{"id":52336,"date":"2026-04-30T21:26:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T21:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/the-prophet-copy\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T21:57:39","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T21:57:39","slug":"the-unfathomable-heart","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/the-unfathomable-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"The Unfathomable Heart"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Unfathomable Heart<\/h1> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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A version of this essay originally appeared in Confluence,\u00a0<\/em>The Dark Mountain Project’s twenty-first book<\/a> on April 15, 2022.<\/h4> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n \n
\n
\n \"The \n <\/div>\n \n \n
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\n The Ruins of Nukey Poo, the PM-3A nuclear reactor at Mcmurdo Station in Antarctica. <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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“How does it feel to become a drop of water, and then to re-enter, <\/em><\/h4>\n

to dissolve back into the whole?”<\/em><\/h4>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ingrid Horrocks in her LitHub essay“Dissolving Genre”<\/a><\/h5> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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The PM-3A Nuclear Reactor, the only one humans have ever built in Antarctica, was supposed to \u2018revolutionize\u2019 human access to the continent through abundant and clean energy. In 1972, after operating only ten years, the US Navy shut down \u2018Nukey Poo\u2019 because of its \u2018numerous malfunctions\u2019, a \u2018suspected crack\u2019 in its containment vessel, and the financial cost of investigation and repair. A leak would harm the environment and break the Antarctic Treaty, which forbids the dumping of nuclear waste in Antarctica, this 34-million-year-old winter, \u2018the Ice\u2019, as we call it. The truth is that Nukey Poo earned its nickname because of the frequency and volume of leaks from its containment vessel. The removal plan disclosed that three cracks had already been welded shut, but not before allowing nuclear waste to seep into the ground. The US Navy relocated 12,200 tons of radioactive earth to the United States. By 1979, decommissioning was complete. What remains of Nukey Poo are these two wooden platforms, still pounded into the side of Observation Hill, a steep lava dome covered in scales of scree. Large metal sheets \u2013canvases for wind and snow to splotches of rust and scratch and nick paint \u2013 are still affixed to the floors of two decaying platforms. I\u2019ve been putzing between them, surprised by the amount of debris still littering the ground after 42 years. This morning\u2019s sallow light highlights the junk. Rusted screws, bolts, nuts, washers and wires. Bits of insulation. String. Rubber. Unidentifiable corroded metal scraps. Even bits of porcelain. All mingling with volcanic rock and dirt.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Observation Hill pimples the edge of Ross Island. From here, I can view a thin line: the meeting of the Ross Ice Shelf \u2013 a Spain-sized glacier and the world\u2019s largest floating body of ice \u2013 and the frozen Ross Sea. This juncture is the furthest south the open ocean exists. Three white wind turbines belonging to Scott Base, our neighboring station, crown a nearby hill to the left. Below, at the base of Ob Hill, a scattered cluster of buildings make up McMurdo, the American research station where I work and the largest on the continent. Enormous fuel tanks \u2013 at least ten \u2013 are its most striking structures. Three letters \u2013 \u2018NSF\u2019 \u2013 emblazon the top of the closest tank. The National Science Foundation now runs the US Antarctic Program instead of the military. I don\u2019t typically visit the nuclear plant rubble on Ob Hill to think about energy consumption or environmental catastrophe. I come to this hill to watch whales, clouds, birds, light. A smoking volcano. Distant glacier-drizzled indigo mountains. Mostly I witness the water. The sea\u2019s surface \u2013 frozen or liquid \u2013 changes like a face. I love watching its subtleties, how its personality comes through as crushed ridges of blue-sheened shards arching towards the sky. Or as the rhythmic lapping of waves touching land. Or its evolution from grease ice to pancake ice to a thin crust, thickening into sea ice as the temperature lowers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Two islands hunker next to each other in the distance, White Island and Black Island, one like a penguin on its belly, the other like a penguin on its back. Between the islands, due south, you\u2019ll find a groomed snow road to the interior of the continent. South of here, beyond the mountains and islands, it\u2019s ice, a flood of ice. Antarctica is home to most of the world\u2019s ice and snow and its highest population of glaciers. But ice is not just ice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

About 1,200 miles from Ob Hill, on the edge of West Antarctica, lives a glacier named Thwaites, a colossus, one of the biggest glaciers in the world, about the size of Great Britain or Florida. Its size is not why we are afraid of Thwaites or why it\u2019s famous. Rolling Stone<\/em> nicknamed Thwaites \u2018the Doomsday Glacier\u2019. A few call Thwaites a monster. Officially, Thwaites the glacier is named after Fredrik T. Thwaites the man, a glaciologist from Wisconsin. I wish I knew what Thwaites the glacier\u2019s real name is, what it calls itself pronounced in the tongue of glaciers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

To us, Thwaites is secretive. We are working to pry its secrets open. I am one of many who are working to support the work of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, a robust four-year-long collaboration primarily between British and American research programs. The collective goal is to understand Thwaites and ultimately to predict its \u2018death\u2019. The eight research projects have acronyms like GHOST, PROPHET, MELT and TIME. People have journeyed by ice in tractor trains to Thwaites \u2013 no small feat. They\u2019ve arrived on the back of the glacier, gliding to a halt on tiny aluminum planes outfitted with skis instead of wheels. They\u2019ve melted hunks of Thwaites, their only source of freshwater, for drinking and cleaning. Thwaites has filled their bellies, their bloodstreams, and their cells. From the surface, researchers have bored holes into Thwaites, lowered instruments and detonated explosives inside of its guts \u2013 a large-scale ultrasound \u2013 to understand the depths, the insides of their subject. They\u2019ve also arrived by sea, sending robots under the water, underneath its body, to measure. They peer at the crumbling edges of glaciers from boats called icebreakers, whose muscular hulls can crush their way through sea ice: South Korea\u2019s RV Araon;<\/em> Britain\u2019s HMS Protector, <\/em>RRS Ernest Shackleton, <\/em>andRRS Sir David Attenborough<\/em>; and the US\u2019s RV Nathaniel B Palmer.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

From the nuclear ruins I can view McMurdo\u2019s port, Winter Quarters Bay, whose bottom is coated with garbage. When the Palmer<\/em>, a cheerful-looking orange and yellow research vessel, pulled into this harbor a few years ago, logistics contractors like me \u2013 the majority of people in Antarctica and the ones who make scientific research possible \u2013 were invited to tour the ship. There\u2019s a maritime romance to it. Tables and chairs bolted to the floors. Porthole windows. Large maps in the captain\u2019s bridge. The namesake of the research vessel is unfortunate. In 1820, Nathaniel B. Palmer, only 21 and already a captain, led one of the first groups of westerners to encounter the continent. Palmer, an American seal hunter, didn\u2019t only see the glaciers curling over the hard ragged edges of the continent. When he saw fur seals and elephant seals, he saw potential profit. So when humans first came here we slaughtered many seals. Whales too \u2013 those great supple beings \u2013 were systematically hunted to near extinction. Right whales. Sperm whales. Grey whales. Humpbacks. Blues. Fins. Seis. Minkes. In 1925, an Antarctic whaler wrote: \u2018The water in which the whales float, and on which we too are riding, is blood red.\u2019<\/em> Between 1918 and 1984, humans killed about 1.6 million whales in the Southern Ocean. That combined biomass was equal to the whole of humankind. In 1986, most nations agreed to suspend whale hunting. Right now, western powers are squabbling over harvesting krill, small crimson creatures who travel together in hypnotic red clouds like murmurations of starlings. We mostly turn krill into food for our pets, but also into cosmetics, like anti-aging serums, and pharmaceuticals. Krill\u2019s bodily oils are good for our physical hearts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Humans have not always approached Antarctica to overharvest, nor were westerners the first people to experience Antarctic waters. Ui-te-Rangiora, an expert \u2018wayfinder\u2019 from present-day Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, sailed south and led a group of ancient Polynesians around AD 650. They encountered floating ice and called the area Tai-uka-a-pia, \u2018sea foaming like arrowroot\u2019, a fine white powder with which they were familiar. The relationship between the ocean and ancient peoples in Oceania was intimate. Wayfinders knew the languages of clouds, water and stars and navigated with them, being carried from small island to small island by water in the vast Pacific. The art of wayfinding, often taught orally through song, demands all the senses. For wayfinders, attunement to the ocean is attunement to one\u2019s body. The sun, moon and stars guide, but if clouds obscure, there are other signs. Driftwood, seaweed. Subtle shifts in the water\u2019s hue. The kinds and behaviors of birds. The presence, shapes and colors of clouds. Rain and the direction and qualities of wind. Wayfinders decipher the shapes, motions, and direction of water, reading swells, waves, and ripples like script. Ancient peoples employed pigs as wayfinders on their boats, whose keen snouts navigate by the distant smell of atolls. One wayfinding technique \u2013 to get the best felt sense of things \u2013 is to rest one\u2019s genitals on the bottom of the boat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Wayfinding technology \u2013 knowing the patterns of nature, the language of water \u2013 survived western colonialism. In his 1978 book, The Voyaging Stars<\/em>, David Lewis recounts learning from Kaho, a blind wayfinder who asked his son, Po\u2019oi, where certain stars would appear. Kaho directed Po’oi to steer into a wave so he could taste the spray in his mouth and feel the water on his skin. The blind man then plunged his whole arm in the water to feel its movement, its remembrances. \u2018\u201cThis is not Tongan water but Fijian,\u201d he announced. \u201cThe waves are from Fiji Lau group near Lakemba Island. Let us alter course to the westward.\u201d Next morning they duly sighted Lakemba.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We are afraid of Thwaites because of what its transformation means for us, our homes and ways of life. Researchers estimate how many billions of tons of its body melt every year and what percentage of annual sea level rise that constitutes. It\u2019s a lot<\/em>. They say that a key part of Thwaites\u2019s body \u2013 its ice shelf, its body part that floats over the ocean \u2013 will disintegrate within ten years. They also describe Thwaites\u2019s ice shelf as a \u2018cork\u2019 or a \u2018dam\u2019 holding back the mass of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, an icescape we call \u2018the flat white\u2019. When you step onto its surface, you step onto a solid cloud. The two-miles-thick ice in West Antarctica is a remnant of clouds drifted to Earth, frozen for millennia. In West Antarctica, all appears still. But underfoot, the ancient ice is moving. My lifetime is too short to perceive it. How exhausting it must be for Thwaites to shoulder that bulk, at least 3,200,000 gigatons! Researchers describe Thwaites as \u2018vulnerable\u2019 and \u2018unstable\u2019, steadying itself by holding onto land under the sea like a cane. They speak of Thwaites \u2018losing its grip\u2019. Perhaps Thwaites is letting go.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

After the ice shelf disintegrates, researchers predict an \u2018ice cliff failure event\u2019 when the rest of Thwaites\u2019s flesh will speed up and leak into the sea. People have calculated how many feet the ocean will rise when Thwaites\u2019s entire body liquefies. Afterwards, when all the West Antarctic glaciers behind follow, the sea level will rise five times that amount. The word \u2018collapse\u2019 has been used as a rhetorical catch-all to describe these series of events, ranging from the onset of Thwaites\u2019s ice shelf shattering to the bulk of West Antarctic glaciers circling the drain. As Bethan Davies, a glaciologist, notes: \u2018collapse\u2019 is slow. Time scale models give vast ranges for the disintegration of West Antarctica, from hundreds of years to begin to millennia to complete.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, I strolled atop the surface of the frozen Ross Sea with Marianne, a seismologist and geophysicist awaiting her chance to spend time with Thwaites. Antarctica is not one homogeneous slab, but a kaleidoscope of ice, intertwined frozen bodies moseying towards the sea. To Marianne, topographical maps of Antarctica showing glaciers\u2019 velocities in various colors make the continent look like a human organ. Its currents, its rivers of ice streaming into the sea resemble veins, arteries, aortas. The whole thing an unfathomable heart pumping blood.<\/p>\n

<\/p> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

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\n \"Byrd \n <\/div>\n \n \n
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\n Byrd Glacier moves through the Transantarctic Mountains in Antarctica. Photo: USGS <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n
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<\/p>\n

Researchers like Marianne are investigating all the factors that are leading to Thwaites\u2019s metamorphosis. The shifting location of the polar vortex \u2013 the swirl of air around the continent \u2013 is altering wind patterns, driving warmer water towards Thwaites, changing it from below. We describe tidal pumping, one of Thwaites\u2019s natural bodily functions, as problematic \u2013 for us. When the tide causes the floating part of its body to rise, the pressure sucks warm water into Thwaites\u2019s \u2018grounding zone\u2019, the confluence where its frozen belly, the land and the water meet. The tide goes out, ice lowers, but the warm water is trapped underneath, morphing solid to liquid.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Two years ago at McMurdo, I chatted with Britney, a planetary scientist who designs robots that rove underneath ice. Her ultimate goal is to send a robot to Europa, one of Jupiter\u2019s icy moons, to find life under the water. Her team created Icefin, a small tubular robot, outfitted it with a camera, and sent it to Thwaites\u2019s grounding zone. No human had ever seen a grounding zone before. She showed the intimate footage to anyone at our research station who wanted to see it. It was not what I expected. I\u2019ve heard researchers describe glaciers\u2019 grounding zones as \u2018chaotic\u2019. I expected some kind of rot, rubble, a broken edifice. Instead, this site of erosion, this mixture of ice and earth looked serene. Thwaites\u2019s wrinkled underside has distinct layers:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 foggy, quartzy ice crystals, then<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ice thickly embedded with pebbles and rocks, then<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 perfectly clear glass with crystallized mud, then<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 streaky, blue-tinged ice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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What labor these layers must have required! What a relief to not be scraping against the ground anymore. What a balm to rest in the silky sea.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Another highlight \u2013 this was when Britney got excited \u2013 was revelatory footage of anemones, who bore holes into Thwaites\u2019s perfectly clear ice, not to measure, sample or record but to live. Anemones like little trees taking root. Before this, we only knew anemones to live in rock or sediment, not glacial ice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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When Thwaites calves into icebergs, welcomed by the ocean, it will not have left Antarctica. During winter, when the world hardens, Antarctica becomes pregnant with ice. Seawater freezes to the continent\u2019s hard edges in a jagged wreath doubling its size. This frozen sea ice softens, shattering into ice floes, every spring. But Antarctica\u2019s boundary isn\u2019t these annual frozen fringes. Nor is its boundary perennial glacial ice or land. Antarctica bleeds into open water. Its threshold is fluid, a deep and generative membrane in the Southern Ocean. Antarctica\u2019s boundary is porous.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A 20- to 30-mile-wide hoop of oceanic water \u2013 the Antarctic Convergence \u2013 encircles the entire continent, flowing unbroken, widening and contracting with the seasons, like the sea ice. Propelled by powerful westerly winds, this halo of water separates two hydrological regions, each with different salinity, density and temperature. In the Convergence, cold Antarctic waters meet and sink underneath the warmer subantarctic waters to the north. These mingling worlds of water upwell a nutrient feast from the seafloor for tiny aquatic creatures, the backbone of the Antarctic food web. The area of the Southern Ocean between the Convergence and Antarctica\u2019s land \u2013 where the surface water is frigid \u2013 are icebergs\u2019 most comfortable habitat. If icebergs cross the Convergence\u2019s liminal zone north into the warmer world, they melt more quickly.<\/p>\n

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The Southern Ocean is like an engine, a pump. The Convergence is a feature of the largest current in the ocean \u2013 the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, also called the West Wind Drift. This muscular current twists and contorts, surging clockwise around the continent, influencing the circulation of water through the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, even beyond the Equator. Like an air conditioner, the Southern Ocean moderates Earth\u2019s temperature and absorbs and stores vast amounts of carbon \u2013 almost half of the excess carbon humans have produced since the Industrial Revolution.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The ocean will continue to pillow Thwaites the glacier as it releases chunks of itself from land, becoming icebergs, which the wind and water will continue to massage and groove and polish into splendid and haunting forms. Thwaites will float counterclockwise for many years, carried by the Antarctic Coastal Current \u2013 the East Wind Drift \u2013 hugging the continent and moving in the opposite direction of the Convergence. Thwaites the iceberg will dissolve into glittering surface water. The ocean, like land, is layered. If this surface water meanders to the Convergence, it will sink and migrate north as Antarctic Intermediate Water. But if Thwaites as surface water freezes into the sea ice that petals the continent each winter, its route will be more interesting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The Ice has a long reach. Antarctica creates deep water \u2013 \u2018bottom water\u2019 \u2013 the currents, the sinews, connecting islands and continents. The freezing of the Southern Ocean supplies the deepest parts of the ocean and shapes Earth\u2019s climate. When Antarctica\u2019s sea water coagulates into ice, it expels salt into the remaining water. This extremely salty, cold and dense water sinks, pushing the water that sank before it northward, beginning a long loop. Most of it will crawl north on the floor of the ocean, an underworld, possibly for centuries, before reaching the surface as far north as the North Atlantic. Even at the Equator, this bottom water will still be Antarctic-cold.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When does a glacier die? When it breaks? When it dissolves? When does Thwaites, its molecules, stop being part of Antarctica? Maybe names, nouns, aren\u2019t so meaningful, so sturdy. Upon inspection, they melt.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We call the bottom layer of the ocean, which covers most of Earth’s surface, the abyssopelagic or abyssal zone. Abyss means bottomless. The abyss is a slow world, completely dark. Most of the ocean is abyssal, so Thwaites will have many places to roam and rest, a community of glacial waters to join, many creatures to meet \u2013 animals far more harmonious than us. Dwelling in a high pressure and low oxygen environment, they move slowly, glacially, to preserve their energy. Most are bioluminescent. They create their own light.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Maybe the abyssal creatures can hear Thwaites coming. In 1997, researchers listening for volcanic activity in the southern Pacific recorded a strange and powerful noise, then more instances of the rippling, booming sound they called \u2018the Bloop\u2019. Theories abounded about what event, what utterance, could cause such a sound. Years later, they figured the Bloop out: an icequake. The bellow of glacial ice heaving itself into the sea.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Thwaites will not be free of us, even in the abyss. Without consenting, it will have to carry microscopic bits of plastic, which the abyssal creatures will eat. They instinctively eat whatever floats in front of them. Thwaites will have to metabolize the acid we add to the ocean, yet will nurture abyssal beings nonetheless.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Like Thwaites, we are migratory creatures, beings whose bodies are mostly water. Eventually, Thwaites the liquid will rise, emerging someplace in the northern hemisphere, perhaps hundreds of years from now. My form will be gone, the Earth will have absorbed my body, its water will have seeped into the ground or leaked into the sky. Thwaites will see what our evolving coastlines look like as it flows, touring our coastal cities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Thwaites will not stay there. The ocean \u2013 like life \u2013 is cyclical. Thwaites will return to Antarctic waters. As Circumpolar Deep Water \u2013 now warmed and living between the surface and the abyss \u2013 Thwaites will migrate back to the Ice, ascending to the surface in a place called the Antarctic Divergence, completing the cycle and replacing the salty water that has sunk, beginning its northward journey. It will be Thwaites\u2019s turn, as ocean, to receive and support icebergs. But this circuit, this homecoming, depends on the freezing pattern of sea ice in Antarctica. An interrupted cycle would affect weather patterns around the world. Who knows where Thwaites may wander?\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n \"Blood \n <\/div>\n \n \n
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\n Blood Falls in the Taylor Valley. Photo by Kelly Faulkner, NSF on November 12, 2014 <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n\n
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<\/p>\n

From here, amid the amber rubble on Observation Hill, I can see a spine of mountains that cradle the driest place on Earth. These \u2018Dry Valleys\u2019 have not seen rain for almost 2 million years. Ventifacts \u2013 rocks curved and hollowed and curled into fabulous forms by the wind and sand \u2013 are the icebergs of these Valleys. A glacier named Taylor lives in one vale, but instead of tumbling into the sea like Thwaites, Taylor appears to bleed from its terminus \u2013 its end \u2013 in a slow gush named Blood Falls. Taylor\u2019s brine oxidizes, creating its own rust. Antarctic-made ruins. Sometimes it\u2019s a lush splash of red. Other times a darkened umber ooze. The source: a remnant of an ancient ocean trapped beneath Taylor, a 1.5-million-year-old time capsule. The bacteria living in this small body of water have evolved to thrive, to restore themselves, cut off from light and oxygen. They\u2019re an example of what life might have looked like before an oxygenated atmosphere or what we might find on another planet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

People say that where there is water there is life. Kathy, a researcher in the Dry Valleys since 1993, prefers to say even where there is only the potential for water you can also find life. Water harbors many kinds of life, takes many forms. Glaciers, humans, bacteria. Something yet to be. Thousands of miles and many years appear to separate us from Thwaites, yet we are a strange junction, an eventual meeting of waters.<\/p>\n

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S t e p h a n i e \u2002 K r z y w o n o s<\/strong> <\/span><\/p> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n

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\u00a9 Stephanie Krzywonos 2026<\/span><\/p> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Unfathomable Heart<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-52336","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"yoast_head":"\nThe Unfathomable Heart - Stephanie Krzywonos<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/the-unfathomable-heart\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta 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style=\"text-align: center;\">The Unfathomable Heart<\/h1>\n<h4 style=\"text-align: center;\">A version of this essay originally appeared in <a href=\"https:\/\/dark-mountain.net\/product\/dark-mountain-issue-21\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Confluence,\u00a0<\/em>The Dark Mountain Project's twenty-first book<\/a> on April 15, 2022.<\/h4>\n<img src=\"https:\/\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/IMG_20211107_130006773-2-1-scaled.jpg\" title=\"IMG_20211107_130006773-2-1\" alt=\"The Ruins of Nukey Poo, the PM-3A nuclear reactor at Mcmurdo Station in Antarctica.\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/IMG_20211107_130006773-2-1-scaled.jpg?w=2560&ssl=1 2560w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/IMG_20211107_130006773-2-1-scaled.jpg?resize=300%2C225&ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/IMG_20211107_130006773-2-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/IMG_20211107_130006773-2-1-scaled.jpg?resize=768%2C576&ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/IMG_20211107_130006773-2-1-scaled.jpg?resize=1536%2C1152&ssl=1 1536w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/IMG_20211107_130006773-2-1-scaled.jpg?w=2330&ssl=1 2330w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\" \/> The Ruins of Nukey Poo, the PM-3A nuclear reactor at Mcmurdo Station in Antarctica.\n<h4 style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>\"How does it feel to become a drop of water, and then to re-enter, <\/em><\/h4> <h4 style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>to dissolve back into the whole?\"<\/em><\/h4> <p>\u00a0<\/p> <h5 style=\"text-align: center;\">Ingrid Horrocks in her LitHub essay<a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/dissolving-genre-toward-finding-new-ways-to-write-about-the-world\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\"Dissolving Genre\"<\/a><\/h5>\n<p>The PM-3A Nuclear Reactor, the only one humans have ever built in Antarctica, was supposed to \u2018revolutionize\u2019 human access to the continent through abundant and clean energy. In 1972, after operating only ten years, the US Navy shut down \u2018Nukey Poo\u2019 because of its \u2018numerous malfunctions\u2019, a \u2018suspected crack\u2019 in its containment vessel, and the financial cost of investigation and repair. A leak would harm the environment and break the Antarctic Treaty, which forbids the dumping of nuclear waste in Antarctica, this 34-million-year-old winter, \u2018the Ice\u2019, as we call it. The truth is that Nukey Poo earned its nickname because of the frequency and volume of leaks from its containment vessel. The removal plan disclosed that three cracks had already been welded shut, but not before allowing nuclear waste to seep into the ground. The US Navy relocated 12,200 tons of radioactive earth to the United States. By 1979, decommissioning was complete. What remains of Nukey Poo are these two wooden platforms, still pounded into the side of Observation Hill, a steep lava dome covered in scales of scree. Large metal sheets \u2013canvases for wind and snow to splotches of rust and scratch and nick paint \u2013 are still affixed to the floors of two decaying platforms. I\u2019ve been putzing between them, surprised by the amount of debris still littering the ground after 42 years. This morning\u2019s sallow light highlights the junk. Rusted screws, bolts, nuts, washers and wires. Bits of insulation. String. Rubber. Unidentifiable corroded metal scraps. Even bits of porcelain. All mingling with volcanic rock and dirt.\u00a0<\/p> <p><\/p> <p>Observation Hill pimples the edge of Ross Island. From here, I can view a thin line: the meeting of the Ross Ice Shelf \u2013 a Spain-sized glacier and the world\u2019s largest floating body of ice \u2013 and the frozen Ross Sea. This juncture is the furthest south the open ocean exists. Three white wind turbines belonging to Scott Base, our neighboring station, crown a nearby hill to the left. Below, at the base of Ob Hill, a scattered cluster of buildings make up McMurdo, the American research station where I work and the largest on the continent. Enormous fuel tanks \u2013 at least ten \u2013 are its most striking structures. Three letters \u2013 \u2018NSF\u2019 \u2013 emblazon the top of the closest tank. The National Science Foundation now runs the US Antarctic Program instead of the military. I don\u2019t typically visit the nuclear plant rubble on Ob Hill to think about energy consumption or environmental catastrophe. I come to this hill to watch whales, clouds, birds, light. A smoking volcano. Distant glacier-drizzled indigo mountains. Mostly I witness the water. The sea\u2019s surface \u2013 frozen or liquid \u2013 changes like a face. I love watching its subtleties, how its personality comes through as crushed ridges of blue-sheened shards arching towards the sky. Or as the rhythmic lapping of waves touching land. Or its evolution from grease ice to pancake ice to a thin crust, thickening into sea ice as the temperature lowers.\u00a0<\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>Two islands hunker next to each other in the distance, White Island and Black Island, one like a penguin on its belly, the other like a penguin on its back. Between the islands, due south, you\u2019ll find a groomed snow road to the interior of the continent. South of here, beyond the mountains and islands, it\u2019s ice, a flood of ice. Antarctica is home to most of the world\u2019s ice and snow and its highest population of glaciers. But ice is not just ice.\u00a0<\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>About 1,200 miles from Ob Hill, on the edge of West Antarctica, lives a glacier named Thwaites, a colossus, one of the biggest glaciers in the world, about the size of Great Britain or Florida. Its size is not why we are afraid of Thwaites or why it\u2019s famous. <em>Rolling Stone<\/em> nicknamed Thwaites \u2018the Doomsday Glacier\u2019. A few call Thwaites a monster. Officially, Thwaites the glacier is named after Fredrik T. Thwaites the man, a glaciologist from Wisconsin. I wish I knew what Thwaites the glacier\u2019s real name is, what it calls itself pronounced in the tongue of glaciers.\u00a0<\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>To us, Thwaites is secretive. We are working to pry its secrets open. I am one of many who are working to support the work of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, a robust four-year-long collaboration primarily between British and American research programs. The collective goal is to understand Thwaites and ultimately to predict its \u2018death\u2019. The eight research projects have acronyms like GHOST, PROPHET, MELT and TIME. People have journeyed by ice in tractor trains to Thwaites \u2013 no small feat. They\u2019ve arrived on the back of the glacier, gliding to a halt on tiny aluminum planes outfitted with skis instead of wheels. They\u2019ve melted hunks of Thwaites, their only source of freshwater, for drinking and cleaning. Thwaites has filled their bellies, their bloodstreams, and their cells. From the surface, researchers have bored holes into Thwaites, lowered instruments and detonated explosives inside of its guts \u2013 a large-scale ultrasound \u2013 to understand the depths, the insides of their subject. They\u2019ve also arrived by sea, sending robots under the water, underneath its body, to measure. They peer at the crumbling edges of glaciers from boats called icebreakers, whose muscular hulls can crush their way through sea ice: South Korea\u2019s RV <em>Araon;<\/em> Britain\u2019s HMS <em>Protector, <\/em>RRS <em>Ernest Shackleton, <\/em>andRRS <em>Sir David Attenborough<\/em>; and the US\u2019s RV <em>Nathaniel B Palmer.\u00a0<\/em><\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>From the nuclear ruins I can view McMurdo\u2019s port, Winter Quarters Bay, whose bottom is coated with garbage. When the <em>Palmer<\/em>, a cheerful-looking orange and yellow research vessel, pulled into this harbor a few years ago, logistics contractors like me \u2013 the majority of people in Antarctica and the ones who make scientific research possible \u2013 were invited to tour the ship. There\u2019s a maritime romance to it. Tables and chairs bolted to the floors. Porthole windows. Large maps in the captain\u2019s bridge. The namesake of the research vessel is unfortunate. In 1820, Nathaniel B. Palmer, only 21 and already a captain, led one of the first groups of westerners to encounter the continent. Palmer, an American seal hunter, didn\u2019t only see the glaciers curling over the hard ragged edges of the continent. When he saw fur seals and elephant seals, he saw potential profit. So when humans first came here we slaughtered many seals. Whales too \u2013 those great supple beings \u2013 were systematically hunted to near extinction. Right whales. Sperm whales. Grey whales. Humpbacks. Blues. Fins. Seis. Minkes. In 1925, an Antarctic whaler wrote: <em>\u2018The water in which the whales float, and on which we too are riding, is blood red.\u2019<\/em> Between 1918 and 1984, humans killed about 1.6 million whales in the Southern Ocean. That combined biomass was equal to the whole of humankind. In 1986, most nations agreed to suspend whale hunting. Right now, western powers are squabbling over harvesting krill, small crimson creatures who travel together in hypnotic red clouds like murmurations of starlings. We mostly turn krill into food for our pets, but also into cosmetics, like anti-aging serums, and pharmaceuticals. Krill\u2019s bodily oils are good for our physical hearts.\u00a0<\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>Humans have not always approached Antarctica to overharvest, nor were westerners the first people to experience Antarctic waters. Ui-te-Rangiora, an expert \u2018wayfinder\u2019 from present-day Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, sailed south and led a group of ancient Polynesians around AD 650. They encountered floating ice and called the area Tai-uka-a-pia, \u2018sea foaming like arrowroot\u2019, a fine white powder with which they were familiar. The relationship between the ocean and ancient peoples in Oceania was intimate. Wayfinders knew the languages of clouds, water and stars and navigated with them, being carried from small island to small island by water in the vast Pacific. The art of wayfinding, often taught orally through song, demands all the senses. For wayfinders, attunement to the ocean is attunement to one\u2019s body. The sun, moon and stars guide, but if clouds obscure, there are other signs. Driftwood, seaweed. Subtle shifts in the water\u2019s hue. The kinds and behaviors of birds. The presence, shapes and colors of clouds. Rain and the direction and qualities of wind. Wayfinders decipher the shapes, motions, and direction of water, reading swells, waves, and ripples like script. Ancient peoples employed pigs as wayfinders on their boats, whose keen snouts navigate by the distant smell of atolls. One wayfinding technique \u2013 to get the best felt sense of things \u2013 is to rest one\u2019s genitals on the bottom of the boat.\u00a0<\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>Wayfinding technology \u2013 knowing the patterns of nature, the language of water \u2013 survived western colonialism. In his 1978 book, <em>The Voyaging Stars<\/em>, David Lewis recounts learning from Kaho, a blind wayfinder who asked his son, Po\u2019oi, where certain stars would appear. Kaho directed Po'oi to steer into a wave so he could taste the spray in his mouth and feel the water on his skin. The blind man then plunged his whole arm in the water to feel its movement, its remembrances. <em>\u2018\u201cThis is not Tongan water but Fijian,\u201d he announced. \u201cThe waves are from Fiji Lau group near Lakemba Island. Let us alter course to the westward.\u201d Next morning they duly sighted Lakemba.\u2019<\/em><\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>We are afraid of Thwaites because of what its transformation means for us, our homes and ways of life. Researchers estimate how many billions of tons of its body melt every year and what percentage of annual sea level rise that constitutes. It\u2019s a <em>lot<\/em>. They say that a key part of Thwaites\u2019s body \u2013 its ice shelf, its body part that floats over the ocean \u2013 will disintegrate within ten years. They also describe Thwaites\u2019s ice shelf as a \u2018cork\u2019 or a \u2018dam\u2019 holding back the mass of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, an icescape we call \u2018the flat white\u2019. When you step onto its surface, you step onto a solid cloud. The two-miles-thick ice in West Antarctica is a remnant of clouds drifted to Earth, frozen for millennia. In West Antarctica, all appears still. But underfoot, the ancient ice is moving. My lifetime is too short to perceive it. How exhausting it must be for Thwaites to shoulder that bulk, at least 3,200,000 gigatons! Researchers describe Thwaites as \u2018vulnerable\u2019 and \u2018unstable\u2019, steadying itself by holding onto land under the sea like a cane. They speak of Thwaites \u2018losing its grip\u2019. Perhaps Thwaites is letting go.\u00a0<\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>After the ice shelf disintegrates, researchers predict an \u2018ice cliff failure event\u2019 when the rest of Thwaites\u2019s flesh will speed up and leak into the sea. People have calculated how many feet the ocean will rise when Thwaites\u2019s entire body liquefies. Afterwards, when all the West Antarctic glaciers behind follow, the sea level will rise five times that amount. The word \u2018collapse\u2019 has been used as a rhetorical catch-all to describe these series of events, ranging from the onset of Thwaites\u2019s ice shelf shattering to the bulk of West Antarctic glaciers circling the drain. As Bethan Davies, a glaciologist, notes: \u2018collapse\u2019 is slow. Time scale models give vast ranges for the disintegration of West Antarctica, from hundreds of years to begin to millennia to complete.<\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>A few weeks ago, I strolled atop the surface of the frozen Ross Sea with Marianne, a seismologist and geophysicist awaiting her chance to spend time with Thwaites. Antarctica is not one homogeneous slab, but a kaleidoscope of ice, intertwined frozen bodies moseying towards the sea. To Marianne, topographical maps of Antarctica showing glaciers\u2019 velocities in various colors make the continent look like a human organ. Its currents, its rivers of ice streaming into the sea resemble veins, arteries, aortas. The whole thing an unfathomable heart pumping blood.<\/p> <p><\/p>\n<img src=\"https:\/\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/usgs-TSKlNIgK1P4-unsplash-1.jpg\" title=\"usgs-TSKlNIgK1P4-unsplash\" alt=\"Byrd Glacier moves through the Transantarctic Mountains in Antarctica. Photo: USGS\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/usgs-TSKlNIgK1P4-unsplash-1.jpg?w=2048&ssl=1 2048w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/usgs-TSKlNIgK1P4-unsplash-1.jpg?resize=300%2C300&ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/usgs-TSKlNIgK1P4-unsplash-1.jpg?resize=1024%2C1024&ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/usgs-TSKlNIgK1P4-unsplash-1.jpg?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/usgs-TSKlNIgK1P4-unsplash-1.jpg?resize=768%2C768&ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/usgs-TSKlNIgK1P4-unsplash-1.jpg?resize=1536%2C1536&ssl=1 1536w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/usgs-TSKlNIgK1P4-unsplash-1.jpg?resize=550%2C550&ssl=1 550w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/usgs-TSKlNIgK1P4-unsplash-1.jpg?resize=1000%2C1000&ssl=1 1000w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/usgs-TSKlNIgK1P4-unsplash-1.jpg?resize=700%2C700&ssl=1 700w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\" \/> Byrd Glacier moves through the Transantarctic Mountains in Antarctica. Photo: USGS\n<p><\/p> <p>Researchers like Marianne are investigating all the factors that are leading to Thwaites\u2019s metamorphosis. The shifting location of the polar vortex \u2013 the swirl of air around the continent \u2013 is altering wind patterns, driving warmer water towards Thwaites, changing it from below. We describe tidal pumping, one of Thwaites\u2019s natural bodily functions, as problematic \u2013 for us. When the tide causes the floating part of its body to rise, the pressure sucks warm water into Thwaites\u2019s \u2018grounding zone\u2019, the confluence where its frozen belly, the land and the water meet. The tide goes out, ice lowers, but the warm water is trapped underneath, morphing solid to liquid.\u00a0<\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>Two years ago at McMurdo, I chatted with Britney, a planetary scientist who designs robots that rove underneath ice. Her ultimate goal is to send a robot to Europa, one of Jupiter\u2019s icy moons, to find life under the water. Her team created Icefin, a small tubular robot, outfitted it with a camera, and sent it to Thwaites\u2019s grounding zone. No human had ever seen a grounding zone before. She showed the intimate footage to anyone at our research station who wanted to see it. It was not what I expected. I\u2019ve heard researchers describe glaciers\u2019 grounding zones as \u2018chaotic\u2019. I expected some kind of rot, rubble, a broken edifice. Instead, this site of erosion, this mixture of ice and earth looked serene. Thwaites\u2019s wrinkled underside has distinct layers:<\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 foggy, quartzy ice crystals, <em>then<\/em><\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ice thickly embedded with pebbles and rocks, <em>then<\/em><\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 perfectly clear glass with crystallized mud, <em>then<\/em><\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>\u00a0\u00a0 streaky, blue-tinged ice.\u00a0<\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>What labor these layers must have required! What a relief to not be scraping against the ground anymore. What a balm to rest in the silky sea.\u00a0<\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>Another highlight \u2013 this was when Britney got excited \u2013 was revelatory footage of anemones, who bore holes into Thwaites\u2019s perfectly clear ice, not to measure, sample or record but to live. Anemones like little trees taking root. Before this, we only knew anemones to live in rock or sediment, not glacial ice.\u00a0<\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>When Thwaites calves into icebergs, welcomed by the ocean, it will not have left Antarctica. During winter, when the world hardens, Antarctica becomes pregnant with ice. Seawater freezes to the continent\u2019s hard edges in a jagged wreath doubling its size. This frozen sea ice softens, shattering into ice floes, every spring. But Antarctica\u2019s boundary isn\u2019t these annual frozen fringes. Nor is its boundary perennial glacial ice or land. Antarctica bleeds into open water. Its threshold is fluid, a deep and generative membrane in the Southern Ocean. Antarctica\u2019s boundary is porous.<\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>A 20- to 30-mile-wide hoop of oceanic water \u2013 the Antarctic Convergence \u2013 encircles the entire continent, flowing unbroken, widening and contracting with the seasons, like the sea ice. Propelled by powerful westerly winds, this halo of water separates two hydrological regions, each with different salinity, density and temperature. In the Convergence, cold Antarctic waters meet and sink underneath the warmer subantarctic waters to the north. These mingling worlds of water upwell a nutrient feast from the seafloor for tiny aquatic creatures, the backbone of the Antarctic food web. The area of the Southern Ocean between the Convergence and Antarctica\u2019s land \u2013 where the surface water is frigid \u2013 are icebergs\u2019 most comfortable habitat. If icebergs cross the Convergence\u2019s liminal zone north into the warmer world, they melt more quickly.<\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>The Southern Ocean is like an engine, a pump. The Convergence is a feature of the largest current in the ocean \u2013 the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, also called the West Wind Drift. This muscular current twists and contorts, surging clockwise around the continent, influencing the circulation of water through the Indian, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, even beyond the Equator. Like an air conditioner, the Southern Ocean moderates Earth\u2019s temperature and absorbs and stores vast amounts of carbon \u2013 almost half of the excess carbon humans have produced since the Industrial Revolution.\u00a0<\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>The ocean will continue to pillow Thwaites the glacier as it releases chunks of itself from land, becoming icebergs, which the wind and water will continue to massage and groove and polish into splendid and haunting forms. Thwaites will float counterclockwise for many years, carried by the Antarctic Coastal Current \u2013 the East Wind Drift \u2013 hugging the continent and moving in the opposite direction of the Convergence. Thwaites the iceberg will dissolve into glittering surface water. The ocean, like land, is layered. If this surface water meanders to the Convergence, it will sink and migrate north as Antarctic Intermediate Water. But if Thwaites as surface water freezes into the sea ice that petals the continent each winter, its route will be more interesting.\u00a0<\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>The Ice has a long reach. Antarctica creates deep water \u2013 \u2018bottom water\u2019 \u2013 the currents, the sinews, connecting islands and continents. The freezing of the Southern Ocean supplies the deepest parts of the ocean and shapes Earth\u2019s climate. When Antarctica\u2019s sea water coagulates into ice, it expels salt into the remaining water. This extremely salty, cold and dense water sinks, pushing the water that sank before it northward, beginning a long loop. Most of it will crawl north on the floor of the ocean, an underworld, possibly for centuries, before reaching the surface as far north as the North Atlantic. Even at the Equator, this bottom water will still be Antarctic-cold.\u00a0<\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>When does a glacier die? When it breaks? When it dissolves? When does Thwaites, its molecules, stop being part of Antarctica? Maybe names, nouns, aren\u2019t so meaningful, so sturdy. Upon inspection, they melt.\u00a0<\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>We call the bottom layer of the ocean, which covers most of Earth's surface, the abyssopelagic or abyssal zone. Abyss means bottomless. The abyss is a slow world, completely dark. Most of the ocean is abyssal, so Thwaites will have many places to roam and rest, a community of glacial waters to join, many creatures to meet \u2013 animals far more harmonious than us. Dwelling in a high pressure and low oxygen environment, they move slowly, glacially, to preserve their energy. Most are bioluminescent. They create their own light.\u00a0<\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>Maybe the abyssal creatures can hear Thwaites coming. In 1997, researchers listening for volcanic activity in the southern Pacific recorded a strange and powerful noise, then more instances of the rippling, booming sound they called \u2018the Bloop\u2019. Theories abounded about what event, what utterance, could cause such a sound. Years later, they figured the Bloop out: an icequake. The bellow of glacial ice heaving itself into the sea.\u00a0<\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>Thwaites will not be free of us, even in the abyss. Without consenting, it will have to carry microscopic bits of plastic, which the abyssal creatures will eat. They instinctively eat whatever floats in front of them. Thwaites will have to metabolize the acid we add to the ocean, yet will nurture abyssal beings nonetheless.\u00a0<\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>Like Thwaites, we are migratory creatures, beings whose bodies are mostly water. Eventually, Thwaites the liquid will rise, emerging someplace in the northern hemisphere, perhaps hundreds of years from now. My form will be gone, the Earth will have absorbed my body, its water will have seeped into the ground or leaked into the sky. Thwaites will see what our evolving coastlines look like as it flows, touring our coastal cities.\u00a0<\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>Thwaites will not stay there. The ocean \u2013 like life \u2013 is cyclical. Thwaites will return to Antarctic waters. As Circumpolar Deep Water \u2013 now warmed and living between the surface and the abyss \u2013 Thwaites will migrate back to the Ice, ascending to the surface in a place called the Antarctic Divergence, completing the cycle and replacing the salty water that has sunk, beginning its northward journey. It will be Thwaites\u2019s turn, as ocean, to receive and support icebergs. But this circuit, this homecoming, depends on the freezing pattern of sea ice in Antarctica. An interrupted cycle would affect weather patterns around the world. Who knows where Thwaites may wander?\u00a0<\/p> <p><\/p>\n<img src=\"https:\/\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/12November2014-Blood-Falls-Taylor-Valley.jpg\" title=\"12November2014-Blood-Falls-Taylor-Valley\" alt=\"Blood Falls in the Taylor Valley. Photo by Kelly Faulkner, NSF on November 12, 2014\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/12November2014-Blood-Falls-Taylor-Valley.jpg?w=1524&ssl=1 1524w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/12November2014-Blood-Falls-Taylor-Valley.jpg?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/12November2014-Blood-Falls-Taylor-Valley.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/12November2014-Blood-Falls-Taylor-Valley.jpg?resize=768%2C512&ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/12November2014-Blood-Falls-Taylor-Valley.jpg?resize=700%2C467&ssl=1 700w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1524px) 100vw, 1524px\" \/> Blood Falls in the Taylor Valley. Photo by Kelly Faulkner, NSF on November 12, 2014\n<p><\/p> <p>From here, amid the amber rubble on Observation Hill, I can see a spine of mountains that cradle the driest place on Earth. These \u2018Dry Valleys\u2019 have not seen rain for almost 2 million years. Ventifacts \u2013 rocks curved and hollowed and curled into fabulous forms by the wind and sand \u2013 are the icebergs of these Valleys. A glacier named Taylor lives in one vale, but instead of tumbling into the sea like Thwaites, Taylor appears to bleed from its terminus \u2013 its end \u2013 in a slow gush named Blood Falls. Taylor\u2019s brine oxidizes, creating its own rust. Antarctic-made ruins. Sometimes it\u2019s a lush splash of red. Other times a darkened umber ooze. The source: a remnant of an ancient ocean trapped beneath Taylor, a 1.5-million-year-old time capsule. The bacteria living in this small body of water have evolved to thrive, to restore themselves, cut off from light and oxygen. They\u2019re an example of what life might have looked like before an oxygenated atmosphere or what we might find on another planet.\u00a0<\/p> <p> <\/p> <p>People say that where there is water there is life. Kathy, a researcher in the Dry Valleys since 1993, prefers to say even where there is only the potential for water you can also find life. Water harbors many kinds of life, takes many forms. Glaciers, humans, bacteria. Something yet to be. Thousands of miles and many years appear to separate us from Thwaites, yet we are a strange junction, an eventual meeting of waters.<\/p> <p><\/p>\n<p><strong>S t e p h a n i e \u2002 K r z y w o n o s<\/strong> <\/p>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/stephkrzywonos\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> <em style=\"color:#ffffff\" ><svg xmlns:xlink=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/1999\/xlink\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><use href=\"#tf-ti-instagram\" xlink:href=\"#tf-ti-instagram\"><\/use><\/svg><\/em> <\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/stephanie.krzywonos\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> <em style=\"color:#ffffff\" ><svg xmlns:xlink=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/1999\/xlink\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><use href=\"#tf-ti-facebook\" xlink:href=\"#tf-ti-facebook\"><\/use><\/svg><\/em> <\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/stephkrzywonos\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> <em style=\"color:#ffffff\" ><svg xmlns:xlink=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/1999\/xlink\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><use href=\"#tf-ti-linkedin\" xlink:href=\"#tf-ti-linkedin\"><\/use><\/svg><\/em> <\/a>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">\u00a9 Stephanie Krzywonos 2026<\/p>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/52336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52336"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/52336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52368,"href":"https:\/\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/52336\/revisions\/52368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephaniekrzywonos.com\/staging\/6954\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}