In the Dark of Night

McMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA

I have spent hours driving a loader. I have moved thousands of pallets, unloaded and loaded at least a hundred planes. I climb into the machines and change gears, turn on lights, adjust heaters, move the forks, without much thought. If you had asked me, I would have told you that I could do it all with my eyes closed. Until last night.

PHOTO CREDIT: DANIEL SU

Last night was the first flight that I have worked since landing at McMurdo on Saturday, and the first night flight I have ever worked. The use of night vision goggles by the pilots requires that the airfield be completely dark. I climbed into the loader and fumbled with buttons trying to find the switch to turn off the headlights. Once off, the entire field was dark, the only illumination the faint and dying twilight. Creeping towards the staging ground, I watched for the dark shadows of other vehicles, following the road from memory.  The C-17 is not a tiny plane, and usually easy to spot several hundred miles away, but this time, there was no sign of the plane until the whoosh of it approaching directly overhead. It was eerie and bizarre, a dozen pickup trucks, loaders, and emergency vehicles, invisible in the dark waiting for an equally invisible plane. Upon landing, I could barely pick out the single red light on the top of the plane. I watched the light approach, and even as I knew the plane must be turning directly in front of me, the red light was the only thing punctuating the darkness. Finally the call came over the radio to turn on headlights, and even then the plane was hardly discernible.

PHOTO CREDIT: DANIEL SU

The night grew colder, the wind chill dipping into the negative 50’s, leaving me shivering in the unheated loader, and I struggled through the process of transferring pallet after pallet, moving through the darkness based on a combination of memory, landmarks, and hand signals from ground workers.

The darkness crippled me, took away any skill I thought I had. It was an altogether humbling experience.