This year.

It seems to me, when one speaks about what Antarctica is like, one should speak in poetry. The sheer scope of this continent, the fact that while humans have messed up some parts of it pretty badly already (McMurdo, for example, is a cesspool of past pollution, and of course, we're doing our best to warm the world up now, and the pretty white parts of Antarctica might not always be with us,) it's probably the continent we've messed up the least of all of them. I wake up to white mountains, and somewhere in my soul, someone's singing. They are so big, and so white, and so reflective of the colors of the sunset that only poetry and well-crafted prose do them justice.

But when people ask me how I feel about Antarctica, words don't always come. What my heart really says, is simple.

"I like it here. It's pretty."



I took these pictures in the last couple of days, just point and shooting around town. The first is the moon over Observation Hill. The second is the sun setting over the Dry Valleys. This place astounds. I hope I never get cynical enough to be bored by the land here. Town, maybe. Never the mountains.

It's been a hard start for me here. Last year's ghosts melding into this year's odd Winfly. There were parts of my last summer at McMurdo that mixed me up a little, and there's always carry over here. Echoes of the past at every corner. But I'm trying to accept this year for what it is, and appreciate everything going on around me.

Starting tomorrow, I'll be able to hike here, and I think that will make all the difference in the world for me. (I've had lock-out duty the last week, which means I carry a key to let people into their rooms when they forget their own keys, and I can't leave town for anything.) Until then, I'm reconnecting with old friends, and making some new ones. There's a lot of hanging out in the dorms, and one of Mac Town's strengths is the high percentage of bad ass people here. So below, two amazing women who are nice enough to hang with me, Lisa and Quinn.