“Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends.... Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.” ~Henry David Thoreau
The ice is gone. It’s like it never happened, doesn’t exist, nadda, gone, dreamland for the last four and a half months. Had I been sleeping the entire time? Was it real, had it all been a dream? Did it really happen? For the past few weeks since I’ve left the Ice, I have found myself asking these questions. Did I really just spend the last four and a half months at the bottom of the world, in Antarctica?
People I’ve run into in the days while traveling in New Zealand ask me where I’m traveling from and I just start laughing. Not at them mind you, but in my mind. It sounds absurd even to my own ears to say “Well, I’ve just come from Antarctica.” I hardly believe it myself, so how can they begin to? A part of me wants to make something up…I don’t know how to explain where I’ve just come from. So I simply settle for, “I’m from Alaska.” That in itself seems to be drawing enough attention without throwing in the Antarctica card. But the reality is that yes, I did just spend the last four and a half months at the bottom of the world. It truly did happen.
I pinch myself and yes, it hurts. I am awake.
McMurdo life is such an extremely different climate/experience/life form (whatever you want to call it) from what everything else is in the rest of the world that it easily feels as if my time there never happened. But I and a mere few thousand other people who shared this experience know for a fact that there is this small, well functioning community down there, still functioning. I am just not there.
I flew from the ice on February 24th at 1530pm. We arrived in Chch (Christchurch, New Zealand, but on the ice it’s pronounced “Cheech”) at 2100pm that evening. The flight itself was a journey. I had never set foot on a C-17 before that day. It truly was a cargo plane. All wires fully visible, cargo loaded down the center of the plane so our seats were restricted to along the sides of the plane. Since there were only about 40 of us, the plane wasn’t too crowded and once we were up in the air we were able to walk around and stretch a bit. The temperatures were pretty low so we still wore all our ECW gear to stay warm. It was so loud on the plane that you couldn’t carry on a conversation so I simply popped my hood up on my big red to block out some of the sound and for warmth and slept while a lot of people read or watched movies on their laptops. In some ways much like any other commercial flight, except this one was operated by the United States Air Force.
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| Saying good-bye to Ivan out at Pegasus |
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| Cassa and I before we flew on the C-17 |
We set down at Chch and my first step out into the world was to dark, dismal overcast skies and rain. It was the first fully dark sky and rain I had experienced since sometime in early October. Someone behind me said, “Oh, breath in that sweet air and all these smells.” I breathed in and was rewarded with a gut full of jet fumes and heavy, humid air. Not so much the mind boggling sensory overload of long lost smells that I had imagined it would be, but it was still a pleasure to feel the heaviness of the hot air against my skin. None of it really fazed me. I didn’t fall to my knees on the ground crying and sobbing because I was once again surrounded by live, “green” things, but it did feel good to stand in the rain for a little while.
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| Inside the C-17 |
We all crammed in together into this little bus to be taken to the Christchurch airport. From there we would walk to the CDC (Clothing Distribution Center) once we had picked up our luggage and gone thru customs.
I followed the rest of the Ice folk into the airport and looked up and halted there in my tracks. My heart sped up a little and I felt my eyes grow wide. I had finally been hit with what I now think of as: arrival anxiety. Basically the fear of facing life as I had left it in October, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.
As we were entering the airport from one entrance way, another arrival of people from some other flight was also entering from a different entrance way and our paths were merging. Our path was filled with tired, pasty white people dressed in heavy duty carhart overalls and puffy red jackets with a fur lined hood and bulky, heavy white and blue boots adorned our feet. Their path was filled with tan, svelte looking humans. They were all dressed in shorts, tank tops, and the aroma of a variety of perfumes wafted about them. Glittering gold and silver jewelry dangled from ears and around necks. It was obvious these people were coming from or heading to vacation. We had just arrived from the only climate in the world similar to that of being on Mars. They stared at us and we stared at them, well, I should say I at least stared at them. I imagined that our encounter could be similar to that of the sudden appearance of some long lost cave man that had melted from the Ice Age and had been set loose into society. Oh wait, didn’t they make a movie about that a few years back?
I knew exactly what these people were wondering. Where had these people come from? What had they been doing? Why were they dressed like that? There were small children (which none of us had been exposed to for months) staring at us, pressing against their parents legs in fear at these unfamiliar looking humans. I too felt like I wanted to press up against someone in fear as I stared right back at them. I turned around, halting my progress down the hallway toward the baggage claim area.
I waited.
Ice people walked past me, but they weren’t really people I knew. I was waiting for a friendly, familiar face. Finally one of my co-workers and friends walked thru the door from the outside where we had been dropped off by the bus. She looked up and paused when she saw me. She smiled at me a little oddly. I’m sure it was because of the terrified look that was on my face.
“Hey there Franimal,” she said, (Franimal is an old nickname that followed me to the Ice and was adopted by my co-workers and friends). “How are you doing?”
“I’m alright. I just need to walk with someone I know.” I blurted out, not ashamed of acknowledging my sudden fear. In that moment, I needed a little familiarity. I had just come from the bottom of the earth where not many people in this world get the opportunity to go. In the eyes of many I’m sure I’m considered this confident, fearless, world traveler, but in that moment I was none of that. I needed the security of the familiar around me as I faced the gates to commercialism, materialism, and consumerism. I had conveniently forgotten about it all and was about to get a massive overload.
My friend simply laughed and off we went to the baggage claim area.
One thing I have realized is that since being on the ice, I have come to connect darkness with sleeping. The only time it was dark in Antarctica was when you were sleeping in your room and all the lights were out and the blackout shades were drawn over the windows. So last night I felt like a zombie as I went thru the motions of going to the CDC to return all my ECW gear and then get all my hotel information. It was nearly midnight before I made it to the hotel and it had been dark for several hours.
I awoke in the middle of the night entirely disoriented, unsure as to where I was. The bed didn’t feel right. The air was different. There were different sounds. I felt my heart hammering away in my chest as I struggled to get my bearings about me and go back to sleep. When I finally woke in the morning it was to blue skies and intense warmth. Hello instant summer.
The biggest things that I have found to affect me so far since returning are sounds, crowds of people, and driving speeds. The first place I went to once I had checked out of the hotel was for a walk in the Botanical Gardens. That’s typically the first and last place most Ice people go to as soon as they are back from that icy world or before they head out for that icy world. The need for green things and sweet smelling flowers is a pull that many of us can’t resist. My ear drums were overwhelmed by the buzz and hum of thousands of insects. I felt as if my hearing had become so acute that it was actually painful. Was all this unfamiliar sound bruising my eardrums?
Having driven at a maximum speed of 25mph for four and a half months on a flat expanse of ice, driving in New Zealand has been a little terrifying. The average speed out of the city has been 100 kilometers which is 60mph roughly. But it feels like we are going 90mph. I feel my heart pounding with every turn and oncoming vehicle we meet. Add driving on the left side of the road with the driver’s seat normally where the front passenger sits to the mix and we call it anxiety.
It’s nice to see the ocean again and beautiful views full of color, but it has definitely been surreal returning to it all. My exposure to humanity was that of consumerism as soon as we got off the plane and walked into the airport. Welcome back to reality. Do you want to buy something?