Was It All A Dream?

“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. 

 

Saying good-bye to Ivan out at Pegasus

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. 

 

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?

Farewell

"I don't wonder at people's being drawn back and back to Antarctica in spite of the hardships and risks--there's a fascination about the life that would appeal to most anybody. It's astonishing too, how one forgets about the outer world. No doubt there are times when one simply longs for civilization again with its attendant comfort and luxury but these fits don't last and you thank your lucky stars that you're down here, living a real life" -Irvine Owen Gaze, Shackleton's Ross Sea Party

Current Weather:

-10°C|14°F Temperature

-17°C|1.4°F Wind Chill

Skies: Clear  

Visibility (miles): Unrestricted  

Winds (knots): E @ 6  

Station Pressure: 28.939 in.

Well, the time has come. Leaving Antarctica. I've heard about this day since before I arrived on the Ice. Redeployment they call it. The day you redeploy back to the "real world." "Civilization."

I don't really know what to think of this because in my mind I haven't been living in what the majority of the world calls the "real world" for some time. I've been gone to remote, far off locations, tramping across the country side. In just a few weeks I'll turn 31 years old. That birthday will mark the end of my first year of my thirties and the end of ten years of traipsing like a vagrant across God's country. It's been a good ten years. It might be the wrap up of a decade of wanderlust, but it's also the start of another decade of exploration. I will be landing in Christchurch, NZ this evening and will be hitting the road the very next day with my backpack to go explore some mountains and ocean beachside.

In my mind's eye, this life I have led has been the "real world." I've gained life experiences that I will carry with me until the day I die. I've met amazing people. Antarctica has added to that. I don't feel any special urge to be away from the ice. I'm not finished with this continent. There is still much to see and do here. I don't know how to write about my departure. Perhaps it will come to me once I arrive in New Zealand and am overcome by sensory overload. The idea of trees, grass, chirping birds, gourmet smells is enticing, but at the same time terrifying. It's about to happen all at once. I feel I need to slowly be re-immersed back into the society I left behind in October.

For now, it's farewell. I hope to return to this continent in October and re-acquaint myself with where I left off. Until then, I'm leaving you with an essay I wrote a few years back when I was feeling something similar to what I am feeling now.

Changing Seasons ~~Fran Haynes
7/31/2007 Tuesday 8:51pm

Tomorrow, August 1st and already a nip in the air. Mother Nature’s way of telling us fall is peeking around the corner. Another year spent in the elements watching the seasons alter from one to the next. Will I ever tire of this, I ask myself. I think not.


It is amazing how in tune you become to the delicacies of Mother Nature while immersed fully in her realm. It awakens one’s senses, your awareness heightened. The wind becomes brisk. The water at 13,000ft slightly more bone numbing than it was 30 days ago. Dawn is breaking later while dusk falls earlier. Yet, the sun beats down just as hot as ever. Sweat still forms to streak my face as we huff and puff our way up and over steep mountain passes day after day. My legs tire, my feet trudge on albeit their weariness, and yet my heart beats strong.


I am longing for the views on the other side of the pass. The excitement of the journey, the unknown just around the corner, it never ceases to amaze, to inspire. That is what pushes me from mountain pass to mountain pass. I have to smile when I think of my response when my friends ask me how my course was. I have never been able to explain what I seek out here. What draws me to remain, year after year, in the elements? In a way, I don’t know. Why begin now? It is times like this, when words fail me I often wish my boots had lips, for the stories they could tell. Instead, I’ll simply nod, smile, and say, “It was a good walk.”


A year ago, one could find me in the Pacific Northwest, roving the wilderness like a gypsy, climbing peaks in leaps and bounds. This winter and spring, my wandering soul settled for the warmth of the southwest. I had once looked upon this land as a harsh, barren environment. Not long into my journey did I realize my mistake as I tramped through country fragile as fine china and just as beautiful.


Seven months have passed now, and here I am in Wyoming, still in the field, still roving. The only difference has become the location of my latitude and longitude. I often forget where it is that I’ve camped. In my dreams, one memory blends with another. How many days spent in the field that breaks down to, I cannot begin to fathom. Either way it does not matter. I would have lost track before I even started counting. Time moves with the seasons.


My time in these mountains is nearing to a close. Signs abound all around me. My feet are weary, my bones ache, but my soul remains satisfied. That is my body’s way of speaking to me. It has been a good course.


In a week, I will return to that foreign land we call civilization. I will leave behind these cold rushing streams, the distant bugle of an elk, and the crimson glories of an early morning sunrise. My boots, beaten beyond repair, will be given the rest they deserve. My hair will be washed and brushed, my pack hung up to gather dust.


I will slowly conform back into society. Shrill horns and whistles, the hustle and bustle of daily life will replace this soothing calmness. Chaos will re-enter, seasons of a different sense will fill the void. A schedule and the demanding timeliness of a clock will replace the laziness of wilderness. My body will slumber like a hibernating bear.


The winter season will pass. My body knows this. The mountains, far in the distance, asleep beneath a blanketing of snow will remain, awaiting my return. Return I shall. With the seasons, I will pass in and out, living and breathing what I can only find out here.

Leg One and Two of the Journey South

“Let your mind start a journey thru a strange new world. Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before. Let your soul take you where you long to be...Close your eyes let your spirit start to soar, and you'll live as you've never lived before.”~~Erich Fromm

The last two days have been a whirlwind, but a good whirlwind. There’s been a lot of sitting, a lot of listening, a lot of meet and greet. But all the questions that have been running rampant in my mind for the past few months have finally been answered for the most part.

Saturday’s Orientation consisted of learning what you can and cannot do on the USAP’s (United States Antarctica Program) intranet network at McMurdo. You were told that anything and everything that was sent thru the USAP network became the property of the USAP while you were down there. Personal emails, blogs, anything that you posted within a social network could easily be followed or tracked if they felt there was a need to. While you were in Antarctica you were representing the USAP and therefore had to maintain a professional face to the outside world. We were required to take a class and then pass a test in order to qualify and be allowed to connect our laptops to the network down there.

I passed with flying colors!

We then met with finance and human resources and learned how to do our Labor Allocation Sheets (basically our time sheets so we could get a paycheck) as well as document any expenses that we could get reimbursed for. We were briefed on what options we had for medical and dental benefits. We were given our travel funds that would get us thru to New Zealand and then at the end of the day we were handed our travel documents and given a rather extensive presentation on exactly how we were going to get to McMurdo.

Our bags would be checked from Denver all the way to Auckland, NZ where we would have to pick them up and go thru Customs with them and then board a domestic flight to Christchurch. In Auckland we would also have to exchange all our travel funds to whatever the New Zealand currency was.

Once we flew to Christchurch, we would be taken to our hotel and have the rest of the day to ourselves. The next morning we were required to go to the CDC (Clothing Distribution Center) at the USAP Complex on our designated outfitting time to get fitted for our extreme cold weather gear. It was there that our expected departure time to the ice would be revealed to us.

Oh, the suspense!

The day we would officially fly to McMurdo we were supposed to arrive to the station around mid-afternoon sometime on the 14th. If the weather was good, we would land with no problem. If the weather was bad (and for the last few days it has been too cold and stormy for them to land) we would then do what was called “boomerang” and turn around and fly right back to Christchurch and wait the storm out. In Christchurch we would then be on call, waiting in suspense for them to say it was clear to try to fly again to McMurdo. If we made it to McMurdo, we would have a brief orientation there, get our housing arrangements and roommates, and then we would have the rest of the day to ourselves.

We were told to hydrate, hydrate, hydrate and get plenty of rest since we would be going thru multiple time zones as well as the International Date Line. By crossing the International Date Line, we would be losing a day. We would be flying on October 10th, but we would be landing in New Zealand on October 12th. October 11th would be gone.

October 11, 2011 would not exist for me.

Today’s orientation consisted of a presentation on environmental and safety concerns/hazards, serenaded by none other than the awesome 80’s one hit wonder, The Safety Dance by Men Without Hats:

And say

We can dance, we can dance
Everything's out of control
We can dance, we can dance
We're doing it from pole to pole

We can dance, we can dance
Everybody look at your hands
We can dance, we can dance
Everybody's taking the chance

its a Safety dance
Oh well its safe to dance
Yes it safe to dance

With our presentation over, we then boarded the complimentary shuttle and were trucked off to the Denver airport to board a flight to L.A.

And that is where you can currently find me. I am sitting here in L.A. on a six hour layover. We are supposed to board our flight to New Zealand at 11:59pm and off we go for the third leg of the journey.

I have to laugh a little bit as I reflect on all of this. There has been absolutely nothing about this journey that has gone normally or “easy,” by any means. I had thought for a brief moment that once I got into the hands of Raytheon and orientation got rolling, it would be a smooth ride from here on out.

Not exactly.

We had just gotten onto our shuttle to go to the airport when the woman who gave us all our travel documents yesterday boarded the shuttle with one last announcement.

An earthquake rating around 5.0 on the Richter scale had hit Christchurch last night and had done a bit of damage so the city was a little shook up. This was a pretty major concern for us because in February New Zealand had been hit with a massive earthquake (6.3) that had pretty much devastated downtown Christchurch. The damage was so bad that the city center was still closed to all public even now in October. Since then, the area has been hit with several pretty large tremors/aftershocks all summer long.

I have never been to Christchurch, but I was told that the economy has been hard hit due to the damage that occurred. Hotels are very expensive and far and few between. A lot of the buildings that have survived the quakes are slowly settling and crumbling apart and are not safe to be near. They’re upright, but many are leaning precariously toward other buildings or even collapsing with little notice.

We were told to be prepared for the possibility that we may be evacuated out of there if another earthquake occurred of such magnitude. It was advised to not necessarily walk around the city, but if we did, we were to take a backpack of spare clothes, money and other basic necessities in case we found ourselves stuck somewhere if another quake happened.

If that weren’t enough to think about, we were also told that Qantas Air had gone on strike last night. Qantas was the airline we were supposed to fly with out of L.A. to New Zealand. What that meant was that we might not fly or if we were able to get on another flight, our bags may not follow us until a few days later since they would be checked in Denver to Auckland.

With those promising words, we were wished a safe and successful journey and shipped out of there to the airport.

There is truth behind the words; flexibility is a key to success.

There are just some things that are out of our hands. You can’t get frustrated. All you can do is listen, nod, and move onto plan B. If we didn’t fly, we’d be put up in a hotel. I’ll admit, I wanted to be on my way to New Zealand and Antarctica more than anything, but I knew I’d get there when I got there. If my flight was cancelled, there was a reason I wasn’t supposed to go right away.

My time would come.

Until then I would settle for acquainting myself with the numerous people that were going to be a part of my experience at McMurdo.

I’ve only been here for two days and I already have a good feeling about things. Granted, we are still very much in the honey moon phase. Being an outdoor educator I am all too aware of the stages of group development. I know that there will come a time when our friendly, uncertain pretenses will fall away and we will see the true colors of ourselves presented to one another. This is not a bad thing. It’s simply that right now we are all consumed with this new experience and are eager to put our best foot forward.

That being said, I know that I am surrounded by unique, amazing people. My orientation group consisted of around 30 individuals that were coming from all walks of life across the globe. I found myself surrounded by 20 year veterans of the ice as well as people who were just as wide eyed as me.

The common theme behind every conversation consisted of three questions. 1) Where are/did you come from? 2) What will you be doing on the Ice? 3) How long have you been going down to the Ice?

When the response to the last question was 15-20 consecutive seasons, I found myself wanting to bow my head to these seasoned, wise veterans. They’d been going to Antarctica for decades, yet they were still there taking part in orientation and they were full of energy and enthusiasm. Just one look at them and you could see the quiet wisdom they exuded. I could only imagine the things they had experienced and seen. And they were all eager to take us young pups under their wings and show us the ropes.

I felt as though I were in good hands. Ages within the group ranged from mid-60’s to early 20’s. There were women and men that had just gone thru their second retirement and then made the decision to go to work in Antarctica “just because.” I met people who had been going down there for years and it was clearly obvious that they were people who were good at what they did, yet they had no need to boast of their accomplishments. It was obvious that it was more than just a job; it was a way of life for them.

It was inspiring.