Heading to Antarctica

August 23rd

As I board a plane to Christchurch New Zealand, I try to conjure up what it means to go to Antarctica. Since I first experienced the continent last year I have been struggling to try to explain to others how this place feels, what it looks like, and most importantly, how it changes you. Endlessly it eludes me. Before I left this season for the ice I gave a couple of hastily put together and painfully long slide shows.

With great enthusiasm I tried to convey the sentiment of this place. The metaphor of a climbing expedition captures some of it but still seems to fall short. The striking beauty of the place endlessly appeals but there is so much more than the photo of an emperor penguin or the clean edge of an ice burg shot on a perfectly clear day in the height of the summer. How to describe the cold stealing your breath away, the humble excitement of going for a walk in a fierce ground storm, the silence of the polar plateau where the white horizon greets the sky everywhere uninterrupted, or the energy of a land that has never supported a self-sustaining human population?

Its funny to hear people who have never been there try. Hopefully at least I do better that them. The common attempts approach the challenge by listing of superlatives: the coldest, windiest, highest, driest, harshest, most isolated, and most extreme continent on earth. Hmm. The problem with this is that it doesn't really make it sound like a place I loved being. Instead I think this attitude appears to be used to feed one's ego... something akin to: "see, .... I can love a place this brutal and I am tough enough to survive here ..." For me, however, Antartica means much more. At the least it humbles me and reminds me that I have little control over the my emotional response to this landscape and certainly even less control over her weather.
Later, still flying south, I ponder the difficulty of leaving North America. My friends, my family, and my place all called to me to stay a little while and experience that which comes from depth and intimacy of knowing a place well. As I headed south for a 6-month contract in Antarctica I questioned what continues to draw me towards places such as these southern lands?