Home

Tuesday morning woke up absolutely glorious. Bright blue skies, shimmering white snows and a knot in my stomach. Today I was going home. Back to my husband and my cat and my garden. Still, there was a little part of me not too sure about all this. I packed up my bags and headed off for breakfast.

After eating we stuck in our last two interviews and finally put our recorders away. And before getting lost in the tedious thoughts of listless waiting we were invited to help do some sea ice thickness drilling. So we hopped into the Hagglund and rumbled off down the Armitage Loop that wraps itself around the headland from Scott Base to McMurdo. We stopped at every set of crossed flags, found the now blown in cracks and set to drilling them. This is a weekly occurance as the sea ice here is known to melt out first and from below. You don't want to loose your Hagglund or Pisten Bully down a crack in the sea ice, let alone your best mate. So we drilled, measured and drove on to the next one. And were home in time for lunch.

After a tasty lunch of fresh salads (remember the C-17 was able to land yesterday), we were back to the listless waiting game. As the kitchen was usually quiet at this time of day, I decided to see if any help was needed and was put to work making cookies. A huge batch of chocolate afgans in fact. Mixing and blending, rolling and squashing and sliding them into the oven. By the time they were ready and pulled out, our shuttle to the sea ice runway had arrived. My stomach was in real knots then. I was excited to go home, but at the same time, having lived here at Scott Base for 3 weeks, it was starting to feel like home too. I had friends and things to do, I knew the places I liked to go to ski and walk and even do yoga.

It's a strange feeling "home". I grew up in the Yukon for 25 years, so in one sense it is my home. But we have now lived in Christchurch for 2 years and it too is home. And after just 3 weeks of time at Scott Base, it too was beginning to feel homey. It wasn't something I noticed in the people who had been in camps, perhaps being completely comfortable you let your guard down and allow yourself to settle in and adapt. Although we generally like think of Antarctica as this distant place of absolute extremes, it is also a home. Not just to the penguins and seals that live there, but to the people who spend much of their lives here with any of the Antarctic programmes. Any place we haven't been seems exotic, but to someone it is still home.

We climbed onto the big C-17 and took in one last breath of cold Antarctic air before settling inside. The door was drawn up and tightly shut and the wheels starting rolling. We were once again in that liminal space between departure and arrival, between home and home.

For 5 hours we thundered along in the sky and finally arrived into the greyness of Christchurch. It was a gentleness to arrive on a cool cloudy evening, as many of us were still dressed in our ECW (extreme cold weather) gear. We were ushered from plane to bus and driven to the international terminal where we joined the line to entre the country. Grabbing my bags from the conveyor, I trundled through customs and finally walked out to a happy hug from my husband.