Endurance

Monday, at the standing stones, wondering what chants were chanted there.  What decisions made.  What eyes met across the circle.  Over the howls and gusts of the comet winds, came the unmistakable thrum of the distant heliport.  In the past, I have dwelt on the shock and awe of offshore trips.  But, in the centre of the circle, it was as if shamanic drums were pounding, dreaming me back. To the thrill of it. 

While I’m glad I’ll never venture offshore again, I’m also glad I did it.  It was exciting, glamorous even - well, excepting the survival suits.  I wanted something more than a desk job or the ‘two point four’ option.  When I was in my mid-thirties and women were supposed to be ‘having it all’, I realised I didn’t want ‘it all’.  I wanted a bit of adventure.  An interesting life.  While I suspect I gave myself PTSD in the cause, I had many adventures.  Standing in that circle, recalling offshore trips, I felt that rush again, exhilaration, of North Sea ‘Tiger’ helicopters. 

‘Endurance’, the ship of Shakleton’s Antarctica expedition, is the second ‘allowable’ no spend movie.  It’s not a film I’d normally choose.  Probably due to reducing sugar (only half-joking), am all about big weather, especially on the big screen.  Choice also influenced by brilliancy of Annie Dillard’s, ‘An Expedition to the Pole’.  She intersperses life-thoughts with the tragic naïveté of early Polar expeditions.  How fatal their lack of proper survival gear was.  Some of Franklin’s men were found, frozen to death in naval coats, alongside ornate silver cutlery, engraved with the officers’ family crests.  Was that cutlery their hope?  Evoking comfort of home?  Did the crests identify them?  Did they plan to trade them, for safe passage home? 

It moved me deeply reading about them.

Images for this journal have been posted on Insta @purplehaze_journal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=563_lBO3wiY

https://www.hansenprotection.no/en/suits/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_(1912_ship)

Credit: ‘Teaching a Stone to Talk’, Annie Dillard. 1982. Canongate.  ‘An Expedition to the Pole’, pg23-63.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin%27s_lost_expedition