2007-08-05

The sun isn't up yet, but its light is returning to paint our skies in pastel shades of blue, purple, yellow, orange, green and grey. Clouds stretch in front of the backdrop and hang as heavy shadows, bringing shape to the sky, lending it a dramatic brooding feeling. Thicker cover shuts out whole areas, leaving only little windows lit by the gradual pallette of light behind.

All this light finds its way to the ground, throwing a pink or purple cast on the snow, and the brightness of the day brings colours out of everything. Coats, cranes and buildings glow when a few days before they'd only loom in darkness. Red, orange and blue jump out, a discovery to my eyes, new and alive, like a freshly painted house. More real than ever, but startling to my senses tired by months of neon bulbs or star scattered darkness and the grey of the moon.

Walking to work and back to lunch, digging the melt tank, mending masts or just going for a walk under this vault of subtle colour makes the more mundane parts of our isolated life less trying.

The swing of the seasons has also set the sun to churning the atmosphere back from the deep cold of winter. Heaving gales blow through the station every couple of weeks and leave a warm, calm period in their wake. We had a record storm for the year, touching sixty knots in gusts, and making melt tank digging easy for once as a few hours of wind drifted enough soft snow back into the hole so, once the shaft itself was excavated, filling it took only ten minutes.

Catching the tail end of a storm with a kite and my skis last week saw me move more than a mile from my bed for the first time in twelve weeks as I danced around the outlying dumps and masts out on the bondoo. The light coming back signals the start of the long run into summer, with much to look forward to, and many activities to savour through the last few months I have to enjoy here.

Andy walks to work in the morning

Around noon

Around noon another day

Brian enjoys the view

An hour after noon

Two hours after that

Next day, around 4pm

and mist rolls in as the sky darkens