Visitor

Having just arrived in the field yesterday and tentatively wandering out onto the vast, Antarctic plateau, I felt the familiar mix of being right at home among the hard, glistening firn, the translucent blue ice, and the broad, flat vistas, and also of feeling distinctly that I am a visitor here. These are not places where people live. To emphasize my alien impressions, we stumbled onto a tiny, coal black meteorite traveler from the nether reaches of the solar system. It seemed to tell me, I am here at your feet, I’ve been here some time and you are lucky to be here to see me. The moment reinforced for me that all the journeying, the preparation and the waiting (and waiting and waiting!) is all necessary – it’s so we can stand in these otherworldly sites, witness that the other visitors are here too, and bring them home.