The
South Pole -- it's there, a great icy, bleak, barren mass, and it's
beckoning to me.
The
National Science Foundation maintains a research center there, the
Adumndsen-Scott South Pole Station. People come and go during the
summer months -- approximately 130 -- and there is a team of approximately 28
scientists and
support personnel who winter there: eight months in total isolation;
no one gets in, no one gets out.
I heard about it
a few of months back, and heard about it again today. And as last time, it fired my
imagination, it beckoned to me, it
called out to me:
Come, spend a year here in my embrace. Come, risk your life in up to 90 degrees Fahrenheit below zero temperature. Come, be a part of the community here. And then return, changed.
I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to go about pursuing this newfound dream; contacting the NSF will of course be a part of it, but I hardly meet their qualifications as listed on their website.
But I shall go. Because I have no choice.
The Pole beckons.