Antarctic Anecdotes

I’ve mentioned that the phrase “It’s a harsh continent” is a good way to excuse anything that seems to go wrong south of the Antarctic Circle.   But in the case of human physiology, that’s not an excuse but a reality. The fact is that our lineage started out as a gang of happy little Australopithecines, presuming that small hairy bipeds eating shoots and grubs and continually running away from lions and cheetahs and what-not, can be considered a truly happy hominid.   Our forebearers evolved on the African savanna, in a temperate environment.   Across the mighty sub-Saharan plains the land was flat, the air was warm, the sun marked the day, and the moon signaled the night.   (And a good chance to be eaten in the dark by a lion of cheetah or what-not.) None of these characterize the Antarctic continent. Antarctica is the highest, driest, and coldest continent in the world.   While seals and penguins live quite nicely on the coast because they’ve been doing that...

  Twilight was officially over on May 13, and even though it had been dark outside for some weeks, there was still this slight glimmer, more of thought than reality, that the endless night hadn’t quite set in.   But now the darkness is fully upon us, in more ways than we knew. We’ve all experienced night, but night here is different, almost primal in its’ extremes.   Outdoors is either hauntingly peaceful or actively hostile.   There’s really nothing in between.   It’s as if the continent wants to lull you into complacency before killing you in the most ruthless and unmerciful way.   If the sky is clear and the wind is calm, even the smallest sliver of moonlight reflects off the snow and penetrates the shadows such that one can gaze out across the polar plateau with wonder at its’ endless expanse and utter barrenness; as Buzz Aldrin said about the moon, it’s a landscape of “magnificent desolation.”   It’s a meditative space, almost spiritual.   ...

Our Chief Steward (aka "Boss Asian") is an incredibly creative and competitive person.  So when she saw that our wintering colleagues at McMurdo Station, the Big Bully on the Antarctic Block, had started their own magazine she made sure that we weren’t left out in the cold.  (Best polar pun ever).  She took their idea for “McMurdo Home and Garden” and made our own version.  Being a good and patient soul, with a certain tolerance for eccentric health care professionals, she was kind enough to ask me to submit something for the inaugural issue.  (To be fair, she asked everybody.   I think the only ones who responded were myself, The Vampire Engineer Who Never Sees Daylight, and her boyfriend who was likely motivated to help by both love and fear.   At least that how it works in my house.) My colleague is not just an editor, but a philosopher.   One needs no more proof of this than reviewing the final paragraph of her hard-hitting expose of the s...