Paluu Pohjoisnavalle

"It is cold out here. I thought I knew how cold it would be. I thought my days in Jersey walking around underdressed in the cold, my few trips to Finland in the winter, and my general tolerance of colder temperatures would make me seem like a natural up here. As if I was born on the ice and people would look at me and say damn that guy sure can handle the cold.  But, nope. It is just too cold. Like I wrote earlier, it is colder than I ever could have imagined or expected. You do get used to managing it though. I can now shift through face layers and between glove liners and gloves as I feel myself getting colder without interruption. I’m used to my eyelashes freezing, although no amount of “used to” will make it any less annoying."

"I mined ice today. Its pretty much like splitting wood. Only with a pickaxe. So its good hard work but it doesn’t really take long. It’s not what I expected though, because we mine the ice that has pushed up in ridges. We aren’t pulling it out of the “ground” So the ridges of ice that have pushed up are about knee to shoulder high and you chop ice off of that. It took us about 15 minutes to fill our two big boxes with ice. I’ve found three other qualities for good ice to mine. It will sound hollow, like striking a large drum, when you hit it with the axe. The ice will cleave off relatively cleanly around the angle it is struck. And, most importantly, it will have many small holes in it when you look at it (very obvious in the light). Those holes are where the salt has leeched out and the reason for the hollow sound."

"It is beautiful out here. I love the color spectrum at the horizon. It is a definite, quick progression of color. I’m sure part of it is how far north we are and the angle at which light is reaching us. The frozen snow and ice dust has smoothed almost everything out but in some of the ridges in the older ice you can see large blocks of old ice not covered by snow or dust that catch the sun and are very clearly blue. Each sunrise and sunset is spectacularly colored in a cool light of bluish pinks, purples, and oranges. At night all the stars are clearly visible and very bright. You can see the milky way and several constellations. Orion looks as if it is standing on the ground. It’s the lowest I’ve ever seen it and its position makes it look more like a person than when it’s higher up. I’ve seen the northern lights almost each night among the bright stars."

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Muistatteko vielä Phillin Pohjoisnapareissun viime keväältä? Nuo ylläolevat pätkät ovat otteita Phillin minulle lähettämistä sähköposteista.

Sähköpostien, kuvien ja kertomusten lisäksi pääsin kurkkaamaan Pohjoisnavan meininkiin myöskin telkkarin kautta. CBS:n 60 Minutes -ajankohtaisohjelma vieraili Phillin ja kumppaneiden leirissä ja teki aiheesta pienen dokumenttipätkän. Tuo pätkä löytyy nyt ilmaiseksi myöskin netistä, CBS:n virallisilta nettisivuilta tästä linkistä.

Kannattaa kurkata jos aihe kiinnostaa enemmän. Videolla näkyy myöskin tuttuja. Taskulampun kanssa yövartiossa pyörivä miekkonen löytyy tällä hetkellä sohvalta, ihan tuosta vierestä.