Shades of white

In this extract from his book The Other Way, which celebrates our relationship to the natural world, acclaimed designer DAVID TRUBRIDGE describes a trip to Antarctica.

- DAVID TRUBRIDGE

On another day, we tracked across the sea ice to the historic huts of Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton, who both led expeditions in search of the South Pole in the early 20th century. In a month or two, this would all be open water after swells have rolled in from the Southern Ocean and broken up the thin sea ice. We were carried in a Hägglund vehicle with rubber tracks. At first, the route had been marked as safe by radar calibration of the sea ice. But soon we were on our own and frequently came across leads that had opened up in the ice and then frozen over again. Was the lead strong enough to cross? Each time we had to stop, get out and drill holes in the ice to measure its depth. If it was not thick enough, we lifted timbers off the roof of the Hägglund and laid them over the gap. Progress was slow and there was lots of standing around waiting.

I stood there with my cameras looking for something to photograph. There was not much nearby, just the scruffy ice surface, textures and shades of white repeated endlessly. I saw a tiny white feather snagged in filigree ice. Even something as frail and insubstantial as this had absorbed enough warmth from the low sun to melt some of its surrounding ice. Around its perimeter its fine strands seemed to blend in with the different crystalline pattern of the ice. It was exquisite. In a forest, I would have missed such a detail among a dense plethora of overlaying patterns and textures. Out here in the emptiness, its lone singularity made it an “event”.