LC-130
Traci J. Macnamara

I just peed in a can behind a curtain. Drafty and cold, the toilet—literally a big can on the floor—in the back of the LC-130 New Zealand military cargo plane I'm on, lacks charm but gets the job done. This bird's carting me from Christchurch, New Zealand, to McMurdo Station, Antarctica, and after mazing my way through the cargo-mainly other humans and scientific equipment-while wearing a pair of eight-pound insulated boots included as part of my government-issued Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) cache, I'm safely strapped back into my jumpseat, buns still cold from the exposure.
    If the bathroom on this plane-functional, isolated, cold-is any indicator of what my life will be like in eight hours, then I'm beside myself with joy. Really. After spending the summer in Los Angeles and a lifetime just trying to cut the crap, I'm ready for this. I think.
     And then I think some more.
     And then I just keep thinking since it's so loud in here that I can't actually talk to any of the other United States Antarctic Program participants because they, like me, all have little yellow foam earplugs balled up and jammed down their ear canals to prevent hearing damage. The painful buzzing of the propellers makes it tough to sleep, and even though I haven't had my fair share of Zs in the last two weeks, I'm content to sit here wide-awake, as long as I can push my way through the cargo to a window every now and then to check our progress. So far, it's just been blue all around, sea and sky.
      We're all sitting in two rows looking at each other like pawns stacked face-to-face in a game of chess. Although it's icebox chilly in here, we're sloughing off the layers of ECW gear we were required to wear, monster-sized red down parkas stuffed underfoot, goggles, balaclavas, neck gaiters, and mittens haphazardly strewn across the cabin floor. I'm stripped down to my ski pants with a pair of fleece leggings underneath, a long-sleeved thermal shirt, and the boots, the big heavy blue ones with furry sock-like liners. Just in case we run into trouble and survive a crash landing into the icy water below, all of this gear is supposed to help us out. I'm skeptical that mine would do anything but put me out of my misery faster, especially since I've packed another twenty pounds into the pockets of my parka in order to get past the 75-pound baggage limit strictly imposed on our departure from Christchurch.
       Without ever getting paid to do physical labor in my life, I've quit my job teaching writing at a university and taken a job as a General Assistant in the McMurdo Operations labor pool. Each day, I've been told, I'll suit up in Carhartts and work boots and, along with seven others, I'll show up and get assigned some type of grunt work for the day-chipping ice with a pick-axe, perhaps, or painting frozen metal storage units, or delivering fuel to scientists at remote field camps. I don't believe that I've ever generally assisted anyone in this manner, and I certainly have never been asked to wear Carhartts and work boots on the job. But, soon, I'll be joining a population of 1,500 scientists and support staff at McMurdo where these types of things are just as common as suits in New York or flip-flops in Long Beach.
       With nearly every nose stuck in a book right now, this plane's population is more than prepared for a long, loud trip to the ice. Antarctic staples such as Endurance and The Worst Journey in the World, and airport bookstore best-sellers like The Life of Pi, and The DaVinci Code are being given equal attention. The guy next to me's reading stacks of double-sided, stapled scientific research photocopied out of academic journals, organized neatly in the manila tab envelope that I watched him pull out of his pack. I've been eying him suspiciously since we stepped on the plane. Bearded, quiet, and uncomfortably intense, he probably wouldn't be passing the time chatting with me even if it were feasible to have a conversation on this flight. Nonetheless, I decide to start one-on a scrap of paper that I tear from my journal.
       With my Pilot Precise (extra fine tip, black), I pen: "Hey!! What are you reading???" When I pass the note to him, he looks at me, a bit startled, and then writes back in his blue ballpoint pen.
      "Research on snow formation."
      "Specifically-what about snow formation are you researching? Will this be what you are researching in Antarctica?" I write back, prodding for more information, not that I'm going to understand his answer.
      "I'm reading old studies on Arctic atmosphere circulation-how it relates to snow formation-and I'll write a new article on the Arctic research I did in Greenland '00-02. Doing my research at South Pole. Flying there tomorrow from McMurdo-weather permitting." I'm pretty impressed: a "Polie," North and South. Now he's really got my curiosity, and I can tell that he's not quite ready to put off my questioning-yet. I point to one of the names listed below the abstract he's got at the top of his stack.
       "That you?" I mouth. He shakes his head, "No," and digs down a few articles, points to a name, his: Dr. Jack Dibbs, Ph.D., University of New Hampshire. I smile. It's sort of awkward, getting to know someone this way, but I like it.
       "Have you been to Antarctica before? What do you read for fun??" I scribble. His response: "Yes." and "This is fun-also picked up a book at a used bookstore in Christchurch, local stuff." For the first time, I feel like the company I'll keep in Antarctica will be like the company I've always wished I had: interesting to the point of being quirky, intense, book-loving, kind of bearded and scary-like Jack-but willing to entertain the curiosity of others: people who read outmoded research articles for fun.

I can only take so much of The Brothers Karamazov in this setting, so I've taken to reading the cellophane wrapper of my Pam's "ready salted, crinkle cut" potato chips. The Pam's Chippie Trivia Quiz has me utterly stumped with questions like "How much does a giraffe's brain weigh?" ("Only 680 grams!" I find written upside-down on the back of the package), "How often does a gnat flap its wings?" ("Over a thousand times in one second!"), and "How many ants can an anteater suck up with its tongue in 3 minutes?" ("Thousands!"). I'm momentarily entertained, but I've just eaten my flight lunch-a brown paper bag stuffed with some fruit, a sandwich smeared with a strange spread, a juice box, the chips-and I fear that I have nothing else to look forward to for the remainder of the flight.
      Restless, I stumble through the landmines of discarded gear to see if the view from the window has changed. What below was once a sea of the deepest blue has now become a pool of sapphires littered with diamonds, reflecting the sun-a blinding white ball on its surface. I've never seen ice on water like this before; big chunks, jagged like broken glass, are floating on the surface, their white dazzling against the darkest blue backdrop. My eyes are watering, but I don't want to put on my sunglasses, as if viewing the scene below through a darkened lens would diminish its beauty or cause it to vanish altogether. Every few minutes, I look back into the cabin to keep from burning holes in my retinas (if that's even possible, I'm thinking that it would be happening here) and, squinting, I can only see the shaded forms of my travel companions shifting around like kenneled animals waiting for their release.
      I give up my spot at the window and go back to Dostoevsky, who pushes me into a long overdue afternoon doze. The loud engines now humming like a lullaby, I sleep for what feels like days, and I wake to the excited chatter of several scientists crowded around the window I'd been looking out all day. I sleepwalk, heavy boots feeling even clunkier than before, over to the round porthole and wait my turn. When the space opens up, I step out of the darkness of the cabin and back into the blinding white light. My stomach drops at the sight like it does when I ride the old wooden rollercoaster at my favorite amusement park in Cincinnati. Now more white than blue, the seascape is littered with icebergs the size of skyscrapers, tips sticking out to let us know they're there, hundreds of stories, hidden, lingering beneath the surface. Even more impressive than what I see below is what I see ahead: The Continent.
      Antarctica.
     Ominous glacial peaks on the horizon, Antarctica sits, a lonely mass of ice and hard packed snow. It isn't anticipating my arrival. But I'm anticipating a sketchy landing on an ice runway, frostbite, crevasses, killer whales, whipping winds, stinky armpits and lots of quiet time for the next four months.
      I feel so terribly small looking down on this continent, and I feel sad. The last eight hours I've spent on this LC-130 have been all expectation, all excitement. And, in a quick jolt no greater than that of a Delta 747 touching down in Dallas/Ft. Forth, I've been birthed, pushed out of the plane onto this, this ... place where I know I can't survive for more than a few hours in the wild.

We're met on the runway by a maroon Ford van and chauffeured into McMurdo Station by Myrna, a chipper blonde from Bellingham who makes a living in the otherworld by owning and operating a popcorn stand at a farmer's market. We've been plopped down right out on the ice shelf between continental Antarctica and Ross Island, which is little more than a mound of rock and dirt just off its coast, where McMurdo Station sits cradled between some small black hills covered in scree.
      At this time of the year-November, and the middle of the austral summer-it's light outside day and night, the sun a big white ball swooping around the sky like it's on a tether, sinking towards the horizon but never touching it. Thirty degrees Fahrenheit and barely windy, today I feel like I could work outside all day, and I think that being here won't be so bad. The skin I've imagined losing on my nose and cheeks might survive the summer, and, with weather like this, I'm feeling confident that all ten fingers and all ten toes could make it out alive.
      Behind us are some of the most impressive mountains I've ever seen-the Royal Society Range, or the Royal Societies, as they're called-and McMurdo Station is steadily growing larger ahead as we drive from the pancake flat sea ice, groomed as a road for shuttle vans to and from the ice runway, to the (can-I-even-call-it-a-) town. I'm thinking that McMurdo looks like a dump in Detroit. Or maybe a strip-mining site near Pittsburgh. Or maybe just the cargo stash visible from the parking lot of any suburban-based Home Depot. But, this is the hub of United States scientific activity in Antarctica, and as the largest such station, it would not be untrue or overly pretentious to say that this strip-mine-looking-cargo-dump is the worldwide center of polar science.
      Seamlessly, the van transitions from ice to dry, dusty land, and we're crawling, heading up a small hill on the main road-the only road-right into the heart of McMurdo. At three stories high, the rows of barrack-type housing on our right are high-rise. I want to imagine that I'm driving into Chicago, heading up north on the Dan Ryan expressway, that the dorms are the likes of Dearborn Homes. It might be comforting to see something familiar here or even to sit in standstill traffic for a few moments, thoughts flying out the window. Instead of bumper-to-bumper traffic, I'm only eating the dust of an occasional Caterpillar bulldozer and catching sight of stray pedestrians in overstuffed red parkas. The driest place on the planet, Antarctica has the climate of a frozen desert, and whatever dirt is here puffs up into fine particles, inhaled directly into the lungs or caked into clod-like boogers in the nose, making late-night nose bleeds and a dry, hacking cough seem indigenous to the population.
       We round the corner and pull onto McMurdo's main drag, still the same road, now dotted with a number of battered-looking buildings covered in poorly painted sheet metal-a pair up the hill to the left a faded aquamarine, a row of buildings on stilts in the opposite direction, a washed-out, doo-doo brown. We pause, a token stop, at McMurdo's only intersection marked by a red stop sign, plastered with a Revolution Surf Shop sticker, at the juncture of three dirt roads. At 4:30 in the afternoon, McMurdo Station is a ghost town whose beginning and end can be surveyed from here, its dusty hub.
       "OK, guys, here on your right are most of the living quarters, 201 through 211, and up ahead-the big tan building on your right is 155. That's where you'll find most everything you need. Dinner there at 5:30," says Myrna turning around in her driver's seat, big blue eyes bugging with excitement.
      "Alright," I respond, smiling like I feel better knowing this information, but I'm wondering if I really have what it takes to live here, a dirty smudge on an otherwise pristine sheet of snow and ice, without grocery stores, restaurants, and funky little hideout cafes where I can sit in the corner and read books with bottomless cups of coffee. I haven't lived in a dorm since college or group-showered since I was on the swim team in high school. But I've been pulled in like a tiny metal filing whisked into the field of something much stronger.
       We move forward another 200 meters and slow to park near the National Science Foundation's administrative chalet, a small wooden building with a deck and a prime-time, real-estate view of the perpetually frozen McMurdo Sound and the Royal Societies, jutting up sharply beyond the vast sheet of ice and snow. As the NSF headquarters, the chalet receives VIP guests-politicians, government officials, potential donors-but also welcomes everyone else who flocks to Antarctica during the austral summer for the sake of science-plumbers, mountaineers, janitors and mechanics alike.
       "Well, here's our final destination," says Myrna. "Grab your stuff, and Station Manager Jim Scott will meet you for your official welcome instructions just inside. Help yourself to the hot cocoa and tea, then grab a seat." The mad shuffle begins again; parkas zip, duffle bags are flung out back onto the ice, suitcases hoisted from the cargo hold.

Once inside the chalet, we file into rows of chairs which have been set up facing a big pull-down screen, and despite being uncomfortably warm, socks now past the soggy stage, I help myself to a cup of Lemon Zinger, a last-ditch effort to stay awake and alert during what I hope will be my final Antarctic orientation session. Instead of seeing it all outlined in a Powerpoint presentation with neat little graphics and sounds, I think I'm ready to live it, breathe and eat it here, take it all in and feel it with my own hands.
      We're told that scientists are studying, among other things, the hole in the ozone layer, the cold-loving fish in McMurdo Sound, ancient yeast spores in the Dry Valleys, and meteorites which stick out like sore thumbs on the otherwise unlittered ice shelf.
      Looking like he's just come in from a late-afternoon hike, McMurdo summer Station Manager Jim Scott, a fit forty-something wearing broken-in blue jeans, a down jacket, and a pair of hiking boots, takes center stage to offer concluding remarks. His big eyes beam with a real love for the place which has become his home each year for six months, and he warmly welcomes us all back to McMurdo.
      "Oh, wait," he says. "I hear we have a few first-timers on this flight. Where are you? Could you raise your hands?" I hold up my hand and smile, along with Dannie, the other new girl who is sitting next to me. "You two, in my office, and the rest of you are free to go. Housing has got your room assignments, and dinner should be on the line until 7:30. Thanks, folks. Good to have you here." He flashes a boyish grin and waves confidently with one hand before retiring to his side office.
      I walk behind Dannie, a little timidly, into Jim's office. After introductions, he says, "Ladies, I will meet you at 7:30 tomorrow morning after breakfast just outside the dining facility for your guided station tour. Then, I will make sure you meet your employers and that you know where your work centers are so that you can start straightaway. You know the schedule, and although you'll be starting a bit late tomorrow, it will be business as usual the day after that." He says it, still smiling, and welcoming, and nice, but doubts about my ability to hack it here return like a chilling wave of sensation which tingles its way from the tips of my toes to the top of my head, and when I turn around to exit his office, I'm afraid that I don't have what it takes to be like him or like anyone else here.
       I don't know if I can work six days a week.
       Sixty hours a week.
       For the next four months.
       In insulated Carhartts.
       I don't know if I can man-haul a sled or drive a snowmobile.
       Or get along in a group shower.
       I know that I can't build a one-match fire.
       And that I can't survive for long without dark chocolate and good coffee.
      When Dannie and I walk out of Jim's office and back into the center of the chalet, we can see outside through the door, which has been left open by the others, who still shufflle around and chat like old friends. It's gray and gloomy, and the sun is hidden behind low, thick, fog-like clouds. The wind has picked up, and I hear the flags on the chalet deck snapping in the sturdy breeze. When I step out onto the deck, the wind whistles in my ears, and my only frame of reference-the mountains-have disappeared behind the wall of weather rolling in. Without the Royal Societies framing the sky across McMurdo Sound, the continent seems no longer vast or beautiful.
        McMurdo Station cowers in the void.