Skijouring & Mirages

2006-01-29

It's been four weeks since I broke my ankle, and I'm now on my fifth cast. It seems that they don't dry out very well here, and end up weakened. Now that I'm able to hobble about without crutches they're taking quite a battering, but still doing their job until they finally crumble into a white powder. Mostly the Doc is annoyed, in a happy way, as she has to put a new one on every week or so. I'm able to get outside and move around without too much help now, the downside being that I can also help with the weekly scrubout, and take my day on "gash" when that comes round.

The major frustration, though, is that I'm unable to join in all the fun things going on around the base on our rare days off. Top pasttime for nutcases is ski-jouring, a sort of cross between wake boarding and snow boarding, as willing victims are dragged over the snow at dramatic speeds by an accomplice on a skidoo. Each twist and turn throws up a milky cloud of crystals around their feet as they float over the powdery surface. And if that isn't lunatic enough the brave boarders can test their balance on a small jump, often enough missing the landing and wiping out in a cartoon ball of limbs, skis, rope and snow.

Those with a less violent disposition can induldge instead in cross country skiing, being a little more one with nature and less man with machine, gliding peacefully but energeticly around the base.

I'm left to drink in the views and the ever changing expanse of the ice. Sometimes, when the clouds are low and the light diminished the shelf becomes a featureless plate, a dull sheet of paper stretched beneath my feet. With the sun strong above the plate gains an edge, and its small imperfections leap out in shade and shadow, small ripples on a foamy sea, waves slowly scuplted by the wind and frozen in the ice. Some special, still, days bring ghostly mirages as objects beyond the horizon loom along its edge. The sea, studded with icebergs, appears once more, shimmering blue in the distance beyond the snow sparkling like a thousand diamonds.

Mirages ring the horizon