December landscapes

In describing Antarctica, metaphors are sometimes mixed, drawing from both alien and familiar landscapes.

Bage led the Southern party of Mawson’s 1911-12 expedition south of the Mertz and Ninnis glaciers. The landscapes he described are like English hedgerows, and the moon.

He noted a weird ‘lunar’ landscape near 60s 144e:

December 2 saw us through ‘Dead-beat Gully’. Late in the evening as we topped a ridge the shadows towards which we had been steering suddenly appeared two miles away, a weird sight – like the edge of the moon seen through a large telescope. (my italics)

The shadows were due to large mounds of snow on the south side of a steep escarpment. There were three main mounds cross-connected with regular lines of smaller prominences, giving the impression of a subdivided town-site. The low evening sun threw everything up in the most wonderful relief.

‘Hedges’ of ice were observed a little further south on 3 December:

Going due south uphill over neve we found ourselves in a regular network of crevasses. Most noticeable were ‘hedges’ of ice up to six feet in height on either side of the crevasses which ran southward. It was now nearly calm and in every crack and chink in the snow bridges beautiful fern-like ice crystals were seen. These must have been just forming, as a very light puff of wind would destroy them.

Bage, cited in Mawson, The home of the blizzard, 1915 (p.212-213 Wakefield Press 1996 edition)

Jack Ward describes Antarctica’s “fallow fields” of ice. (1955)

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Posted on Thursday, August 2nd, 2007