across the great divide

I’ve been sifting through the layers
of dusty books and faded papers
they tell a story, I used to know
it was one that happened, a long time ago

Nanci Griffiths (across the great divide)

I’ve been doing some sifting and sorting while Anniemay’s been away.  Not so much dusty books, more boxes of photos and colour slides.  I’ve had a few slides digitised - not lots - just the ones that really mean something.  I’m going to make a print of this particular image.  It was taken in the summer of 1977 and tells a story of a young boy’s dream.  Are you sitting comfortably?  It begins 60 years ago.

1956-57 was the International Geophysical Year (IGY).  If you don’t know about the IGY, Donald Fagin has a very nice song about it on the album The Nightfly.  Or ask a responsible adult.

I was at primary school at the time and one day we had a visit from some hairy men with beards and anoraks and a Husky dog (the breed, not one with a sore throat).

The purpose of the visit was a ‘show and tell’ about (Sir) Vivian Fuchs’ Trans-Antarctic Expedition.  After a slideshow and lecture, they persuaded us children to part with our pocket money so that we could ‘adopt’ the Husky (yeah, right - like they were going to let us keep it).  By ‘adopt’ they meant we could pay for enough dog biscuits to get it to the South Pole and back.  

Now I’ve been a dog person from a very early age so I was already digging out my threepenny bit.  But it was the slideshow - and the vast expanses of snow and ice - that really grabbed my attention.  And I resolved there and then that one day, I too would go on such an expedition.  

Fast forward to 1977 and I’m a mature student at the University of East Anglia, studying Environmental Science.  A notice came round asking for undergraduates majoring in geology to volunteer as lackeys field assistants for a 3-month expedition to the Vatnajokull Glacier in SE Iceland.  Hmm; snow and Ice.  

I was not majoring in geology, but went to see the expedition leaders anyway, taking my camera with me and offered to take photographs of their research work.  They looked at my Nikkormat FT2 with its 35mm f2.8 Nikon lens and my 10 rolls of Kodachrome 64.  They looked at each other and stroked their beards.  They didn’t seem bothered that I had no experience of snow and ice (apart from making snowmen) let alone glaciers and climbing.  Luckily for me, their sponsors wanted a photographic record of the trip, so I got the job.  I think it was the fact that they wouldn’t have to fork out for 10 rolls of film that clinched it.

Taking this image required a lot of huffing and puffing on my part.  I wedged a couple of ice-axes horizontally into the crevasse to make a seat.  And once I was sitting comfortably, snapped away.  They got their pictures.  I ended up with a box full of memories.  Looking at it now, I think I must have been mad. 

ps.  Now added an extra; ablation poles being drilled into the glacier - these stick up about 2m high and are placed 1 km apart and allow measurements of the rate of movement over the summer to be recorded.