Illustration by Kevin James Hurtack © 2007
Hope
by Mo Irvine © 2007
When I came to, I thought I was blind, and in a panic I smashed through the crust of snow that had shielded me from the worst cold of the night. I scraped ice off my goggles. I was frozen, my leg was broken and amputation was in all probability going to be the only option. I was sure frostbite had already taken hold of my foot. Not that amputation was going to be a problem, really. I was unlikely to survive the next few hours let alone make it long enough to be flown to a hospital.
I was alone and most likely dying on the most inhospitable continent in the world. Five-and-a-half million square miles of desolate, freezing, restless, shifting ice. How stupid was that? I was one of the "Country Mice" – one of those lucky scientists (haha) who gets to travel around the camps. I wasn't feeling so lucky right now.
I'd been on an outing from McMurdo Base, searching for nunataks when it happened. The wind that never seems to stop blowing here had kicked up a blizzard and I'd found myself in the middle of a white-out. Before I could stop I realised I'd driven onto the edge of a vast crevasse field, and next minute the skidoo hit a bridge of blown snow and disappeared from under me. I didn't even hear it go as it dropped down into the black chasm. I was thinking that maybe I would have been luckier if I'd gone down with it. When the doo went down I was flung aside like garbage, there was an audible crack as my leg bent the wrong way beneath me, and it was probably my backpack that saved me from cracking my spine. Wasn't I the lucky one.
If I hadn't been wearing my backpack I wouldn't have made it through the night. I used my bog chisel to drag myself away from the edge of the crevasse, hoping I wouldn't back right into another one. Passed out for a while, but it couldn't have been more than seconds, otherwise I would have frozen to death there and then. Luck was with me, if you could call it that. When the whiteout cleared I realised I'd found my nunatak, was only yards from it. I dragged myself to the rocky outcrop and crawled into a niche out of the killing wind. I covered myself with what I had in my backpack, and the blowing snow coated me like dandruff. I hunkered down and there I spent my night, hoping that bleak pinnacle of rock wasn't going to mark my grave.
***
I must have spent some time unconscious because I never heard the skidoo go by. Maybe deep down some of the noise had registered in my brain, but it was too late. Too damn late. I wept in frustration after I broke out of my snow hole and saw the tracks in the snow. So near. My tears turned to ice and froze on my face. I brought up a gloved hand and smashed them away.
I scanned the empty ice fields but could see nothing through the blowing snow and ice-glare. I crept back to my crack in the rock, took out emergency rations and chewed in a desultory fashion. Hours passed. I dozed. Drifted in and out of consciousness. Tried to eat some more food but I had no appetite. It had faded and deserted me, along with my will to live.
I hallucinated. Saw birds and strange shapes where there were none. Knew I was dying. Didn't even look up when one of the birds stood right over me, then shouted out, "I've found him! He's alive!"
Didn't register until I heard the sound of another skidoo, more voices, felt myself being wrapped in something warm and lifted carefully onto a sled. Then I cried. The tears froze on my face, but I didn't care.
