September 27, 2015: My Greatest Adventure

This feels familiar. I am on a plane heading to the land of endless winter and I am alone. This was how it all began. Four years ago, wide-eyed and hungry for the world, I left home on my first big adventure. I was off to explore the ends of the earth; the sharp drop off between the familiar, the safe, and the nervous unknown. An unexplainable force pulled me towards the edge. I stood there with toes suspended over rock and air and the breath catching in my lungs. 

I turned around for one last look, but I didn’t turn to salt. Instead I saw my past. Piles of National Geographic magazines strewn around an eight-year old girl sitting indian-style on her bedroom floor. Her dark eyes devouring the colorful pictures of a world outside her own. A world she devoted herself to like a religion with complete and utter faith despite its distance. 

In that moment, in that last look, the wide-eyed girl disappeared and I saw the course of my future morph from one ending to another. I was privy to my final form. Instead of an old woman with out a story--bitter from the cruel speed in which life had passed her by--I saw those familiar brown eyes set on a canvas of wrinkles, shining with the spirit of youth. She sat at a desk swaddled in memories so intense that they felt like they were born only yesterday. A pen animated by a leathery hand danced across paper leaving a blue trail of stories. The image faded and there I was standing in the present. For the first time I felt like I was truly living in the moment. I kept my eyes open when I jumped, and they have been open ever since.

Sitting here reflecting I can feel my heart beating in anticipation; the same heart that almost pumped its way out of my chest the first time I felt the bitter air fill in around my body and usher me out the door of the C-17. It carried me towards an intimate relationship with a harsh, yet stunning, land and a tall stranger. I remember it as if it were a moment ago. The glitter of frozen water molecules dancing in the air; the wide towering body of Mt. Erebus exhaling contrails of fumes across the crystal blue sky; and him. I remember David. 

Our eyes met and they were the same--bright, spirited, excited, animalistic. Like the crazy flash of a wolf’s eyes after the thrill of a chase. It was the look of primal fulfillment. We were doing what we were meant to do. We were where we were meant to be. Like the rare alignment of stars, our paths crossed. Time flickered and we were fused for life.

I am not a romantic. I am not a believer in love at first sight--I believe in bodily chemicals at first release--but there was something internal that drew me to him that I can’t explain. He was everything familiar. It was like I had known him for a hundred years, yet only for a moment. David was perfect for a girl like me. I was all earth: changing, growing, and, at times, turbulent. And he was the sky: vast, bright, and soaring. When I was with him I could fly. I did not love him instantly. Lightning did not strike and I did not dance like a dervish, but something deep inside me knew that what was happening was extraordinary.

Every year when I return to the land of sun and ice I am reminded of our first season at 90 degrees south. The memories flood my mind and I lose myself in nostalgia. I remember our first soul-stirring conversation, our first kiss, our first night together--in a dug-out snow cave in -40 degree temperatures. I can still recall the flush of cold on our cheeks, the frozen eyelashes and beard, and the ethereal glow of the snow-packed walls. 

I fall in love with him over and over again. On the most mundane days our eyes still find each other, they lock, and together we relive that first encounter--appreciating our love for the world and our love for each other. It has been four years since I stood on the edge; since my giant leap into the unknown. Four incredible years since I gave my heart to a man at the bottom of the world.

My greatest adventure.