legends · 4 min read ·
The Weather Hut
An Arctic weather observer watches a second hut approach across the ice, and a second observer at its window.
**Station log — Kapp Hvalross, observer on solo winter posting.**
*Instructions: take synoptic observations at 00, 06, 12, 18 UTC. Radio check daily at 19:00.*
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**Nov 1, 06 UTC.** Arrived by the last supply plane. A single hut on a gravel spit, a mast, a Stevenson screen, a diesel generator. The sun sets for the winter on Nov 14. I'll be alone for four months. The pilot waved from the cockpit and took off. I stood on the strip and watched the plane become a dot.
**Nov 6, 12 UTC.** Settled. The hut is warm. A bunk, a stove, shelves of tinned food, a wind-up gramophone, a stack of old paperbacks. I've read three. The logbook goes back to 1952. Handwriting changes by decade. Every previous observer wrote that it was lonely, but good.
**Nov 14, 12 UTC.** Last sun. A slice of orange at the horizon, for twenty minutes, then gone. I stood on the porch with a mug and said goodbye to it, and felt a bit silly.
**Nov 22, 06 UTC.** Polar night. A hard blue-black. The stars are enormous. Aurora most nights. I record cloud cover as clear, visibility as unlimited, and the temperature as −27.
**Dec 3, 18 UTC.** Odd thing in the log. I was reading the 1971 entries and I found a line I hadn't seen: *Dec 3, 18 UTC. Wind NW 12 knots. Noticed that the hut has a window I haven't used. Will look in the morning.* There are only two windows in the hut. I checked. Kitchen and bunk.
**Dec 5, 12 UTC.** Searched. I measured the hut from outside and inside. It is 4.2 metres wide outside and 3.6 inside. There is a gap of 60 centimetres in the wall, behind the shelves. A wall-width. I took the shelving down. Behind it, boarded over with old pine, was a window.
**Dec 6, 06 UTC.** Took the boards off. A small, deep window, double-glazed, looking out to the east. I wiped the frost. There is a view, the hut's own, and the dark. Nothing. A flat grey-black field of snow, and the horizon.
I looked for an hour. The aurora came up. I watched it, green, ripple after ripple.
**Dec 10, 18 UTC.** I now sit by the east window most evenings. I cannot say why. I look out at the snow. It's the one place in the hut where I feel I am being looked at kindly.
**Dec 19, 00 UTC.** I looked out at midnight and saw a light.
A small yellow light, a mile off, on the ice. Steady, like a lamp in a window. Nothing should be there. The station is on a peninsula. East is the frozen sea, for two hundred miles.
I took a bearing. 087°. I logged it.
**Dec 20, 00 UTC.** The light is closer.
**Dec 22, 00 UTC.** Half a mile. It has the shape of a window now. A rectangle, with a darker shape in it.
**Dec 25, 00 UTC.** A hut. A small hut on the ice, a mirror of mine, with its own mast, its own porch, its own lamp. I could see it plainly in the aurora. Smoke from the chimney. A figure on the porch, standing with a mug.
It raised a hand.
I raised mine.
**Dec 31, 00 UTC.** The other hut is thirty yards off my east window. I can see the figure's face now. It's me. It is a me with a beard. Thinner. Older. In the clothes I'm wearing, the same jumper, the same hat.
I called out. The window is double-glazed, so there was no sound. But I saw its lips move, saying something I knew. A short phrase, repeated.
I read it. *Don't open the window.*
**Jan 4, 00 UTC.** I haven't. For four nights, now, the other hut has been at the glass. The figure knocks. I can hear it through the pane. Tap. Tap. A polite knuckle. It points at the lock.
**Jan 9, 06 UTC.** Radio check missed. Generator has failed. The hut is cooling. I can see my breath. I'm writing this with gloves on.
I have worked out what's happening. It's the winter. It's the dark. A man alone for months starts to see things, and one of the things he sees is another man. But the other hut has footprints leading to it. I can see them, in the snow, from the east window. Mine. They go out from my porch and across the ice. They go all the way to the other porch. And they're deep and fresh.
**Jan 10, 12 UTC.** It's no longer knocking. It's standing at the glass, with a hand on the pane. I can see the frost forming under its palm. It's smiling. In the hut it's warm, and bright, and there is a stove going, and it's laid two places at the table.
I'm very cold.
I'm going to open the window.
Please don't tell my wife what I saw.