Writing

Hello to those of you still checking this poorly updated site. I have to apologize for not writing for so long. I have finally begun the massive write up for my thesis and feel little inclined to write in my free time. So, rather than discuss our continuing international food experiments (off and on I must admit) or tell you about our various tramps (which I will try to get to eventually) or ramble on about our impending residency (which will definitely show up), I will offer some of my reflections on Antarctica. As part of my exploration of the perceptions of Antarctica by New Zealanders I have been doing self-reflective writing throughout my studies. They talk about where my original ideas and drive rose from and how my research and experiences have influenced and changed my perceptions. It is not often we take the time to reflect on how experience changes our perceptions, but I offer the idea that taking the time now and again can help us understand not only how we affect places or events, but also how they affect us.

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10 Mar. 09

The first time I remember wanting to go to Antarctica was the summer of 1998 when I was in Britain with my family on a holiday. We were in Bath staying in Beckfords’ Tower, a landmark trust property. I had just purchased a book about Shackletons’ Endurance expedition in order to write an essay for a Canadian essay competition. It was a big picture book, with stories and photos from their journey. I learned about how their ship sank into the ice, how they lived on ice floes for months on end, how they survived on penguin and seal meat, how 6 of them made an amazing 700km voyage in the open seas in a tiny boat to South Georgia to rescue the rest of the crew, not one person dying, I learned where South Georgia was. After that, I read South by Shackleton himself. Retelling in detail what this vast and distant continent was for him. And I was hooked.

Growing up in the North, I have an understanding of cold and snow and ice. I know how to make an igloo, a quinze, a snow trench. I know how to stay reasonably warm in -30^oC with the wind whipping the heat away from your body. I have skied on a glacier. I have slept over night in the snow. I have experienced a whiteout. But I have never experienced Antarctica. I know deep down it is different. I know that the experiences I have had will be vastly different from any I could have in Antarctica, but they must count for something. They must have some relation to what one encounters and the other end of the world. In Antarctica.

Shackleton's ship in 1915

Antarctica was always white to me. It was blowing snow across a vast, flat white surface. Even the mountains I pictured were white, no rock, just snow. There were beaches of limited black rocks, but everything else was white. I got these images from reading about Shackeltons’ Endurance expedition. The old photographs of black and white taken by Hurley showed nothing but white on white with wisps of gray thrown in for shadows. Sure there were little people all in black, most of which I later learned were drawn in by Hurley to produce a sense of scale. But it didn’t really matter; Antarctica was this vast, blank continent, filled with the lonely stories of Shackleton, Scott, and Amundsen. I wanted to see it for myself, to experience this desolation, this emptiness, this hollow country of snow.

After our trip to Britain, Antarctica didn’t quite disappear, but it certainly dropped from the centre of my mind. I adopted a strong fondness for penguins and learned as much as I could about them. I read different stories in the news about Antarctic science. But it was all very far away. It felt almost on a different planet. I loved the Yukon, the North, Canada, and I worked hard at learning about my home. About the plants that grew there, the birds and animals that lived there, and the different histories that made it the place it is today. But it’s interesting being raised in a country I know is not my cultures’, in a land that is nothing like the places my grandparents’ or even my parents’ told of in their stories, in a place that is filled already with the stories of other peoples’ traditions and ways of life.

My father was always aware that we were settlers, new comers, immigrants, and even though I was 6 when we arrived and I grew up there, I have this feeling of not quite belonging. I want to go back, I want to raise children there, and make my family there, but I know and always will know that I have a very different connection to the land than do the Athabaskan, the Tlingit, the Gwitch’in. I value and love the spaces and places I have come to know, Egg Island, the 30 Mile River, Magic Pony hill, Lake Laberge, but these are different values and connections than those of the First Nations who have been there for generations. And this is probably the biggest reason I came back to Antarctica in my mind. The idea of tabula rasa that Antarctica epitomized grabbed my mind and drew me to it. As a second generation Canadian and first generation Yukoner, I was acutely aware of my not quite belonging. I longed to feel that deep connection that I imagined the Ta’an Hwitch’an felt for the places I loved so much, I wanted to belong to some place. I imagined that Antarctica might hold that key. Now I’m not so sure that it actually holds the key to my feeling a sense of deep connection to the place, but perhaps it is instead showing me how to belong in the Yukon. I will have to wait and see.

Christmas Reflections

[Christmas family portrait at Log Cabin - 28oC]

This Christmas, Stephen and I received the wonderful gift of a trip home for the holidays. Both our parents brought us over the Pacific and up the coast to arrive in Whitehorse just two days after Stephens' last day of school. We knew we were in for a busy time, but we were looking forward to seeing friends and family and meeting the newest member of the family, our nephew, Kieran.

We had two weeks to cram in as much visiting and Yukon-ing as possible. But where to begin?! There was skiing to do and people to visit, places to see and meals to be shared, we were drawn out in every direction and hardly had a moment to ourselves. Throughout it all, between the family traditions and our own new beginnings, I found myself contending with a new dilemma. The end of school.

I have been studying now for almost two years and here at the University of Canterbury a PhD is a three year program. So theoretically, this will be my last year and after that I will need to think of a new direction. A place to land. Something worth pursuing. And everyone, understandably so, wanted to know what that was. Unfortunately, I had (and still have) no idea. A major part of answering that question relates to where I want to end up, not just what. Our trip to the Yukon was reaffirming both Stephen and my desires to return there eventually, but there were also certain parts of our home in New Zealand that we didn't want to leave behind.

Most notably, the space and freedom to develop in any direction we want. Without other people's opinions or beliefs or suggestions getting in the way. The beauty and downfall of living in a small town is that everyone knows you and the place you fill, making it hard to branch out from there and do something different. It was a strange feeling to come back to the place we had grown up after two years away and be treated as if nothing had changed. As if our lives on the other side of the world were simply dreams that hadn't really happened. But I suppose if you haven't shared an experience with another person, to them it is just a dream, a thought, an idea. And all you are left with is the memory.

[Driving home in the dark]

So with all this mulling about in my head I was lost a lot in the depths of my head. Thinking about life, the universe, and everything. Then, one day, during a lovely, long and lonely ski at -25oC I realized that I was okay with New Zealand being a memory and a dream, but the Yukon and Canada were very much a place I wanted and needed to be and to live. They were who I was, even while I am here in New Zealand, I am Canadian, a Yukoner, yet while I am in Canada, I am only someone who has visited and lived in New Zealand. And that is okay. I felt much better after this revelation and was able to make my way home along the ski trails in the dark to sit in the sauna and enjoy my new found knowledge. Moments of self-realization are a wonderful gift and should be fully enjoyed whenever they occur. This moment was short lived of course as I moved onto the idea of how on earth I would become employed in my small town with my current schooling.

[Playing Puerto Rico with Dad, Andrew and Stephen]

Life moves on though and we went off for a lovely family dinner afterwards and left these troubling thoughts for another night, another ski. Beyond the shady realm of my deep and labyrinthine thoughts, Christmas was filled with skiing, cold weather, family (and all the joys and frustrations they bring), friends, good food and Christmas tree hunting (for a more detailed account of this, please see dad's blog at http://yukonrambles.blogspot.com/2010/12/perfect-christmas-tree.html). Too soon it was time for us to board our plane and head home (at least the current physical one in which our cat lives).

[Driving home to the summit]

Heading South

Well, once again I have been fortunate enough to get myself a trip Southward. In two days time (early Wednesday morning), Stephen will drop me off at Antarctica New Zealand and I will climb aboard a huge plane to emerge into spacious whiteness. This time I am travelling to Antarctica as a research assistant to my supervisor on his research examining the behaviour of scientists in the field. Focusing especially on the choices they make that relate to environment sustenance or degradation.

During my time in Antarctica I will be maintaining a blog for Science Alive, a local Christchurch science centre. This means I will probably not post much on here, but you are more than welcome to follow my adventures while on the ice at http://psychologyinantarctica.blogspot.com/