Ice and the Sky Page #2

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We had to mark and store it

before it became irretrievable.

We dug yards of tunnels

to create warehouses.

Science had to wait.

We had almost forgotten,

it was a matter of survival.

Then the blizzard toppled

my observation tower.

I was desperate.

My entire program was at risk.

Only with the support

of my comrades...

...was I able to retrieve

the situation.

With every rung I cursed

the idiot who designed the tower.

Another bolt, another burn,

the metal sticking to my fingers.

I vowed to make him

pay for the torture...

...with every removal

of my gloves.

The weeks went by,

we settled into a routine.

A communal meal was taken

in the evenings.

Roland cooked...

...while Jacques sent back data

by radio.

To hold on, we fostered a spirit

of camaraderie and solidarity.

We lived, worked and slept...

...in our single heated room,

with zero privacy.

Bad moods were outlawed.

They would have made

our lives hell.

Our dress sense featured plenty

of frayed edges and holes.

With no water,

we soon gave up washing clothes...

...discarding them when worn out.

Steamed poulard of Bresse.

Roasted scallops,

Cromesqui shellfish.

Browned sweetbread,

truffled potatoes.

Tournedos Rossini, chateaubriand,

venison.

Rubinette apples, hare la Royale,

Burgundy wines.

Without realizing it,

I was starting to...

...do things I would

keep up all my life.

Charcot had snow,

so I studied the crystals.

At first in a basic way, to see

if I could find anything new.

Why were the summer snow squalls

finer than the winter ones?

Their thickness told

of snowy winters...

...or long periods with

no precipitation.

Crystals!

I realized that

no two were the same.

Each singular form

had its own story to tell.

Intact in their youth, they fill

out and are transformed...

...crushed beneath

the weight of fresh snow.

I imagined a journey that

I would later learn to measure...

...I watched them slide

imperceptibly towards the depths.

Ice is a river whose stillness

is but an appearance.

It takes a flake 50,000 years

to reach the coast...

...before settling on the ocean.

Split by the tides,

they become icebergs.

Warm seas push and

then melt them.

Once water, they set off

on a great ocean voyage.

Taken by the sun,

they become vapor...

...and return to the sky

to maybe fall here again...

...in a timescale that reduces

my existence to nothingness.

In the end, our year

went by quickly.

I keep the memory of the heady

and windless polar nights.

I've never seen as many stars

as I did in the Antarctic sky.

The memory of the Aurora Australis

still gives me goosebumps.

I endured the barely tolerable

extreme cold...

...to enjoy it for as

long as possible.

I remember our last

night at Charcot...

...ears instinctively lulled by

the familiar hum of our recorders.

I listened to them one last time,

with a sense of accomplishment.

For the first time in history...

...men had joined forces

to take the pulse of our planet...

...with no regard for

race or nationality.

We were among them,

as one with our colleagues...

...doing the same work as us

all over the Antarctic...

...in Tahiti, Venezuela

or Vladivostok.

We were relieved

a year after our arrival...

...in a critical

physical condition...

...suffering scurvy and

snow blindness.

But so happy to see new faces.

Farewell, Charcot.

A year later, the oncoming glacier

forced the base to be abandoned.

Crushed by the ice, it still

slides gently towards the coast.

I climbed aboard

with a single-minded...

...determination to return.

I was gripped by a strange virus:

a passion for the Antarctic.

This morning president

Ren Coty...

...welcomed members of the French

expedition to Adlie Land...

...men who have risked

their lives for science...

...and the glory of France.

Arriving from Melbourne

on L'Arcadia...

...our explorers could at last

embrace loved ones...

...left behind 16 months ago.

Our heroes of science are home.

Look at their emotion!

I shall never forget Charcot.

I went there without a thought...

...and came home with

a unique view of the world...

...enriched by the time

I had there to think.

With hindsight the experience

has marked my entire life...

...my relationships,

my passion for science...

...and above all the empathy

I have for the planet I live on.

I saw it in all its

splendor and power...

...never imagining that

my every step towards knowledge...

...would reveal the vision

of a world...

...increasingly ravaged

by humanity.

Back in France...

...my reunion with friends

and family was a joy.

But I was consumed by the urge

to return to the polar regions.

I had heard about Swiss

and Danish glaciologists...

...obtaining remarkable results

in Greenland...

...using a new instrument:

the mass spectrometer.

I elected to write a thesis...

...adapting their protocols

to the Antarctic.

By October 1959,

I was back in the Great South.

Another stroke of luck!

The French government offered to

let me do my military service...

...as part of an exploratory

mission to Victoria Land.

This was an American

scientific expedition.

I was to work in glaciology

alongside eight explorers...

...of five different nationalities.

I was the most experienced.

The flight over

the trans-Arctic mountains...

...was magnificent.

I was now an explorer!

At Charcot, we were 300km inland.

Here, 2,500km of uncharted land

awaited us.

Our mission was to describe

and understand.

After only a few days

we realized...

...we had ventured into

a vast tract of crevasses.

It was impossible to turn back.

We had come too far.

Every step was a

potential death trap.

That same day we learned

that two New Zealanders...

...had just died on

a similar mission.

Despite the risks, the convoy

stopped every 50km to allow us...

...to carry out our

scientific work.

But it was hell!

I strove to control...

...my burning fingers

and chattering teeth...

...when precision was called for.

A hundred times a day

I contained the urge...

...to fling my notebook

into the raging wind.

Soon all that would remain

would be a list of points...

...on a table of figures,

a nugget in a pile of ore.

But a single flawed reading

would undermine...

...the whole set of results.

Regular, flawless data was needed.

I often felt ready to quit.

You never really get warm.

The cabins smelled of

wet socks...

...instant soup, and exhaust fumes,

when we wanted a little heat.

Every day wore us down

a little more.

Whenever we set to cooking...

...the condensation drenched

our clothes and sleeping bags.

When we tired of being dirty,

we made a little water...

...for a perfunctory wash.

Any respite was an opportunity

to take the air.

Minus 25C with no wind

felt like a heatwave.

I was fascinated by our capacity

to bear the unbearable.

The crevasse detectors

were totally ineffective.

Even hand probes were unreliable.

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