Wooville
| I shared a field camp with a writer, Sara Wheeler, who happened to be in Antarctica at the same time. Since our two wooden huts sat on the frozen ocean, we had to spend a day taking a sea ice safety course, learning to use ice picks and drills, and to recognize the various types of ice cracks, some of which were hidden under the surface.
Once settled in and immersed in the inspiring expanse of wilderness, I found myself at peace with just my thoughts, ready to explore the surroundings, and to paint, away from the grind of everyday details. Until the spring season brought its first signs of life, our landscape was still and silent. |
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We dragged a fuel sledge out from the station to fill our oil drip heaters. This made it comfortable to work on days when we were stuck inside during a protracted storm. (EXCERPT from an article by Lucia in Bird Watcher's Digest (March/April 2000.): "We both lived and worked many weeks in those huts, which were just big enough for two wooden bunks, a table and an oil drip heater. We were there as part of a National Science Foundation (NSF) Artist and Writer's Program on separate missions. I was there to paint the landscape and wildlife in the spectacular low light of spring. With a daily radio call our only contact with civilization, we lived two hours from McMurdo, a station supported by NSF, which administers the US Research Program in Antarctica. |
 Map of Wooville & Vicinity |
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Because of our project designations, W-004 and W-006, our camp became known as "Wooville." After crossing 15 miles of barren sea ice one comes across a sign we were given, "Welcome to Wooville - population 2." We reached our camp by a small tracked vehicle we called the "Woomobile." At top speed it went a whopping 10 mph, and provided a relatively warm space from which to observe and sketch the penguins on days when the temperature was in the minus 40°s and 50°s (F). The small heater struggled to bring the temperature up to the freezing point but I somehow managed to paint. My journal reads: "The vehicle's inadequate heater offered no relief for my freezing toes. The colors in my palette grew into a starry pattern of ice and the wet brushes were little rocks, until I thawed them in a thermos cup of hot water. When I laid the palette on the heated dash, it slipped off, covering the console with frozen dots of all colors, which I had to pop off with my knife. Despite the struggle, the vignette gradually took shape. I came back frozen to the core and finished the watercolor by the heat of the oil-drip stove, my feet thawing in down slipper boots. Never did heat feel so luxurious." |
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| When I first arrived in mid August, no life stirred in the barren icescape. Near our camp stood an empty wooden hut built in 1910 by British explorer, Robert Falcon Scott. Scott's men lived there during the pitch black winter preparing for a trip to the south pole. I sometimes stood by the hut imagining the long polar night of Antarctic winter, when the sun sets for the final time in April not to rise again until August, and gazed out toward the lifeless horizon at the edge of night. Now the sun crawled up, wheeled along the horizon for three hours then sank again, darkening the frigid sky. The vast black dome glistened with stars that shed an eerie light on the endless expanse of ice. Pure stillness reigned, the dead silence broken only by ghostly pings of cracking sea ice." |
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