 | Disappearing PlacesAn archive and collective map of places that no longer exist, at least not as they once did. |
Windiest, Coldest Place
Posted On Monday May 21, 2007 By Lisa Roberts
Here is a drawing I made in February 2002, from the top of Mount Henderson, south of Mawson station in Antarctica. The wave form on the right is my voice sounding the word “katabatic”. This is the name of the fierce wind driven by gravity from the top of Antarctica’s vast ice dome down to the coast.
Mawson is one of the windiest places on earth. But the day I drew this was complete stillness – so still I could hear the blood pumping through my head, and a penguin crying from the far away coast.
Antarctica is Gondwanaland nolonger. Once alive to the colours and sounds of myriad living things, the place is now a cold white desert.
The words, pictures and stories of a whalo (whale observer) first inspired me to go to Antarctica. They reminded me how, as a small child, I was told about this place, and how the pictures I was shown and words I had heard used to describe it had fascinated me. But I had never imagined myself there until meeting her.
Only when I arrived there did the words of Antarctica even begin to have meaning. The place had got to work on me, and I began to see my own Antarctic landscape; or at least a small part of it. And there was a sense of isolation in that. I know we all see the world differently, but I was more aware of that there than anywhere.
Tags: antarctica, ice, mawson, mountain, penguin, stillness