My life seems up in the air in every way imaginable. I received an email from a close friend hoping things would change from a less than average previous couple of years. I replied that maybe this is just how life is, slugging through a boring job, everyday exploitation by powerful, smarmy, and repulsive people and businesses, and frequent disappointments that arise like weeds in a spring garden. With less than a month’s time remaining for my stay in Antarctica, my thoughts are scattered with where I will land on my feet next.
Offers are being presented to me on where to spend some much wanted vacation time once off the ice. One of my best friends here wants me to travel to South America. Another group of people invited me to go to a small island off the coast of Thailand and rent a beach house for a couple of weeks. Yet the most intriguing possibility was an email from a long lost friend in the South Pacific Kingdom of Tonga.

For many years my mind has drifted to setting foot in this corner of the world that sculpted a large part of my thoughts and life. Some dreams do become reality and I am excited about spending time with my best friend from high school, one whose mother referred to me as her white son. From my time immersed in a very distinct and different culture, my mind expanded and developed concepts and characteristics that would help make me who I am today. On what I’ve experienced in life, I wonder how anything can ever surprise me, yet my journey continues to astonish me. Through much space and time, it looks as if a broken connection will come full circle and be reunited. After reading his email, I hurried down to the galley where a screening of selections from the Banff Mountain Film Festival flickered overhead.

This film festival promotes short movies exploring niche outdoor lifestyles and sports. One of my favorites featured a group of rock climbers who embarked upon a national park in the Czech Republic. The caveat was that the climbers couldn’t use chalk or any metal pitons or screws on the rock. To tie off they literally tied knots in the rope and crammed it into cracks in the rock until it hopefully became secure enough to continue scaling the sheer cliffs up hundreds of feet.

The other film named Psyche: Patagonia Winter was a story of two climbers trying to scale Patagonia’s jagged peak, Torre Egger, in the dead of winter. This Special Jury Award recipient was an oftentimes humorous and witty documentary that captured the most amazing scenery and landscapes. So much in fact, that Patagonia pushed to the forefront of places I must experience before I die. Type Torre Egger in Google and look at some of the pictures. It's spectacular. The climbers ultimately fail in their conquest. But sometimes it’s those failures that are precisely what inspire and motivate us to move on to bigger and better adventures. Life has a way of unfolding itself in puzzling ways. And the world presents gifts of beauty all around.

Outside beamed an incredible sun halo. The halo, with accompanying sundogs, are produced by ice particles being blown in the air by strong winds. They reflect light akin to a rainbow when hit at the right angle by the sun. Only rather than arching from one end of the horizon to another, a sun halo literally circles the sun. I have seen others here but this one in particular contained several circles. Some above, some circling the sun, and then a huge parhelic arch wrapping itself around the whole circumference of the sky. Looking away from the lights direct rays, it seemed as if someone in the heavens above gently sprinkled diamond dust from a clear sky. People that have been here for three seasons said they have never seen one this brilliant. But like all good things, it disappeared quickly and all that was left was a 20 MPH wind gust ripping through clothing layers reminding you that you’re in Antarctica.

The temperature saw it’s high point for the year, checking in at a balmy negative 2 degrees, but would soon crawl back up around the usual twenty below. We finished the entire soffit of the station and have now moved up to the roof. The view is spectacular, white snowfields for as far as the eye can see. A coworker told me we have about two weeks left of nice weather and then the temperatures will rapidly change and be back to negative fifty before we leave. And while my time here is beginning to come to a close, who knows what doors will open for me when I get out of here. I have some ideas rattling around in my mind and hopefully I can make them work out.

written by  JCinTheSouthPole on January 10, 2010 from Missoula, United States
from the travel blog: South Pole
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So Tonga might be your next stop?? Wow!!! Can't believe your time there is almost up!! It went by fast! Can't wait to hear about your next adventure...btw, why is it posting from the US now on this blog?

written by  April on January 10, 2010

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