"First you fall in love with Antarctica, and then it breaks your heart." - Kim Stanley Robinson

People love to ask the big questions, want to know about my plans, my ideas, my dreams. I do not believe they expect what I say, even though I try to keep the most extravagant ideas close. Even to myself they sometimes sound absurd. I try have tried time and again to tame my imagination with ration and societal expectations, but to no avail. My mind always returns to places I have not been, things I have not seen or done. Whats more, I yearn for places where no one has been, and to see and experience things no one has before. The unfortunate victim of some as-yet-unnamed psychological malady, I dream, and plan on doing things that I believe no one has even dreamt of before. There have been few times in my life when I have been completely dumbfounded as real life surpasses any of my wildest fantasies.

I stand inches from the outermost edge of the last continent; a sheer and indisputable boundary. To the South lies an entire CONTINENT of ice and rock, (home to only two species of plant, and ZERO terrestrial animal life). To the north stretches the dark blue of great oceans and the rest of the planet. The cartoonish abruptness with which these two worlds meet has me in search of some sort of Hollywood gimmick. I strain my eyes to the east then west and see a straight unerring line with deep vibrant blue on the north, and pure silent white on the south. Things as simple as this are not supposed to exist.

After nearly half an hour contemplating the validity of what I’m seeing, a strange powerful blast makes my hair stand on end before causing me to turn its direction. I whirl to see the arched hulking back of some sort of monster sink silently out of view. What the hell was that? It’s not long before I see it again, a whale. A whale surfacing about one-hundred meters out to the north. I had not expected to see whales down here. I am completely shocked, and fumble with my camera (as I do in fact still feel the need to take pictures of whales). Before I get it figured out, the giant swings round. It’s swimming directly at me. My heart stops, I feel the blood drain from my face, not out of outright fear, but out of the possibility that is beating may ruin this moment. The whale surfaces again twenty-meters out. He dives and I expect to him surface again farther away. Suddenly it is literally at my feet. I look straight down as this bus sized apparition screams up out of the darkness. Its rubbery mantel breaks the surface no more than five feet away. I revert to preschool. I wonder what that thing feels like. I could touch it. I should touch it. My mind tries but I can’t move. I struggle to grasp this thing, so close, but out of reach. Suddenly another blast, this time it nearly staggers me as hot humid air explodes in my face. I can’t even wipe my cheeks off. The monster has arched down, and is diving directly beneath my feet. I watch the rest of its long grey body slip silently under my toes.

It is a long time before I process what has just happened. The conflicting emotions that accompany the realization of a dream flush through me; exhilaration, fright, pride, humility, happiness, mourning. A whale? It is a strange thing; this fulfillment of dreams as yet undreamt of.

I stare into the blackness for a long time afterwards. For some reason I am waiting for more. I know that it will never happen again. When I do look up the world comes back; I see the Adelie penguins shooting out of the water onto to the Ice. They scamper back and forth like a mini circus, clowns wobbling around. No, tight rope walkers, wings out for balance. They mill about chasing and wrestling one another.

I see another penguin belly-sliding its way toward us. This one it different, from nearly a quarter mile away I can tell it is an Emperor. Slowly and methodically it paddles its way toward us. Head held high, he moves with an air of dignity that commands attention. The little Adelies fade into the background. I am entranced, amazed as I start to hear the consistent shush of his gleaming belly gliding so effortlessly over the snow. My mind disagrees, these sounds are not right, I should not be able to hear this. I concentrate and it just becomes louder as he nears. He stops, pushes his bill straight into the ice and arches his neck. His pearly underside rises up effortlessly. He is standing. Towering above me as I lay on my own belly less than two meters away. I wait for action, he will flee, cower, attack. I am disappointed. He stands stoically, glistening in the polar sun. These penguins seem all too aware of their common name, as they represent nobility and stature incarnate.

Adelies crowd around the new giant, squawking and frolicking like children. They receive no acknowledgment. For half of an hour this emperor stands as a statue among the chaos of the Adelies before I spot another penguin sliding from the other direction. The two Emperors great one another, although rather solemnly. Quietly they stand side by side, as though they are aware of the difficulties of this place. An attitude of deliberate purpose.

I marvel at the penguins and whales for hours, I can not bear to pull myself away, keenly aware of the uniqueness of this moment. Soon it is nearing dinner time and those I have come here with are hungry, we pile into the Hagglund (see; amphibious tracked military personnel carrier) and rattle our way back to McMurdo.

The Solice of Open Spaces

DAMN IT! I watch as one partner shoots past the north end of tent Island and out of site. My other partner heads to the south, completely oblivious to the obvious absence of our ‘teammate’ as well as the gaping open-water crack she just drove her snowmobile over. Soon she too has disappeared, but behind an icy wall of pressure ridges. I call for anyone on my radio. No response. Surprise. I wait, weighing my options. Who is more likely to die without my help? What was the original plan that we finalized less than 5 minutes ago? Isn’t someone else supposed to be the responsible one here? Can I just do this survey on my own today?


I stick with the plan; the person most likely to die; and decide that although it would be nice, I should probably not try to do the survey alone. I head to the southeast skirting out and around the yawning (but recently and boldly crossed) crack to catch up with Adia before I lose her in a maze of pressure ridges. She knows I am frustrated but not why. She asks… I’m done.

The rest of the day I work by myself (at least as much as is possible down here.) I relish the silence, I delight in the work. I am glad. Content to let my thoughts and imagination run where they may; unhindered by the incessant drivel that tends to ruin days like these. Regardless of my complete satisfaction and enjoyment, by day’s end I am purportedly ‘in a weird mood’. Cause for an intervention.

I try to dodge their prods, knowing they won’t understand or believe anything like the truth. They want a simple answer with a simple solution. They want blame. They want to create and exaggerate a feeling of discomfort for all involved. They want a fight.

I break down and give them the blood they are looking for. I unfairly and inaccurately pin ‘my mood’ on my team. The rest of the crew seems satisfied, a little drama to help fill those silent spaces.

Our season is dragging to a halt. The effects of two months on the ice can be seen in us all. We are worn, weary, and tired. We love the life, but its looming end has us thinking of people and places beyond our little camp; has us taking stock and preparing for our departure. It is different for everyone. For my part I choose to shed the external nonsense that I could get anywhere else in the world, and take in as much pure Antarctica as I can, storing it up in bulk for temporary escapes from the hustle and flow of all that lies to the north of ‘The Great Southern Unknown Land’.

Tonight Adelie Penguins once again mill about our camp. It pleases me to be content simply watching and experiencing them as if they were old friends. I no longer feel the NEED to run for my camera, and miss the moment by trying to reduce it down to two dimensions. Instead I watch the penguins slip and slide on the ice, teeter around in all directions with their wings held out for balance, and investigate anything they come across. I don’t have to wait behind the lens for different poses, instead I watch them sleep, listen to their little feet padding across the ice, and imagine the lives they lead.

"Great God! this is an awful place" - Robert Falcon Scott (upon reaching the South Pole)

Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there's nothing else to gaze on,

Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,

Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon,

Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?

Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream streaking through it,

Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?

Have you strung your soul to silence? Then for God's sake go and do it;

Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.

-Robert W. Service

It has taken me nearly two months to come to the bleak realization that if I am to wait for any sort of personal time in which to write this blog, it will get updated just about as often as it has. I feel that I should therefore be absolved of any claims of insufficient blogging, as I have heretoforth been too concerned about finding a ‘good time’ to write, to actually do it. Thus I have written all of these blogs over toasted bagels, grapenuts, and early morning statistical analyses debates.


Back to the Issue at hand

Seals: Surprisingly enough we continue tag, weigh, and survey hundreds of seals a day. The sixty-pound newborn pups of mid-October are now pushing three-hundred pounds and have a full complement of razor sharp teeth This makes wrestling them into a duffle bag (to weigh them) a tricky proposition. Further complicating the matter is the unheard of snow that we have been experiencing.

Excerpt.

Historically this part of Antarctica has been one of the most arid spots on the planet, making places like the Sahara, and the Namib Desert look like virtual rainforests. Because we are in what is known as a deposition zone, the snow that accumulates around Ross Island and McMurdo Sound is often tens, hundreds, if not thousands of years old, and blown off the Polar plateau to our south. This season we have experienced (first hand) the effects of global warming, albeit in the guise of dramatically increased snowfall that comes in the form of Blizzards. The largest blizzard of the season thus far dropped over sixteen inches of snow and piled it into drifts rising over twenty feet in some places. This blizzard struck with beautiful timing and the deep snow concealed the ever-widening cracks in the melting sea Ice wonderfully. In fact I have been fortunate enough to fall through three snow bridges into open water cracks, not to mention countless other minor (but dry) crevases. This snow has really slowed us down and makes nearly everything we do a bit more tiresome.

I must admit that I should apologize for my inaccuracy in the past. It turns out that I really have not been living in Antarctica, but on the Sea Ice immediately adjacent to it. Even Ross Island (where McMurdo is located) is only connected to “Antarctica” by a thousand foot thick sheet of ice. Even though I am surrounded by the Soaring peaks of the Royal Society Range and Mount Discovery, until a few days ago I had not stepped foot on the Antarctic mainland (or mainice). Luckily we had some seals to survey and tag along the coast, and finally got to the continent by way of Huey Helicopter. After getting picked up at camp we flew north along the western Coast of McMurdo Sound, counting seals hauled out near the snouts of the giant glaciers that pour off the Transantarctic Mountains and polar plateau beyond. These glaciers stretch hundreds of miles over the horizon to our west, and a few continue up to 60 miles out into the deep blue waters of the Ross Sea to the east, in massive Ice tongues. An army of stark white Icebergs each the size of a small town stretches out as far as I can see, floating northward toward New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Argentina, and points north.

After hours with my face pressed against the window (lightly however since the windows are made to just pop out with a firm push)I see what seems to be over a thousand of the black leechlike bodies that I know are seals, sprawling along jumbled and jagged sea ice between a maze of titanic bergs. This is our study site at Terra Nova bay and our pilot drops into a mighty Ice canyon to let us out for a few hours of work. We pick our way around towering bergs, along black gapping cracks, professionally tagging and surveying seals as we work our way through the Icy maze. I work in silence. Like so much of what I have seen and experienced down here, I cannot help but feel that there are no words that can do justice to the majesty and power of this place. It pains me to know that I cannot possibly remember everything, cannot feel this way forever.

The dull thud of the rotors shakes me back into reality. I start to head back for the landing zone and the rest of the group.

"Below the 40th latitude there is no law; below the 50th no god; below the 60th no common sense and below the 70th no intelligence whatsoever." — Kim Stanley Robinson.

I find it a strange thing to find an entire continent of people with the same personality disorders as myself. People never satisfied with the things that are. People who shun the ‘convinces’ of the city and turn toward the simplicity of the land. Whose hearts always ache for horizons beyond. People sacrificing the comfort and love of family and friends for the adversity and solitude of a life lived at the margins. By our very nature people such as us seldom if ever even meet, much less congregate in one restless and anxious mass at the edge of the earth. McMurdo is electric with this kind of energy, building and replenishing in its power. Although it has been difficult, I have found some peace among close quarters of camp and am now able to write in a mood more representative of the way I feel most of the time down here. A place that fills me with as much humility as gratitude and satisfies but also intensifies my wanderlust.

We continue to tag and weigh seals although the pupping season is rapidly slowing down. We have been spending more and more time away from the large colonies and searching for seals in the more inaccessible corners of Erebus bay and McMurdo Sound.

I spent one day at the base of the Erebus Ice tongue, nestled up against the titanic ice falls pouring off the south face of Mount Erebus. Here we roped up to travel, over, and across, and through shattered and enormous glacial seracs to find seals pupping along the cracks in the sea ice on which they are so haphazardly strewn. A jumbled icy mess where a fall could mean twenty or thirty feet onto jagged blue ice, or into a gaping black open-water hole.

Another day I got to fly south across the Ross Ice shelf to tag and count seals using the tidal crack that forms around White Island. The same White Island used by polar explorers in their navigation across a startlingly flat and barren plain of ice larger than Texas. This trip as exciting as it should have been on it’s own, was even more so owing to an Emergency helicopter landing after an unidentified electrical fire. Once we got safely back on solid ground we rescheduled another flight (with a different and hopefully not burning Helicopter) for later that afternoon. Of course and in proper accordance with Murphy’s Law the weather deteriorated in those few hours between fights. By the time we finally made it to White Island we were met with light so flat that even our pilot was surprised when our skids bounced off the snow on our landing, as none of us could tell how far above ground we were owing to a complete lack of reference points on the griddle flat shelf. As we exited the helicopter we were met with friendly 40 MPH winds and a classic ground blizzard. After thirty minutes tagging and recording the 6 seals that constitute the farthest south living population of animals on the planet we hurried back to the shelter of the helio, only to find that we could not take off in conditions so extreme. Twenty minutes later our pilot (growing impatient) arbitrarily decided that we could in fact take off, and better do so before the weather got even worse. A few shaky seconds and we were above the whiteout shrouding the seals and ice below, and heading toward Ross Island and McMurdo under bluebird skies.

As disjointed as they may be, these are the thoughts and experiences that come to mind today, the first I have had off since Halloween.

“It is a pitty that I cannot write more” – R.F. Scott

P.S. in reference to the title of this posting I should note we are well below the 70th parallel and almost to the 80th at 77.85 degreees south.

Scott for scientific method, Amundsen for speed and efficiency but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton

I write again feeling as though I have been neglecting my journal. It is not because there is nothing to write about, because everyday I see and experience things that I will never forget, but mostly because I like to write alone. Such a desire makes daily journaling nearly impossible when personal time is so difficult to come by. In our small camp people are up, about, and distracting from 6:00 am until nearly 11:30 at night. Instead of waiting for personal, time I have just decided to make my own, and ignore the rest of the group as I write.


Journal

I don’t know if any of you have heard of “Planet Earth” a TV documentary series produced by the BBC, and if you know that it is unquestionably the greatest natural history documentary of all time. If not, now you do. I mention this because the “Planet Earth” crew is down here shooting an equally amazing nine hour sequel called “Frozen Planet”. They have invaded McMurdo and are treated, (perhaps rightly so) as celebrities. The aggregation of people who collect down here at the bottom of the planet are those who most appreciate the power and brilliance of “Planet Earth”, and consider its makers among the greatest film makers in the world. That said, the camera crew is amazingly friendly despite the non-stop attention they get. Since we are “The Seal Experts”, and also since our seals are to be a major uniting character in their Frozen Planet series, they are continually out at our field camp looking for insight on where to get the best shots, or what kind of behaviors we are seeing, etc. They have come out so much that they have become good friends with all of us and have even entrusted our crew with one of their underwater cameras. We have free license to film seals underwater for them, and if our shots are good enough they will be included in “Frozen planet”… we may even be mentioned in the film credits. I say all this because a lot of my free time has been spent laying out on the Sea Ice in front of an LCD screen and a joystick, filming seals every evening.

When not padding my cinematic resume I continue to tag, sample, and weigh seals, even though the majority of pupping is rapidly grinding to a halt. During the past two weeks we have tagged over 400 seal pups, and retagged over 100 females, and the occasional male. Its strange to think that I am starting to get used to walking through, and sometimes climbing over, towering unearthly blue walls of Ice. I have yet to get any real good pictures of the beautiful sculpture like pressure ridges caused by the power of the tides, and ocean currents below. Today I am heading out into our most jumbled and amazing pressure ridge regions and will make an effort to shoot as much as possible, hopefully coming back with a few shots to share.

Although beautiful in their elegant design, pressure ridges are not the only amazing ice formation around (surprise). Yesterday we skirted along beneath the shear face of our friendly neighborhood glacier where we were humbled as we strained our necks to pear up towards the top of the crevassed and broken 200-foot-tall Ice walls which stretch for miles in both directions. This unbelievable mass of ice, enormous as it may seem , is hardly a glacier in comparison with beardmore, or some of the others across McMurdo Sound that stretch for hundreds of miles, are nearly 10,000 feet deep, and are sometimes more than 40 miles across. I continue to be amazed by the vastness of this place, a place that puts the well known grandeur of Alaska to pitiful shame. A place that will spoil me in desolation, immensity, humility for many years to come.

After visiting the Barne yesterday ( and collecting about 150 pounds of prehistoric glacier ice for our drinks back at camp) we made our way to the Adelie penguin colony at Cape Royds about 10 miles north of camp. A dusty and black outcrop of volcanic rock Cape Royds flows out from the base of Erebus and provides the natural eastern shoulder to Erebus Bay. To its south stretch the multi-year ice, our camp, McMurdo, and beyond that the great Ross Ice Shelf. To the North lies the open water of the Ross Sea, the Antarctic Ocean, and the rest of the world beyond. We scrambeled up and over the dust and penguin guano of the cape to be greeted for the first time in over a month, by the sight of open water. Straining our eyes toward the Northern Horizon we scanned among broken Ice flows for the tell-tale signs of Orcas, Humpbacks, or Grey whales after nearly an hour basking in the calming energy of the ocean to our front, we turned back into the Ice and home.

This cape is more than a barrier keeping Ice in and open water out of Erebus Bay, it is The onetime home of Sir Earnest Shackelton, when he made his bid to be first to the pole. His disheveled hut is still nestled in a small protected pocket of land. Unopened boxes of provisions still line the walls, dog houses, stand at the ready for another pack of sled dogs, Horse stalls remain, with tackle intact to harbor those unfortunate ponies that would be killed on the barrier (Ross Ice shelf) to the South. It as if Shackelton himself will be back tomorrow. I am excited, awed, inspired, I don’t know what I am. Some of the group is not. We cannot go and check it out, we cannot even look in the window, we are at CAPE FUCKING ROYDS! Where EARNEST SHACKELTON lived and because our boss doesn’t care at all about Antarctic history, (and she is the only one “certified” to let us into the hut) we cannot go in. I get yelled at for stepping too close… The rest of the population of McMurdo can go into this hut, and Cape evans hut, and the Discovery hut, every week if they want, and we will come here only one time this season, Today. Today, Jen doesn’t want to take 10 minutes to let us look inside. My blood boils as I think about how hard we work every single day for her, as I think about this possibly being my only chance to come to Antarctica, about this being my only chance to ever step foot on Cape Royds, about how she doesn’t even care how much this means to not only me but the rest of the crew as well.

I keep quiet and walk back to my snowmobile, thankful for the half hour of solitude I will have to calm down as we drive back to camp.

Next time I am going to look in the window. Next time I will simply ignore Jen and her completely arbitrary and nonsensical rules.

For Cape Royds there is no next time.

Long time comming

I understand that many of you, (all three of you) may feel that I have been neglecting my blog, or journal, or whatever you wall this thing. Truth is; I have not had a whole lot of free time in which to write since I last wrote. The past ten or so days have been quite a ride and I will now attempt to compress that stretch into a somewhat easily manageable read, while at the same time maintaining pure and unadulterated accuracy, and clarity.

To begin with, we continue to see seals. When I first wake up and walk to the outhouse, seals. All day every day I travel around on my snowmobile purposely looking for seals to catch, and then come home in the evening to find more seals surrounding camp. Being in the constant company of seals, one starts to feel like they are your friends, like they understand you, like the National Park Service isn’t doing enough to protect them, Like you are their only true savior, and that you would die for them because you are Trent Trentwell and you live in the Seal Maze the most dangerous place on earth.

Sorry. I wandered a bit. Anyways, I have been amazed at how everything down here is so completely dependent, and revolves unfalteringly around the weather. I will now attempt to provide anecdotal evidence to prove my point.

On the evening of the 20th a team of communication 'experts' came out to camp to help focus our (already working) internet in an effort to make it run faster. The resultant loss of internet was seen as no big deal (since they just went back to McMurdo that night anyways) and they would be back the following day to fix it. When we woke up on the morning of the 21st a heavy ice fog flattened light and destroyed all sense of depth perception. The world was white, white ice below, white fog in front, and white sky. An amazing but erie example of sensory deprivation. This is what being blind must feel like. To retain our senses and sanity our crew huddled inside the kitchen hut where there was more than nothingness to confuse our minds. We would just wait it out and work later in the day. After 15 hours of this it became obvious that we wouldn’t be going to work and we all settled in for the evening and decided to make up lost time on the following day. I went to sleep that evening in the silent and death like calm that pervades everything here, only to be awakened by being nearly shaken out of my top bunk. Our little refrigerated cargo container had somehow gotten onto a train and was roaring down the tracks. Things, metal things, banged and smashed into the sides as the box shook and rattled. At times our train took sharp curves so fast that I feared that we might tip over. I was going to put a stop to this, and crawled off the bunk and pealed back the thick black curtain that is our night in this world of constant light. Fully expecting to look out and see the North Dakota country side whipping by, I was surprised to find that we were neatly positioned next to the girls refrigerated cargo box, and since trains rarely run side by side I concluded that we had not moved and we are still in Antarctica. I stepped outside just to make sure. Quickly I am met with more white than the day before (if that’s possible) but this time a literally howling wind knocks me off my feet and I struggle towards the kitchen hut, only 5 meters downwind. As I break the refrigerator-door-seal it bursts open, and I am thrown inside. I look dumbfounded outside for a second before closing the door and looking at the monitor of our little digital weather station. Wind 65 MPH, Temperature -30 F, Wind chill – 86 F. This is ANTARCTICA. We are having our first ‘Herbie’ or Katabatic Blizzard, and it will remain like this for the rest of the day. We sit in the kitchen hut all day and stew in each other’s stale air, making sure that everyone has caught the cold that someone brought from town. In the afternoon our outhouse (tethered to the Ice with truckers cargo straps, and two-foot-deep V-Threads) is starting to go, 2 straps are already broken, and if we loose anymore the outhouse will end up at Cape evans, (if we are so lucky). Shawn, Glenn and I bundle up and head out into the frigid hell. We are all knocked off our feet once, but manage to get another V-Thread anchor set up and replace the broken cargo straps. The entire ordeal takes less than 5 minutes but I come inside with useless hands, searing ears and nose, and numb legs. We decide to not go outside anymore.

I was rocked to sleep that night and felt sure that this weather would never let up (not more than five miles from here, Scott’s men endured a blizzard of greater intensity for six weeks). I was therefore surprised to wake up to only moderate 30 mile an hour winds and a paltry ground blizzard. We all bundled up and set out for work. Today I was to head into Hutton Cliffs, and since I had never been there I would follow Jess and Shawn who had. The trip there was questionable at best. We could just barely make out the next flag that marked the ‘road’ to the two-hundred foot tall ice-cliffs, and so we went one flag at a time, never sure if we would reach next. To complicate things even more, the wind hand sculpted the snow into immense sastrugi that could easily flip a snowmobile if one wasn’t careful. After nearly an hour crawling down over concrete hard snow sculptures as large and manageable as park benches it was a relief to see the massive overhanging cornice of the Cliffs. We walked in and out of unearthly blue pressure ridges all day tagging seal after seal, trying to make up for the lost time of the past two days. By day’s end we had tagged nearly 30 new pups and quite a few moms as well.

When we pulled into camp that night we heard that the blizzard from yesterday had destroyed miles and miles of Sea Ice, and now the open water edge was only 20 miles to our north. We joked about seeing Orcas, Leapord Seals and Penguins soon. It was therefore all the more ironic when I was awoken at 1:00am by a very familiar, yet new and strange sound. I lay in bed waiting to hear it again. After the second time I jumped/rolled/fell out of my bunk and ran to open the door. As the unwelcome light flooded the room, I clearly saw about two dozen Emperor penguins standing in front of and looking up quizzically at our piston bully. Pants. Shoes. Hat. Coat. No not shoes. Boots. Camera. Wrong Lens. Quick. They are going to leave. I ran outside still pulling my clothes on. The rest of the crew, now wide awake came out too. The penguins were celebrities calmly posing for our impromptu photo shoot , but like true models do not act for the camera, they are naturals. They wandered through our camp questioning the construction of our buildings, and our choice in color schemes. Soon they have had enough and they march ( yea I said march and it’s not too cliché because it’s true) off toward the Ice tongue. We are all still so excited at having penguins walk through camp that we don’t stop to consider that they are more than twenty miles from open water and will likely die if they continue on.

We wake up the next morning and see three lone penguins on the horizon to the west, but the rest of the two-dozen are nowhere to be found.

We got internet connectivity again last night. Thank god for the "communications Experts".

On the Ice

10-14-09

Antarctica, at least this far south, and during this time of year, is seemingly a place of biological sterility. Until yesterday I had spent nearly two weeks down here without seeing as much as a glimmer of non-human life, plant, insect or otherwise. There are no birds, rodents, bugs, grasses, mosses, anything that one might associate with life. I have come to realize that I (and I believe most people as well) truly need to be in touch with natural life to keep feelings of utter solitude and disconnection welling up too strongly inside. Without this contact I begin to feel very much like an alien on my home planet.

After days of this or that training, and countless logistical miscues we have finally made it out to our field camp at Big Razorback Island. At a half mile long and nearly 200 feet tall this volcanic spine of an island serves to shelter our tiny camp from the full force of the prevailing winds that rip down the slopes of Mount Erebus or off of the endless Ross ice shelf. We are not the only ones who seek its shelter from the brutal extremes of daily life down here. A few Weddell Seals tucked tightly in lee of the island, have given birth not more than 100 yards from our back door.

I know that the presence of those seals has done more to satiate my requirements for life than I have fully comprehended. Seeing their massive tube like bodies basking in some unfelt heat signals to me that this place can in fact support life, and that no, I am not completely out of my mind.

It also helps that these seals are the exact reason that we are out here. Yesterday as we rode our snowmobiles along the tidal cracks that form around anything that does not move with the currents or tides of the Antarctic Ocean we saw our first seal pup. A brown grey blob (although spindly in comparison with its mother) the size of a Labrador Retriever squirming on the ice next to its 1100 pound parent.

Since it is our job to place tags on every seal pup born in this part of the Ross Sea we treat this is as our first opporitunity to work. The tagging equipment and handheld data recorder come out, and as a group of six we simply walk toward them. The mother cranes her neck to watch as we approach but is unimpressed and paces her head comfortably back on the ice. We are now less than fifteen feet from the pair and they have yet to show any signs of fear, excitement, or anything other than lethargy. Shawn and Glenn walk still closer until they are standing over them. Shawn grabs a back flipper and gently pulls the newborn (frozen umbilicus still attached) away from its mothers side, before quickly punching a plastic cattle tag into each hind flipper. With that, Shawn lets go and the pup squirms back into the side of its unfazed mother.

We troll along open water cracks, working our way from one seal to the next, but find no more pups. Our day is done. We will be back tomorrow.