My wife and I were driving home from a long Labor Day weekend spent in northern Minnesota. Traffic was light, considering there were more than 50,000 visitors in the Twin Cities for the Republican National Convention (RNC). At the other end of the Mississippi River, 1,200 miles to the south, Hurricane Gustav was slamming into New Orleans, the first hurricane to do so since Katrina in 2005. The country held its collective breath, waiting to see what damage the storm would bring, but in the streets of St. Paul, pepper spray hung in the air, riot police crushed protesters into the asphalt, and the National Guard stood watch.

We listened to reports of the chaos on the radio, hunched forward in our seats as our car zipped toward our apartment in St. Paul. By the time we collapsed into our beds that evening, exhausted from the long weekend, nearly 300 protesters were in jail. What began as a call for peace and a demonstration against the Republican Party ended in smashed windows, tear gas, and mass arrests. And this was only the first day.

Between Monday, Sept. 1 and Thursday, Sept. 4, the St. Paul Police Department and other cooperating agencies arrested 818 protesters. The vast majority of the protesters were nonviolent, but the police used pepper spray, tasers, rubber bullets, tear gas, and other “less lethal” crowd control measures. They conducted mass arrests, cordoning off streets and arresting everyone, including street medics, innocent bystanders, and journalists. Downtown St. Paul looked like a police state, filled with police officers in riot gear, an alphabet soup jumble of federal agents with three-letter acronyms, and National Guard soldiers.

Rick Kelley, of Coldsnap Legal Collective, a group of concerned citizens dedicated to providing support to activists involved in the legal system, was taken aback at the intensity of the police response. "I didn’t expect the preemptive raids, I didn’t expect the felonies, I didn’t expect the invocation of terrorism charges against people who are as far from terrorists as anyone I’ve ever met," Kelley said. "The kind of police response that we experienced was, I think, unprecedented in a lot of ways, and it shocked me."

Irene Greene, a practicing therapist and a coordinator with North Star Health Collective, felt the same way.

"It was a much wilder scene than any of us anticipated, but we were prepared for the worst, so folks were prepared for what they had to deal with: people getting beat by batons and beat up in jail, and tasers,” said Greene.

North Star Health Collective (NSHC) is a group of health care workers, students and community activists who are dedicated to access to health care for all, regardless of ability to pay. During the RNC, volunteers associated with NSHC organized, manned, and operated a first aid and wellness center in downtown St. Paul. The center housed a first aid station, a base of operations for the street medics who tended to injuries of both protesters and police, an outdoor decontamination center for people who’d been sprayed with chemical irritants, and a wellness center to help people cope with the mental trauma of protest-related violence.

First aid centers are common at large-scale protest events like the RNC, but the attention to the mental health needs of protesters was something new.

"One of the things that was especially unique about our center was that there hasn’t, to our knowledge, been a wellness and first aid center that has combined crisis counseling with the first aid/medic component," said Greene.

During the events surrounding the RNC, 58 street medics came from around the country and assisted more than 1,100 individuals with injuries as minor as blisters and sunburn and as severe as taser wounds and projectile injuries. There were 375 people decontaminated at the washing station outside the first aid and wellness center, 65 people treated at the first aid center, and another 85 counseled at the wellness center. There were 21 street medics who were arrested once, and four who were arrested twice, despite clear markings.

The volunteers and activists of Coldsnap Legal Collective (CLC) were also standing by to provide assistance to the protest groups. "Long days, little sleep, and a barrage of phone calls from people out on the street," said Becky, who asked that her last name be withheld, from CLC.  Coldsnap encouraged protesters to write their legal hotline number on their arms or legs, so if they were arrested, the police couldn’t take it away. They fielded calls from protesters in the thick of the action, people who’d been arrested and were making their one phone call, and people who’d been released from jail. CLC served as a liaison between those in jail and their friends and family. They also maintained a vigil outside the Ramsey County Jail, so that arrestees would have warm food, clean clothes, and a hug when they were released.

The police were as prepared for the protests as the activists were. Infiltrators placed inside the protest groups kept the police informed on the protest actions planned during the week. On Friday, Aug. 29, the police launched a series of preemptory raids targeting activist groups and independent journalists when they entered the Convergence Space, a gathering place for anti-RNC activists. The next morning, there were three more raids in Minneapolis and another in St. Paul. The St. Paul raid targeted the base of operations of I-Witness Video, a NY-based group of photojournalists whose mission is to film and document police abuse. Video taken by I-Witness helped invalidate many of the charges filed in arrests surrounding the 2004 RNC in New York. Also targeted in the raids were the "RNC 8," prominent members of the RNC Welcoming Committee, an ironically named activist group. These eight people have been charged under the Patriot Act, and they face terrorism riot charges.

"Monday and Thursday were really big decontamination days," said Greene.  On Monday, about 10,000 marchers from several different groups came to protest the war. The majority of protesters walked, chanted, and waved signs, but a few broke windows and blocked traffic. The police clamped down hard on the violence, arresting nearly 300, including journalists and street medics. They used tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and other "less than lethal" crowd-control measures, and eventually arrested almost 300 people, including passers-by caught up in the violence, and Amy Goodman, Nicole Salazar, and Sharif Abdel Kouddous from Democracy Now!

The protests and police violence culminated on Thursday in a drama played out over several hours on several highway overpasses near the state capital. A rally held at 4 p.m. fired up a crowd of about 2,000 for a march at 5 p.m., when the group’s legal permit to assemble expired. When the protesters headed for the Xcel Energy Center and the Republican delegates who were beginning to arrive, mounted police cut them off, blocking their path on the John Ireland bridge. As protesters moved east, to the Marion and Cedar Street bridges, the police moved as well, closing all downtown overpasses over the interstate and blocking the protesters’ path with snowplows, mounted police, and cops in riot gear, brandishing batons.

The standoff ended in the inevitable way. As the sun set and darkness settled in, the police issued the final order to disperse. Shortly thereafter, they moved in with tear gas, pepper spray, concussion grenades, and full riot gear.  The police drove the group onto the Marion Street bridge and arrested everyone, including journalists and street medics.

"When I was out there on Thursday night, one of the first instances that happened is basically that this line of mounted police formed in front of some of my friends and I, and I stood there for several minutes, my friend and I stood there with our arms around each other and stood in front of them and just stood there,” said Becky. “All I wanted to do was have them look me in the eyes. And they wouldn’t do it. I actually said at one point, ‘Look me in the eyes, please look me in the eyes right now, and the woman looked down and gave this uncomfortable laugh […and said], ‘I can’t, I’m watching the crowd,’ and I thought, no, it’s because in the next minute if you’re ordered to beat the crap out of me, looking me in the eyes and recognizing me as a human being might prevent you from doing that. Making that human connection with me right now might prevent you from doing your job."

Becky, Greene and Kelley all agree that the purpose of the police actions seemed to be to demoralize protesters, to isolate them from their fellow activists and to discourage further protests, Instead of tearing activists apart, the harsh actions of the police had the opposite effect.

"I truly do not believe that anyone involved in the protester side of the convention is going to come out of that and say, ‘Well, clearly they’re right. Clearly I should no longer be anti-authoritarian,” said Becky. “Clearly, the government and the state and the police . . . know what’s up and I should probably listen to them from now on. You guys win.’ That’s not what we’re going to see, that’s not what we’re seeing. If nothing else, people are more politicized."

The response a lot of people have, in the example of Amy Goodman’s arrest, is, "She should have stopped when the cops told her to." When asked about Thursday’s events, many people respond, "Oh, well, their permit expired at 5 p.m. They shouldn’t have been there." Both of these arguments boil down to "You should do what you’re told." And that’s true, at least if you want to stay out of jail. I knew at 5:30, when the standoff on the bridges over I-94 was just beginning, that there were going to be arrests and tear gas and everything else. Every person on that bridge, be they protester, police, journalist or observer, must have known it too. After the events earlier in the week, how could they not?

The problem comes in when what you’re being told to do is unjust. Then you have two choices: go home and allow the injustice to continue or refuse to do what you’re told, make your voice heard, and suffer the consequences. When the state is unjust, you can’t wait for the state to give you permission to object to their actions. During the civil rights movement, marchers were refused permits and faced fire hoses and police dogs. They marched anyway, because they knew what they stood for was honorable and just. This is why people stayed in the streets of St. Paul, knowing what was about to happen to them and standing defiant. They had something to say and were determined to be heard.

In situations like these, I try to think about things from the opposing view. What was going through the minds of the police involved? I assume, from the cops I’ve met and known, that most of the police involved were good people doing the best they could in a tough but necessary job.

“I don’t think you can police always for the best in the crowd. You have to police for the worst in the crowd,” said Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher in an interview with Amy Goodman. It wasn’t an easy situation, either. Downtown St. Paul was filled with celebrities from around the country. The national spotlight was fixed on our city. We wanted to make a good impression.

Also assumed: the police are a tool of the state. They are the monopoly on violence that any government must maintain, without which it cannot exist. I buy into government’s basic assumption: violence is inevitable. We are all humans. We are violent creatures. Someone will always be in charge. But I also buy into the basic assumption of anarchy: I am my own best boss. If we all treat each other like adults, we don’t need the enormous infrastructure of government and we can all get along. It’s an optimistic viewpoint, and I buy it. At least until someone gets shot.

So what happened? Why did the police turn on the citizens of the Twin Cities and our guests with such brutal force? Why did they spend so much time infiltrating activist groups? Why did they use pepper spray, tear gas, and concussion grenades against nonviolent protesters? Did it have anything to do with the $10 million lawsuit insurance policy the city of St. Paul negotiated with the Republican National Convention?

"If you’re going into something knowing that you’re not going to be held accountable in your community… and you’re not going to have to deal with that public pressure, I think it lifts a little bit of that weight off your shoulders and gives you a little be more free reign,” said Becky.

The agreement, made between the RNC and the city of St. Paul, is unprecedented, and covered "up to $10 million in damages and unlimited legal costs for law enforcement officials accused of brutality, violating civil rights and other misconduct," according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, in an article published Sept. 3, 2008. An agreement like this creates a situation where the police don’t have to worry about the legality of their actions, because they know there won’t be any heat from taxpayers. Instead, maintaining "order" becomes the prime directive, and constitutional rights are violated in the interest of temporary security.

It’s easy, though, to get bogged down in the negativity that surrounded the RNC. Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin may have mocked community organizers in their speeches to the Republican delegates, but on the streets of St. Paul, friendships were being forged in the crucible of a shared crisis. Communities were organized. "I feel like I met people that I will be friends with for life," said Greene. "To go through something like that, it’s definitely a uniting experience."

Giuliani, Palin and others may sneer at people who care enough to go out into their community, reach out and try to make their community a better place, but it hasn’t stopped those who were brought together by events surrounding the RNC. One of the shared goals of the many activist groups that protested at the RNC in 2008 was to build solidarity and bring together like-minded people. In that sense, the protests were a success.

Epilogue
Becky, Coldsnap Legal Collective:
"One of the most beautiful things I saw out of this week was how close we became as a community. The number of hugs that I got, the length of time of those hugs. We held each other longer, we cried together. People that I didn’t know that well before the event, I could meet them on the street and be like, ‘I remember talking to you when you were in jail, I’m really glad you’re out. Can I give you a hug? How are you doing? Thank you for being out on the street,’ and they would respond with ‘Thank you for being in the office.’ That kind of mutual support and mutual aid and caring was really great.

"The state uses this divide and conquer technique. We saw that on a smaller scale in the convention, even in just little things, like isolating individuals, putting them in solitary, or dropping them off in the middle of nowhere after they got out of jail,  It’s trying to isolate people, trying to make people feel like they’re alone, feel like they don’t have any people to support them. Those isolation tactics can be very useful if we don’t recognize that together, we’re really strong and we have each other’s backs. If we allow members of our community, whether radical or not, to be isolated and to be picked off, it makes the larger group smaller. They just keep picking us off one by one.

"We have amazing community resources in our city right now. We have a legal collective where none existed before. We have a radical healthcare collective. We have a community bike space. We have a group that formed around confronting and dealing with sexual assault in society… there are things to be optimistic about."

Aaron Richner I am a writer/editor turned web developer. I've served as both Editor-in-chief and Technical Developer of In The Fray Magazine over the past 5 years. I am gainfully employed, writing, editing and developing on the web for a small private college in Duluth, MN. I enjoy both silence and heavy metal, John Milton and Stephen King, sunrise and sunset. Like all of us, I contain multitudes.

Only the man who was in charge of the single lamp at the North Pole, and his colleague who was responsible for the single lamp at the South Pole, only these two would live free from toil and care: they would be busy only twice a year. —Antoine de Saint Exupéry, The Little Prince

The stars have been our companions for the past few months. Dancing in between them, the ribbons of the southern aurora offer light when the moon is gone. Watch them fade and the black grows so deep as to lose hands in front of faces, to discover wind drifts in the snow or a wall by blunt impact. The last remnants of the sun set in March, and the long dark has carried the sixty of us through the bitter winter of the South Pole.

All of Antarctica offers uniqueness in character of the land, the sky, and the sea. It’s a world as yet untamed, where it is still risky to do something as simple as stepping outside, or understand something so patterned as the rise and fall of the sun. Men of written history have found God and lost sanity here, have faced frostbite and harsh wind, fierce loneliness, silence and death. But in confronting this world, many of them also found tremendous beauty and great humility.

The last hundred years have tamed this continent somewhat, to a level that finds its safety concerns part of corporate databases, the warmer seasons attract thousands of visitors, and human impact grows every year. Yet in the midst of the growing hustle, a set of people gather, intent on experiencing that which only Antarctica can offer — the long night of winter.

From mid to late February through to mid October, Antarctica grows weary of visitors. Winds driving in from the polar plateau bring storms, gales, and extreme temperature drops. Travel not only within the continent but to and from it brings great risks. Temperatures descend into territory that render vehicles unusable, ice locks in summer harbors for tens if not hundreds of miles, planes cannot land in the cold and dark Antarctic winter, and survival without protection is measured in minutes. In response, the various stations close down, become isolated, and build upon an internal community to make it through the winter. When the last flight leaves, very few will see a new face for eight months. An entire existence becomes dependent on the equipment and people immediately around. In the event of any disaster, rescue, if possible at all, will be severely delayed.

Just over 900 people from a multitude of countries find this appealing each year. We’re split between 36 different stations, spread out over 4.5 million square miles. To some extent, every station experiences the Antarctic night. It is only at the very bottom of the Earth, eight hundred miles from our closest neighbor, that the South Pole bears witness to a single day spread out over an entire year. One sunrise and one long day; one sunset and one long, dark night.

The pursuit of science and the International Antarctic Treaty (one of the premier examples of international cooperation, preservation, and exploration) drive this continent’s development. Everything that is done here can relate back to furthering the knowledge of humankind.

Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is an international hub, hosted by the United States Antarctic program. From a peak population of 300 in the summer months, who fly in and out from the coast, the isolated winter reduces that population to 60 or fewer.

We form a modern tribal community with the necessary skills between us to keep the station warm, powered, and gathering data until the return of the sun and the summer.

Scientists and technicians (known as “beakers”) manage an array of scientific acronyms designed to peel back the fog of the unknown. There are massive telescopes that look into the darkest sky on Earth, detector arrays that are buried kilometers deep in the ice below, gathering evidence of subatomic particles; digital eyes that seek out the streaming auroras; weather stations; atmospheric ozone devices; and sampling systems that gather the some of purest air on earth. The data pooled helps us to see and understand the very beginnings of the universe, to explore the relationship between the sun and the Earth’s magnetic field, and to provide a baseline for atmospheric comparison the world around.

To ensure the integrity of the data, a slew of men and women are responsible for maintaining everything from something as mundane as a clogged drain to the severity of a generator failure. Their skills keep us powered, warm, and alive. Chefs work miracles with frozen food (much of it years old) and supplement meals from the harvest in our greenhouse. A small IT department maintains the computer and server systems on station and keeps the limited, but vital, satellite and radio links to outside world, live. Carpenters, electricians, welders, and plumbers continue needed construction through the winter months and aid the maintenance crew when needed. The power plant technicians guarantee lights, heat, and water. A materials department tracks inventory long since buried in drifts, much a mile or more distant from the warmth of station. Engineers and planners communicate the changes made and needed with management who are off-continent. Our heavy equipment operator strives to support construction, material movement, and fueling the distant buildings.  As the cold damages the vehicles, the shop endeavors to keep them running. Our two-person medical department is prepared to tackle any contingency and all of us are involved in emergency response teams (fire, trauma, and logistics) in some form.

We do this all in the cold, in the dark, with a necessary willingness to step outside our basic responsibilities and aid the friend next to us. Often, we do this at temperatures that we can stand but that our equipment cannot. Working outside at -95 ºF with a windchill thirty or forty degrees colder is not uncommon. Doing it with clothing that freezes, goggles that fog over in minutes, numb fingers and numbing minds, dying batteries for limited light (to protect the light-sensitive science experiments), and exhausted lungs from the ten-thousand foot altitude? This is our normal.

Your breath at these temperatures crackles when it moves past your lips, a brief respite from the searing cold of the winter air diving deep into your lungs. Though only your eyes may be visible to the cold, the lightest touch of the wind bites hard, freezing eyelids to low hanging hats and mingling with the quick forming ice on your hood and facemask. Fire comes to mind, a white-mix of intensity, when skin has been exposed to cold for too long — a sign that you have seconds to cover it or frostbite will set in.

Ostensibly, we tackle these challenges and risks to keep hundreds of millions of dollars in equipment and data in good order for the U.S. Antarctic Program — for individuals in offices ten thousand miles distant and an ideal based around scientific exploration. Realistically, we do this for each other.

In the dark, isolated and distant from any neighbors, the sixty of us have a jumpstart on familiarity. We immediately share a context and a challenging environment that few other places can offer. We depend on each other in the most literal sense for eight straight months. Friendships and disagreements, loves and arguments abound — the panoply of human emotion and action is all here, often magnified, often gossiped about. Our situation, however, also has an obvious undercurrent of dependency. All of us are necessary for the survival of the other. Anyone short-shifting their work forces others to carry their burden and then has to eat meals with them at the end of the day. “Family” may be too strong a word but say “community” and that notion becomes far more tangible. 

In his book Bluebeard, Kurt Vonnegut talks of a sadness of the modern connected world. He speaks to how a talent is suddenly compared to the whole of humankind. How an ability to sing, which may have once entertained a small village must now compete with the talent that can move an entire planet. Though we are children of the first world and modern globalization, here we can explore what Vonnegut laments.

We make our own entertainment, our own plans and pursuits. We compare ourselves and compete with each other, come to know our abilities in a group where “better than” has less weight than “different than.” Over the season the last delivery of magazines grows old, movies are watched one too many times, and the ever-present voice of consumer culture fades. Somewhere in the setting of the sun even those not previously exposed to the value of individual talent find their eyes opening toward it.

How entertaining others manifests itself differs — it could simply be consistent human conversation and company in the bar every night. It could be stepping up to sing in a band having never before performed or learning to play an instrument and sharing those painful first steps. At this point, over half the station is involved in music in some fashion.

The escapes that society uses to avoid the awkwardness of human contact are still here but the press of people (sixty may be few but our space is limited) makes real and true interaction hard to avoid. By virtue of our shared context and isolation we can quickly move past being new and strange to each other and reap the rewards of a relationship. We can institutionalize ourselves, grow used to constant company and eating nearly every meal with friends and familiar faces. There’s a saying that the first time you come to Antarctica you do so for the adventure. The second trip is for the money. Every time after that you return because you can’t seem to fit in anywhere else any more.

What they say, though, is just that. All of us come here for our own reasons, all of us with our own goals and aspirations, with our own hopes. How those measure up to the people we meet and the effects of the cold, the dark, the altitude, and the night sky vary.

“Polies” (as we’re known in the Antarctic communities) often set up for a winter with specific ideas of changing their life, be it through exercise, education, self-reflection, or something else entirely. An individual might come down hoping to write a book, read a great many more, learn a language (or three), to leave problems stateside, learn an instrument, find a lover, cook, build something, make art, get into better shape — the combinations and specifics are multitudinous, including the many not spoken out loud.

We come expecting to be able to complete these goals in full, picturing months of time set aside from the distractions of the real world back home, easily saying that we can put something off one more day — we’ve plenty left. We don’t realize, unfortunately, that distractions are common to society regardless of size or place. We don’t see or understand always that change occurs over time — that if one lacked the discipline to write a book in his or her life before, he or she will likely not gain it here. We don’t expect or count on the environment to the degree that it affects us.

Buried under 9,000 feet of ice sits the land at the center of the Antarctic continent — we rest on top of it. In combination with our physical altitude, variations in barometric pressure and weather patterns cause the physiological altitude to rise to 11,500 feet in the winter. When that hits, no one on station sleeps well, if at all. Walking the halls the next morning, you can easily believe you have awoken to zombies taking over the station. The cold, of course, does its own number on our metabolism. For those working outside daily, the exhaustion may be welcome, but it can and will drive ambition into the ground. Inspiration can be difficult to find when the environment doesn’t change and when one cannot seek out new things or leave. However, the altitude, the cold, the static nature of this place — none compare to the dark.

There is great excitement when the sun first sets in March — the winter is still new, nothing is yet too worn or staid. Your fellow winter-overs are still mysterious, your friendships still new. The setting sun, though below the horizon, takes weeks of horizontal circling to fade. As a group we wait for signs of the coming dark — of the steps between nautical twilight and astronomical twilight, of the first stars, of the first of the southern auroras. The magic is still easy to see and find — the horizon, stretched and perfect, humbles with its stark beauty. The first shadows from the moon bring smiles (soon frozen). The aurora dance with an intensity and frequency that is to become familiar — they are present so long as the sky is clear and moon is set. 

As the dark grows we cover the station windows and shut off exterior lights to shield sensitive science projects. Though we can’t see the horizon, there is cocoon-like comfort in the sheltered station, in the settling night sky. For the majority of us from the northern hemisphere, the constellations are new and unfamiliar. We learn to navigate in the black by watching the direction of the Southern Cross and we watch for the first of the iridium flares — reflections from the satellites that keep us in touch with the outside world.

Two or three months in and the night still feels positive and powerful. Two or three months in, however, and the reality of a vacant sun and isolation begin to take their toll, rendering personal feelings irrelevant. According to research compiled by Lawrence Palinkas, “Among the physiological responses to these environmental conditions are a complete absence of Stage IV sleep as well as sizable reductions in the amount of Stage III and REM sleep, a disruption of circadian rhythms, dyspnea, arterial hypoxia, headaches, hypocapnia, erythrocytosis, mild alkalosis, suppression of the immune system, and disruption of thyroid function.” The effects of the dark on your mind and on your physiology grow more apparent daily. Manifestations of memory-loss, sleeplessness, and mood swings all creep into normal interactions. Palinkas offers the scientific terminology to use. For us, we simply say that you are getting “toasty.”

We are all affected in some degree or another and all of us move down the slope together. Isolated as we are, we don’t have an easy comparison to see how we have been affected. Veterans tend to laugh it off as the names of our friends begin to slip from easy recall. Attempting to come up with simple words becomes a chore — referring to something as common as a boat becomes, “that thing that, you know, floats on water and hauls stuff.” We stare off into the distance, often in the middle of a conversation and count how many times we’ve tried to tell the same stories to the same friend. Small disagreements balloon into massive arguments beyond any logical perspective and basic troubleshooting of problems requires extreme concentration. None of us have an accurate understanding of how much or how severely we’ve been affected — we won’t, until the sun has crawled back above the horizon and the station opens again.

For six months now, we’ve been on pause. Our cares and concerns from the outside world have been muted, rendered distant, physically and emotionally. Our day-to-day routine consists of simple plans, of familiar people and few responsibilities that exceed what has become habit. Expectation followed us here in the form of our plans, our hopes, and our goals. The expectations built up over the beginning of the season, and played out calmly or not at all. The future happened to other people, was worried over by those long away from here. We’ve been able to simply exist, continuing along at a pace unaccustomed to change. Though we have our challenges — to us our world is simple and comfortable. It is simply here.

And then the sun started to rise.

We first noticed it in early August. Clouded horizons had masked the beginning few days of twilight that we were supposed to be able to see. There were rumored whispers that someone had seen something — an edge of color on the horizon from the corner of their eye — but nothing solid. Then, in the middle of a weekend concert, excited yells led to ill-clothed runs to the observation deck. Cheering, smiling, laughing, joyous piles of people ran out at seventy below, hopping barefoot for moments, breath clouding faces and wide, thrilled eyes. In the distance stood the barest glow of orange.

Suddenly we find ourselves thrust into the undetermined future. The sun cracked the horizon on September 22 and the evidence of its rising grows daily. Even in an overcast sky we can now see drifts, other people, and all of the station at once.

No longer able to avoid it, we are pushed into planning vacations and the next job, into finances and the pragmatic aspects of the future. We are pushed into wondering about friends and family soon to be seen again, into wondering how we will react to them, to the outside world. We are forced to wonder how they will react to us.

Our expectations for the season are now measured in progress versus the time left. Our goals, our projects, and our ambitions are laid bare to the truth of what we have accomplished. We have no choice but to weigh our own minds toward failed pursuits. Do we struggle with self-doubt or do we treat them as casualties of the dark and move on? We begin to count our victories and contrast our memories against the grip of nostalgia. The great unknown has moved from a vague fog of dream and wonder to storm clouds brewing on the horizon.

The last couple of months of the winter season are described as among the most difficult and trying, because the drama and conflict are knocked up a few notches. The rising sun drives a fierce desire to move on and experience the next step of life. It is easy to assume that this is due to the effects of the long dark. The suspicion is growing that it is instead to do with our rebirth into the world at large.

To waver too long on self-reflection and the unknown of the future is to become lost. Now is to relearn decision-making, to plan again after a year-long break and to face our actions from the past year. The waves are rising, the wind is building, and the time to pick a direction and run strong is nigh.

The other night, when the sun first cracked the horizon, the storms that had been obscuring its rise cleared for several hours. A group of us gathered around the galley windows to watch. Not yet fully crossing the cover of land to sky, atmospheric refraction left the top of the sun rippling. Pieces of it seemed to break off and hover above it, shimmering into blue, then green, and disappearing. In all the rest of the world one might be lucky, on the clearest of days with the flattest of horizons, to see the flash of green for only a second. Here, we watched it dance for hours.

This is our sunrise — our one sunrise that brings with it more than any other before. This is our demarcation point, a decided moment that cannot fade like an ordinary dawn back home. It is our marker for the change that we find has already happened and the untold affects that this experience will bring for years to come.

[ Click here to view the accompanying visual essay ]

Nathan Bahls