All of us, craning towards the windows to see the ice, the land, steaming Mount Erebus—like giddy kids on a school bus, sitting backwards in our seats, climbing over each others’ laps to see outside. We landed on the ice runway, McMurdo in the distance like a construction town during a Minnesota winter, dirt churned up in the snow.

We walked to New Zealand’s Scott Base one morning, about a mile away. As we crested the ridge dividing the stations, the wind picked up, stinging our faces in the gaps between our balaclavas and snow goggles, making me feel like a kite in my huge jacket. Walking down the hill toward the frozen shoreline, textured by pressure ridges where the ice crushes up against the earth and vaults up a bit, the wind blew snow past us, slithering like smoke on the road. An American mechanic was kind enough to give us a ride back against the headwinds, all ten or so of us piled in the bed of the pickup like red marshmallows. I took my hands out to take a photo, and by the end of that minute, my bones were aching and my hands were so stiff I nearly lost my mittens to the gust as I tried to put them back on.

We climbed steep Ob Hill, spectacularly overlooking the town and the ice runway, struggling up in our ECW gear, crab walking and sledding down on our bottoms in the parts that were too slippery to walk.

Walking back from Hotel California, home to the infamous 24 bunk male dorm room not-so-affectionately nicknamed “Man Camp,” near midnight— the sun glaring brightly, everything was silent but the wind, straight line and brutal, playing with power lines and handrails, sounding a bit like a boatyard in a storm. People struggled by with their parkas cinched up around their faces. I drank hot tea in the galley, getting ready to fly to the Pole in the morning.

This post is dedicated to the four French workers who died in a helicopter crash in Antarctica the day we arrived on the continent. My heart goes out to their families.