Square Frame

The Kiwis at Scott Base (four miles down the road from us here on Ross Island, with a winter population of 12) maintain a sweet little square-frame trailer out on the Ross Sea Ice Sheet (a permanently frozen area, at least for now) to which they are kind enough to invite some of us hooligan Americans from time to time. An overnight at the Square Frame has been on my bucket list all winter, and as the winter is dwindling, it was now or never to organize a trip out there.


I was in a group of three who hadn't gotten to make a trip out there yet this year, and when we stopped at Scott Base for a briefing on the way there, we found all the lights down and half their crew--plus two visiting McMurdoans--wearing masks and sitting in a dark room with an ultraviolet light on, intending to and succeeding in scaring the bejezus out of us.

Then they tried to soothe our nerves Kiwi style...that is, with a shot (which I of course gifted to someone else) before sending us on our way.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but the square frame is ADORABLE. So cozy and tidy and basically I just wanted to move in there and stay forever.

There is an outhouse about 20 yards away, but we brought one of the pee cans into the Square Frame foyer so we wouldn't have to get suited up to go outside so often, and the whole squatting-over-the-funnel method worked great.

 There was a little kitchenette, and a bunk area...

All in all, so perfect.


But the whole point, and the best part of it all, was spending a night out on the ice sheet. We had incredible weather when we went out. My phone camera isn't good enough to take night sky pics, so I don't have those, but the stars were INCREDIBLE. And it was so still out that when I went outside on my own and laid down on the snow, the silence and lack of sensory input--there are few smells in Antarctica, and it was so dark, and with no wind there were basically no sounds--it was almost an out-of-body experience, the quietest being-outside experience of my life, and so lovely I almost cried.


And then in the morning, because we're getting so close to sunrise, all this light started slowly coming back into the sky and we spent a good hour outside enjoying the scenery and taking pictures.

This is the Square Frame seen from the outside, with Castle Rock in the background:

And this is the mighty Mount Erebus, the southern-most active volcano in the world (and, I believe, creator of this island we are living on, Ross Island), and you can see it's actively venting in this photo. With no wind, the puffs of fumes from the crater would just sit on top of the peak like that for up to a minute...totally incredible. It looks really close in this pic and when we were standing there, but it was actually something like 20 miles away from where I was standing when I took this shot.

All in all, this was one of the most magical, special recreational things I've gotten to experience during this winter in McMurdo, and the overnight, though too brief, left me feeling so grateful, and like I'd just woken from an amazing dream.