Week 18: Sa 24 February 2018, 15:42. “Little Chile” aka Guillermo Mann Chilean Base, Cape Shirreff, Livingston Island, Antarctica

Here I am in Little Chile, proofing data in the depths of Microsoft Excel while drying my face of tears. The “Lord of the Rings” soundtracks are what kept me ticking through the studies of college life, and today they’ve carried me along through Rite in the Rain notebooks of data. Let me explain.

Unfortunately for my health, we’ve discovered weaknesses in the structural integrity of our camp over the last week. With near 100% humidity, sections of plywood wall and floor have rotted over the years. Adam found a hole in the wall a few days ago, so we removed Adam’s entire bed – the bunk below mine – to realize that an entire corner had multiple rotten sections with mold growth.

Over the course of the days when we were exposing rotten areas, I noticed I’d managed to develop a cough. It would have been bizarre for me to have somehow caught a cold, since nobody else has been sick and we’ve shared all of our germs here, so we think my body is fighting with mold spores. Lucky me.

As a result, I’ve been holed up in Little Chile with a laptop of data, a laptop of music, and multiple mugs of tea today. The rest of the crew has taken on the role of demolition crew as they cut out the rotten areas, deep clean, dry, and piece the walls back together with fresh wood. Since I’ve probably been suffering from the air in camp, I’m not helping with that project.

Being on my own today has been refreshing and quite productive. I’ve been able to stay more focused on entering and proofing data because there aren’t people coming and going around me all the time. Since music with words is too distracting for me, I chose to play my old standby and travel through Middle Earth all day.

There’s an unofficial Guinness World Record for number of times having listened to those 3 soundtracks, and I’m 99% sure I hold that record. College friends still associate me with the music when they hear it just because I ALWAYS listened to it while studying. Because of my love for the films and soundtracks, I can basically watch the movies in my mind when I listen to the music. (How that doesn’t distract me from my work is beyond me.)

Anyway, here I was just verifying which gentoo chicks had received which bands, as the ultimate sequence of tracks rolled along: “The Black Gate Opens,” “The End of All Things,” “The Return of the King,” “The Grey Havens,” and Annie Lennox’s “Into the West.” This time I let my emotions ride along as I listened, which is how I ended up having a good cry over the databook. Good thing it is Rite in the Rain and therefore tearproof.

We have about 3 weeks left before the Gould picks us up. 3. Stupid. Weeks. Annie’s line of “the ships have come / to carry you home” is all too real. Every field season feels like my own hobbit self’s journey. I travel farther away from home than I’ve ever been, spend all my time with new friends, face unexpected obstacles, and have experiences that no one at home will believe (or understand.) I don’t help save the world or anything, but I get to know its distant lands a little better.

Because of those things, feeling the final 30 minutes of “Return of the King” sometimes hurts. Hearing the flutes of the Shire play over the darker tones of Mordorian music breaks me as I picture Sam and Frodo dreaming of strawberries with cream from the slopes of Mount Doom. Seeing the faces of Merry, Pippin, Gimli, Aragorn, and Gandalf when their cheers turn to tears at their perceived loss of Frodo (when Mount Doom erupts) stabs me in the gut. And when Gandalf is waiting at the foot of Frodo’s bed when he wakes up, the hopeful strings and flutes shepherd in all my happiness with the greetings of Merry and Pippin, Gimli, Legolas, Aragorn, and Sam. Watching Aragorn become king, reunite with Arwen, and then bow to the 4 hobbits as the strings crescendo and carry the hobbits back across the map to their home in the Shire is too much to handle. Back in the Shire, I frequently feel like one of the hobbits having a post-epic drink at The Green Dragon.

The problem is, I don’t have a Shire. Being peripatetic in the realm of wildlife fieldwork lends itself to a very full life, but it can also have its times of lonesomeness. My mom, by far the most social of the family, often gives me a hard time when I make comments about how there are too many people in the world and how more animals would be preferable. She typically tosses out a line about how people are important; as her daughter, I perform my rebel role of muttering that idea away.

But I do know she’s right – to an extent. It’s just that the people I care most about are the ones who aren’t content going to an office job and hitting the gym every day. I’m not one to open myself up to people – in part because I figure I’ll be leaving – so it’s the people I spend the most time with, the people with whom I share interests and experiences, who matter most.

Sometime I hope to bring to you readers the tale of my being chased up the beach by a fur seal while trying to maintain a poop squat. That probably sounds funny to you, but my co-workers are the ones who can heartily laugh along because they, too, have had it happen. They’re my fellow hobbits.

As journey’s end rapidly approaches, I can’t help but think of how strange it will be to all have separate hotel rooms in Punta Arenas. All of the former Cape Shirreff techs I know have mentioned how they almost panicked to not know where every crew member was at all times once back in town. I can already imagine how lost I’m going to feel the day we all part ways and I step out of the Hotel Cabo de Hornos to begin backpacker travel on my own. There will be wallowing.