Ariel Waldman

It is just wind.

This was actually a really big challenge when making the Life on Earth series on PBS.

So we had, you know, sounds that we captured in Antarctica that I captured in Antarctica.

But

sometimes you need to fill in some of the sounds because they're just not recorded at high enough quality.

And so my sound engineer, Nathan Moody, he struggled because he had to find field recordings of wind going across rocks with zero vegetation, like no moss, no trees, no nothing.

And that was really challenging.

And I think he ultimately found some field recordings by George Vlad that were made high up

somewhere in Chile or something that had like no vegetation.

But that was a really big challenge.

And so, yeah, it's mostly wind and the sound of your own footsteps.

And I've come to really love the sound of my footsteps because you just get to really hear your footsteps across ice and snow and soil and different types of that.

And you get to appreciate those sounds in a way that you don't normally get to.

And so it is it is utterly, utterly quiet.

And also utterly sort of smellless, you know, like a lot of people say, oh, isn't Antarctica the freshest air you've ever had?

And it's like, yeah, but also when you think about fresh air, your concept of it might be distorted by earth.

So in Antarctica, yeah, you're probably smelling the freshest air, but that means you're smelling nothing.

When I come back to New Zealand, that's like in the middle of their summer from Antarctica, I get off the plane and I go,

Oh, finally, fresh air.

And I realized my concept of fresh air is like the grass and the trees and being able to smell like the flowers through the air.