The last view I had of the South Pole was through the tiny, round window of the cargo hold of an LC-130 airplane. I clutched the webbing of my jump seat with one hand and watched the station disappear from view as the plane turned on the runway. The endless white snow sped by as we began to taxi, moving faster and faster past my eyes. We lifted into the sky. Just before we disappeared into the clouds I saw the Polar Plateau below me, a flat, sparkling white ocean of frozen ice and snow.
I am not sure when, or whether, I will return.
My eyes prickled with held-in goodbyes as we took off, and I was grateful that the engine’s loud roar prevented conversation with my neighbors. With the land no longer in sight, I turned from my window and settled into my seat webbing. Passengers sat in two rows against the cabin’s walls, strapped into our seats, with our cargo piled in the center between us. In the three hours it takes us to get from the South Pole to McMurdo Station, we did little but doze or read, blanketed in our extreme cold weather gear. Isolated by my thick jacket and my earplugs, I passed the time thinking about my memories of Antarctica and the time I’ve spent at 90 degrees south.
Until the plane arrived, we were not sure we would be going north today — the weather in McMurdo was stormy, and pilots often prefer to stay grounded at such times. Now, landing in McMurdo, I could see why there was the concern; blowing snow obscured the usual McMurdo landscape of mountains and coast. “It looks like we just flew back to the pole,” I said as I looked around the sea ice. “Only the station is gone.” A McMurdo worker pointed us toward a small, orange building — their “passenger terminal,” a warm shelter for us to wait in. A C-17 airplane would be arriving to take us on to New Zealand in four hours or so.
We played cards as we waited, looking out the window occasionally to check on the weather. Once or twice the clouds cleared, bringing Mount Discovery and the Royal Society Mountains into view.
“So, what’s next?”
Where do Polies go from here? Many work outside as much as they can, savoring the green of more temperate climes; they go to jobs as park rangers, trail workers, wilderness firefighters, raft guides and mountaineers. One woman spends her summers working as a botanist for the forest service in Washington. Others, usually the young and single, try to spend much of their off-season time traveling.
“I’m hiking through as much of Asia as I can,” said one woman. “I’ll see if I can get work building houses while I’m there.”
Many of the scientists head back to their sending institutions and laboratories to work on the research they’ve accumulated. They are clearly excited about their collections of samples and data. One man held up an ice core. “This ice is older than Jesus,” he told me. “I can’t wait to bring some of these other samples back to the United States.”
Doug, a small, wiry man with a neat mustache and an Elmer Fudd hat, will tell you that his many seasons spent as a mechanic at the South Pole are his time off. “This is my vacation,” he tells me. “I leave here and go back home to the farm just in time for calving.”
Some go straight to the opposite end of the globe: Greenland. Science stations at the northern end of the world need support staff, too, and several people regularly bounce back and forth from one pole to the other. “You might say that I’m bipolar,” quipped a contract carpenter.
“There’s always another adventure waiting somewhere. You just have to look for it.”
Finally, the C-17 landed on the sea ice, and we all boarded, bound at last for New Zealand.
Six hours later, we stepped into what seemed to be an alternate universe. Humidity assailed us the second they opened the plane’s doors. As we stepped outside, we entered a world in nighttime for the first time in months. I gaped briefly at the dark sky before stepping into the airport to go through New Zealand customs.
Inside, we mixed with non-Antarctic people coming from commercial flights. They looked clean and tan in comparison to us, and stole curious glances at our pale and scraggly group. Later, with baggage in hand and passport stamped, I was back outside in “the real world” — Christchurch, New Zealand.
Meg Adams, who grew up in Holden and graduated from John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor and Vassar College in New York, shares her experiences with readers each Friday. E-mail her at madams@bangordailynews.net.