Last Day in Camp

BYRD SURFACE CAMP, ANTARCTICA

Home Sweet Home

While in camp, I have tried to spend a bit of time with everyone, getting a little glimpse of the work they do, the part of camp they occupy. I chatted with the camp mechanic in his old Jamesway, shoveled snow away from the fuel bladders with the Fuelie, released a weather balloon with the weather observer, rode along with an equipment operator as he groomed camp using a Tucker Terra and a drag. I also watched the hand-crank washing machine in action, watched a movie by the firey glow of the Kuma stove, and shared a scotch in the wash tent. It’s been a blissful escape from the bustle of McMurdo, and wonderful to see what I’ve been enabling with all the work that I’ve done over the course of the season.

Byrd Camp

It is easy, on a day-to-day basis, to feel uncertain of myself, whether the choices I have made for my life have always been the right ones, to wonder if I shouldn’t have more purpose, or more to show for three decades on the planet. But the truth is, I have done some pretty amazing things in this lifetime. Perhaps nothing noteworthy by world standards, but still some fairly unusual, and sometimes wonderful moments.

This is me, standing out on the polar plateau, waving my arms.





And this is what was coming at me as I beckoned it ever closer with my mittened hands.

It is the first time, and perhaps the only time, I have ever marshaled a plane. I realize that some people do this several times a day, every day, for their whole long life. But for me, it was fun, and something new and novel, and something which I am unlikely to do again. I stood in the breeze of an Antarctic summer day and beckoned a 1960’s bundle of metal, props spinning, to come closer to me. I felt very, very small.

Anticipation: Waiting for the Herc to Land

Tucker hauling pallets to be loaded onto the Herc