Full Moon At Castle Rock

Hi again:)

I've been making a list of things worth writing about. It's a long list, and getting longer by the day.

Last Saturday night, my one night off, the winds blew themselves away and took every cloud with them. I saw a moonrise over the Ice, a satellite tracing its orbit, the Southern Cross overhead, and the Aurora Australis - all for the first time.

I'd like to give you an idea of all the smaller details I've been leaving out of these letters. The place is Castle Rock, which is really nothing to "write home" about. It's just a rock, a BIG rock, a leftover lava tube jutting from the landscape three miles from here. I've been there twice now, once by sunlight, and once by moonlight. That first day trip was worthy of an entire letter by itself, but like I said - the list just keeps getting longer.

The season's perpetual twighlight has finally worn out its welcome, and given way to a few hours of real darkness. Timeless twilight can be magical, but it bleaches the heavens, and is no place for a full moon. . .


This is McMurdo's power plant by twilight. For over two weeks, dusk was as dark as it got - a pale crescent, one or two stars, and the planet Jupiter rearranging themselves as they slowly spun about the station. Recently, that has started to change. Midnights are growing darker and have turned a rich navy blue. The sun can still blind you by day, but in a few weeks it will dip beyond the glaciers for the last time. Our first full moonrise over Ross Island was last Saturday, just as our Piston Bulley crested a hill on its way to Castle Rock. The moon rose opposite the setting sun, as if they made a shift change. Our "timeless twilight" is finally over.

At 6:30 PM, a group of us squeezed into two Piston Bullies, survival gear strapped down just in case, and headed north to greet our first full moon:


This, obviously, is the full moon rising over Antarctica. We had planned on reaching Castle Rock before moonrise, but a sliver of yellow light on the horizon told us it was time to abandon our Piston Bullies and warm up our cameras. I love this picture, even though to most people it's probably a boring shot. It reminds me of what I felt at the time. You have to understand that nothing here reminds us of home. Everything is alien and strange and "other-worldly". So when the moon (the same moon I've seen my entire life) popped up in front of me, it seemed like a piece of home. At that moment, the moon and the earth switched places...

... and I was standing on a frozen, lifeless rock, gazing across the gulf of space at the world I had travelled from.

As you can see from the picture, it didn't strain my imagination much. Never in my life have I seen the moon as a warm and inviting place. I'll probably never see it that way again, but for a few precious minutes, it was my one link to home.

The illusion stopped when I realized the moon was hanging upside down. Just like that, it looked as alien as everything else. We climbed back into our Piston Bullies and headed to Castle Rock. . .

This was my Piston Bully. I'm proud of this picture, a long exposure I got by holding my breath and not moving. A little blurry, but not bad considering.

A LITTLE NATURAL HISTORY:

Ross Island has three volcanoes, two of which are extinct. Mt. Erebus, of course, is still going strong. A million years ago, the plateau where Castle Rock now stands was deep under the ice. A volcanic vent spewed lava from there, adding to the island, but eventually cooled, leaving a "lava tube" in the ice filled with liquid rock. After a stupidly long time, the ice receded - exposing the rock that had once filled the tube. Castle Rock is several hundred feet high, and climbers love to scale it. A hiker fell to his death a few years back, but people still climb it. I tried myself my first time there, but that's another story. . .

Sigh. I wanted to describe everything, capture every little detail, but this letter would just go on and on and on. We slid down its eastern slope on dinner trays (careful not to break our legs like someone did last summer). After a few cups of hot coco, we laid down in the snow and did some star gazing. I've wanted to see the Southern Cross since my navy days, but never sailed far enough south. It was a memorable moment for me when I first picked it out from a thick carpet of stars. My reaction? The same a Mark Twain's: "They should have called it the Southern Kite." It really does look more like a kite than a cross. I also saw Scorpio - a huge constellation that looks very much like a scorpion. There's a bright orange star right where its heart should be. I studied the constellations 'til someone pointed out a satellite moving across the sky, a tiny, bright ball zipping towards the horizon.

Seeing the Southern Lights was never part of the plan. It is too early in the season, the skies are too bright yet, and the full moon is brighter still. Despite all that, a weak aurora appeared over the station just as we got back to base. It looked like four streaks of smoke, a scratch from a cat's claw, that trailed off behind Ob Hill. There was no color in it, and no movement that I could see, but it's amazing we could see it at all.

I'll leave you with a Green Apple. Green and Red Apples are survival shelters strategically placed along the routes to the station. Remember what I said about feeling like I'm on the moon?

The little speck to the right of the moon is Jupiter.

UNITED STATES ANTARCTIC PROGRAM

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