deep breath.

sigh.

relax.

the transition is done - after four days on the coast of antarctica, hanging out in mcmurdo, countless hours of flights and many, many nights in between this summer and home i’m here. my old room beckoned, the station is familiar as always, the friends as welcoming, the place as exciting, the horizon line as steady, the sky as blue, the south pole as it always has been.

i haven’t made a solid home - a place of my own - in over three years. everything has been a transitional lifestyle, a job or a home that lasted for no more than a few months. at the pole, however, there is consistency and familiarity, a return to the same faces and spaces that leave me comfortable. and this time for a year… it will be the longest i’ve lived in any one place since 2001 and, assuming that my dreams don’t change in any exceedingly large fashion, the beginning of settling a little more regularly.

it’s a grand adventure about to start, filled with the myriad mix of emotion that place it as perfection for the challenge it will be.