It’s The Little Things

In the real world it seems as though humanity has been on the path of bigger is better. A competition of sorts between cultures. Who has the biggest building, biggest roller coaster (yep, had to add the coaster wars!!), biggest… fill in the blank. A world wide ego flex.

I also believe we all buy into it to a point. Participating in the race or watching it. It’s not all bad, but when does it stop? When will we realize that bigger isn’t always better?

I’ve been able to unplug more than normal here in Antarctica. Or at least it’s been easier to unplug! Those of you that know me, know that I’m a bit obsessive over things and have little self control! So being here, where not everything is readily available has been another great aspect. It’s basically real world adjacent here.

Meaning while we have modern means; heat, electricity, indoor plumbing (most places!) and many other modern conveniences people still do things to entertain themselves and others. As I’ve mentioned many times before there is a group or event for almost anything here. If you want something, many others probably want it too. It’s also a great place to explore other things, things you may not think about in normal life.

In the real world there are too many distractions. That is rather unfortunate. Here that can also be the case, but most of us unplug part time. I’ve changed (probably just temporarily) my online habits from doom scrolling social media to focusing on the music I’ve been promoting. It’s a current obsession that’ll overwritten by a new one at some point. But for the time being I and creating rather than consuming meaningless drivel. Ba-haha, now I’m creating meaningless drivel!!

Anyway, the little things here are many and pop up in random places. As I said, humor here is huge. While I hate the term and concept; meme’s are huge here. Many departments create something hilarious to overcome the stress when it happens or just be funny. Poking fun is a great past time and other departments poke back. Case in point; LDB (NASA’s Long Duration Balloon) had some setbacks due to weather and equipment failures. This took equipment from the other two ice shelf facilities: Williams Skiway and Phoenix Airfield. This put both locations in peril of failing for incoming and outgoing flights. But, true to nature a department created a meme about all the working equipment being taken by LDB and the other areas suffering. The posted meme had retaliation by LDB by putting their own sticker on the meme! This was indeed hilarious.

Additionally stickers here are huge. Apparently, those who come to Antarctica don’t get past the sticker phase of life, it’s just becomes mature. Example of a ban sticker: “Get your rocks off at the beat off station!” The story behind that is we have a place at the transition (where the land and shelf ice meets) that we must stop at and clean off our vehicle so we don’t drag rocks and dust onto the shelf. The rocks and dust melt the snow faster. So the vehicle clean off station has a nickname like everything here; the beat off station. And here we are getting our rocks off… making sure we get as much grime off the vehicle as we can.

Walking around station there are examples of the humor almost everywhere. Especially stickers and some graffiti. I posted the photo of the bathroom stall with “Beware the limbo champion.” The next stall over has “Beware the pole vault champion!” at the top of the door!

My humor has been a couple songs: “Ban from Antarctica” and “McMurdo Madness”  both with some truth and some fiction as entertainment. There will also be stickers made at some point. As of now I don’t know what to make!

The scenery, while very monochromatic is still amazing. The day I arrived and saw the mountains for the first time all the way until today; spectacular. Everyday the weather is different and so are the views. Clear days and sunny; 360° views for miles and miles. Snow covered mountains, bare mountains, flat ice on the Ross Ice Shelf… Cloudy days, still great visibility, but everything is flat light and the texture is gone. Low clouds of fog, we are in our own little world miles or light years away from everything. The mental games are fun to play when one can’t see more than a couple hundred feet! Storms blow through, sometimes intense and sometimes they skirt entirely. Mt. Erebus venting its steam or acid cloud, beautiful to see. When the wind is calm the rising steam climbs. Most of the time there’s a breeze and it’s being blown off to one side and fading into blue sky. The changing snow pack, currently slowly melting from McMurdo running down the ditches back to the ocean.

I’m still waiting for the sea ice to melt and more wildlife to come. Hopefully orcas! I really want to see the orcas! On the horizon in the sea ice a few icebergs appeared last week. I’m going to see if I can find a better vantage point to see them and take some terrible photos! I did find a better vantage point. They look smaller!! Weird! From ground level and further away the looked tall as ships on the horizon. Must have been the Fata Morgana making them look taller.

The constant change is awesome and I enjoy seeing all of it for the first time. Today, we have a waterfall coming down the rocks near the transition. It’s New Years Day, 2026. It’s so warm it’s almost resort weather. Tomorrow we have Ice Stock, our New Year’s celebration of bands playing for twelve hours into the evening! I’ll post again soon about that event.