It's winter!

Well, I mean, not exactly--but it's winter in the sense that the last flight of the summer finally left earlier this week, only three days behind schedule.

Now that it's quieted down (station population: 217 for the next two weeks, when the first winter plane is scheduled to come take even more people away), things at the store have also quieted down and I've gotten moved into the room I'll be in for the winter (another post on that soon) and I feel like I have the time and mental space now to take some more exploratory walks. There are some interesting spots around town I hadn't ever stumbled upon before.

I took this picture intending to post in contrast with another picture I was SURE I had taken in a previous season of one of the coat rooms in the central building on station just OVERFLOWING with dozens and dozens of identical Big Red coats. But now I can't find that picture! Drat. Anyway, here is how the coat rooms look now. Demonstrates pretty well the overall feeling of emptiness on the station, which is a little disconcerting at first but also, in the end, one of the real joys of wintering.

And in a more literal way, winter really is setting in, slowly but surely. We're starting to have sunsets! The skies over the bay are absolutely stunning.

The sea ice is freezing over fast, but there are also still some animals close by. The Crary Science Center lab tech for the winter (who I know from past Pole summers) is on Emperor penguin alert for me. The other day, an hour too late, I received an email from her that she was seeing a dozen of them belly-surfing across the sea ice. By the time I got over to Crary to look through the telescopes, they were gone. Sad. But there are still tons of seals hanging out by the breaks in the ice they've created and/or are maintaining, and it's full to watch them loll via the Crary telescopes.

I still haven't seen any Emperors, but there was another Adelie sighting, up close and personal, that I'll tell you about soon. Till then!