The Last Vikings

#GoOutdoors

As I clung to the seat of the ottercopter, my knuckles freezing, darkness all around me, I realised this was the first time I'd been in a helicopter since I was born. That's gotta be some symbolism right there.

They'd led us out of the Cleaver in the inky morning darkness, past the sighing void of the abandoned whaling station, to the now footprint-crossed field where the ottercopters were.

It was our first time outside since the boat launched, and it was cripplingly cold. My fingers were stiff, frozen sausages, my huge padded parka as thin as a t-shirt in the wind, breath cutting my throat, nose painfully numb. Next to me, ice had formed in Ruben's beard.

I felt like I was going to die.

We were barely warmed by the movement of radiated air on the ottercopter, as we hurtled through the air, nocturnal blackness all around us.

A nameless dread hung around me like a shroud. My nightmares about the whaling station, the constant fear my subterfuge would be revealed to GlobalGreen, the never being alone... it was all getting too much. The cold, the dark, the incessant noise of the helicopter.

My anxiety was so high I had a tight pain in my chest. Thank God it was so loud—it would be impossible for me to act normally if I had to converse.

The clamouring journey dragged so long it was like splitting into another dimension, a place where time worked differently. The others' eyes were puffy and pensive, flicking between the windows and one another, collars and scarves obscuring their mouths, phones and cameras tucked away.

Finally, dawn began threatening to break, the still-hidden sun turning the world a deep indigo.

A mosaic of ice and livid sea emerged from the darkness below. I rested my head on the window-frame and watched it appear. Gradually, the white icebergs got bigger, and the sea was channeled into straits, the snow becoming dominant.

I thought of my Polar Environments option course, and looked out for Emperor penguins and Weddell seals. I didn't see any. Just plains of ice, tinted blue as bruises by the dawn. Vast, empty, lunar peaks and troughs, in psychedelic patterns of refracted light and shade, the occasional scatter of jagged rocks showing through.

I shivered.

As the sun came closer, orange blurred the blue horizon, like God was painting with watercolours and had just washed his brush. Below us, the sea was orange, the snow purple, psychedelic swirls and blobs.

Then I spotted a patch of meaty substance amid the lava-lamp light of the dawn. A small cluster of rectangular buildings, dark red against the purple snow and the black andesite peaks.

I nudged Ruben and gestured towards it, the engines too loud for us to speak.

He furrowed his brow as he peered down, wiping a droplet of water from the end of his nose.

"Brown research station?" Ruben had to lean right in to my ear to speak, the tip of his nose icy against my cheek, making me shiver.

That meant we were over Paradise Harbour, and what would be—in summer—the gateway to the continent.

But now, with winter encroaching, the sea ice was so extensive there was no clue to where the land ended and the sea began. No differentiation between rock and water. Just eerie blankness all around.

The realisation that we were over Paradise Bay made me think of Paulo, my promise to call him, and my heart pulsed nervously in my chest.

I wouldn't call him. The thought of making a voice call when I hadn't seen him for so long made me cringe.