Before leaving port, I gather with the rest of the members of the expedition in a mustard yellow warehouse to receive our ECWs, or extreme cold weather kits.
“Zippers break,” some bearded guy says as he hands me an orange duffel bag stuffed with dozens of articles of government-issued outerwear, many of them duplicates. Where we are going there are no stores, no Amazon deliveries, no ways of replacing something that fails. If it breaks, we’ve got to mend it or hope that we brought along a suitable backup.
The oldest woman in the group leans over and whispers in my ear, “Try everything on to make sure it fits.” Then she disappears into the communal changing room, which is really just a couple pieces of plywood tacked together. I follow her inside, pull a well-worn pair of work pants the color of pond scum from my bag. “Nothing like a pair of Carhartts to remind you that you have an ass and most men don’t,” I say to the women around me. Tasha Snow, the media coordinator, is already halfway through her pile. When she steps into a pair of rain pants and pulls out the bib, I laugh. It appears as if two of her could fit inside.
The first person to see Antarctica did so just over two hundred years ago; for most of the short span of time between then and today, women were all but forbidden from the ice. In the clapboard dressing room, I wondered whether the government hoped, even if only in a sideways manner, that our bodies would disappear beneath the bright orange “float coats” and PVC bibs they issued. Our unisex “uniforms” were meant to keep us safe, but from what?
The next evening, I head to the Bridge to watch the ship set sail. I expect the captain to ring a bell or blow a horn, or for someone to smash a bottle of champagne on the bow. Instead the thrusters turn on, a few lines are tossed, and our contact with South America is no more. The Palmer slides out from her parking spot and steams east, through the Strait of Magellan. I stand there, on the bridge wings, for a long time, hands clenching the metal railing, cold pulsing into my palms. I have no idea of whatever it is I have gotten myself into. On the back deck over a dozen people have gathered to watch the ship leave port. Seeing them, my stomach drops: These strangers and I are sailing toward Antarctica together now. We are all we’ve got.
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