This picture was taken by co-worker Marie McLane as she was arriving at the South Pole on a Herc. I was standing on Sundog, videotaping the roaring plane as it taxied by. Then I trundled up to offload a pallet soon after. It's what I do, Cargo.

I called home in response to an email from my mother.

My cat of almost half my life, 20 years, Tomoe, had reached a point where age had defeated her in every aspect expect one. Her conversation. So I called home to talk with her one last time. To make the sounds she always responds too. Except a whistle, I could not cry and whistle both, and the crying overwhelmed me.

Today I am weeping some more. I just read to story of her last minutes. It can’t be helped. She brings up old griefs, none too well buried, and makes them fresh. I found her, and her 4 brothers, in a box in a rice paddy (dry season) next to a bus stop on Sado Island, Japan. 1992, about 7 weeks after my father had died. I’d made it home to say good bye to him, then I’d had to turn right around afterwards and return to try and live a life bereft of sense in Japan. It wasn’t working very well, and I was barely going through the motions. One of those motions was a music festival put on by the Kodo Drummers in August to which I was committed by already paid for tickets and expectations of my appearance there.

I was camping in a tent by a beach outside of the town where the festival was being held. I took a train and a ferry to get there, and traveled by bus on the island itself.

One morning early in the week long festival when I was doubting my reason for being there, I heard this high pitched meeping mewling sound as I stood waiting. I looked around, confused. I couldn’t see a thing. I followed the sound into the rice field behind me and a few metres in I found a small box from which these plaintive yet emphatic cries emanated.

I opened it, and there she was, my little warrior queen, Tomoe, having been the only one of the 5 kittens in that box with the strength on that hot day to speak against their fate as discards. She was a tiny clearly marked kitten: black, ginger, and white. A calico, therefore female, among her 4 brothers. She had a mask, half ginger, half black with a white nose and huge ears. Two brothers were black and white, the other two ginger and white. Maybe 4-5 weeks old. Eyes crusted shut. A mikke neko, 3-colour cat, in Japan is considered good luck.

And she was.

More luck than I could have imagined when I welcomed these kittens, needy and hungry, into my spiraling sad life.

I scooped them up out of the box, and slid them into a sling I made from a sarong I had with me. They nestled snugly into each other, on top of each other, against my chest and my heartbeat and fell asleep. Quietly but for a few purrs I could only feel against me.

I carried them that way for the next week of the festival. What else was I to do with them? Leave them in an increasingly hotter and hotter tent alone all day? Not likely. So I carried them with me. Content and safe, they barely stirred. I taught them how to drink by dunking their faces gently into a shallow saucer of milk, wiped tuna oil from a can of tuna on their faces so they would lick it off and learn to eat solid food, and woke in the tent well before sunrise every morning because they were already awake and leaving holes in the tent floor with their tiny sharp nails. They stuck to it loudly as they skittered around energetically, getting stuck while underway and tumbling tail over head, one teeny paw still engaged to the floor. They bumped their wet noses against my face, whiskers brushing and tickling. They mewed. And needed to pee. Hello, Mum? Gotta pee? Now? Now! Really.

So up I would get, load them into their sling against my chest, and walk down to the sand beach to release them. Closest thing to kitty litter I could find. World’s largest flush kitty litter box, really. And they would tumble about in the valleys of footsteps in the sand as I sat there a bit dumbfounded from lack of sleep and this sudden responsibility. Very few of us humans were on the beach, and certainly no one ever walked any dogs on it. Every now and then a person would walk by us, catching the attention of one or more or all of the kittens and off they would go unnoticed in a line of kittens after this big shadow on their world who must be Mum. Until I noticed their absence, by the absence of sound, for Tomoe was still talking. I’d get up and chase after them, maybe two trailing a young Japanese man up the beach and three more trailing an older woman down the beach. I’d trot after these unaware humans apologizing to them in Japanese, to collect the kittens and deposit them back at their starting point. I garnered my share of stares and smiles. This crazy half-dressed wild-haired foreigner collecting kittens from their heels. Then they’d be off again. Several hours every morning they’d chase any big shape passing by.

When I went for a stroll I’d be trailed by all 5 kittens in a row behind me, yelling at me in their tiny squeaks to slow down. Footsteps formed hills taller than themselves, and their sticky little eyes were coated and gummed with sand by the end of their morning. I’d gently clean them with water, to their greatly offended kitten dignity. Tiny wet heads shaking and sneezing and complaining.

Then I’d feed and water them again, scoop them up in their sling and they’d sleep the next 4-5 hours purring against me as I attended festival events in town.

And that’s how I healed from my father’s death. Forced out of my own headlong descent into a grief-stricken depression and anger, into the position of caretaker for 5 rambunctious little kittens, who pooled around my ankles mewing, chased after balls of tin foil, or slept nestled against me at night one per arm pit, one each per shoulder and one at my crotch. Sometimes I was lucky enough to sleep in past sunrise, but then they would collect themselves in one corner of my body and play. I was wide awake soon enough, for they played with little teeth and nails unsheathed and did not differentiate between my inner thigh or their siblings as they wrestled.

Tomoe was always the most vocal. A never ending conversationalist, who narrated every moment of her waking life up until her death yesterday. Her brothers talked, but she commented, entreated, welcomed, discussed and emoted. If she was awake, she was most likely telling you what she was doing, from heading downstairs to the toilet, to speaking with her mouth full, to greeting my middle of the night loud farts. I could sleep through my own farts, but not her inquisitive reaction to them, thinking I was awake and had spoken to her. Or just complaining that I woke her again with one of my blasts.

I brought her with me when I left Japan, her and one of her black and white brothers, Sirius (for his dog-like behaviour). Many of my friends were simply appalled by the sounds she made, and asked my mother if I had possibly brought an INFANT home with me from Japan. But she filled the house with her chatter, she communicated every thought and emotion. Much of the time it was answered by Sirius, and his perpetual morning voice, gruff and cracked.

Until he died, on my 30th birthday, while chasing a squirrel across the street. My 47th birthday is in two days, on November 10th.

Then Tomoe upped her volume, looking for him. Loud enough to wake the dead, if not communicate with Sirius. She remained louder the rest of her life, 17 more years.

She was softer than other cats, her fur more mink than feline. Her wide-eyed face and big ears, typical of the Japanese Bobtail breed she mostly was, was perpetually kittenish looking. She never gained that jowly wide-face look most cats get when they grow out of kittenhood. And her tail. Well, she was not a purebred Bobtail by any means, because her tail was not bobbed, nor a tiny pompom off her ass as is ideal for that breed.

She had a hook, a pretzel, a jumbo shrimp. It looked, all furry, like a bunch of fluff, but when you felt the bone beneath the fur you found many distinct knobs or bends on it. With a tiny tip of her tail wrapped around by the rest of it. It was not broken. She could talk with her tail too. It looked a bit like a shrimp or a grasping hand when she moved it, opening and closing.

She spent a lot of time in my arms being introduced to Americans who did not believe her tail, so while she’d get the initial head pat, she’d soon be flipped around for the obligatory gentle tail grope. I think she may have thought Americans odd for the rest of her days.

Her tail had its drawbacks. When she and Sirius dashed madly after each other through the house, any plugged in lamp or answering machine or alarm clock whose cord hung down loosely would be caught in her tail, and get whipped off the table top. Which produced a great crash bang behind her, and a declaration of shock and pain, since she was often still attached to whichever item she’d just hauled off a table in her wake.

I brought her home from Japan, but I left her mostly with my mother. I went off to college and lived on campus, and left her behind. I lived in a tiny apartment that allowed no pets in New York City, and sneaking her in was not an option. Everyone would know she was there. She was so vocal at home, that if she was sitting on the roof of the porch up in the tree line, at squirrel height, talking to everyone who walked by on the sidewalk, it was not unlikely someone would call in the fire department to rescue her. She didn’t need rescuing. The neighbourhood soon learned her quirks, and the 911 folks soon learned our address and discounted any Oh My Gawd That Poor Trapped Cat calls.

And I left her again each time I came to the Ice.

She became my mother’s companion, largely. But she knew my voice and my heartbeat, and the way I kissed her head and bumped my chin against her face when she sought my neck to nuzzle. I called home to talk to my mother and always, Mum put her on the phone for me to talk to her and hear her voice. And she knew me. She would lick the receiver, right up to our last conversation on the phone this weekend, she knew me, even through my weeping.

Now I am at Pole, and she is gone. My mother is at home in a house that echoes emptily, a house that no longer contains a cat who greets you whenever you come home. There is no longer a cat to talk back to, with whom to have conversations, to respond to your queries, with whom to discuss the day’s events. She is no longer there, and there is emptier than you can even imagine, if you never met her.

I was not there to hold her in her last moments, my mother did that. And wept. When it was over, her vet of almost her whole life hugged my weeping mother, who had just lost her dearest companion.

Tomoe is gone, after 20 years. 20 years after my father died, leaving me bereft, but with sudden kittens to steal and heal my heart. She was truly my child. My only child.

And here I sit at the South Pole, weeping and red-eyed in that unattractive redheaded way, feeling all the old griefs of losing her and my father and her brother Sirius, and cats and people past and loved and gone.

I will always miss her, her affection, her volume, her perpetual kittenish expression, her soft pelt. I will miss her boney loose-skinned toothless old age, her middle of the night hollers, her bad breath, the perpetual spoken narrative of her every thought and feeling, her ability to dumbfound callers and visitors alike when they first heard her, the pleasure she got when I drummed her up one side and down the other, purring and squirming on the bed under my gentle pounding, protesting when I stopped. I will miss the sounds she made as she spoke through her food, as she chewed, swallowed and licked her face in full voice. I will miss picking her up from the vet and having her recognize my voice from the front office and start yelling “Mum? Mum! Get me out of here!”, setting off all the animals in the place. The looks on the faces of cats who heard her, the confusion of the dogs she ignored, and the enchantment of my almost 4 year old niece who knows her better than she does me.

Goodbye my darling warrior queen, my unique little precious one who knew my heartbeat and recognized it as the sound of Mum, no matter how long or how many times I left her behind. She knew me.

Ma petite Tomoechan, urusai nekochan, goodbye sweet pea.

November 4, 2010.
A year ago today I left Pole.

No matter how long I am away I am always a Winterover, especially when I come back. I may never winter at Pole again, but I will always have that knowledge of the bottom of the world, in the dark, in the cold.

I did two Winters. My first Winter was horrendous. Truly, indelibly awful. No matter how amazing the individuals that make up a Winter community can be at the outset, when there is a failure, the whole season can go awry. Divisions, mistrust, hatred, resentment, laziness, all can culminate in depression and grief and trauma.

I learned some lessons during that winter. I learned that despite everything, the winteriness of Winter thrilled me. I had a job where I worked outside. Unlike most of the station, I looked at that scroll as the temperatures dropped, and the window coverings went up to close us in, and I still had to go outdoors to do my job. I had to venture into that daily colder cold, that daily darker dark regardless of the fear and dread. I thank my lucky stars for the job that I had, because it was outside, alone in the dark under the thick sparkling blanket of stars, falling over on my ass as I gazed dumbstruck up at auroras that danced and sang mysterious emerald shapes in the sky that I found joy. No matter how bad it got inside that station, all that petty squabbling and deliberately-inflicted misery, faded against the enormity of that sky and the peace I found in the dark on my own.

So I came back. And I had my good Winter. Leadership, experience and a companion made the difference between bad and good for me. Even so, my first few months, so close to the hard Winter and the engrained emotional responses I’d been trapped in just to survive it, were difficult to handle. I had to learn the difference between the Winters, and to do so I had to leave behind the bad Winter so I could experience what a good Winter was like. It took effort, and constant reminding, to do so. Not everything was able to be put aside. I doubt it ever will be, completely.

But I got my good Winter, outdoors and in. The one I’d wanted and hoped for. Yes, there were bumps and challenges, ups and downs, but I’d had my bad Winter, and no matter how bad it got, it never came even close. I measured bad differently. I knew what it looked like, tasted like and smelled like. And 2010 wasn’t it.

Now I am back on station, back at the South Pole, after a year away. I am here for the Summer, repeating my amazing season of 2008-9 in Cargo, as a Cargo Handler (or Air Transportation Specialist 1). In my year away I traveled the world. It was the longest time I’d been away from Antarctica since I started coming here in 2004. I needed it. Even after a good Winter. I healed. I relaxed. I thawed from the protective numbness that I’d developed.

Because Winters at Pole? Good or bad, they are universally hard. Hard on a body, hard on a mind, hard on a heart. Just. Really. Hard. Ten months here, 9 months with a small community. No way to leave when things go horribly wrong. And horribly wrong can be measured in so many different ways: the break up of a relationship, serious health issues, awful people, bad leadership, injuries, shit food, terrible news from home, a fire, or running out of chocolate.

You like to think, during your winter, that if any of these things happened you’d survive. That you are not really risking your life every time you go outside. That the station will not catch on fire, and that all the preparedness and training of every single member of the crew for such an event is enough to rescue ourselves should things go terribly wrong. That no one will have a heart attack, or break their neck, or have a serious head injury where we cannot take care of them with the medical facilities and personnel we have on station.

But reality is different. For most of the winter, we can’t get out. We simply can’t. There is no one who can show up at the drop of a hat to carry us all to safety. Maybe, one or two people could get out eventually, but not all of us. Not in time. Not in time to save us.

Not that there aren’t people out there prepared to try, should things be so dire as to need that effort. There are people out there who will fly planes, who will organize for such an event, and would risk their lives on our behalf, but it wouldn’t happen next week, or the week after, or the week after that. I may not even happen.

Realistically. You can’t get out.

So, you deal. You hunker down and get on with your day after day after day after day. You wake up morning after morning and you plug away at what you are here to do: science, waste, materials inventory, fueling, cooking, fixing machines, whatever.

And you watch the community– because it’s often the only thing in a day that changes at all—and peoples’ behaviour as the season plods on. You watch people buckle down and get on with it, or slowly lose their equilibrium so that character traits become exaggerated and define them, drink themselves into another reality, lose their shit spectacularly, or sit around on their lazy asses doing fuck all. Just like the world at large, its just so damn much more obvious here.

And then the winter ends.

And you leave.

And you recover and remember. And you forget. Or just try to.

And sometimes, some people, come back.

But that Winter, those Winters, they stay there inside you forever.

Here I am at Pole again, a year after I left my second winter, with a year of traveling and adventures and a world of change under my belt.

And boy, am I feeling my Winters.

This past Winter, the one I skipped, was a bad Winter. I know that look. I hear their stories and my entire being resonates in sympathy and understanding. I wish healing on the crew of 2011. Because I know it’s possible.

I am so thankful I wasn’t here for it.

Let’s start this Summer, and may it be a good one. I am back in a great department, with a boss I truly love, learning who my co-workers are and how we work together, and I’m telling you now, I’m EXCITED.

I am a regular user of Facebook, and newly minted in Google+. If you would like to see the seamy underbelly of my life in shorter more frequent status updates, find me there or email me first, and introduce yourself. I have a few blog readers who I’ve accepted as “friends”. They got to see my reports on toilets in India, kittens in Turkey, risotto in Italy, hot flashes in Nepal, croissants in Paris, and Highland cows in Scotland while I was silent here and on the road. It can be a TMI kinda world there, so I strongly caution you.

Introduce yourself, tell me how long you’ve been reading, and why. Strike up a bit of a conversation with me and I will put you in a circle, or friend you, or whatever the social network requires.

Ciao!

How?

I went outside.

I’m a lightweight. Literally. I do not weigh enough for these winds. Condition 2 had been called in town, and as usual to those of us up the hill at the Haz Yard, we were experiencing an unacknowledged Condition 1. Easily.

And of course, the Spill Truck had a flat tire. All day. So the easy commute of hopping in a warmish truck after breakfast and lunch–squeezing in alongside everyone–for the ride up the hill, disappeared. We had to walk. It’s not such a big hill, not terribly steep. On a calm day, no problem.

This is how Antarctica rolls. On the coldest day of Winfly, and almost of all Winter, Of course your warm transportation has a FLAT. That’s just how it is here. Never get complacent about it.

So up we headed.

It is unholy hell when the wind is shrieking down the chute into town from Arrival Heights, bearing snow and volcanic grit right into our faces. Ambient was -30s F (202-low 30s C), but the wind was aggressive, angry even. It buffeted and howled and bellowed and barreled down the hill into us as we struggled up directly into it, through goggles swiftly rendered useless by frozen fog or by the fact that they are framed in a light foam designed to allow the fog of our breath to depart. What that achieves is NOTHING good. Because the cold wind, bearing death and destruction in its tiny wake through the sides, bites and stings and frostbites. Goggles be damned. The only thing they do is prevent the dust, grit and ice crystals from damaging the cornea through your slitted eyes.

I was actually in better shape for the morning commute sans goggles, sporting the narrow slit between lowered hat and pulled up gaiter, limited vision true, but I was following a co-worker’s boots ahead of me. I had full coverage of my face and felt fine, if nearly blind.

After lunch, the goggles were nearly useless, leaving me with a string of pinprick-sized very localized ice cream headaches along my forehead through the top holes. And they fogged up and froze pretty damn quickly too.

The after lunch climb was different. The wind had picked up even more. So much so that I had to stop every 10 steps or so to turn sideways against the wind, brace myself in a semi-crouch, and catch my breath again before I faced back up hill into the wind. I had to PUSH myself against the pummeling wind, bent forward at the waist, stomping hard and deliberately, maintaining conscious control of my legs to prevent them from flying out from beneath me when I lifted them one by one. This was no thoughtless walking or climbing effort, where legs just do what they gotta do, moving forward, one foot at a time. This was I must hold my raised leg, bent knee steady against the wind so I can put it back down again in front of the other foot, into the wind. An approximation of forward progress. And bloody exhausting.

I ducked into the VMF (Vehicle Maintenance Facility) halfway up the hill for a break. (This is a 7-10 minute commute at best, and half way up I needed a REST STOP.) I’d left the Galley about 10+ minutes beforehand. I caught my breath in the warm building.

Then with a growl to myself I pulled my gaiter back up and replaced my newly defrosted goggles back over my eyes, and stomped back outside to continue my commute. Whomp! came the wind again. I navigated my way through the parked vehicles of all stripes and sizes awaiting treatment, using what I could as a windbreak for a while, before emerging out the other side into the wind slaloming down the steep sided road ahead of me. Tunneled by the stacks of milvans and the steep snow banks, the wind struck at me with even more ferocity as I faced the steepest part of the trek. Only a few hundred metres at most remained.

I bent over, I leaned forward, I stamped hard to replace my boots on the road after each step. I staggered up the hill struggling to maintain forward motion against that damn ice bearing wind.I stopped and turned sideways to minimize the wind and breath again, panting with the effort inside my gear. But smiling. Laughing once more at the absolutely ridiculous nature of this place and my life in it. Reveling in the adventure.

And I was noticed in this effort by my boss. I’m sure he was laughing at me as he watched, but he did call a Solid Wastie and say to come get me. I was less than 150m from the building when the loader came up behind me on the road and pulled up along side, driver gesturing for me to climb in the cab. I did. I was blessedly delivered by the great rolling beast to the door of the building.

On my commute home, downhill with the wind at my back, I was sent out the door attached to my co-worker, a young man of more avoir du pois than me. He was instructed, semi jokingly, to keep hold of at least one of my feet should I take off in a gust and start sailing toward the sea ice. I held onto his arm, or he maintained an arm across my shoulders as an anchor as we laughed our entire way down the hill. A knight in filthy Carhartts with a heart of gold.

Yesterday’s ambient temperature in McMurdo was about -40F/C. Easily one of the coldest temperatures reached in an unusually warm winter. With the windchill we reached into the -70s and 80s F (-58 to -64C). At South Pole yesterday their ambient was -76F (-60C) or so. With a few paltry knots of wind.

I’m here to officially declare, as one of the few folks in the world who KNOWS what cold is and does in the extreme lows, that WINDCHILL trumps AMBIENT any day. Hands down, no contest, McMurdo is colder then than Pole. Pole’s cold is subtle, it almost snuggles up to you, sneaking in layer by insidious layer until it is slowly made evident to you that you may die of it. But oh so gently. Peacefully, even.

McMurdo is a brutal violent attack, rendering you cold in seconds, battering at your defenses and stealing into every weakness it finds. It is a mugger, a motherfucker, and it wants you DEAD NOW. Then it will fling your lifeless frozen corpse into a crevasse and stomp all over you. Gleefully.

It’s all about the wind. McMurdo is all about the wind. So, when I say it’s colder at McMurdo, it means I’ve got colder faster scarier at McMurdo because of the wind. The deep cold of a Pole winter is still colder, technically, but easier to deal with. It doesn’t just show up without warning with a sledgehammer and beat you with it.

I am no longer that smug Polie who viewed her McMurdo friends’ exclamation pointed news of “-68F with windchill!!!” as illegitimate in relation to my then -93F (-69C) AMBIENT at Pole. Yup, I got the numbers trump. But in the kick your ass trump, McMurdo wins it every time in Winter.

But when the wind drops? Innocence reigns here, and Pole wins like Secretariat in the cold stakes. Year. Round.

He has contributed a lot to this site, with some awesome pictures in the picture version of surround sound. Lotsa fun things to see in McMurdo Station.

http://www.sphereographic.com/antarctica.html

Go see, it’s cool.

So is DJ.

And today is his birthday.

In the wind stakes, McMurdo totally trumps Pole. Pole’s got temps, tho’, no doubt. If I were to choose, I’d be hard put which to prefer.

I LOVE this kind of windy kill you and coat you with white in seconds kind of weather. It’s invigorating and exciting. There are thrills galore as the buildings shudder and rock and pitch in response to the wicked gusts. Looking out the window as the plywood flies by and the shovels on the spill truck are plucked from their custom built saddles and sent tumbling; There’s just something about it. Once you duck.

I had forgotten the kind of snow that sticks, wet enough to stay on you as you transition from outdoors to indoors, and to leave everything it coats wet as it melts. There is no shaking it off your fleece as you remove it, it has been slammed into every nook and cranny between every fibre you are wearing, and it doesn’t brush off. It doesn’t shake off. It doesn’t even come off when you hard slam the fleece up again a wall. It’s there until it melts. Then it’s wet. Then you go back outdoors.

But then, it doesn’t freeze. At Pole, it freezes. You may shed snow like heavy dandruff, snow that doesn’t stick, doesn’t wet, doesn’t hang around on you long enough to make it indoors and melt on you. It’s just that cold and dry there. But your gaiter, your hat, the items that suffer from the humidity of your breath, and grow hoarfrost as you exhale, they freeze solid. Like a neck brace around your face, solid and hard with the frozen exhalations that have streamed through it. At a certain point, you don’t turn your head on your shoulders to see to the side, you turn your body. You are frozen into your gear. THOSE melt when you get indoors. And going outdoors again in a wet gaiter/hat/mask combo is just not cool. You either toss them in the dryer or have an alternate set or two or three you can start afresh with.

Here in McMurdo your defenses against the wind have to be pretty robust. It doesn’t much matter if it’s +9F (-13C) when the wind is up over 40 knots. Pole may be windless and -85F (-65C), but here on the coast, you are being pelted, pummeled, ploughed into by horizontal snow. It gets in your ears, through your hat, it blinds you INSIDE the loader as it slams past any crack and coats everything white. I have turned from black head to toe to white head to toe in less than 3 minutes outdoors, several times a day here. If I stand still facing one direction then I am like a Black & White cookie.

Shoveling snow here is different too. At Pole, when it is “windy” the snow drifts and builds and accumulates. Then you go out and you chip it away. It’s light and dry, almost like white snow shale as it flakes into huge chunks you can then fling away easily. Not so in McMurdo. It’s wetter, and it slams itself into drifts and piles and lumps of hardened packed snow in less time than it takes to trip over it. It’s much more challenging to shovel. It holds its shape and requires breaking up before you can shovel it. It clings to itself.

All day we were in Condition Two.

Ha! Laugh the Polies, thinking we live in a state of condition holy crap by virtue of our temperatures all the time. But the Conditions here at McMurdo are something else. I’ve been rolled by wind gusts here, sent skittering wildly along sea ice with the hopeful trajectory of the next building down, I’ve had to drop to my knees to crawl along the buried fuel line I’d just dug up seconds before, in order to find my way back to the connected pump house and a part of the reassuring world that is not All White and Sideways. I’ve watched allegedly Fixed Wing planes flap their freaking wings by a metre or more up and down, trying to take off on their own.

Condition Three here is Condition OKAY. It means visibility is fine, winds are low, there’s no snow, and temperatures are okay. It can still kill you, sure, it IS still Antarctica, but at least you can see what you are doing when you die slowly of hypothermia. The temps, again in comparison to the South Pole, are laughable, but the temps that matter here are the wind chills.

So when the wind picks up and the snow picks up and the wind chills drop and the visibility decreases, they cut some operations. And call it Condition Two. We had a Condition Two in town all day today. Wind blowing like holy fuck and snow slamming by from left to right as I looked downhill from the Haz Yard toward what remained of town. White. Strong white and horizontal. No one outside working in it, in machines or on foot.

From our vantage point up on the hill, just inches away from the border of where they declared the Condition One (or Condition Stay Indoors You Fool, and That’s Official!) that surrounded us everywhere, we were pretty much in the gale force winds plummeting determinedly down from Fortress Rocks and Arrival Heights and the Pass to Scott Base. All geological structures that drive the winds narrower and harder and faster until they reach US, the highest warm building in “town”, furthest up the hill, higher up on the bowl that faces the sea. We may have been looking down onto this delusional bubble state of Condition Two but we were clearly in a different state of stormy than down there.

I sat indoors at the computer with my co-workers, all of us consigned there by the sheer ridiculousness of the winds around us, and I researched batteries. Zinc oxide, alkaline, lithium, nickel metal hydride, carbon zinc, nickel cadmium, and a host of other batteries requiring separate shipping and handling. The world outside gone white and crazy, we rocked gently to the few major gusts that hit us. I reached out to the world via the magic of Google, to try and identify these strange unlabeled batteries made in Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, China with names like SQMY, Kingkong, Pairdeer, Dishy.

It was kinda peaceful. Up there on our hill, isolated from the world by blowing white, kept indoors by the weather I really wanted to go outside and play in. But wind picks up things that travel fast and kill. Snow is the least of it. The few ventures I made outdoors to the back dock to deliver identified and sorted batteries to their correct drums were accompanied by my thrilled whoo hoos and shrieks of excitement as it grabbed my hair and pelted my face. The snow screamed by yelling in my ears: Go Inside You Silly Redhead! Because, yes, still a tough Polie here, it wasn’t even in the NEGATIVES outside, what’s a little wind at these temps? Who NEEDS a HAT?

What Pole offers is the stillness of a plateau night, the broadness of the endless sky lighting your way with STARLIGHT, the heavy comfort and familiarity of a cold that sits right on every part of your body with threats of death if you don’t know when you need to get back indoors. If you don’t recognize when your body is 15 minutes from Enough Already and you need to Go Inside Now. It offers private aurora shows with no light pollution, and green frozen fog glowing oddly around you.

Pole is a peaceful cold beauty. McMurdo is an exciting stormy beauty. I like them both. Both make me smile behind the fabric protecting my face. Both make me laugh out loud in joy at where I get to work each year, Antarctica.

Yeah, holy fuck, I work in Antarctica.

Lucky me, eh?

• Visibility less than 100 feet sustained for one minute, or
• Wind chill greater than -100°F sustained for one minute
• Winds greater than 55 knots sustained for one minute, or

• Winds 48 to 55 knots sustained for one minute, or
• Visibility less than ¼ mile, but greater than or equal to 100 feet sustained for one minute, or
• Wind chill -75°F to -100°F sustained for one minute.

• Winds less than 48 knots, and
• Visibility greater than or equal to ¼ mile, and
• Wind chill temperature warmer than -75°F.

What a remarkably different one it was from now. What I recall is the frustration of being trapped inside a windowless office having to deal with a lot of unhappy people, unable to experience the reason I was here, Antarctica, outside. I also recall being simply dumbfounded by the beauty, the transformation from dark to light at such a rapid daily clip until we were all sun all the time. I recall sunsets and sunrises hardly differentiated in their endless glory, with red skies like the opening of bloody gates to hell cut sharply by the black mountain range profiled against it. I recall standing there between buildings on one of my rare outings, looking at this beauty, wearing jeans. My thighs froze nearly solid as I gasped in the cold air in awe. I couldn’t tear myself away from the precious glimpses I was afforded.

I’ve always wanted to come down for another Winfly, to see these sights again, to watch that swift transformative month when we go from dark to light, from night to day.

This is not that Winfly.

I’m working outdoors. A lot. I’m high up on top of town looking out over the sea ice from the Haz Yard. I am working in Hazardous Waste for the same folks for whom I did my last two Winters at the South Pole. McMurdo is a far larger place, and the Waste Department is necessarily separated into two categories: Solid and Haz. At Pole, that’s the same Wastie.

I am blissfully content, happy even, to be here this season. Oddly, the beauty of this season has been trumped by the awesomeness of the job I’m learning and the people with whom I work.

This is a new sensation for me, here in McMurdo–to like my job. I’ve been there, but to feel like I am respected for it by my co-workers? That’s brand new.

I loved being in Shuttles. I loved driving huge ungainly odd mechanical creatures back and rumbling rolling forth to the runway from town all day long. I loved riding the fuel lines, dipping tanks, feeding planes, helos, buildings, traverse bladders, whatever in Fuels. It was outside, it was hard, and I enjoyed it.

But I never “fit”. I didn’t fit in Shuttles. I sure as shit didn’t fit Fuels. I didn’t like my Housing job, so that didn’t fit very well at all.

I don’t socialize the way McMurdo requires. I don’t socialize with alcohol and cliques and groups and parties and departmental teams.

It was such a revelation when I landed at the South Pole and discovered that my willingness to work hard and be friendly was sufficient to engender respect from bosses, co-workers and the community at large. And respect is key for me. I don’t need people to LIKE me, but I do work hard. I’m not lazy, I’m eager to learn, and I work hard. I ask questions, I offer help where needed, I volunteer my time. I’d like to be respected for that, not judged for not socializing the “right way”, not being part of the inner circle, the “in crowd”.

Fuck the in crowd. That’s not why I keep coming back.

I’m here for Antarctica. For this rare and amazing beauty that smites me hard and new every time I get down here. For the overt, for the subtle, for the stark raving loveliness of this environment. It makes my heart sing.

And for all 4 summers I worked in McMurdo, it was THAT that kept me coming back, desperate to return even when it was clear I wasn’t really wanted, and the folks who hired me were not happy with me. It was ANTARCTICA I came here for. And if that required being treated with disrespect even when I strove to always do my job safely and effectively, and to remain friendly and cheerful in the face of snark and snarl and sniping, then I was willing to do so. Because always, when I stepped outside, my massive love for this place made the problems of the people seems miniscule and bearable.

And then I hit Pole. And holy shit, what a difference. Pole doesn’t have all these hiking trails, the 3 bars, the huge library, the chapel, the yoga classes, the recreation department, the boondoggles to ice caves and dive tending and ice breaker rides, helo trips to the ice edge, the intense social net and privileges that most everyone here bitches about as if it is not enough and they deserve more.

Pole is hard. There are no boondoggles. There’s not much there, really. Yes, it’s flat and white. The work is hard, and you work way harder there than in McMurdo. It’s tough on a body. And if you need to end your day by heading to bed less than 30 minutes after you eat your evening meal just to rally your physical resources enough to get up and do that same hard work all over again the next day, then you do. People understand that. Because Pole is hard. And people respect the hard work. If you shirk, or complain, or don’t pull your weight, everyone knows it because they FEEL it in their work.

That’s all it takes, respect. Respect is a rare thing indeed, and it is precious beyond compare. Social respect. Work respect. Personal respect. And Pole gave me respect. I’d never felt that here in McMurdo, at work. I’d felt it from individuals here. I made great friends here in McMurdo, and moving to Pole took me away from some pretty awesome and special people.

But respect at work, for me, is the most essential ingredient. I would do this job for NOTHING to be here in Antarctica. How much more glorious is it to finally stumble backwards into a department here in McMurdo where I feel respected? Valued. Appreciated.

I have totally lucked out. I’ve got GREAT co-workers here this Winfly. Co-workers with knowledge they are willing to share, the patience to answer my questions and teach me the ropes, each with a sense of humour that has me laughing fit to burst, and smiling all the time. They are helpful, funny, intelligent, generous, easy going people. And they do not give a shit how I socialize or not, or who I hang out with. Or when I go to bed, and how long I sleep, or who I eat my meals with or the fact I eat so many of them happily alone yet surrounded by crowded animated tables.

That’s not what they are looking for from me, whether I fit some appropriate social circle and expectations. I work hard. I ask questions, I’m learning this new job. And that is enough.

So, this Winfly? I love my job, I love my co-workers, I love my department, and I love the challenge of the work. I love the laughter and the hard physical labour. Yeah, so it hasn’t been all that pretty like I remember Winfly 2005 to be, but that’s okay. Because this time? I really like going to work every morning.

And I get a pretty fucking awesome view from the Haz Yard. Every day we drive up the hill to work and I look out over an ever changing magical landscape. How choice is that?

I like the work I’m doing in paradise.

I like the work I do in Order to be here. In. Paradise.

I left the Ice last November. This is the longest break I have taken from Antarctica since I started in 2004. After SEVEN seasons, culminating in TWO consecutive Winters at South Pole Station, I was due for a break. I needed to rehydrate, re-freckle, and reupholster myself in a layer of fat and summer clothing. I had to learn how to sweat again without being freaked out by it.

And for 9 months that’s exactly what I did. With an excess of sweating. I traveled. I hiked. I couchsurfed. I met a whole panoply of amazing people in so many different countries and cultures. I took TIME to look around and enjoy myself.

I’ve wondered why it took me so long to get around, to get BACK around to this kind of traveling. I used to do it, but decades ago. I saw all my Ice friends and co-workers going off and having amazing vacations in all corners of the world. I yearned. But I didn’t. I’d get out of Antarctica and land in NZ and it was everything I wanted: greenery, seas, mountains, rivers, creatures, friends, wide open spaces sparsely populated by people but heavy on the stunning beauty and all in an easy, tiny country where a day’s driving nets you the equivalent of traveling from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean via the Great Lakes and the Prairies and the Rockies. Albeit quickly, if you didn’t stop in regular silent moments of simple awe every few minutes. Every year, it was a healing gorgeous welcome.

New Zealand has it all. This time I made it all the way to Cape Reinga, finishing up the North Island. It was time to take on more countries. Move further afield. Challenge myself more. And I’d finally paid off my student loans.

So I did.

I learned how to travel again. How to just roll with it. I took my hard-earned winter lessons on the road with me, and was a better traveler for it.

I checked off a few dreams, fulfilled a few fantasies, and saw a whole damn lot of the world. I wrote a lot. In an old fashioned way, with pen and paper.

Now it’s time to head back “home”. Back to the community that values and respects me, who supports me, and laughs with me and at me.

Back to the Ice.(And back to blogging.)

Yippeeee!!

It’s a bloody exhausting time of the season, the time we are most likely to end up injured. This year I didn’t hurt myself, no broken bones, no tumbles down the stairs in the dark face first. Just sheer bloody exhaustion.

Two winters in a row I did. Working outside at the South Pole. TWO winters.

Yeah, I know there are people who have worked 6 winters in a row, but none are women, and those women who have done 3-4 winters in a row surely did not work outdoors.

So I am in New Zealand now taking a well earned, well-deserved break. I will be here until February 2. No I am not returning for a 3rd winter in a row. There are several reasons why I consider it ill-advised to do so, primarily that I am bloody exhausted.

After New Zealand I am headed to Australia for a few weeks in the Melbourne area. Then I fly to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for a week’s stopover on my way to Delhi, India. Plans in India are vague as yet, it still seems so far away from NOW, but they include yoga, fabric & textile shopping, perhaps a few tramps in the Indian Himalayas and a visit to the Dalai Lama’s home in exile. Nepal for a whole, to hike in the Annapurna region and do a silent retreat for 10 days (not even PEN & PAPER allowed! I may expire.) then back to India before I head to Istanbul, Turkey. Got a friend there and a place to stay for anywhere from 2 to 5 weeks.

And that’s as far as my flights are booked. Further than that I’m looking at trains through Eastern Europe: Bucharest, Budapest. Many folks are leaning forward with great urgency when I ask for recommendations about Eastern Europe and strongly recommending, indeed, passionately advocating both Slovenia and Croatia.

So many options. I’ll figure that all out once I get to Istanbul.

For now, I’m fluffing around NZ visiting friends and testing Ruby’s breaks on cows with twin calves, a pair of squealing kicking piglets, wild goats, a very large bull who refused to budge no matter how close I crept up to him, wet nose to bumper at last when I honked and he blinked. He BLINKED. So I sat a while and waited. Then there was the pheasant mama with her 3 tiny fluffy chicks frozen in the centre of the road. The knobby kneed hopping pukekos refusing to fly because they simply do not do it very well; the Australasian harrier taking off from some roadkill in its lumbering broadwinged way to finally reach air enough to soar magically. Just the take off is awkward as crap.

Oh, and then there’s the pair of abandoned roosters at a highway layby who kept me company, crowing in harmony, as the sun went down over the bay revealed below us. These two roosters were clearly living wild, and depending very much on the kindness of strangers tossing snacks out their car windows: potato chips, sandwiches, various food bits. A real bromance they had going on, very content with each others’ company. They were fine company until they decided to check out Ruby a bit closer, from the inside.

A lesson I have learned from the wekas in the South Island is if a bird gets inside your car, scaring it out is not the best option. Birds shit when you scare them. Bird shit IN your car is yucky. So you have to encourage them gently to exit your car, hoping all along that they don’t just shit anyway.

I have not been blogging at all because I am very much on a budget. I am no longer traveling with a laptop, since I fried it with a soup wash during my winter. So any writing I may do costs me from NZ$5-10 per hour. I am not a fast typist at all. A post this length is about one and a half hours of typing, with editing.

I am, however, writing. Profusely. Pen and paper in a rapidly filling and bulging with words notebook. All is not lost, you are just not getting any of it. Sorry. Perhaps once I reach Malaysia or India where an hour of internet time costs so much less and the internet cafe is the only air conditioned place around, I will type up some of my entries.

Until then, my communications with the world at large are taking place largely via facebook status feeds. Short quick updates I don’t have to pay through the nose to do. I check my email every few days and post something to facebook to let people know I’m still alive and thriving.

Perhaps I’ll take the time and the money sometime down the road to collect those status updates and post them here. Just to fill in the blanks.

But, until then, I’ll simply write for myself on paper as I sit under a tree next to a waterfall, having invaded the space of a few panting sheep in the heat of a day while hiking to steal their shade. Or roll over in bed at a friend’s at 6am after a hot flash and grab my notebook to record random thoughts and memories from winter and how my body is recovering from the cold brutality of that place.

Stay well, readers. Expect silence from me, and be pleased by the unexpectedness of any future post I may make here in the next few months.

Because, moi, *I* am on vacation.