Transplant

I would like to update this blog from time to time in order to give my loved ones (and anyone else who is interested) a better account of what life is like down here at Palmer Station, Antarctica. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in my job and daily activities that I don’t take the time to look around and process all that is happening. Since this was actually started by Lacy to be a travel blog, I will try and insert inspiring travel quotes and other such thematic threads. But of course, I am really not traveling at all. At least not in the way that most people would define travel. My entire area of activity is within a two-mile radius generating out from the station in which I spend most of my hours. I actually live here, at Palmer Station. Held hostage by a ship that comes around only once every couple of months and a string of rules and regulations that would make Shakleton and Scott shudder.

But I still feel like I am traveling. For one thing, I am only here for 6 months. I have a wife and cat waiting for me. And this place is so dramatic that looking out the windows of my bedroom is enough to make my heart beat faster. The day trips to various islands, which I am coming to know better, hold more mysteries than I will be able to discover. It is as foreign to me as another planet.

Travel Quote No. 1: “Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.” – Paul Theroux

I can hardly say I am an extensive traveler compared to many, but constantly moving though places often gives me only a glimpse of life with which I use to make wild and sweeping conclusions. Staring out the window of a train, it is easy to see a village and make a judgment about an entire country. It’s easy to think in my language and feel apart from it all, just an observer.

I am happy that I am here long enough to be able to become part of the community. There are progressive things happening here. Antarctica is one of the greatest places on earth, not just because of its physical beauty, but because of the science that brings humans here. People from all over the world come here to research the ocean, the cosmos and the human psyche. Though we are all dependent on the whims of our home-countries, living here often creates the illusion of world peace. We study penguins and global warming, the beginning of our universe and the impact of tsunamis in the South Pacific. Everyone here is a transplant, a high percentage of whom hope to bring findings back to the real world and make some type of change.

Of course there are downsides. And points to be entirely critical of, but I’ll have to save those for another time…