this issue includes Tina Green, Bill Jirsa, Karen Joyce, Jeff Klein, Helen Paul, and Gavin Tierney, most of whom contributed to this inaugural issue (all submissions are read blind). IceTongue welcomes submissions for our June 21 Winter Solstice Issue. So this month, as the sun sets on another austral summer and most Antarctic visitors return North, we offer our fist issue ever: a place for Antarctic literature. Stay warm, and welcome to IceTongue. Bill Jirsa McMurdo Station, Antarctica

Mon 20 Feb 2006

Claire Beynon is the winner of the inaugural McMurdo Station Poetry Contest.

Thin Ice

Step out
onto white

not as a body
bearing any weight

but as a feather
might.

Think
of ink

in a quill
drawing a cantata

out of
light.

Flag Lullaby - November 2005, Explorer's Cove, New Harbor.

The wind is visiting
New Harbor
for once the chill
and light of midnight
bow down
and listen.

We shelter
inside the Jamesway.
Outside, five flags
are live skins
shocked into action
by some ancient

command. They brace
themselves and beat
like drums that thrum
and thrum
and thrum until sleep
overcomes.

Claire Beynon spent October and November 2005 as part of a team of researchers at Explorers Cove, New Harbor, and wrote these poems there after a precarious end-of-season walk in front of the camp where the pack ice was beginning to thaw. She lives in South Africa and New Zealand.

Image: Late Season Sea Ice, Bob Champoux

Fri 10 Feb 2006

Poetry by Kathleen Heideman

"There's nothing out there."
—Fred Eisele, describing the Polar Plateau

"The water never sounds malicious, exactly, but it's clear that its power is so far beyond human scale that if it crushed us, with a sudden twitch, it would never notice..."
—Genn MacDonald on Aube (music review)

We are curious by nature, curious—yet find we yearn for something we already know:
at the end of the Taylor Valley, sunlight outlines every detail, but there's no "human scale" --
nevertheless, we find ourselves sizing up each glacier — Hello? — appraising each dome of snow,

as if it were a stranger in a dark bar, a 3-bdrm bungalow we might be purchasing. Aren't your Asgaards low,
compared to the Rockies — I mean, wouldn't we grow to love them less in time? Our echo bounces, hails
itself, tumbles into icy scree below. Hello there Friendly by nature, yet we yearn for what we know:

each human eye contains a tiny yardstick marked with pencil: "average pine tree, average crow" —
when we are uncertain, we lift that eye to the world. WHAT EXPERTS KNOW: before shooting, exhale.
Better photographs are the reward for being still. Hello? — You try being still, sizing up this snow —

I've seen how we throw ourselves upon it, expecting powder, the snow is different here, a noun with no
verbish give, cement, glassine, or grains in spin-drifts. The cloud is waist-high. The horizon provides no scale
for us to weigh this world upon, so we go on calculating, under-estimating, yearning for what we know

of elsewhere: bricks, timbers to build a home with. We used to have a yardstick: "average love, average plateau"
but a polar plateau runs for — what, a thousand miles? No bookstores, electrical lines, sentinel pines; we fail
to find our familiar; yet the eye darts around, an optimistic crow in search of broken twigs beneath snow,

another crow. Yardsticks smooth as skiis, we slide backwards. the eye wants one blasted tree in the snow,
so we can figure the distance to the plateau. Is that too much to ask? Where does the tailor hem the Tale?
My uncle trained a crow to say hello. Hello it said — that's all it knew. We are curious by nature but know
even a trained crow prefers answers, yes or no, to endless distance, endless greetings, endless snow.

Kathleen Heideman spent November of 2005 in Antarctica through the National Science Foundation Artists and Writers Program. Her project website is Scientific Method: Poems of Antarctic Inquiry. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Image: Antarctica (without), Michelle Ott

Fri 10 Feb 2006

Or A Short Summary the Heroic Era of British Antarctic Exploration

Poetry by Helen Paul

When men were men they starved and died
Or froze or larked about and made
Adventures, fraught with science, merely to have tried

At tasks that no one yet claimed the pride
Of being first to do. When the shade
Of winter’s winter died Light found the men’s wide
Shoulders harnessed, twitching to be off. They were paid
With little more than having tried

To do the nearly inconceivable beside
Men made brothers by the blade
Of cold and sometimes hunger. Seals died

To feed the dogs. Penguins were examined, hide
And feather, sleds hauled and hauled up killing grade,
Muscles sublimated. Their stalwart souls two years were tried Before the lads could catch the tide
For home. Those shaken, kippered, scurvied, men that made
The voyage home were briefly pictured best of breed beside the men who starved and died
For the glory of adventures made solely to have tried.

Helen Paul works for the United States Antarctic Program at McMurdo Station. When she is not in Antactica, she lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Image: Vince's Cross at Hut Point, Bob Champoux

Fri 10 Feb 2006

Poetry by Jeff Klein

Consider the Hadley Cell,
In which warm and moist air rises; travels
From the equator to a latitude
Of roughly 30 degrees
North or South, Texas or Chile.
The air, then cold and dry, falls to Earth

Most all known deserts on Earth
Are the result of this square cell.
Like where it never rains, in Chile.
However, if one travels,
Say, below about eighty five degrees
(though one seldom has the latitude

In life to find such latitude), One could find the driest place on Earth.
Drier (and colder) by degrees
than the air in the Hadley Cell
as it falls, ending its travels
Far from the equator, say Chile.

Indeed the story doesn't end in Chile
At that dry middle latitude...
The air that has fallen now travels
Along the surface of the Earth
Creating the secondary Ferrell Cell
Rising again around sixty degrees

(Oddly enough, at sixty degrees
One is almost still in Chile,
The smallest country with more than one air cell?)
The air, seeming warm and moist by this latitude,
Begins again to rise above Earth
Entering the last leg of its travels

And at this point in its travels
Where temps fall below -100 degrees
(Like Vostok, the coldest place on Earth--
Colder than any of the Andes' peaks in Chile),
Here, in the extreme latitude
Do we find the Polar Cell.

And so air moves across Earth, across Chile
It would seeem, and travels by degrees
With no sentience, the latitude of a single cell.

Jeff Klein grew up in south Florida and managed his way to New England for college and graduate school. This past austral summer, he put that knowledge to work washing dishes in Antarctica. Jeff now resides in Ithaca, New York

Image: Clouds over Mt Discovery, Colin Campbell

Fri 10 Feb 2006

Poetry by Bill Jirsa

The specimen informs: love is a floating point, no meaning except in things, time equals loss. Of course we may be wrong in detail.
This sample was found in Antarctica as two individual pieces which fit perfectly,
like two lobes of a frozen lake, two seasons, wings of a ludicrous bird, as illustrated in Figs 2 & 3.
We used to be afraid of comets.
(Imagine closing your eyes in the course of meeting someone,
seeing that moment through the distance of time.) This quality might be called largeness.

We used to live each day as if this life were someone else’s. Then the largeness
of our mortality loomed like mineral silos across the salt plains, the reactor details
growing finer as we approach the floating point of the ranges beyond. Someone
always turns to watch the point recede into the horizon, perfectly
expressing the sadness of birds migrating. We remember watching the comet
recede into the dawn as birds, two or three miniscule figures,

approached the place where we slept. We fell in love once. Two or three
times we have broken someone’s hearts. This chart represents the enormity
in our silence; love, the desire to possess the loved, hurtling like a comet
into distance (turn to look how far we’ve come). So we learned to hide details
even when we meant them. We wept perfectly
whenever we read old letters from someone

who used to love us, the complete specimen, someone
we should have taken better care of. Two or three
points of data perfectly
supporting the theory: possession is the decaying of love, the largeness
of the bell-shaped curve, the scatter plot of the departure date
of birds, details
that beg the question: was it ever too late? We remember you returning like a comet

spraying stars into our night. Could we have hoped to see a comet
more than once in a lifetime? Even if we stay up late enough, someone
is always pointing out the distance, details
we cannot ignore. In Antarctica there are deserts that are among the two or three
driest places on Earth. The ranges there, the shadows of their largeness,
freeze rivers in their channels, lakes clear to their bottoms. My desires were like these rocks worn perfectly

smooth by the fingers of the wind over millions of years perfectly
cold like the breath of a comet.
All this silence, all this looking backward into the distance! The largeness
of the past is brought to bear as a tiny point upon someone.
And where are the birds? There is nothing for them to eat and yet two or three
of them stray up these dry valleys each year seeking something, their death not worthy of detail.

So the specimen perfectly exemplifies the point: perhaps you are someone
to pass through our sky like a comet: in the thing itself, figure two or three
approaches to meaning. The night enlarges us. This distance, like our desire, is just a detail.

Bill Jirsa works in the computer department for the US Antarctic Program in McMurdo Station. He lives in Colorado when he is not in Antarctica.

Image: Skua standing on Twin-Otter aircraft, Ariana Owens

Fri 10 Feb 2006

Poetry by Jack Harris

Although surrounded, I am alone
This work is for the young
Who do not have the fear
of not returning or promises of caring.
They sleep freely and laugh at edges
Tomorrow passes, and they live now.

For them, time is endless now
They have no need to be alone
And so, they test themselves by play at edges.
But I am no longer young
And no longer capable of carrying
The implications that come with fear.

In this land it is easy to know fear
Even though it is peaceful now,
Implications are facts I'm carrying
That build mirages of meanings to me alone,
Although I remember being young
Before the world was hemmed with edges.

Here the wind the sea the mountains have edges
Each more powerful than the other, each engenders fear.
I am told the world is young
And thoroughly mapped now
With bits belonging to single labs alone
And someone who is committed to its caring.

But that does not help when you're carrying
Important tools along the edges
And others depend on you alone
Then the implications raise the fear
That the past won't help you now
Now it's not a state of mind, not to be young

For age's glowing length does not replace the strength of the young
When life itself depends on carrying
The how and power that is needed now.
When all depends on crossing edges
And only strength displaces fear.
Then, though surrounded, I am alone.

So though I've been at many edges, and can, in fact, cross some now
And though I've gained in patient caring, and managed carrying many fears,
For this I will atone: I hate the young. Tomorrow I leave them here, but I now know alone.

Jack Harris was the senior member of a team at New Harbor, in McMurdo Sound during November 2005, where divers depended upon him to tend their dive holes while they were submerged under the sea ice.

Image: Cape Evans Road, Bob Champoux

Fri 10 Feb 2006

Poetry by Bill Manhire

Read by Sir Edmund Hillary at Scott Base, 28 November 2004, at a commemorative service to mark the 25th anniversary of the Erebus tragedy, when all 257 passengers and crew on Air New Zealand flight TE109 died on the slopes of Mount Erebus.

The Mountain I am here beside my brother, Terror. I am the place of human error. I am beauty and cloud, and I am sorrow; I am tears which you will weep tomorrow. I am the sky and the exhausting gale. I am the place of ice. I am the debris trail. And I am still a hand, a fingertip, a ring. I am what there is no forgetting. I am the one with truly broken heart. I watched them fall, and freeze, and break apart. The Dead We fell. Yet we were loved and we are lifted. We froze. Yet we were loved and we are warm. We broke apart. Yet we are here and we are whole.

Bill Manhire is the Director of the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University, Wellington, and the editor of The Wide White Page, an anthology of poetry and fiction about Antarctica.

Image: The crater of Mt. Erebus and Hut Point Peninsula, Bob Champoux

Fri 10 Feb 2006

Fiction by Karen Joyce

The first thing that went through her head when she heard that the Senators were being escorted to her camp by Gordon Grimes was: Hide the coffee. No doubt he would sweep in and blast out with a Hey Krissie, honey, you look great! How ‘bout a cuppa? as if ten years hadn’t gone by already since he’d been her thesis advisor. Well she sure as shit was not going to be waiting on him when he showed up this time, Distinguished Visitors or not. No way. There wasn’t a molecule of sycophantic grad student left in her. This was her camp now and had been for the last eight years. That whole cult Gordon had enjoyed for twenty years with all those “Lake Hoare Whores” as he liked to call them after a few shots of Wild Turkey – that was a bygone era, that first blossoming of women field geologists putting up with whatever they were dealt with by the dominant culture. Gordon was about to find out that everything had changed: all those cute grad students were now postdocs, mountaineers, full professors like herself. His era was ten years and ten pounds ago. At least ten pounds. Kris ran a hand across the soft flesh of her belly and turned sharply away from the wrecked package of broken Oreos on the table, her tongue furtively digging away at the crevasses of chocolate that were still stuck on her back molars, as if to hide the evidence. She pushed the plywood door of the Jamesway open and let it snap shut behind her, rattling the rack of test tubes that Slack had once again left on the floor. Goddamn it, she thought, if he does that while Gordon’s out here, that bastard will probably report us. Outside, the Antarctic sun hit her like a halogen headlight. Fishing for her sunglasses, she could just barely make out the limno team spread out across Lake Hoare: four red coats bent like boomerangs at the other side of the spiky ice. She could see her own tent lit up by the sun on a far hill, a bright yellow triangle against the dun-colored rocks. Then it came back before she could stop it: the vaguely nutty smell of him, the humid tent, the sharp rock under her Ensulite pad. The liquid amber light streaming in from all directions. Gordon’s glasses crunched and broken beneath them. How pissed off he’d been at her for days afterwards, like it was her fault. How the hell had she still managed to fall hard for him after all that? Out of habit, she started toward the propane toilet before she remembered this morning’s “incident.” It was Slack’s week to maintain the thing, to make sure it didn’t fill up too high before the burners were lit. But of course he’d waited a couple of days longer than he should have and when he finally hit the IGNITE button, the damn thing exploded. Just blew up with every kind of excrement flung skyward twenty feet in all directions over that most pristine environment on the planet, the Dry Valleys. Well they ain’t quite as dry as they were before this happened, she reflected as she circled the damage. What great timing: the DV visit coming in this afternoon, with Gordon of all people escorting, and here was all this shit and toilet paper plastered everywhere, now frozen into every rock and cranny. The only short-term solution she could think of was tarps. Cover everything and tell the DV’s to stay back, that there was a “sensitive experiment” going on. But that wouldn’t explain the smell. And Gordon was sure to ask what exactly was being studied, standing there with his pretty little mouth pursed in a fake smile, the center of the circle. She absolutely had to pull him aside and tell him as soon as he got off the helo, because the first thing the DV’s always ask for is the bathroom. And they didn’t even have some kind of bucket set up anywhere yet, unless Slack had taken that one on without having to be told. Where the hell was Slack, anyway? They heard the whup-whup-whup of the helicopter coming up the Taylor Valley just as they were securing the last of the tarps with rocks. Kris shaded her eyes against the sun and watched the insect dot resolve itself against the barren mountains, sprout a rotor and swing around like a pro skier to land on the tiny pad. She turned her head away from the furious dust storm till the rotor went limp, hanging down comically on either side of the helicopter like a pair of drooping ears. She watched a figure in a bright red coat open the side door and jump out, light as a rangey dog: Gordon. She would have known those springy legs anywhere, even after all these years. He turned to help the others, their awkward feet in oversize cartoon boots searching like blind puppies for the helo’s steps. Then he turned around and spotted her. “Krissie! Hey!” He sprinted down the rocks to her, his entire face a wreath of smile wrinkles. “God, woman, how long has it been!” He grabbed both of her hands before she knew what was happening and slid his eyes up and down her body before gathering her to him in a hug, hips and all. She instantly felt the heat fill up her windbibs: that man can toast bread just by standing near it, as Jill used to say. The rich animal smell her own camp-filthy body rose up around her as she pulled herself away. Had he noticed it? How could he not? Up close she could see the deep latticework of wrinkles that mapped every inch of his face. Served him right: he’d always prided himself on never wearing sunscreen, called them all a bunch of pussies for slathering it on. No sooner had he finished the introductions (in which he neglected to mention that she, Dr. Kris Hartwood, Professor of Geology at Ohio State University, was the Principal Investigator out here at Lake Hoare) than sure enough, one of the female DVs asked if it would be possible to use the “rest room.” “Absolutely! But first, Gordon, can I have a word with you?” She pulled him down the path a few feet. “Gordon, we had a bit of an accident this morning with the....” He stood there smiling at her, watching her face, obviously not listening. “Propane toilet? It...ah...there was a little accident with the burner....” “God, Krissy,” he said, shaking his head as he reached out to take the thumbs of her mittens in each hand, spreading her arms wide. “It’s so good to see you again. You look great, you know that?” She had to fight the urge to tell him that no one had called her Krissy for the last ten goddamn years, at the same time every fiber of her body thrummed like a harp in the hands of a master. Turning her head away from him towards the DVs, she realized that all of them were watching the scene with the blank, expectant faces of farm animals waiting for hay. “Thanks, Gordon, that’s very sweet. But we have kind of a problem right now, OK? No toilet.” Her eyes instinctively shot up to the camp, hoping to find Slack up there setting up some kind of barrel-slash-tarp arrangement like she’d told him to do. Or something, anything. But Slack, of course, was nowhere in sight. Gordon turned away from her and shouted up to the DV array, “Why don’t we all head up to camp?” He gestured effusively with his wiry arms. “Get everyone settled and then maybe we can all sit down for a cuppa. What do you say, Krissie?” There it was: the cuppa. She stared straight at him through the greasy bangs that framed her eyes. Her chest suddenly felt cinched, her breath puffy. Before she knew it, she felt herself pulling in enough air to get out, “Absolutely, Gordon! Pete’s Coffee, just like you never left!” By the time she’d gotten a 5-gallon barrel and a tarp set up as a “rest room” for the visitors and made her way back to the main Jamesway, she found all of them sitting around the dining room table in the Jamesway hut, listening to Gordon. Slack was laughing gently at every conversational pause, standing by the stove as he poured hot water through a filter full of coffee. The parched air sucked up its essence and filled the Jamesway with the complex phenolics of an upscale San Franciscan cafe. It never ceased to strike her as an impossible luxury at this geographic extremity. But it was an immutable camp tradition that had come before her and would most likely stretch on till the US Antarctic Program money dried up like a Texas oil well. The DVs were sitting quietly, bunched together around the table and nodding like spring-headed dolls in the direction of Gordon, who was expounding upon the glory days when men worked hard, drank harder, and weren’t afraid to give each other a bad tattoo with a needle and some ink. It was all so familiar – like listening to an old cassette from a box left over from her college days. I wonder how many brain cells I still have that are devoted to this crap, she thought. Next he’s going to show them the pork chop, no doubt. “Here!” he said to them, pulling his fleece over his head. “Look at this! THIS is what I’m talking about, allright?” He pulled the neck of his ancient T-shirt to one side, baring his shoulder. She tried not to notice his muscles, wiry and tight as ever. And there were those blondish armpit hairs peaking through, the color of his beard, his hair. And there it was: the pork chop, the blue inky outline blurred by time but still recognizable. “You see that?” he asked them, looking up at them with the zeal of a preacher. “That’s Antarctica, the continent of Antarctica. Can you see that?” The DVs rose politely out of their chairs and pulled their glasses away from their noses. “THAT’S a real Antarctic tattoo, allright?” Gordon said triumphantly, as if challenged. “THAT’S what the old days were like, back when the only women were just a bunch of pictures stuck on the wall of the U-barrel!” He turned to her and smiled brightly. What was he trying to say? That women had ruined everything? “Hey now, don’t get me wrong, that was then and this now. And the present belongs to women like Krissie!” Not researchers like Dr. Kris Hartwood, she noticed. Just Krissie. Slack had finally finished with the coffee and came around, pouring it with genteel ease into the camp’s permanently stained melamite cups. The woman who had needed to use the rest room asked if there was any cream for hers. “Sugar and creamer are right there on the table there,” Slack replied as he carefully poured the next cup. She reached tentatively toward the plastic shaker before waving it off, her hat tassles making small arcs under her chin. “No, I mean cream, real cream. Or milk, I’m not fussy. This stuff is just...chemicals and whatever. Terribly unhealthy. People don’t realize.” As Kris jumped up to see if there was any UHT milk left in the refrigerator, she wondered if the woman had any realization of where she was right now, how far off the deep end of the planet this field camp in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica was. Most of these DVs, they had no idea: straight out of Washington, D.C. to the seventh continent on a four-day boondoggle at the American taxpayer’s expense. The stream of them out of McMurdo was relentless. How many of them could find this place on a globe with two hands and a flashlight? Kris rooted around in a cardboard box under the sink and dug out their last container of New Zealand cream, the one they’d been saving for the Christmas holidays. Setting it down on the table in front of the unfussy woman, she looked up to see Gordon watching her with eyes so deeply slitted with wrinkles, it was hard to believe he could see out of them. The room seemed to stall out in an uncomfortable silence. His T-shirt fell back across his triceps as he leaned against the counter. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s a whole new era. New people, but the same old science, huh?” Did he wink at her, or was that just the flesh around his eyes flapping meaninglessly? That clinched it. Time for the throw down. “Actually, Gordon, it’s definitely not the same old science anymore,” she said. “With what we’ve found this season up on Mt. Feather, we’ve come a long way towards disproving your theory that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet melted off during the Pliocene. Categorical evidence, in fact.” She could feel the prickly heat of a fight pumping the sweat out – why hadn’t she taken off these awful wind bibs when she first came in? Gordon shifted to the left, a languid smile pulling his cheeks into parallel sets of erosion lines. Slack set the coffee pot on the table and retreated to the shadows. The wind sucked at the door, pushing and pulling it against the door jam like an angry child. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said to the Congressmen, “welcome to science in the real world! What Dr. Hartwood is referring to here is an ongoing debate on the part of geologists about when the continent of Antarctica went cold. Did it happen all at once? Or did the glaciers come and go over a period of millions of years?” “Ah yes,” nodded a gentlemen with a thick Senatorial mane of hair that stuck out to the side of his head like a flag. “Global warming, and all that.” “Global climate change, John,” corrected the unfussy woman. “That’s what they’re calling it, not global warming. Isn’t that right?” She looked up at Gordon for confirmation. “Yes, absolutely, global whatever you want to call it!” he replied. “As long as it doesn’t happen in the near future, because if this place melts, Krissie and I will be out of a job!” The polite laughter was drowned out by the helicopter rotors. Gordon looked at his watch and stood up. “Gentlemen, ladies, I’m afraid it’s time to head over to Marble Point for lunch!” The wind whisked them briskly toward the makeshift pad, where Gordon assisted the DVs aboard before running back to her. “Krissie,” he said, drawing one of her leprous gloves between his hands. “It’s so great to see you again, honestly. And I don’t know if you’ve heard yet, but it looks like I’ll be seeing a whole lot more of you in the near future!” His eyes disappeared into their folds of impish skin. “Really? And when would that be?” He looked back over his shoulder and waved a finger at the pilot as the props came up to full speed. “I just got funded for a special project, working up at Mt. Feather. So I’ll be back here in a month and be based out of here through New Year’s, at least. How great is that?” The dust sandblasted them, beaten violently by the circling props. She covered her mouth and looked out across the frozen lake. Gordon pulled her against him and said something to her ear before rushing away. She ducked down and covered her head as the helo swooped over, casting a shadow across her like an enormous raptor. Standing up, she looked back toward camp and saw Slack stretching into a perfect triangle, leading her grad students in the first Yoga pose of the morning session. Trikanosona, he called it; every pose had a Sanskrit name. This constant Yoga-ing - Slack was corrupting the camp with it. She wiped her nose and looked up toward Mt. Feather and the Sirius Formation around it. There was Beauty in it, if you could take a slow breath and see it. Or Truth, if only she could pull it out of those rocks like a tooth. But in the meantime, she had to get all these shit-covered rocks cleaned up.

Karen Joyce has worked for the United States Antarctic Program since 1990. She splits her time between McMurdo Station and Denver, Colorado.

Image: Ventifacts, McMurdo Dry Valleys, Alan Campbell

Fri 10 Feb 2006

Fiction by Gavin Tierney

Ian lit one cigarette from another. His black hair was pulled back underneath a gray bandana. The song ended, permitting conversation in the bar to continue.

“Antarctica was never meant to exist man.” Ian sat back in his chair, his hands raised into the air.

“You see, it was a mistake. Someone messed up. The reason it did ‘come into being,’ was a simple miscalculation, something having to do with land mass and the Earth’s rotation.” Ian’s finger tips touched the sides of his head and then bounced forward, flinging thoughts like droplets of water.

“So, because some metaphysical fuck-up forgot to move the decimal point over one, we are stuck with a big old piece of ice and rock. Antarctica slipped through the cracks and the powers that be decided to just let those humans deal with it.” Ian’s hands relaxed in his lap. No one had taken notice of him.

“The way I heard it was that the whole bottom of the Earth, rotating axis bit wasn’t even the original idea. As I was told, there was some big elaborate plan with alternate suns and pulls of gravity, where the Earth would twist and turn every which way. ‘A Tropical Paradise’ it was billed as in the brochures. Of course that was just a thought that was being tossed around and then PR got wind of it. Well, needless to say, nearly all of those brochures were thrown away.” Ian reached into his back pocket and pulled out a crumpled pamphlet.

“I found this in the bottom of some file cabinet they loaned me to work on the project.”

Ian slapped the brochure down on the table. A picture of the Earth and a woman in a bikini were on the front.

“So, like all things dealing with creation and the universe, the whole project was just pushed on through. A better gravitational system could have been created, sure, but all the man upstairs wanted was a product for as low cost as possible. Earth wasn’t even the focus back then. It was just some humanitarian tax write-off. So, production began and, the next thing you know, there the Earth was Antarctica and all.” Ian tipped forward, his elbows on his knees, his finger tips touching his forehead.

“There was talk of just kind of chopping off the bottom of the planet, amputating the whole damn mistake, but they realized that wouldn’t work. Then they thought of scrapping the whole thing, recycling the parts that could be used and burning the rest. But, it cost less to just leave Antarctica and hope no one noticed.” Ian sat back. A large grin grew on his face as he nodded.

“And it all worked out pretty well. No one really cares about Antarctica.” Ian jerked forward, his hands reaching out.

“But here’s the crazy part. You know that whole bit about the ozone? Well, their just covering their bases, hiding the evidence. Antarctica still bugged the powers that be. That’s how I found out about it. They called me up to consult on the micro organic bionomic sub deltoid particles that the lowest levels of the UV radiation filter out. It’s a good thing too, without the sub particle calibration the melting would have occurred twice as fast. They made sure there were no mistakes with landmass and decimal points this time.” Ian paused, retracting his hands and folding them on his stomach.

“And you know it’s about time they got rid of the place. I mean look at Antarctica, bottom of the entire world, all ice and desolation, with no purpose. Mistakes were made and there it is; Antarctica: just waiting to melt and be forgotten.” Ian took the butt of his cigarette and lit another.

Gavin Tierney worked as a dining assistant in McMurdo Station during the 2005-2006 summer season. He teaches and lives in Seattle.

Image: Equipment at the Ice Runway, Bob Champoux

Fri 10 Feb 2006

Fiction by Bill Jirsa

I’m drinking beside an ichthyologist. I can smell the whiskey on his breath when he leans over to talk above the noise in the bar. He smells like a memory of my grandfather: fish and bourbon.

He’s asking me to help him check some lines. Yes, I say. Yes, because I want to be outside and see something that is not the inside of this bar. The invitation is not really for me. He fancies the woman across the table from us. She drinks Bailey’s, and she laughs at whatever we say. She is adorable and neither of us can have her, but the ichthyologist can ask her to come fishing, and if I go she might agree.

The midnight sun glistens off the sea ice. I’m walking above nine hundred feet of ocean as I go back to the truck to find tools. I see a child’s fishing pole in a duffle. He uses them to go for the smaller fish. None of the things in the bag look like what the ichthyologist described, and I return to the hole in the ice with a handful of tools I know he doesn’t want. Skuas chatter as they land nearby, waiting for us to drop anything.

I’m standing over a hole in the ice beside my grandfather. I’m holding his drink while he curses and toils at the bird’s nest of monofilament at the reel. It’s a cheap, kid’s pole, the kind you buy at the liquor and bait shop on the road to the reservoir. One cast and I need him to untangle it. We are both in love with my grandmother who is laughing in the truck with a cold bucket of fried chicken.

The smell of my grandfather fills my nostrils, like a spirit of fish and bourbon.

Bill Jirsa works at McMurdo Station for the United States Antarctic Program.

Image: Hole in Sea Ice, Alan Cambell

Fri 10 Feb 2006