Fog

One of our projects down on the ice was to make a runway on an ice surface near the South Pole Station so that aircraft on wheels could bring personnel and supplies instead of the much less efficient ski-equipped C-130s that had been used forever. The site that had been chosen was a bare patch up next to Mount Howe, the southernmost piece of terra firma on the planet, located about 200 miles from the pole.

Preciosita was the homeliest little bulldozer that had ever clanked through the streets of McMurdo Station. I think she was a relic from WWII that had been abandoned here during the International Geophysical Year. She was squat and olive drab and rattled in every joint, but she was just what we needed, after a few minor modifications. I had taken her out to the Pegasus site for a test run and now it was time to get her to Williams Field, about 10 miles distant across the Ross Ice Shelf, in preparation for final transport by C 130 to the next chapter in her long life. It was a beautiful mid-summer day, clear sky and as warm as it gets in those parts. I started out in high spirits, following the pink-flagged road and scanning the flat white expanse for penguins that occasionally wandered out this way.

The way you can tell a road on the ice shelf from just any other part of the ice shelf is that it is marked at about 50-foot intervals with bright pink flags. The early crews come down at the start of the season and mark all roads in this way and for the rest of the season the road crews come through and groom and maintain them. As long as you can see a pink flag, you are not lost.

Preciosita was not a racing machine. I would judge that she might aspire to 10 mph, tops, if hard pressed, but that this would probably result in loss or destruction of small parts that would significantly impair her usefulness, so we made slow progress across the glittering snow. I could have walked faster. I sang half remembered songs and whistled snatches of Sibelius. I timed the passing flags. I played with my mittens. I leaned over backwards to look at the receding flags upside down. I propped my feet up on what passed for a dashboard and noticed that the horizon was looking a bit blurry. I stared at this while Preciosita growled implacably through the snow.

By and by, it became absolutely clear that this was not my imagination. The horizon was gone. I couldn’t say that Williams Field was gone because I couldn’t see it yet anyway, and when I swiveled around to look for the trailer at Pegasus I could barely make it out, a black speck on the featureless snow.

Soon I had to button up my parka and gratefully put on my turtle fur neck warmer. The line of pink flags I was following no longer vanished in a sharp point but rather faded to dingy pink and was swallowed. They said weather comes on fast here and they were right. Soon I could only see 5 flags. Then four. Then three, two, one. I knew up ahead somewhere this road stopped and I had to turn left onto another flagged road. I started wondering what would happen if I shot across the intersection and got disconnected from the flags. Now I started looking for the next flag as soon as I was abreast of the last. It was a second or two before I could make it out in the fog. I developed a strategy. I would count to three as soon as I passed a flag and if I couldn’t see the next one by then I would immediately stop and reconnoiter on foot until I found the next one.

Preciosita growled on. One-two-three-flag! One-two-three-flag! I soon felt as if I had been doing this forever. It was very quiet here in my cloud. Even Preciosita’s bellowing was muted. One-two-three-flag! I had my mittens on and tucked into my sleeves. The hood of my parka cinched so tight I could hardly see through the fur. Not that there was much to see except the next flag.

One-two-three-no flag! I squealed to a stop, hoping this was my left turn. I thought I could see the next flag indisctinctly off to the left, but got off anyway to look. My knees were shaky partly because of the cold and partly from having been hunched in the same position for so long. It was a pleasure to walk. I stopped every two steps or so to make sure I could still see Preciosita, inspite of her earsplitting racket. Yup, flag confirmed.

I got back aboard, heaved her around to the left and continued. One-two-three-flag! One-two-three-flag! Pretty close to Williams Field now. The next maneuver was a right turn. Soon now. One-two-three-flag! And there was the next one off on the right. I pulled her around and lined up on the home stretch. One-two-three-flag! Then I started thinking about what was up ahead. There was the power pole, for example, that provided electricity for all of Williams Field, including navigation lights, crew quarters, maintenance and supply, radios and God knows what else. I slowed down. And there were always vans and trucks parked anywhere. And who knew where they had put the last C-130 that had gotten through? And pilots and mechanics groping through the fog. I had to go to the bathroom. My eyes were gritty from staring at whiteness and indistinct flags. I oozed noisily and interminably forward.

Finally, the power pole! I had found and not run into the power pole! I slowed down some more and found and did not run into the communications trailer. I crept between a couple of maintenance trailers in the general direction of the freight pallets, which I did not run into either. The first spot I found which did not appear to be a runway or a main thoroughfare, I came to a full stop and turned off Preciosita. I stumbled off her gratefully and gave her a little pat of thanks. I groped my way toward the galley with happy visions of a toilet and great quantities of warm food steaming in my head, the hum and clatter of Williams Field muffled and distant.

I didn’t see any penguins that day.