Antarctic Thesaurus
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elemental elephant seal extreme Erebus
Erebus
In 1997 an air new Zealand flightseeing trip over Antarctica crashed into Mt Erebus.
I was invited to write something for Sir Edmund Hillary to read at the service - for the commemorative service for the victims. And so I decided to try and give a voice, first of all, to the mountain which seemed to me to not have been part of the discussion, and a voice to the dead who I felt, I think, that 25 years had gone by and the way in which memory works the dead could now be remembered as they were rather than as a whole lot of distressing body parts inside the debris trail. So I wrote this poem made up of two voices and the first voice is the voice of the mountain.
Stephen Eastaugh 256 crosses, Erebus (Ross Island. Antarctica) 2007
Standish Bakus Mount Ereubus 1956
The great "sacred" mountain of the Antarctic, this 13,000 foot active volcano is among the most majestic, beautiful, inspiring and forbidding prominences on earth. So domineering that one is aware of its existence visually from well over 100 miles distance; so aloof that it seems to maintain its own mantle of weather apart from anything being experienced by our lowly fleet at her feet (though quite capable of throwing 100 knots of wind in our direction when bored with her other moods); so terrifying that to step boldly at random on her flanks would amount to becoming engulfed instantly in some vast crevasse; so benign in the soft, warm light of the low sun as to permit her to take high place among the sentimental scenic settings in the world. In such a mood as the latter have I tempted to record a brief moment of Erebus.
Vessels represented, from the left, MSTS Greenville Victory, Arneb, Nespelen, YOG-34, Wyandot, Navy icebreaker Edisto, Coast Guard icebreaker Eastwind.
Standish Bakus, Navel Historical Centre, (August 2001)
