Antarctica:
100-Days of Darkness
This is a winter writing project.
After spending the 2022/23 austral summer season (October-February) at McMurdo Station-down on the world’s coldest, driest, windiest continent-Antarctica. Curiosity got the best of me and I decided to stay for the austral winter (March-September) bringing me to a full year on the ice.
This is a collection of one-hundred ice-brain entires from the bottom of the world while wintering over in Antarctica.
Freshies and Mail
The two planes that managed to land this past weekend brought us our first fresh food and mail since the beginning of May. Four months without salad or fruit! Honestly, I didn’t feel that void until it was filled. I’ve been gorging on lettuce, oranges and kiwis. Another truth be told, I was nervous to…
WinFly Begins
It’s been a typical game of hurry up and wait down here. Everyday I wake up and check on the flight status. The first flight of WinFly was supposed to arrive here at the beginning of last week, but has been cancelled daily for almost two weeks, so until this evening, we were still a…
Day One Hundred
One hundred days, fifty-one thousand words on here, and guess what I just saw…the sun! Well, kind of. I had my coffee shift first thing, which was still busy despite the potential flight coming in later in the day. After coffee, I went back to my room and read and drank coffee for a bit.…
Day Ninety-Nine
I posted a couple photos on the socials earlier this week. Snaps of my new dorm building and the view from my new back door. In the caption I also noted that I only had two more sleeps until my first sunrise since May. After I made the post it came to mind that the…
Day Ninety-Eight
Yesterday marked a month of being sober. After six years of sobriety, I decided to test the waters over mid-winter and see if, perhaps, I could drink like a normal person. After three weeks of dabbling on and off, I came to the not so surprising conclusion that I am still very much unable to…
Day Ninety-Seven
I woke up today to an email from Snacks. For those that don’t know who that is, he was my hiking partner on the Appalachian Trail and we became the best of friends. We’ve kept in touch since we parted ways at the end of the hike in December 2021. After the hike he went…
Day Ninety-Six
It was around -40F with the wind chill bringing it to -54F today. This is a tad warmer than it has been and in turn allowed for activities at Phoenix (the ice runway) to resume today. Those activities revolve around getting the runway prepped. The flight that was due last weekend will attempt to make…
Day Ninety-Five
The frigid temps continue. This morning it was -47F with the wind chill coming in over -70F. Still sooo cold. With inventory and the move to the new dorm last week, I broke my workout routine streak and jumped back into that today. I am so all or nothing. Yesterday in my restlessness, I knew…
Day Ninety-Four
It’s Sunday and I have the day off. I think I may have only had one other Sunday off the entire time I have been down here and that was back in the summer season. For most of the rest of the station, this is their normal day off though. I woke up and got…
Day Ninety-Three
As the winter season comes to a close and WinFly approaches, all the upcoming change has been heavy on my mind. Some of it, weighing more heavily than I realized, causing anxiety I didn’t know was there. That’s what change does to us as humans, it stirs up fear, and how easy it is to…
Day Ninety-Two
It’s nice and frigid out, as it always is, but sometimes it’s just that little bit extra. Yesterday morning it was -38F and with the wind chill it was -65F. WE hit -80Brr. As expected, I woke up to a couple emails from my boss back in the States. He sent a QuickBooks update over…
Day Ninety-One
I woke up to my alarm this morning. I have the only key on station to the storage room in the bars, which also hosts a control panel that the IT and carpenter teams are doing some work on, so I knew I had to meet a couple of people at Gallagher’s this morning to…
Day Ninety
Ninety daysssssss. Here we are. After sitting at the computer all day yesterday doing data entry that seemed to never end, today was the opposite. I was moving nonstop from the time I got up until now. Exhausted is an understatement. I got up early to make a little progress packing up my old room…
Day Eighty-Nine
Gawsh. What a day. I’ll start by letting you know what I didn’t do that I’d planned to do…all the things that didn’t get crossed off the to-do list for the day. Gym. Shower. Start moving to my new dorm. Yoga with Adriene. Those all remain on the list, uncrossed. And that’s okay, sometimes that…
Day Eighty-Eight
Sunday started with restocking Gallagher’s for brunch bar and then heading to the gerbil gym. Six days of exercise and still going strong. Then it was shower time and brunch before heading to the store. Double brunch brought my second favorite brunch item-baked brie. Yum. Tuna and brie in one weekend, double yum. In the…
Day Eighty-Seven
Today was another good day, but I am not finished telling you about yesterday. After a hella amazing morning at coffee I headed over to Gallagher’s and restocked for brunch bar. Normally brunch bar is only on Sundays, but since it was a two-day weekend for the community it’s also a double brunch bar weekend.…
Day Eighty-Six
I had my weekly coffee shift this morning. As much as I don’t love getting out of bed earlier than I would for work, I love my coffee shift. I’ve considered not doing it on community-two day weekends, because I know that I won’t have any visitors, but I always forget to cancel it by…
Day Eighty-Five
With the move over to the 207 dorm building and inventory in the store taking place early next week, well, things be busy-busy. Busy is good and probably the new norm from here on out til I depart for the non frozen world. This evening there were two birthday parties on station. One for our…
Day Eighty-Four
It’s a happening. Change is here. It started with the blue hour in the afternoon which increases by a few minutes everyday bringing more and more light to our little station. The mountains across the sea ice were completely visible this afternoon and all the colors were in the sky looking out past Hut Point.…
Day Eighty-Three
It was overcast and a bit snowy today, but the blue was in full force. It is wild to step outside and see something other than darkness. It also feels like it happened so fast. Dark one day, civil twilight the next. I’ve started imagining what it will be like to be back in 24…
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The Whole Wide World 