Surprise!!!

I've decided to winter.

I know, I know, you're remembering when I left, how I ranted and raved about how someone had to be crazy, insane even to want to do that. Well Surprise!!!! There are a few factors that go into this decision. Don't think that I've come upon this as a whim. I do understand that there will four months of complete darkness followed by additional months of limbo twilight and dusk. I do know that it will drop to -60 degrees and that white outs are a real threat during that time. I do understand that I will be isolated from the rest of the world with no out going flights and no mail or packages. But even still . . . .

I'll have lived a year in one of the coldest, harshest, driest, last white wildernesses in the world. I'll be exposed to the coldest of the cold and know what that truly means. I'll get to see the stars and the Boris Australis in one of the clearest skies on the planet. McMurdo will become a ghost town, with a population of 200 or so souls, and I'll be one of them haunting here. I'll be isolated, in darkness, unable to leave and that idea seems exotic in the extremes. Am I crazy? Perhaps, I have to take a psych test to determine that. Do I know what I'm getting myself into? I have an idea, but no one really knows as each year unfolds what life will hold.

So with this said, should I pass all the necessary precautions, I will be spending an additional eight months here on the ice and leaving in October. The decision is in God's hands, as they all are and so I pray and will wait to see what happens.