Ex Nehilo - The Great Black

The Great Black

In the Great Black of the Moon, that’s the shadow side for those who have only studied the moon and never experienced it, the known becomes a little less known, the real becomes a little less tangible, and the hope… Well, hope is nowhere to be found in the Great Black.

-Mark Waltrip,

First man to solo walk across the Great Black

Day One:

It was important to me to leave without any real fanfare. People like LeMonte and Jakovites had left Tranquility Base like heroes; but now they’re no more than footnotes. To circumnavigate the moon has been tried by many others and they’ve all failed. They’ve all left with bands playing, people cheering, and teams of experts waiting to guide them. They’re all dead now. They’re dead because they had something to go back to – loved ones, money, power, the system. Out in the Black you don’t live for anything but the next second.

I loaded the tanks, camping gear, and food packets into my suit – standard suit, no fancy bells or whistles. The sky cares nothing for our bells and whistles. The sky looks down on us as if we were naked, even in the bulkiest space suit. It sees our hearts and it divines our life or death. It probably weighed one hundred and fifty extra pounds with everything packed and my first step onto the lunar soil sunk deep in the loose dust. One small step for man.

The air in my suit somehow seems is cleaner outside under the stars than any air I could breathe inside Tranquility. I’m free.

Day Twenty-Seven:

Have reached the edge of dark and light, good and evil, hope and despair. The day is constant out on the sunward side, so the dark beckons to me. I have toiled, labored step after labored step, into and out of craters and depressions to reach this point. Should I be here?

Day Thirty:

The horizon is now out of sight, all is black and lost. I have only the small light affixed to my suit to light the way before me – a microcosm of man stumbling about through history. The soil is looser around these craters. Must watch step.

Day Thirty-Three:

Reached the location where I arranged for supplies to be left: I had to pay a lot for the Russian to make the drop and convince him I was part of a scientific research team. Most of it was there, but it was all tangled up in the cords he had used to secure it. Took over three hours to cut free and would have been another hour to repack. Decided to rest instead and do it in a few hours.

Day Thirty-Nine:

Some of the food didn’t taste right, even for congealed meals, so I checked the expiration date on them. The newest one is three years past! This wasn’t the stuff I bought and had the Russian store! He must have taken them and made a tidy profit. At least he didn’t skip on the air, but I can hardly breathe without wondering if he gave me substandard tanks or bad air.

I am starting to see lights out in the distance. The first time I saw one I was at the bottom of a crater. By the time I reached the crest the light was gone.

Day Forty-Three:

My stomach hurts, I haven’t been able to eat since the meal the night before; spent the whole night throwing up in my tent. I don’t think I can sleep in there again – it smells too bad. Followed a light around the side of a very deep crater for most of the day, but could never catch up to it. Having to sleep standing up. Didn’t get far today. Too tired.

Day Forty-Nine:

See more lights. They are all moving the same direction and disappearing in a crater not too far away. Too far to walk today though. Wonder where all the people went?

Day Fifty-Three:

Took longer to reach crater than thought. All the lights are there in the jungle at the base of the crater. I can see them dancing and can hear them singing. Will go down to the jungle tomorrow, for now sleep what little I can.

Day Fifty-Four:

Have made it to the edge of the jungle. The branches and vines are all in tangles and I cannot find a way in. I can hear the lights singing. IWANTIN!!

Day Fifty-Eight:

Have left behind the jungle and the lights. They would not share. Need air. Have thrown-up in my suit now too.

Day Sixty-One:

Arrived at second supply drop and now have good clean air. Food worse than the last drop. Filthy crook! Will rest here an extra day before moving on.

Day Sixty-Nine:

Rested three days instead of the one, but feel much better now. I think I’ve made some good progress to make up for my extended stay at the second drop and my slower pace. My stomach still is in knots and is causing problems with my reclamation system. The filters aren’t kept up as well and the smell is overpowering-the vomit smell in my suit. The sky laughs at me when I sleep. I hear it say I will never see light again. My world is a two foot circle of light moving inch by inch over nothing.

Day Seventy-Four:

I can see a sliver of light on the horizon, to excited to sleep, but my body refuses to move any more. Twelve days of air left and ten days worth off traveling todo. Got to make every movement matter. Appreciate movement now in a way I never did before. Movement is the exertion of your essence. To move requires all of my, all of our being, just to take a simple step. Tomorrow I will must move.

Day Seventy-Six:

I am behind, there is not enough air! Couldn’t find a way out of the crater, so I spent hours trying to get out. Took too long. The horizon is getting brighter but I am going to die right at the cusp!

Day Eighty-One:

I’ve reached the terminus between the sunward and shadow side. I took one last look back and saw the lights calling me back, but they don’t share. I stepped into the light.

Farewell (Day Eighty-Five):

Only a few hours of air left. My stomach is in constant pain and seems to have spread to other parts of my digestive system. My reclamation system is broken, so I have no water to drink, and now the suit is starting to fill up with crap. I’ve stripped off everything I could spare to help me move faster, but all the extra weight in my suit made that a waste of time. Time! Time! Time! Tick Tock on life.

Editor’s Epilogue:

Mark Waltrip’s life was almost certainly lost in those next few hours if he hadn’t been spotted by a mining survey team. They said he was walking slowly back to the Great Black and refused to turn back. Then suddenly he seemed to spring to life and embraced the closest person to him. They were able to get him back to Tranquility, where doctors began the long process of healing his frail body.

At the beginning of his trek he weighed 105kgs (230lbs) and at the end of his eighty-five days in the Great Black he weighed 50kgs (110lbs). He had severe dehydration, trench foot in both feet, and extremely low blood pressure. The fact he survived amazed the medical team at Tranquility, but to the few friends he had both at the base and on Earth there was little surprise. A stubborn fighter, is what they called him.

He had left Earth for the new frontier of the Moon only six months before his historic circumnavigation of the moon. He never spoke of it to anyone, but made casual inquires with some EVA and Lunar hiking experts. He approached one of the best, Kyle Rindle, who gave him the sagely advice to give up on crossing the Great Black.

“The kid didn’t look like he had it in him. Sure he had the tiger in his eyes, but it didn’t take long out in the black for that tiger to become a kitten. It’s what happened to LeMonte. He was all talk, but they found his body just days past the terminus. So I told him to give it up.” Rindle told me when I first started to research this story. Other experts tried to do the same, but Mark’s quiet resolution finally won over one expert.

“He just saw it as such a pure event that I was hard for me to not want to help him,” said Iwao Watanabe, one of Tranquility Base’s first permit residents and unspoken king of extreme EVA. “He spoke of being free of the ensnaring world. Breaking the tangles that hold us all together to see who he was alone without the competition, comparisons, and jockeying for position we see every day.”

After Mark recovered he went back to Earth, with as little fanfare as the day he left for his circumnavigation. Not that reporters didn’t try to celebrate him, but in what is now considered Mark’s trademark style he sidestepped the reporters by taking a bulk cargo tramp back dirtside. He has remained a figure of anonymity, but has inspired a glut of followers who have gone out to break the tangles. Most are stopped before they reach the terminus by security forces, while a handful have slipped through and perished in the Great Black.

To dissuade others from trying and losing their lives he wrote an extremely critical autobiography of his own passage through the darkness. It rose to the top of the world’s Best Seller lists, but Mark has donated the profits to the Families of Luna Fund – a fund to support families of the miners and researchers who have died on the moon.

To this day Mark Waltrip is still the only man to complete a solo circumnavigation of the Moon. Only he has broken the tangles.