Burning calories AND keeping warm
From Karen Joyce--thanks Karen!
Who are these people? That's a great split off to the right!
Thanksgiving on Ice
Happy Thanksgiving! For those of you sitting warm inside, watching football and smelling the turkey roasting I want you to send a warm thought to our friends on the ice who are not eating turkey. To give a glimpse of what Thanksgiving can be like on the ice, I'm offering up the first few paragraphs of Traci McNamara's richly detailed essay from Antarctica: Life on the Ice. The woman in blue with the marvelous warm smile is Traci. Enjoy!
We Ate No Turkey: A Holiday on Ice
Traci J. Macnamara
Instead of spending Thanksgiving Day as I usually did in Colorado Springs—watching the Macy’s parade on TV in my pajamas--I was shivering in my work clothes on the McMurdo Ice Shelf, learning how to make a storm-worthy shelter by cutting dense snow into blocks with a paper-thin saw. Snowcraft, as our mountain-savvy instructor called it, was only one portion of McMurdo Station, Antarctica’s two-day survival skills course optimistically called Happy Camper School.
Ululations Have Been Increasing
David Ainley reports that he has just arrived at Cape Royds, where it is egg laying season. Here is the great surprise: penguin populations are going up! David's lyrical essay in Antarctica: Life on the Ice is about contemplating the future of Adélie Penguins. There is a webcam at Cape Royds, which you should not miss.
David introduced me to his penguins at Cape Royds in 2004-2005. He even let me pick one up--they are the size and weight of a large football--while he injected it with a pit tag. Needless to say, I was overcome by the cuteness of penguins. Two of my essays about my time on the ice posted here on the blog and my essay in the anthology describe the miraculous life of penguins that I experienced at Cape Royds.
Here is David's description of what they are researching, titled "Ululations Have Been Increasing":
16 November 2007
We have set out in the 12th year of a project in which we seek to
understand the answer to the question of why Adélie Penguin populations
have been increasing in the Ross Sea since
Polar Disorder
No, don't worry, penguin chicks are not suffering from Polar Disorder. The chick comes from Nicholas Johnson's marvelous website, Big Dead Place, that is dedicated to Antarctica and to thinking about Antarctica. This penguin comes from an essay about the proliferation of cuteness...Nicholas, whose essay in Antarctica: Life on the Ice is about going "toast" offers a real insiders view of life on the ice in his book, also titled Big Dead Place.
At his site, Nicholas serves up stories and interviews and this month Harper's excerpted an interview with "Nero" an independent contractor who has worked in Antarctica, Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the polar disorder...
Nicholas reports from the ice:
I'm in McMurdo, working in Fleet-Ops. Today I'm dozing snow out at Pegasus.