Midday Midwinter. E.A. Wilson 1902

Today is the Winter Solstice. The fulcrum day. This haunting watercolor was made in the field on notebook paper by Edward Adrian Wilson in 1902 on the British Discovery Expedition with Robert Falcon Scott. That expedition traveled closer to the s. pole than any before it.

Sun. 22 June. Today is our actual midnight, the day on which the sun gives us least light and is farthest from us. The sun now begins to come back to us, and you lose him. We certainly don’t get much light from him at present and yet we cannot forget him, because there is still, on clear days, a line of twilight with a faint orange red tint along the northern horizon, not much to boast of, nor enough to pierce the thinnest clouds which make things very dark indeed.’ (A. Savours, (ed.), Edward Wilson, Diary of the Discovery Expedition etc., London, 1966, p.153.)

Wilson later joined Scott on the famous and tragic Terra Nova expedition which reached the pole January 18th, 1912, only to find Roald Amenson’s party had already been there, just five weeks earlier. On their return trip Wilson, Scott, and one other companion, Henry Robertson Bowers, died together in their tent about ten miles from the food depot they were desperately travelling to.

This is the Scott party, including Wilson in the foreground, arriving at the S. Pole. They believed up until this moment that they would be the first. When they arrived they found this tent, left by the Amundsen party a month earlier. This is the most heartbreaking photo you’ve ever seen.