It’s dangerously cold, day and night

The first few days of a polar expedition are usually the coldest and with the sledge at maximum weight the first few tugs over the smallest of lumps seem disproportionately hard.
Trying to describe what it’s like to be here in order to help someone who hasn’t is like explaining what wine…. or beer tastes like to someone who has never touched a drop.

Suffice to say it makes no sense to be here, it’s dangerously cold, day and night  it’s far away from everything I and everyone I love.
Life here on this surface of ice is only ever uncomfortable .
So why bother..?..

Partly out of a sense of duty to serve the environmental cause and a token gesture to science, and that is always good food for  the soul.
This place has the most beauty and charisma of any environment I have ever lived in.

Nothing can explain that it’s just a feeling I have when I’m here.
It is getting harder to be here but the ‘return’ on my physical investment is still the same.

Maybe I’ll change my mind on that tomorrow…