"A man doesn’t begin to attain wisdom until he recognizes that he is no longer indispensable.” These words are by Richard Byrd while camped alone in Antarctica.
Flying above the land and ice of Antarctica you get a larger view of the landscape and it is easy to feel insignificant against this immensity. We got a view of Commonwealth Glacier from the helicopter. Can you see the sharp ice margin that we walked to yesterday?
View of Commonwealth Glacier from the air
We also flew over the Andrill (Antarctic Drilling program) site in McMurdo Sound. Andrill is drilling deep into the earth below the ice and ocean to learn more about past climate in Antarctica. You can learn more about what their project entails here. Andrill is an international project involving the United States, New Zealand, Italy and Germany. There is a teacher program associated with Andrill called ARISE (Andrill Research Immersion for Science Educators) and the teacher blogs are located here. Any teachers interested in coming to Antarctica should apply to PolarTREC and ARISE!
Andrill Site on the sea ice of McMurdo Sound
The sea ice here looks "dirty" because silt blows off the land and covers the ice thicker in some places than in others.
To get back to a human scale, and to gather the human emotions of seeing this landscape we took pictures of each other in the helo.
Nick is pretty excited to be in a helicopter
And so are Bryan and I!
After we landed back in McMurdo, we had to unpack and settle back into the lab. It is nice to be back "home" in McMurdo, but we are all going to miss the beauty and isolation of New Harbor Camp.