Prompt: True North

When people speak of the things that hold them together, they speak of love, of trust, of family, or maybe of god.

I speak of nearly two tons of high tensile fire-resistant fabric knitted together with a foul smelling glue, a thin metal frame, and bladders of highly-flammable hydrogen gas suspended in a net above my head.

It is not much; certainly more ethereal than a man’s belief in his god.

The balloon is nearly inflated now, glowing silvery against the moonlight. It’s just my mother and I preparing for launch, secreted away along the edge of her expansive property. Our mission has been in the works for months, and if all goes well I will be the first woman to float to the north pole. And if all doesn’t, I will likely be the first known woman to die trying. That ought to frighten me, but it doesn’t. A thrill runs down my spine.

The actual compartment I will be flying in is not a typical fairweather basket, but a metal sphere not unlike a diving bell. Two layers of aluminum with packed straw sandwiched between as insulation. That will be all that protects me from hail, wind, and extreme cold. It stands, weighted down by sand bags, waiting for me to crawl inside.

“You have your journals, Ellena?”

We’ve weighed and re-weighed everything I will be taking. There is little room for margin once we take off, and there will be nowhere to stop to refuel the hydrogen bladders. But my journals were never on the table to be cut; without them I am simply a fanciful woman, with them I am a scientist.

I nod to my mother, and we go over my provisions one last time, marking off on a tally sheet to confirm nothing is missed. Our window of opportunity is thin; the winds are fair tonight, and I need to leave to make sure I arrive at the pole and return while in the warmest parts of the summer.

Just four years ago in 1909 the American, Peary, claimed to make it to the Pole on foot and with dogs, but he provided very little scientific information by doing so. It’s a shame, and one I aim to rectify. My balloon is armed with as many data collecting devices as we can spare weight for. Peary corresponded with me while I was under the guise of my brother and told me things in quite painful detail. I do not enter this expedition ignorantly. Should my balloon fail me, I will not survive.

By the time we have things checked and rechecked, the balloon is inflated and the metal sphere that will be my home is bobbing and straining to leave Earth and her worldly troubles behind. My mother checks her watch, marks the time down in a notebook of her own in the dim light we’re suffering under while not risking a match so close to the hydrogen.

She’s not a woman of many words, my mother. But she stands by me. When I told her of my wish to do this, she found ways to acquire hydrogen, to send for engineers to help build the balloon itself. She has, and will likely always be, my staunchest supporter. She fought for my education and sent me to schools my own brother was kicked out of; her own education was never fostered and I know she regrets it. But she is not lacking brilliance, and she orchestrated the plan to launch a day ahead of schedule to dissuade any... well meaning... attempts to stop me.

She helps me climb up the side of the sphere, which requires me to hike my skirts to an improper height before I’m shuffled into the dark hold.

Just before I tuck myself into it I see headlamps in the distance driving up the long winding drive to the coach house. “Drat,” I say, my head alone sticking up. “They’re figured us out.”

My mother, always a touch crasser than myself, swears several times over. “Fire her up my darling,” she says, “I’ll deal with the men folk. Then she pops up the step ladder to kiss me on the cheek. “May your wind be fair and your pencil sharp my darling Ellena.”

And, without a moment’s more fuss, she pulls the cord that releases the sandbags and I’m hoisted into the air. She was never a woman for faff, my mother.

There is a single viewport, a double layer of thick glass directly in the bottom of the sphere. I shuffle myself to the bottom immediately and look down and out. Already I’m rising fast and high but I can still see my mother’s shrinking form standing tall and strong on top of our hill as the two cars race to meet her. Our detractors from the aeronautics club, come to make sure I don’t risk life and limb for a silly woman’s dream. I tried to gain their support early in my attempts, but received nothing but concern and condemnation.

I smile as their car doors open and my mother opens her arms wide. They’re too late. And then I’m too high to see any more, and gone and off on a journey of my own.

I prop my journal on my skirts upon my knees and take my very first measurements, a ritual that I intend to do every two hours while awake. I mark my journal in pencil; in case my insulation should fail I wish to be able to make my last words known even if my ink freezes before I perish.

I scrawl, “July 2nd, 1913, 4:20 AM” on the top of the first page.

“Day 1 of journey. The weather is fair, winds from the west require a slight adjustment to initial plan for hydrogen.”

I reach up and, per my notation, adjust the flow of hydrogen via a rope lever which pulls open and closed the bladder. A second pull flares up the fire and sends me higher into the sky.

Here, floating in the sky, I am alone. I am trapped in my little bubble, and my only visual is straight down. I must rely on my maps, my instrumentation, and my intuition.

The first of these items is something I question and continually recheck, taking nothing on faith. The second two are ones I have utter belief in. The irony being my male counterparts have full faith in the first and little to none in my instruments or my capabilities.

And yet here I am, floating in the early morning sky, the sunrise filling my sphere with a glowing orange light, towards the true north pole of the Earth.

I grin and put my pencil to paper. There is much work to do.

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