Prêt a porter?

What you see is the roughly 20 pounds of gear that I have typically worn throughout the summer and winter while here at Pole. I also wear another light thermal top, too. If it’s particularly chilly, I’ll add another expedition-weight fleece top. The overalls sure take a beating, even just from walking around station.

Somewhere up north there are Basler aircraft trying to head this direction. The weather has been pretty lousy lately, with lowered visibility here at Pole. I’m not sure what the weather up at Rothera Station has been like, which is the first stop for the planes as they head to Pole on their way to McMurdo. The planes have to come here first, because they do not have enough range for a direct flight from Rothera to McMurdo.

We’ve been watching the Star Wars saga some in the last week. I don’t know exactly how much different my childhood would have been without Star Wars and Indiana Jones, but it certainly would have not been the same. It is amazing how many places a good imagination can turn the hay loft of a barn into on a summer afternoon, with the bugs buzzing outside and the breeze stirring the vibrant green of the trees’ leaves.

The last plant I saw living outside was a tree next to one of the hangar buildings at the Christchurch Airport. My flight to McMurdo was one year ago, tomorrow (14 October). Since then, the only living things I’ve seen outside have been of the bipedal human sort. I do not recall the last animal I saw, but one of our (now deceased) cats was probably the last one I was in any contact with before coming here. Though it will be fun to see these different aspects of the world again, it is amazing how quickly one readjusts to seeing them daily. I guess it’s the same quickness of adjustment one goes through adapting again to this environment, after having been here sufficiently numerous times to get used to it. Anyhow, it will be interesting to experience it all again, but it will happen in its due time. Now is not the time of the season to become impatient.

“The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it but the way the atoms are put together. The cosmos is also within us. We're made of star stuff; we are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”
~Carl Sagan