Ariel Waldman

three feet or so and we do that because all of these little creatures like tardigrades get blown on top of the glacier and then get frozen inside of the glacier and yet they still survive so they're actually living embedded in a glacier maybe three feet down and just having like their best life encased in in ice but yeah hiking up the glacier is is really really challenging but then when you need to drill it yeah you're only going like three feet what are you eating

I mean, I don't eat a whole lot when I hike, but I mean, you're always constantly snacking in Antarctica because you can't have huge meals because if you need to then go on a hike, you're going to be completely bloated.

So there's just lots of snacks and they're all like dried goods that are expired by...

Many years in some cases.

So most of the food we eat in the camps in Antarctica is expired by multiple years.

And you're always going like, oh, this one's only expired by two years.

Great.

You know, mac and cheese, M&Ms, Oreos, like your go-to's.

You're trying to decide which one is the most recently expired.

And then you're also trying to decide which ones will not taste disgusting.

Like if you taste something and it has no flavor, you've won.

If you taste something and it really tastes like it expired, which happens, like it is disgusting.

It's terrible.

Yeah.

Get used to eating expired dried goods.

I was really excited last time because I found a pack of peanut M&Ms that was only eight months expired.

And I was like, yes.

So around the sea ice, yeah, you get like penguins, you get seals, you get orcas, you get cool sea spiders and all sorts of things.

But further inland where I work in the dry valleys, then you're in a weird place where penguins and seals cannot survive.

And in fact, it's so strange because any penguins or seals that mistakenly end up in the dry valleys end up dying there.