Last week was my center’s annual meeting, when we bring all (well, most) of our members together for a 3-day conference, to share all of the things we have been doing as a center. Our 100+ members are spread across 14 institutions, and live in all four time zones of the continental US. But we spend a lot of time working together over Zoom and manage to develop great working relationships at a distance, so this meeting always feels like a big reunion.
I don’t have a good image to illustrate this post, so let’s imagine these gentoo penguins are at a conference
This year was extra fun for me, since I am about to deploy for an Antarctic field season. Everyone who has participated in past field seasons was ready to share their tidbits of advice with me, and it was a lot of small but important things that you won’t find on the internet. I have compiled everything I can remember here.
Do a lot of strength training now. Ice cores are heavy and we have to move them a lot. Also we have to help unload the 1000 lb snowmobiles from the plane.
Don’t sweat and then lie down on the ice - you’ll get chilblains on your butt. Yes, chilblains are real and not just some weird disease from Victorian times. But also if you get chilblains, just put hydrocortisone cream on them and they will go away. (Wikipedia says to put garlic on it but I am skeptical.)
Also try not to sweat at all if you can help it. The sweat will freeze. And don’t let your fingers get too cold. The longer they are cold, the longer it will take to warm them back up. If that means you work very slowly, then you work very slowly.
Your big work boots should be larger than your regular shoe size so there is room for air to circulate around your feet. That is what helps keep them from getting too cold. And leave room for toe warmers.
Make sure you get the insulated Carhartt bibs with a front zip, not the butt zip, or else you will have to strip down when you have to pee in the field.
Face coverings are extremely important and no one agrees on what the best kinds are. Trust no one’s opinion and bring lots of options.
The camp pillows they issue are trash. Steal a regular pillow from McMurdo laundry instead. But also don’t think too much about how many people have used that pillow. (Note: I am bringing my nice travel pillow, thankyouverymuch)
Make sure your sleeping bag they give you isn’t too big or else you will be cold. One person had to stuff the bag with clothes to stay warm at night.
Do not put up a flag outside your tent if you want to get any sleep. (Wind. Lots and lots of wind.)
I also learned about the typical field shenanigans that I am used to in other settings, including:
tips about the best place to slide down the ice like you are sledding on a hill
the best way to transport liquor from New Zealand to McMurdo (there was some disagreement here - one person told me to put it in the pockets of my Big Red, another said this was not necessary and also would be embarrassing if the bottles broke)
a creepy baby doll for hiding in your colleague’s stuff, currently located somewhere in the cache of supplies stored in an ice trench out at our field site. (It is my goal to be the first person to find and deploy the creepy baby.)
Unsurprisingly, I also felt much more invested in the actual science now that I am an active participant. Discussions about the best locations to drill ice cores are suddenly fascinating. Data about the speed and direction of the ice flow feel important.
This trip is starting to feel real. I am really grateful to be part of such a large and supportive scientific community. I doubt I’m going to reach a point where I feel completely prepared, but I am getting closer.
Other things occupying my brain this week:
Reading: Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy. I kept seeing this book recommended, I enjoyed her previous book Migrations, and it is a near-future climate apocalypse novel set on a fictional subantarctic island. It’s like catnip for me!
Listening: A couple of years ago, my husband and I decided to become Those People and we bought a record player and started buying used records and insisting that vinyl sounds better. (It’s true. It does. Sorry.) I am slowly collecting all of the albums by The Kinks. Before now, I had really only known their hits, but so far I am enjoying everything by them.
Watching: I was telling someone about the ice core drillers who are part of our field crew, and they said, “oh, like in Armageddon?” Hmm… maybe not quite like that, but I did decide that it is time to revisit all my favorite nineties/early two thousands disaster movies. I watched this one last night. I had forgotten that it was two and a half hours long. The first hour was entertaining, but then there was just way too much Everything Going Wrong in Space. Next up: The Day After Tomorrow. (Yes, that is a real ice core in the first scene!)