Mini Wadhwa (ANSMET Systematic Search Team), December 24, 2012, Larkman Nunatak

…and all through the Scott tent, not a creature was stirring, not even the katabatic wind’s lament!

Actually, there has been quite a lot of stirring on this Christmas Eve here in camp. In fact, it was a regular workday for us today. We spent the day searching a previously unsearched portion of an ice field near camp, and were rewarded with 6 new meteorites. As you can see from the first picture, collecting meteorites here is a collective effort! Although it may seem like most persons in the picture are simply onlookers, each person has an assigned task in this carefully choreographed routine that ensures that the meteorite is adequately described and recorded in the field and then collected as cleanly as possible.

This collective spirit is in fact at the core of the ANSMET program, and what better time to reflect on this than during this holiday season! Every year, typically 8-12 participants on the ANSMET team (usually researchers and educators interested in the science of meteorites) contribute their time for a period of about 2 months to search for new meteorites that are for the benefit of, and are readily made available to, the entire scientific community at large. And it is indeed a gift that keeps on giving – these unique, otherworldly samples that will be available for future generations to study and investigate and wonder at!

This evening, for the first time since we have been out in the field, all eight members of the ANSMET Systematic Search Team, got together in one little Scott tent to celebrate the holiday (see second picture). While all of us were surely thinking of (and missing!) our family and friends in far away, more northerly places, it felt great to feel that collective spirit, that sense of camaraderie that our very survival here depends on.

A very happy holiday to all!!

collecting scene

Christmas!