Ice Shaped Hole

I went against one of my strict rules and looked on facebook today and saw some one's winterover pics from McMurdo. (the picture above I took in my last season). I purposely don't log on to facebook for this reason only, and it has been sad to not be able to use that interface much -it just causes me too much sadness to see it. As usual, I thought I was okay with my current life: just knitting away every day and going to yoga and waiting for it to snow so I can ski. Going on hikes and drives every day exploring the area - but a gnawing black feeling growing in my gut that I am not living my dream. It's very simple, I want to be there and not here. And seeing those photos of winfly sent me down the rathole again. There is no one to blame there is not tragedy I don't have an ailment that would keep me from going. I am now going to focus on re-homing my dog. Missing the first season was a shock and very very depressing, missing the second was having to  make friends with serious low level depression, and now that I am missing a third it just seems utterly stupid to not engage with this experience that gave me EVERYTHING. And everyone tells me it is stupid to not go, especially health professionals. It is the people I would least expect to tell me to give up the dog, but that is what they tell me to do. There is no longer a question that being able to have this lifestyle is essential to my mental health. I actually have thought I might not be able to survive if I can't go back, not without being hospitalized. I don't want that to sound dramatic - it is just the truth. This is the first season that I am not pq'd for an alt contract, so I didn't even pursue a job, deciding not to do it until Fergus passes, but my focus has been too much on just trying to figure out how long he is going to live. I feel trapped, and I did not know when I adopted him that I would find a lifestyle I loved that did not include him. I mean, parents abandon their kids all the time...why do I feel like I have to stay with this dog? I have given him a good 16 years. He was on the chopping block when I adopted him in 1998. I am sacrificing the work I love and the place I love to be with him. Where do I draw the line? Where does the commitment to an animal end when it is keeping you from following your bliss? My fear is that I hand him over to someone and then will feel guilty...but will I really? I rarely thought about him in previous deployments but knew he was being taken care of. I trusted only one set of caretakers, maybe it's time for me to open up to a whole new way of thinking. Instead of crying all the time about this and feeling like a martyr really take control of the situation and find a good situation for him. I have a whole year to do it. I just have to decide if it's going to be a home where I never see him again or if I'll re-engage with him when I get back. The easiest thing would be for him to make his transition during these next 6 months. He is not sick at all. I just know that it has come to this. My isolation an alienation in a world I don't want to live in has me working 1000% harder than I should to try and feel good about myself. It is not working. I have to do the really hard thing now. I have to make a decision about where to leave him, and be okay with it...and when I take him to his new home I hug him goodbye, I courageously turn away, and look with a fire-y love filled heart and giddy anticipation upon my reuniting with my home.

Trails on Mt. Hood

I've lived on the mountain six weeks now and it has been a very a very exciting time. I have made peace with the decision to stick it out with the dog (I think) and not go back to the Ice until he is gone. There is too much astounding natural beauty around me to justify any sort of sense that I am missing out on something. I've never really been a hiker, just sort of done it while traveling or with people I'm hanging out with that are totally into it, but now I've been going quite a bit, ticking off hikes in my big Oregon hiking book, and I always feel really proud of myself when I've done one. Finding the trail head with the goofy instructions and a non-working GPS up here is half the battle - once I've found it I'm surprised how accomplished I feel after I've completed it. I go by myself and I rarely see anyone. On a sunny day I'll go deep into a dark forest - and on a cool, overcast day I'll do the super popular hikes. I've always done a lot of walking but now I'm logging more miles per day. I also found an awesome yoga studio after not practicing for two years. The apprehensions I had about moving here did not materialize: I have more friends and closer feeling connections than I did in my previous two years in Portland. The villages on the mountain all feel like members of a family that I feel honored to be a part of. There are not a lot of jobs up here so that is challenging...but my goal to become a better skier is still a top priority, I'll just have to wait for the snow. I miss the camaraderie of working and the excitement of deployment, but I had to open myself up to the possibility that I could find contentment here. I have one last trip to scheduled to Taos this year, and then my favorite time of year will come...Winter.

A Cabin in the Forest

I just bought this cabin you see pictured here. It is on Mt. Hood, in a little village called Welches, about a hour's drive from Portland. I am not excited about it, but my lease was up, my dog is still alive, and I needed a "project" to focus on as I am looking at missing a third season in a row on Ice. I just found a Kiwi dollar while I was moving stuff, and broke down into tears again (Ice folks will understand). And we are entering my least favorite season where I have to battle with despair and Reverse SAD, so I decided to buy a little home because at least it's something I haven't tried yet in my continual search to find meaning on my off Ice life. 

It was not an impulsive decision - I had been looking at these cabins for two months as they were so affordable and would allow me to work/ski on the mountain throughout ski season, a goal I have been working slowly towards. This one, which is the nicest of all the ones I'd looked at, just fell into my lap at a ridiculously low price, so I said yes, and then had the two weeks of psychotic fears (buyer's remorse, wanting to back out, actually driving for six days to So Cal to calm the freak out down) and now I'm prepared for the move.

The one exciting part of getting ready to go is seeing all my stuff go out of my current apartment. I was not prepared to feel this glee and sense of freedom of getting rid of my stuff. The cabin comes furnished so I am getting rid of all my stuff. I stood, after hauling a bunch of stuff to a neighbors house, with that deep inner brewing excitement and studied it and it was Freedom. Freedom! Not being trapped - which was what all the anxiety was about with the cabin purchase. I am setting myself free by having a place I can lock and leave and don't have to deal with lease signings anymore.

A kid just bought my bed so now I am sitting on the floor...as soon as I move into that cabin I am most likely going to do a really big road trip. The last one was really interesting, as long solo road trips seem to do a really roto rooter on my emotional landscape as I'm traversing the actual one. I mean, on this last trip I would go through the highest highs of excitement followed by sobbing over my steering wheel - just by listening to the random millions of thoughts in my head. I hate summer, so probably need to deal with it by enacting a scenario that feels like I'm on the lam. Hoping to get a passport stamp in this summer too. I'm moving in 10 days and it really feels like the right thing to do. I can always sell in a year if I don't like living up there. A part of me was panicking so badly over this, but it's all going to be okay...I am free, I have to keep reminding myself that I am free.

UAE, p.1

After years of dreaming about going to the Middle East, I traveled through all of the United Arab Emirates, and spent two days in Muscat, Oman. I was too busy to write during this time as I was on this wild & hectic trip with a handful of solo travellers who I met in Dubai, but I will do my best to try and record as much as I can remember of the details. In short: unbelievably wonderful.

When I planned this trip I had had a taste of being in this region when I was in Istanbul a few years ago. There, hearing the calls to prayer from the mosques made my innards all aglow so I knew I had to go to the middle east. I had spent a season on Ice reading Freya Stark's books and felt daunted to travel there alone, but it's probably one of the easiest places to visit and get around, the only drawback being the 16.5 hour flight (and the weather).  I spent 11 days in the Emirates & Oman and can say it was probably the best experience I've had traveling. I didn't even notice the 90F temps because of the rich time we were having being immersed in the culture and being around people so friendly and gracious and helpful that it showed me how sweet the world would be if everyone treated everyone else the way these people do. We only had contact with the foreign guest workers, who make low wages, but they are from countries that value friendship and family above success. There were glimpses of the rich & illusive locals, and they were generous with smiles for us too...20% of their GDP is tourism (only 10% from oil) so even the Ugliest American traveller (I saw them - shudder) is treated as an honored guest; and how we throw money at them may have something to do with the level of service, but their warmth seems to be home grown and real, and it's one of the reasons that the urge to roam he earth is still so compelling to me: I believe that people are good hearted, and I like to find the cultures most radically different from the one I grew up in and hang out with those people.

Dubai was interesting but my heart cracked open when we got out in the desert. I had a lot of apprehension about going someplace where I knew I could be flattened by the sun, but the days in the desert had a sandy haze in the sky and the whole peninsula is breezy so it was never too bad. We were even there for the 12 drops of rain they get each year, and running around in Arabian sand was very fun. It is very unlike the deserts I've been to in the American Southwest,  just a completely different landscape.

Each emirate had it's own feel, all in their own way as spectacular as Dubai, with Ras al Khaimah & Sharjah being particularly memorable. But the most soulful place we went to was Muscat, Oman. We spent two days there & didn't want to leave. I will honor it in it's own posting...but it's 2:00am after I've flown back from Dubai and must rest up...just wanted to get something up while the glow was still on me...no matter how much it costs, every dime spent on exploring is worth all the material things I've given up to do it...this place has pierced my heart, and I feel so lucky to have gotten to go there.

Another Post about Missing Antarctica

I appear to be having a very rich life of late - skiing mid-week for two full days, riding back and forth to the mountain with a busload of rollicking fun people. I am also fiendishly knitting piles of gorgeous woollies that I can hopefully sell again in one fell swoop in Taos. I could have never have imagined that I wouldn't have to go to a hideous job every day because I did it for so long...but now that I don't have to, the freedom is a lot to deal with. Having to fill all this free time is more work than I thought. I have no complaints or worries, and am about to go on my first trip to the Emirates and Oman, and get to live in this amazingly beautiful landscape that is winter in the Pacific Northwest. But I logged onto fb today, which I hardly ever do anymore, and saw several friends' redeployment posts, and felt that giant empty black hole open up inside of me and I'm having to use all my mental defenses not to fall into it. It's a black hole of anguish over not being at my "home"...I've never been through anything like this before; the missing has it's own life.

It has been two years since I last redeployed so I am now accustomed to the ache of not being on Ice. I didn't want to write another posting about this but this is my reality: no matter how many incredibly fulfilling things I can find to do, none of it fills that void. I can coast along for a few months but when a significant Ice date comes up I'm flattened. I feel like I have the wind knocked out of me right now as I just read about peoples posts about flying to Christchurch after a long season. Gawd,  I'd give anything to be there!

At least this ache is not killing me anymore. I just carry it around with me while I'm doing other things (knitting & skiing). I've even tried a bunch of new agey tricks like being grateful for what I have and staying in the present and continual planning of exotic trips, but they are all just a delaying tactic. I remember that scene at the end of the Hurt Locker, when he is standing in the cereal aisle of the grocery store after the intense life he had amidst the violence of war: he knew that conventional life was not for him, so he went back. I am waiting for my time to go back too. I am trying to be a grownup about it, and not talk about it too much anymore, but sometimes I slip up - I spent all of Valentine's day crying my eyes out in the arms of a man who cares about me in a dilapidated hotel on the Oregon Coast...a dream coastline, overcast, rolling dark clouds, grey waves grey sand grey sky, my weather nirvana. The courage it took to move here and be friendless and try and reinvent myself in another place and to make a life that appears enviable in its financial freedom aspect..the exotic travel to Scandinavia and ski trips and delicious rain for days on end...all these wonderful things I have and a man who flew to see me for Valentine's week so we could ski and laugh and drive around and watch movies. He got to spend that day with me after I'd fallen into that holy crap I'm not on the Ice hole - but he didn't shame me or feel left out because on some level he understands even though he doesn't feel the same way. I met him there, and every time I see him or hear his voice my spirit lights up like the first time I saw him and the first time and every time I landed on that ice shelf. He was there and he knows, and even though he doesn't feel as heartbroken as I do he agrees that it was the best time in his life, and being with him reminds me of the best months of my life, driving my loader past the galley while he smoked outside in his chef clothes, waving and knowing that in a few hours I'd be seeing him, and everyone else on station, and then going to bed in my little dorm room and laughing with my roommate and getting 4 hours of sleep a night and going to work every morning in the icy air, working hard, working my ass off. I could never have imagined that I could be so happy, so content. I still can't believe it, it seems like a dream. Like a cinderella dream come true.

Northwestern North Dakota

I haven't been posting as not much has been happening. Actually, a lot happened about a month ago but I neglected to write about it when it was fresh, so we'll see what happens when I try to tell the story from memory...

I had a perfect seeming short deployment contract to the smallest Ice station and everything was a go...except for the ticketing, which I was just waiting & waiting for...then in the blink of an eye the contract was yanked, I screeched into my driveway after hitting a few curbs on the way home during the phone call to Denver knowing the only thing I wanted was to drive like a madman to North Dakota. So I did. If I wasn't going to deploy and go through that glorious period of being shuttled and cosseted jet setter style halfway across the world on my employer's dime, then I was going to do something spur of the moment adventurous, half assedly planned but reckless enough to feel like an adventure, with a reunion with someone I really wanted to see.

There is nothing like that feeling of driving hundreds of miles across the country by oneself. Whole areas of memories emerge in great detail, and little pockets of trauma pop up and seem to resolve themselves purely by just driving with them. I had this feeling when I drove to Nebraska in 1987, as I was really running away from/to something then. I did this trip the same way: didn't have my car checked out beforehand (would have been too mature, made the trip seem less like a Springsteen song), didn't have tripleA, don't know how to change a tire...but I really wasn't worried about this because I was driving on highways and highways are always near services, and I had my cell phone and iPad.

I found out about my yanked contract at about 2:00 in the afternoon and went home to pack my car, get all my dog stuff together, and plot out my trip with my GPS, reserving my first night's hotel room in Bozeman. Mapqest said it was about a 10 hour drive - that sounded doable I thought, ignoring that little intuitive voice that remembered that it always took MUCH longer than the gps said. I was so excited to get up at 4:00am for my trip that I could barely sleep and ended up fitfully sleeping only a couple of hours and getting up at 3:30 and hitting the road by 4:00am. I didn't realize there was so much fog that early! Just getting out of Hillsboro through Portland was incredibly stressful with the fog, and intense traffic heading to the airport for the 6:00am flights...by the time the sun came up I had been gripping the steering wheel so tightly that my hands were almost frozen in that position. The daylight made the trip easy..and once I was over the Columbia River and into Washington state, I felt the drive was gonna be easy. I was in for a big surprise.

After my one & only rest area stop of the day outside Spokane, I noticed something odd looking in the atmosphere ahead. As I hurtled toward Spokane the cars heading the other direction were covered with snow. Cool! I thought - snow! It was cool for 10 minutes and then it was terrifying for eight more hours and two entire more days. I just happened to time my 3 days drive with a severe winter storm that iced over the roads and had blinking signs over the mountain passes about tire chains and winter conditions. As if seeing a foreign language, I ignored these signs and kept driving. I started to see less and less cars on the roads (certainly no ford fiestas) and worsening conditions. I saw that the road was icy, but doable at a very slow speed. I hadn't eaten and needed to pee, but kicked into survival mode & put stopping off the table and made getting to my hotel my only goal. Like a wired zombie I stared at the only part of the higway I could see: the yellow or white line or tiny sliver of road edge which became my only spec of comfort....I saw  rest areas along the way but the ramps to them were white and shiny and uphill-no way...I tried to follow the big rigs tail lights to see which way the road bended, but they drove too fast and I was alone again, going very slowly, driving almost blind, until I found another set of friendly tail lights to hug near. I got to my hotel and when I stood up out of my car I felt I was in some sort of stupor - I noticed it was very cold...my car said 5F degrees. I hoped my car would start the next morning. My little dog was too cold and wouldn't potty outside but I kept running him around until he went. I was NOT going to leave that hotel room until my big drive the next day. Feeling empowered that I had "made it", I felt good about the next days drive, which was twelve hours of clattering across ice and having to hold the steering wheel so tightly so the tiny toy sized wheel would not hit a patch of ice and pull the car off into the black forest or off a sheer cliffside. I accepted my driving fate - I had claw marks in my palms from my fingernails...I didn't stop for food, only ate whatever nuts, candy, donuts was within reach. When I made it to my hotel room my second night, in Billings, my zombie-stupor state was compounded by the number of hours spent in this state of extreme concentration while know I could die at any moment. There were several moments when I felt that I could just fade into the white and quietly disappear...but those were only when I had lost my tiny spot of road I could connect with or when the drifiting snow upon entering North Dakota brought on a new level of fear.

On my third day the roads were still solid ice - the hotels I stayed in were full of people smart enough not to drive, and looking at me like I was crazy when they saw what I was driving. There was a moment when there were no other cars on the road, I was about 6 hours from my destination, it was 0 degrees outside, I had no cell or 3G signal, and realized wiht a heavy heart that if my car broke down here me and Fergus would probably not survive the night. I felt all the emotions I think one might feel upon confronting this reality: shame at not being better prepared, foolish for not checking the weather before hand, self chastisemnet for risking my little dog's life too. Then I saw I sign that I wasn't sure I'd conjured or not. It said you needed to have survival gear in case of a breakdown out here in the middle of nowhere. Even in West Texas you see a truck every hour or so.....but it is WARM there - warm all the time. This was something I'd never dealt with outside of an environment where I was in a big tractor surrounded by mechanics and survival gear. So, I thought, as I was crossing in to ND with a straight shot to Watford City, that this could be it...I felt myself running out of hope and the Ice was thicker and I was having to drive slower and slower and now it was dead of night. Daniel called me every hour to check on me - I felt really supported in that, and when I finally parked in his restuarant parking lot in downtown Watford City I felt the burst of a second wind: I had made it! The place was so busy, so much snow, so many big rigs, so many men in carhartts. It felt like home! I wished I'd just moved here and not had an apt back in Portland...Portland ha! Now it made sense to me why I was so underwhelmed in Porltand. It was just another hipster city...like the one I had live in for 30 years! This, North Dakota, was more like the wild west or McMurdo and just utterly different. A work camp! A city full of men! The reunion with D. was like melting into companionable comfort...like entwined tigers needing their tribe of each other, my last reminder of my last season at McMurdo. I stayed three days, drove around ND a bit, checked it out for work. Got a call for an airport job back in Portland so drove back in perfect roads conditions to train as a ramp agent loading cargo planes at PDX.

Now I'm writing this last bit many weeks later and that trip seemed like it happened a zillion years ago - but the one thing I know is I need to do stuff like that. I need to do a spur of the moment long crazy road trip every once in a while to feel that part of me that feels really alive. When I was on Ice I felt alive the whole time, but now that I'm stateside I'm seeing I have to work really hard to give myself what I need. I don't want to make this post too long so I'll write about the job and other exciting things in the next one...

All This Useless Beauty

Twelve years later in Taos...the same view from the same window from the painting studio in the stupendously wonderful adobe lodge that butts up against the Taos Pueblo. And always a little washcloth, dry as a bone in the high desert air, hanging from a curiously placed clothesline. It only took  about 48 hours for the joy from our gathering to wear off. I changed my ticket to blow off my Austin trip to come back to Portland early, as I wanted to get to winter as soon as possible. It did not disappoint - we went straight from hot and sunny to pure winter. I had an even more difficult summer this year than last year - I have no air conditioning, and was even more depressed than I can ever remember being. I don't understand why I can't just roll with it - I'm looking to move to Alaska next summer, it seems to be the only reasonable option left.

I have not looked at facebook in a while as I don't want to see what I'm missing at McMurdo. No matter how many awesome things are going on right in front of me, I am still grief-stricken that I am not there. I keep trying to distract myself from the grief with a variety of activities and spectacular trips, and even grueling jobs help, but the hole in my soul is there, and I don't know what to do with it. Sometimes I feel very childish and embarrassed that I feel this way - I mean, aren't there a million other wonderful things I could be doing? A friend of mine who just found out I painted couldn't believe that I would rather be driving a loader in Antarctica than having art shows. How do I explain to him that going to the Ice was the fulfillment of every dream I ever had and some I didn't even know I had. Today, I went on a job interview at the airport regarding cargo and airplanes and it all sounded very exciting and with this cold weather even might be a little reminiscent of my old life, and while I was putting on my steel toed boot this morning, I looked over at my little dog, who was looking at me cuz he always wants to go with me, and I thought, I could just toss this eight pound shoe onto this 7 pound dog and could it all be over with  - but what kind of sociopath thinks that way? To be so relentlessly enmeshed with my memories of this place, to re-visit in my mind over and over again with euphoric recall the tiny details of deployment and redeployment, to remember running to the CDC with my luggage on that wobbly cart to dump all my ECW and be free again! And then to start the cycle over 6 months later. Do I love my Ice career more than my dog? Absolutely. But I still stick to the plan of taking care of him til he's gone.

What I miss most is that cycle: 6 months on, 6 months off...no time to get into a rut, no time to get into a toxic relationship, everything has an end date, everything can be fresh, new and exciting again. I no longer thing anything is wrong with me when I feel this urgent need for excitement. I honor it. It is who I am. More Excitement Please.

I just read several stunningly good books in a row: Both of Cheryl Strayed's books, and Philip Roth's American Pastoral. Still reeling from all that good writing. There is so much talent in the world. So many beautiful things being gestured and created every moment - and at the same time dear friends losing beloved pets and parents, and the world keeps turning. Impersonal. Gracious. Full of mystery.

It is dawning on me that maybe it's time for a new dream. This idea just hit me today. It is terrifying in the sense that I already KNOW what is best for me...or do I?...I've been digging my heels in so bratty and tight-jawed, clinging to the past, that I haven't even considered that there could be anything else out there...could there? Could the universe be so full and bursting with fruit that something as wonderful, maybe...even...as..exciting as the Ice could come into my life if I'd just consider it? Well I have to consider it - because I've had my tantrums long enough and I'm sick of myself. It is time to see the world with present day eyes and kick the king baby crybaby to the curb.

My friends in Taos kept seeing me sneak off to my room when I was supposed to be painting. I was sneaking off to knit...I approach knitting with the slobbering glee I used to approach the mirror piled with powdery goods...and I heard myself tell this friend "knitting solves everything"...and it felt really true. When I am engaged in it there is nothing else going on in the world and my brain is silenced. Knitting solves everything...and for some reason I took my first year's worth of knitting to Taos, and sold every bit of it.  That was really great!

There is another hole in my soul that is filled by my parents love. I was with them for 10 days and didn't have to make any decisions and we just ate packaged dinners and watch shows on a massive flatscreen. It doesn't sound like a big adventure, but being with them after moving so far away is really precious to me. A lot of my friends don't have parents anymore. I feel very grateful that I have mine.

Again With the Making Me Cry

The "Grey Thatch"

I awoke to an e-mail from a dear friend (who is probably the only subscriber to this pitifully neglected blog) whose title is also the title of this posting. This was followed by a giddy Skype session, and now my ego is puffed, as it sometimes is, from that rare occasion that these shameless ramblings may touch someone. Inspired enough to write another posting just one day later! I know at least one person is reading now, and many others who google "under the sea floats"....wtf??? And I'm re-using photos from previous postings...

The ecstasy of having no estrogen left in my body! My soul is singing at never having to use birth control again (why are we fertile for 30 freakin' years!). I always knew I would love the crone. I was yearning for the crone when I was a 21 year old punk. I was a "get offa my lawn" kind of gal when I was ripe with ova. I don't hate kids. I just never wanted any. And I really like it when I don't have to be around them very much. Those shortys behind me in the photo are emperor penguins, by the way.

Summer in Portland is only slightly less hellish than summer in Austin. At least in Austin I expect the weather to suck 10 months out of the year. But for 4 months without break here is is white hot sun and boiling temps. I can say it cools off at night here, which is a relief. But I am not doing another summer here-I've already decided that.

required Antarctic paragraph:

The thing about Home is it not always bliss. But people who've been through hell together report the same sorts of feelings I've felt on the Ice. A lot of id comes out on down there...I always tell people: whatever it is in you that you are hiding from, or think you can control and not act upon, or are not even aware of, that Thing will roar up and take over in that remote station bubble. I always am surprised which character defect will get activated, which ancient cathects will emerge, which uber inappropriate man I'll be attracted to. It's shocking, but I go with it.

For G, the only other person I know who grocs this dirty south thing the way I do: I love you!

Home

Ugh - I'm finally letting myself look at photos from my last season on Ice two years ago. I chose the shots that hurt my heart the most because I just had to let myself go there. I like the stormy, dark days of winfly and the overcast days in general, and the top photo is sentimental in too many ways to have to explain. I have an alternate contract, as I did last year, but I didn't get called up last year and may not this year. I still have the doggie to take care of, but I'd give anything for everything to line up in place and have a dog sitter so I could go back. This is the time of year that feels particularly sharp, as this in when the first batch of folks are about to deploy. There was talk of a winfly only deployment, which would have been perfect: I had a dog sitter for the six weeks and wouldn't have to move out of my apt - but I wasn't far enough along in my PQ process to be a contender. There is a chance I will get all the medical appts. done before last winfly flight, and the job that was being talked about would have been  (like everything having to do with the past 8 years and the Ice), like wow, like really, I get to do THAT.

Missing one season is hard. I've done it before and I feel like I'm missing out on so much. I am emotionally crippled stateside as I cannot recreate the social and tribe like intensity that exists there. I was just on one of the more fun trips I have every been on: tweaky busy travel to a different gorgeous Scandinavian port every day, and in the midst of this heady and uberfun time, I would lay in my private cozy stateroom watching the craggy coastline go by, thinking it doesn't get any better than this, but also aware of a deeper, more honest feeling hiding under the lid I have so tightly placed over it: it does get better than this. And not just better but edgier and weirder and so much more badass and wonderful and just more fun than I could have ever dreamed life could be. Somehow, a permission to be this realized, solid me just happens after my first day of station life. I have tried every way I know how to feel that me that is there, here, and I cannot do it. When those wheels of that cargo plane touch down on the Ice, the self that I'd been waiting all my life to meet blasts onto me with icy air. I am home. The Ice, and especially McMurdo, have given me everything. The only way I can pay her back is to just keep going and doing my best to do what is asked of me. I have and will continue to feel like an orphan until I can go back.

Looking at these photos has a profound impact on me...things had gotten better and better over the seasons and and sitting here next to me is the only reason I can't go back: a 15 year old dog who wants all of me all of the time. It is an odd situation to be in, and I guess my only option is to wait.

I have surrendered to the fact that I have to go back to be happy. I've tried everything to try and make myself feel otherwise. The pearl at any price has been found, and I won't ever let it go.

Visual Journey of Norway-Denmark-Scotland Trip

I love being on the ocean

Copenhagen - my favorite city so far

Oslo

Sunset on the North Sea

Bergen Norway

Bergen

Bergen

Skjolden Norway

Skjolden

Alesund, Norway

top of Mt. Alesund

Geiranger - pics cannot do justice to this magnificent place

Mt. Dalsnibba

Lerwick, Shetland Islds

Lerwick

Edinburgh