Meet the volunteers joining ANSMET’s 2023-2024 field team! From left to right, Lauren Edgar, Minako Righter, Daniela Hernandez, Erin Gibbons and Robert Citron. Not shown is Jon Friedrich. There’ll be more about all of them later in the season.
There’s no single word in English (that I can find) describing a moment when something tenuous and immaterial becomes reality; but I need one, since that’s what happened last weekend. ANSMET leadership and the 2023-2024 field team gathered in Cleveland for this year’s Bootcamp, which ran from mid-day Friday through mid-day Sunday. This was the first time we’ve held our Bootcamp since 2019. I think we all can agree that the world has changed a lot since then; Bootcamp has always served as a reality check for the upcoming ANSMET field season, so preparing and running it this year was all kinds of scary and exhilarating and energizing after 4 years without it. In the end it came together beautifully, and represents a very important step toward the revival of ANSMET’s fieldwork.
And it felt like a revival to me. Speaking as the individual who most often sermonizes about the value of ANSMET, there was a strong sense of the evangelical, reminding ourselves why we’re important, reminding ourselves why the risks and challenges are worth the rewards, and welcoming eager new faces to the flock.
It all started late on Wednesday, when Jim, John and Brian arrived in Cleveland. I had to come back into town as well; I had spent the afternoon in Pittsburgh at the 2023 Geological Society of America Annual Convention. Thursday morning the four of us met at Case to finalize the bootcamp agenda and physically pack up and move everything we need for the bootcamp to Case’s University Farm, affectionately known as Squire Valleevue. Bootcamp’s home since its inception has been a comfy, quaint little building on the farm grounds called the Pink Pig; and yes, it was a pig barn long ago. Scale-wise it fits our needs really well; big enough to let people spread out, but small enough that we are were forced to get to know each other. Bootcamp, like the fieldwork, is a paradoxical mix of isolation and forced togetherness.
By early afternoon on Friday the remaining folks had made their way to us. After some detailed introductions we dug into the formal agenda. The first day is mostly about the pre-season- preparations for travel, dealing with the myriad USAP requirements around IT and health, and establishing some shared behavioral expectations. Dinner was a model Antarctic meal, prepared by yours truly while discussing the importance of food in the field, the challenges associated with food (and water) planning, and how we go about acquiring groceries. After dinner comes one of the highlights of the Bootcamp, a fashion show that demonstrates both issued and recommended field gear, and always leads to a rich discussion of priorities and personal preferences.
Setting up a Scott tent for beginners. The threat of rain led us to use a barn as our faux campsite this year; two of the newbies spent Saturday night enjoying the first of many in those familiar yellow walls. From left-to-right, John Schutt, Michael Kelley (ANSMET’s Program Manager), Lauren Edgar, Erin Gibbons, Daniela Hernandez, Robert Citron, Jon Friedrich, my butt (behind tent) and Jim Karner. Brian Rougeux is inside the tent .
Saturday’s agenda broadly covers living and working in Antarctica, both in McMurdo and in the deep field. In the morning the discussion is about expectations for McMurdo, from arrival to the work load, the relentless training to cargo handling and our relationship with USAP and their contract personnel. After lunch Brian led a detailed discussion of field safety; the challenges we’ll be facing and how ANSMET tries to minimize those risks. The discussion was wide-ranging, from hazards associated with the cold and the environment to those due to human behavior. Inevitably there’s a fair number of “war stories” describing times when ANSMET has had to deal with challenges and/or emergency situations. The good news is that our careful preparations have led to only a few such situations, and ANSMET has a superb safety record after hundreds of thousands of miles of travel and tens of thousands of person-hours operating in one of the world’s most difficult environments.
Saturday afternoon ends with another favorite moment of the Bootcamp, a simulated shakedown. Attendees get up close and personal with a Skandic SWT snowmobile (the same model we use in the field) and we walk-through the procedures for setting up camp. As in previous years, two of the newbies are invited to spend their first night in a Scott tent, giving them a feel for the living space they’ll enjoy while in the field and encouraging them to think about the limits (in terms of safety and personal space) and perhaps even new dimensions in interior design.
Dinner this year was a trip to a local asian hot-pot restaurant- not quite an antarctic meal, but it certainly followed my preferred “stew-like” theme for such meals. Upon our return to the Pink Pig, the evening’s discussion focused on personal wellness and the related challenges associate with ANSMET fieldwork. Topics like homesickness, maintaining one’s physical, mental and emotional health, issues with alcohol and other dependencies, maintaining constructive communication and open leadership were all addressed. All of these things can be a particular challenge when in isolation, making such discussions particularly important in contributing to ANSMET’s success.
Sunday morning brings the bootcamp to a close, and fittingly is dedicated to a discussion of the scientific importance of ANSMET and detailed plans for the coming field season. The discussion begins in a general sense, with an evaluation of what’s led to ANSMET’s historical success, and how this year’s activities will continue that. We talk about how we search, how we identify meteorites, the protocols for recovering individual specimens, and what happens to them after recovery. And finally, we discuss the work that remains at this year’s primary target, the Davis-Ward icefields. You can find a detailed discussion of those plans here.
Time will tell, of course, whether the 2023 ANSMET field season will be successful or not; but I’m happy to declare that Bootcamp was definitely a success from the view of leadership. Bootcamp isn’t about memorizing a thousand things related to the fieldwork or testing people; it’s about putting key aspects of the work into everyone’s minds in a friendly way, introducing things to our newbies for the first time, and refreshing our veterans on our practices and priorities. Our goal for the Bootcamp experience is to let it all seem at least passingly familiar when everything come back up again for real in just about a month.
Fingers crossed, everyone! The journey continues!
-Ralph, from obnoxiously warm Cleveland OH (pictures courtesy of Minako Righter)