A Place of Penguins

From childhood, Antarctica is a continent shrouded in wonder and mystery. A place of penguins, a glittering white monstrosity most often viewed through the wise and watchful eyes of the Wandering Albatross, Diomedea exulans.

With the exception of the few Research Bases that dot its shores and occasionally reach into the hostility of its interior, and the wind that etches the echo of time into its glaciers, Antarctica is vast and silent. It is the coldest, windiest, highest, driest, most extreme continent in the world. The result of endless collisions of smaller terranes over hundreds of millions of years to become what it is today. An ice covered world at the end of the Earth.

As a child, I wanted to be an astronaut. Then, as now, the possibility of traveling to the Moon seemed more plausible than ever setting foot on the Antarctic continent, than ever standing on a glacier at the bottom of the world. And now, what was never even a possibility, what was never even a thought in the dreams I schemed as a child… is tangible. My passport is sitting next to my computer and my kitchen table is covered in a half month’s paycheck worth of cold weather gear. I am going to stand on a glacier at 70 degrees South. I am going to drink water melted from the ice at the bottom of the world.

I am going to Antarctica.

I’ve prepared for this trip all semester. I traveled to England for three weeks in September to train with the British Antarctic Survey and I presented my thesis research proposal in mid-November. But even with all of the preparation, and all of the times I’ve explained to friends and family why I wouldn’t be back in Auburn for Christmas, the reality of the journey I am about to undertake hasn’t really sunk in until now.

Geologists tend to think in terms of things that are big. Big Bang. Big Dinosaurs. Mass Extinctions. Deep Time. It’s difficult in a world as immediate and finite as our day to day lives to grasp the tiny glimpses of the infinite. But the world is a big place. The imaginary lines that bound my world as a child, the Tropic of Cancer, the Equator, the Tropic of Capricorn, are now lines that I will cross. As I cross these boundaries, these impossibilities, the world becomes bigger… and more beautiful.

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My thesis research is supported by the National Science Foundation. The project is part of a series of grants centered around the International Polar Year. There are many people working on such projects. I am just one piece in a global scientific jigsaw puzzle trying to better our understanding of the Antarctic and its global influence on things like climate change over time. The project I'm part of involves an international team of scientists from all over the US and other countries including the United Kingdom and Argentina.

Last year, members of the research team spent several weeks cruising on the Lawrence C. Gould, an American research vessel, collecting rock samples from all over Tierra del Fuego (southernmost South America) and the northern portion of the Antarctic Peninsula.

One of the Primary Investigators on the current project is a scientist at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). This year, my thesis advisor (Dave Barbeau) and I are utilizing our project's connection to BAS, and we are going to do field work from Britain’s largest Antarctic Base Station, Rothera.

This evening (December 11^th, 2008) we will fly from the United States to Punta Arenas, Chile. Before leaving for Antarctica, we will do a week of field work via 4x4 and foot in the mountains near Punta Arenas on the Peninsula Brunswick and Isla Riesco, and across the Straights of Magellan on the Isla Grande Tierra del Fuego (you can see all of the places I’m talking about on Google Earth!).

In Punta Arenas, the United States Antarctic Program will outfit us with all of our cold weather/survival gear. Once properly equipped, we’ll join 5 or so other people on their way down to Rothera Research Station on Adelaide Island, Antarctic Peninsula aboard a British Dash-7 aircraft (December 20^th).

After arriving in Rothera, where ~120 support staff and scientists make their Austral Summer home, we will undergo some onsite training regarding camping on glaciers, crevasse rescue, skidoo driving, etc. Once all of our gear is packed, my professor, two Antarctic field guides, and I will be dropped off via Twin Otter aircraft on Naess glacier at Burns Bluff along George VI Sound (probably just before Christmas), where we’ll spend a couple of weeks studying the rocks and collecting samples by way of cross-country skis and skidoos. We will be camping in pyramid tents at the base of Burns Bluff on the ice and snow.

The planes will fly in to relocate us at least once during that time (to Belemnite Point). After completing our far-field work, we’ll come back to Rothera and take day trips by boat to sample rocks at several other locations (Anchorage Island, MacKay Point). At the moment, the plan is to return to the U.S. around the 1st of February, 2009.

Right now, it looks like I’ll be spending my Christmas and New Years in a tent on the Antarctic Peninsula. Talk about a white Christmas.

Most of the rock samples I will collect will be granites. These rocks, like all rocks, are textbooks of Earth’s history. By studying the rock types, their locations, and the minerals in the rocks, we can learn things about when and how and why the rocks formed, and ultimately things like when and how and why the continents moved, and what these continental movements may have affected.

It is believed that the timing of the opening of the Drake Passage (which lies between southernmost South America and the Antarctic Peninsula) is intimately linked with the thermal isolation of the Antarctic continent, related to the formation of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. This circumpolar current and the configuration of the continents is known to ENORMOUSLY influence the global climate system, not only today, but millions and millions of years ago. The opening of the Drake Passage and the formation of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current are thought to have played an important role in the glaciation of the Antarctic continent more than 30 million years ago!

So, the bit of work I do in the southern Antarctic Peninsula is just a tiny contribution to the research being done by scientists from around the world aimed at increasing our understanding of the Antarctic continent. By understanding the influence that Antarctica has had on past climate change, and how the continent influences global climate at present, we can better understand the role we expect the Antarctic to play in the future climate of our planet!

Here are some of the places we are going (you can see many of them on Google Earth):
Chile
Punta Arenas
Peninsula Brunswick
Isla Riesco
Isla Grande Tierra del Fuego
Rothera Research Station, Adelaide Island, Antarctic Peninsula
Anchorage Island
MacKay Point
Northwest Palmer Land, Antarctic Peninsula
Naess Glacier (70 deg 22 min 53.64 sec South, 67 deg 51 min 22.52 sec West)
Burns Bluff (70 deg 23 min 39.12 sec South, 67 deg 52 min 46.10 sec West)
Alexander Island
Belemnite Point (70 deg 39 min 14.43 sec South, 68 deg 31 min 6.53 sec West)

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When I was home over Thanksgiving Break, my Aunt Cheryl gave me an early Christmas gift. When I opened the box, my eyes met the glitter of a pendant necklace consisting of a tiny shooting star within a circle reading, “Explore. Dream. Discover.” The gift box displayed the quote that inspired the necklace:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do… So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” -Mark Twain

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To my family, thank you for giving me an early Christmas over Thanksgiving Break. Thank you for teaching me to dream big, work hard, and love life. Your constant support gets me anywhere I’ll ever go. I am the luckiest. I love you guys.

Much love and many thanks to my friends for their love and encouragement. I will do my best to bring back all of the penguins I can, since this was the most popular request, with Antarctic rock samples for my geo-nerd friends taking a close second. To those of you requesting ice for their mixed drinks, I must remind you that despite its relative abundance on the Antarctic continent, ice melts, so meeting those requests is highly improbable if not impossible.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

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Off I go, to explore, to dream, and to discover.