Bonus Ep: Amy J. Brummit - Amundsen-Scott Resident

0:27Hello and welcome to episode seven of something about the ice. We have a very special episode to share with all of you today, and we couldn't be more excited. I'm your host, Erin McCann, and I'd like to welcome you to our very own behind the scenes podcast. Joining me as always today, our podcast, Trent Shumway and Brian. Now, normally at the start of our episodes, we kick things off with a little chit chat and banter about what's going on in our lives before we introduce you to our mystery guest and then dive into an episode recap. Today, we want to make the most of our limited and valuable time that we have with our guest, and it is my pleasure to introduce all of you to her now.

1:06Explorer, scholar, artist, educator, conservationist, mariner, adventurer. Our guest has journeyed to more than 100 countries across the globe and worked in some of the most challenging and beautiful places on earth. She has collaborated with renowned organizations, including National Geographic, Habitat for Humanity, and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. And that just scratches the surface. What truly captured our attention, though, was her time on the ice. She spent multiple seasons living and working at every U.S. Antarctic research station, McMurdo, Palmer, and, of course, a Munson Scott South Pole station.

1:48Friends, it is my absolute honor and pleasure to welcome to the show, Miss Amy J. Brummett. Amy, we are so happy you're here. Thank you so much for agreeing to share your experiences with us. Well, hello, everyone. It is quite a pleasure to be here, and I really appreciate that introduction, Erin. I have to now live up to everything that you just said in the next hour, right? No doubt that you will. No doubt. That resume is pretty impressive and very varied. It is. It is. Yes, I've heard that before. It is definitely. It is definitely varied. It's funny, though, at this stage of life, when I look back on it now, I do see a common thread with all of it.

2:34So a lot of it has to do with connecting and connection, right? Whether I'm working to connect with nature or other people around the world, other cultures, other countries, different sorts of science, obviously, in Antarctica. connecting with yourself, right? When you break out of that comfort zone and go into situations that are a little scary, you find that you connect with yourself in ways that maybe you wouldn't otherwise. So there is a little bit of a thread that goes through all of that. I love it. One journey leads to another. Now, before we started, Brian mentioned that you're in another very exciting and very exotic part of the world.

3:18So before we really dive into your time in Antarctica. Tell us a little bit about where you are and what you're working on right now. Yes, I am currently in the Democratic Republic of Congo, smack dab in the middle of Africa. Some of you, if you're readers, you maybe know the famous novel called The Heart of Darkness, which was about the DRC. I'm in the capital city called Kinshasa, and I'm currently working a contract in education. I'm doing a teaching contract. So you will also know with all of that, all of that list that Aaron stated of my resume is that I do a lot of work that's contract work.

4:01So very different than maybe what a traditional job or career looks like for people in the United States where I bounce around all over the place and work different contracts with different links. They could be anywhere from weeks to several months to even a few years. So it depends. I just think that is the coolest adventure. Like you're a true citizen of the world. And I'm now feeling just this absolute compulsion to just go somewhere and do something wild.

4:32Amy J. Brummit:Yes. Do it. Do it. In fact, if that's the biggest takeaway today, that's a little bit outside of your podcast, then I feel like that I've done a good job if I inspire some folks to get out there and go see something new. Absolutely. Well, we definitely want to hear about your time on the ice. So we have a ton of questions. Some of them are from the people here in this room. We also have some listener questions. We have a really dedicated listener base. So if you don't mind, we're just going to jump into some of those questions. Is that okay? Yeah, that sounds great. Fantastic. Okay, so what was your job at the three Antarctic stations and how long were you at each one of those postings?

5:13Oh, so let's see. It varies quite a bit. And each station, I know we'll talk about this a little bit, how they are alike and how they're different. So I have spent, I spent one summer season at Palmer Station and that's a six month contract. Palmer is the one that's on the peninsula of Antarctica. And then I spent the majority of my time at McMurdo Station. I did two winters there. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yep. The old Mac town. And I spent two winters there so we could dive a little bit into what it's like to winter as well. And I also spent, what did I spend there? Two summers. and then I spent a summer at your famous location the South Pole Station and I also was working for the United States Antarctic Program this past winter in the Arctic so I was up in the Arctic Circle at Summit Station and that wintertime darkness and that was a unique experience because there were only five of us there for the entire winter.

6:29So yeah, so there's a lot to say about that. Okay, kind of a silly question. I'm so I'm in Texas, which means I'm fairly close to the equator. So we have fairly equal kind of summer and winter seasons as far as the amount of light. How long is a winter season or how long is a summer season? Yeah, great question. Again, it depends on where you are on the continent. So the longest and the darkest is the South Pole. So you get a solid six months of darkness and then obviously a solid six months of light there at the South Pole station. At McMurdo, we get four months of darkness, four months of light.

7:15The coolest thing I like to explain when I try to try to spell this out for people, because it's obviously very hard to wrap your head around, is that we are used to one sunset and one sunrise every 24 hours. Whereas there we have one sunset and one sunrise every 365 days. So once a year. So for example, I did 14 months at McMurdo station, which meant that basically you have four months of light, then two months of a sunset. Then you have four months of complete darkness. And then you have a two month long sunrise. And it literally takes that long for the sun to rise and for the sun to set.

8:05Amy J. Brummit:I have to imagine that is the closest thing we can be to, to, um, you know, being on an alien planet is to see, you know, just like you said, the, the constant sunrise or sunset for money, you know, never up or down. It just, it must be a one. I have to imagine you've got plenty of photos of, uh, that sunrise and sunset. You have someone. Oh, it's okay. So he, he can tell I'm on, he sees that I'm on something. something. Sorry, listeners. Someone came into my space. We're all good. All good. I feel like that must be so disorienting. That was my question, actually. I was just like, how quickly does your body adapt to that?

8:49Yeah. Great question. Some people have a harder time than others. So some people really struggle, more so in the darkness, where either they get what we would call cabin fever. They start to, they can start to go a little cuckoo. Some just have the problem of their sleep being so messed up and they'll be going days without sleep and they're, you know, sort of losing their mind in a way because of that, obviously. But everybody's different and you don't know how you're going to react to it until you do it. And so when I try to explain to the general public, I actually preferred the winters. I prefer the darkness.

9:32And that's really hard to explain. The best way I've come up with is that picture yourself, say, at a ski resort, and you're in one of those big lodges, and it's that beautiful snow outside, and you're inside snuggled up in front of the fire, and you've got a soft blanket and a hot drink, and you feel so cozy is the best way that I can describe the feeling that I have when I'm wintering in either the Arctic or Antarctica.

10:02Amy J. Brummit:Well, if I wasn't sold going down there before, you want to go during the winter. Oh, absolutely. Winter over. Sign me up. Sign him up. Well, you have to get good connectivity, Brian, because we need more seasons of this show. So you can go, but you have to keep writing. Yeah. And good luck with that because you probably you i'm brian i think you know i mean i feel like like like you said you know so much about that we only have internet down there when it's certain satellites satellites above us and so we now they do they do a great job with tracking those times so we know in the galley yeah yeah you know the in the galley how we've got the oh yeah the the monitor that tells telemetry and how long yeah yeah exactly um so you can you know you can make plans with that but sometimes it's the only time you've got connectivity is in the middle of the night and obviously we work really hard there so you want to sleep in the middle of the night sure absolutely and i know you there is time is very um relegated down there just because a lot of people like you were on a contract or you have you know people trying to justify their grants um so you know goofing around shall of course it's going to happen but yeah they try to keep it to a minimum so they can justify their budget especially with you know any any taxpayer money any university monies uh or any any corporate monies i will say that was what because i want this to be realism but the the purpose or the the vehicle and how the story gets to the people is it's all through the lens of a body camera of the deputy marshal who is down there.

11:42Amy J. Brummit:The internet was going to be an issue. So I had to come up with a way that the bogus government funded company, like the Lockheed Martin, we call them Beauregard Lowing, put satellites in orbit called the Lifeline Satellite so that it would be more reliable, but nowhere near fiber internet or anything like that just to to you know keep that realism i'm sorry i'm gonna stop peeking out no i love that i love that that you took that you worked that realism into there that is great that is great i would i will say that there was probably and obviously i won't tell details but there was more goofing off quote unquote back in the days before cell phones right before people were everyone became a journalist right right before the the evidence could be placed all over the internet so i would say there was there was more goofing off in that time and uh yeah maybe a little bit more discreet in today's world just to bring our listeners along when we were kind of warming up and before we started recording um amy was kind of telling us about different aspects of the station and and brian already has done so much research as you all know from the detail of the show but brian already knew everything that she had mentioned so brian is our second expert on the show today stop no yes he is yes he is stop all right speaking speaking of research sorry no please please speaking of research then amy because i imagine you don't go into this blindly You clearly know as you're going into this, the kind of sacrifices one has to make.

13:22How do you prepare yourself for this? Do you even have any cohorts, any friends who are going to be there? Or are you going in? It's just you. And you're just prepared to spend this 14 months of your life literally on an alien planet, like Brian was saying. Right, right. Trent, that's a great question, too. I will have to say that my personality is actually one that I do dive in sometimes pretty blind into situations. I will, I will take those. Yeah. Dive head for, yeah. I will take those. But I kind of like Brian, actually, when I look back before I finally got hired there, because it took me a while to, to actually get a contract there.

14:09And I was like, Brian, I was scouring the web, YouTube, reading every possible book out there, trying to gain as much information as possible. And in my circumstances, I knew about it from the perspective of people who are seasonal workers. So people who, for example, I worked at ski resorts. So you work in the winter season. And then in the summer season, you might do a job like I used to be a whitewater rafting guide and a sea kayaking guide and work jobs of that nature seasonally for the benefit of not only the jobs are really great, but for the benefit of having big chunks of time off to travel.

14:53So I learned about it through that lens, which is a different lens than, say, for example, researchers that are that are employed at a university. Um, and so I knew, knew from that sort of lifestyle and knew from people who had done it and were working other seasonal jobs. I had a, you know, a pretty good idea of what it most likely looked like. Now, of course, with anything in life, there's, there's things that you don't know until you get there. Sure. Sure. But that's, that's part of the adventure. I imagine the uncertainty. It's like, but now of course, as, as you're revealing additional jobs you had, it's like, god i need to have more adventure in my life yes same i'm just a desk jockey for god's sake i think you're probably selling yourself short you all probably have more adventure in your life than what you realize like raising kids that is quite the adventure oh yeah it certainly can be amy tell us about your first impression when you stepped off the plane at the pax terminal and saw the Edmondson Scott station for the first time?

16:03Well, I love that question when I saw that previously, because so to give you a little background into our world there for, for, for decades, it was almost impossible to get to either Palmer station or Edmondson Scott South Pole station. If you were working at McMurdo, it was the, the, the top dogs, like it was a position of prestige. It was one that you had put in enough time and proven yourself at McMurdo Station to get to those other stations. And so when I first started at McMurdo Station, I basically learned that it was probably going to be impossible to get to either one of those other stations.

16:52And you really, you start to, well some of us that it's important to you start to try to kind of figure out the ins and outs and who to talk to who are the people that might be able to help you get there even to get there as what we call a boondock where we do a um you get like a little special treat for being an exemplary employee where you get to go to places like you might get to go to the dry valleys if you know about the dry valleys. You might get to go for like literally a 12-hour stint to the South Pole Station. So you start to sort of figure out, okay, who do I need to connect with? What do I need to do to get there?

17:34So I had a very laser-focused drive to get to those other two stations and get contracts there. And I was really fortunate. And when I do try to explain this to some people, like when I work on the National Geographic ships and we give talks about where we are and when I'm in Antarctica, I explain to them that, hey, it's unusual. Most people are not able to work at all three of the U.S. Antarctic stations. So I had been dreaming of that moment for a long time. And when it finally happened, like right now, Brian, what you said earlier,

18:16Amy J. Brummit:I'm getting goosebumps, goosebumps, goosebumps. When I, when I stepped off that plane, I mean, I was speechless. I was so, I mean, you know how life is when you, when you finally reach something, a goal, a summit, something, when you finally reach it, that you, you, you're not even sure how to to be in that moment and I think that's all that's also a reminder like you always try so hard to be present in that moment so I was um just elated and of course the the cold it's much colder there than it is at Murdo and so that sort of knocks you off your feet a little bit um but I was just like a little kid on Christmas morning that's probably 90 degrees south i have a follow-up question so what what hit you hardest upon stepping off the plane was it the cold or the altitude or both oh oh great question immediately it was the cold immediately uh the the the altitude hit me within probably oh maybe a couple hours where i started to feel a little bit lightheaded started to feel that almost it's kind of strange because you feel lightheaded but at the same time your body sort of feels really heavy so so it is a strange feeling um i was taking is it diamox i hope i'm saying the right medication um it's it's diamox that we take for and i've taken that with with other um altitude situations like summiting high mountains Kilimanjaro um so going going high in altitude I've used Diamox one other time because I do I do uh mountain climbing but I didn't like I mean casually throws that in like in my spare time I also climb mountains cool it's actually make mountains too I mean I read books but some people go in there all right guys we got to cut the shirt I'm going to be going to the Mariana a treasure in about 30 minutes so yeah brian's off on an adventure now i love climbing mountains but um so yeah so i had taken diamox when when i was in the himalayas and i one time and i did not like the side effects it's really strange side effects you get like all these tingles in your fingers and your toes and you have to go to the bathroom constantly diuretic diuretic yeah um and so i was hesitant to take it but people who had been to the south pole station they they advised us to take it so i thought well i'll start out taking it and see how i do and i am really glad i did so we take it for about four days and that helps you acclimate and then you just sort of wean yourself off of that and and then some of us again same thing where some people adjust to it.

21:16They, they acclimate to it and other people do not. So we have to get people out sometimes where they, they can't acclimate to it. And there's nothing you can do ahead of time. It has nothing to do with what kind of shape you're in. Uh, there's nothing you can do to prepare your body could actually acclimate one time really well. And then another time, not at all. There's like no pattern to it. And so, yeah, we've had to, we've had to get people leave or take people back to mcmurdo who just can't breathe he can't breathe wow yeah i mean we could have told a very different story brian if bass couldn't have adjusted to the altitude i know very short season two episode run and we're finished maybe maybe you introduce a new

22:04Amy J. Brummit:character who can't actually i'm not gonna lie i i will be up as you are talking i am i am logging ideas that I should, I should incorporate that. I didn't, I didn't know, you know, the, the having to, you know, evac people, you know, who would just have problems with me. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I'll submit my suggestions to you in writing after this episode. There we go. Aaron's going the formal route. All right. Okay. So kind of in the vein of that, with some people having so much trouble adjusting you, it sounds like you did okay. What was actually your hardest adjustment from all of your time on the ice at the, at the three stations?

22:42Oh, what was my hardest adjustment? I would say this sounds so unglamorous. Um, I would say at, at some point I was starting to get sick of the communal living. So you are, you are, you know, sharing bathroom space. Like at Palmer station, we had one bathroom, kind of an average size bathroom that you might have at home. And there were six or seven of us women where every morning someone was on the toilet, it. Someone was at the sink. Someone was in the shower. Someone was trying to get in there. And so you reach a point after after weeks and months where you think, yeah, I'm really ready to be in my own bed.

23:37And yeah, that's a hard no for me. Be in my own space and food to food. Food is can be a struggle as well, especially in the winter. So in the winter, we get no fresh food. It's just frozen and canned food. And so I'd say that I'm not even a foodie and I don't even typically, I'm not even typically guided by food necessarily, but boy, you really start to crave certain foods and you just want, you want a fresh salad. You want some fresh fruits. Um, and, and you think, am I going to go crazy just because I want a salad? And sometimes it feels that way. I'm so glad you brought this up because this is one of the questions I had was in our share we have like you know these these chefs are are doing uh their share and then some and their food is is quite good so that was gonna be a question was how you know how bearable is it how you know after a while i imagine those creature comforts you know are something that you're going to be craving constantly like if i would murder someone for a twinkie right now right right is that yeah he went with twinkie he went with twinkie yeah he's going old school there there There were so many choices available.

24:49I'm just saying, you know, you get to the point where it's limited. It's like, I can't do sardines anymore. I'm bringing you a Twinkie the next time I see you, Trent. Okay. That's great. That's great. All the listeners will be shipping you Twinkies. That's exactly right.

25:05Oh, gosh. Well, I will say our chefs, too. We usually have some very creative, hardworking chefs. and the whole team the whole entire team that could do magic can really do magic obviously they can only do what they can but it it at times is extremely impressive and i myself am not much of a cook so i'm always amazed at what they're able to pull out there in the in the middle of literally at the bottom of the planet earth right like how did you do this at the bottom of the planet earth and like you said without without fresh ingredients it's like yeah it's tough you got to make do yeah okay can you tell us you were talking earlier about how there was more goofing off before everybody had cell phones and things were recorded can you share like a funny story or something particularly memorable that happened to you at at any of these three stations as long as you're able to share it we certainly don't want to get anyone in trouble yeah don't or anything that's right i can't i gotta protect my people that's a good idea because we do have uh secret secret gatherings secret parties uh that we we definitely have to uh keep on the down low and i'm not talking like anything you know r-rated just that things that uh they started to really sort of put the hammer down uh-huh some things came out in the press that was happening specifically at mcmurdo station they had twinkies

26:45Amy J. Brummit:they had twinkies shut them down i know that which you refer to but i won't i yeah i know Yeah, yeah. Like I said, respecting my people. So, so, yeah. So, so, but we it's I'm super impressed with the creativity of the people that we have there and thinking about something like super fun or super memorable. um i'm definitely thinking for you all for the south pole station that we have one of one of our wonderful lead heavy equipment operators um he would every year he would build these enormous mounds of snow and he would work weeks on this so they're moving snow all summer long because we just get we get buried otherwise we get buried which i'm sure brian probably knows too about our old station literally being buried the dome yeah the dome um final station and the station before that too um that's under the ice um so so he they move snow all summer long they're digging us out and they have places way off site that they dump snow but he because he's such community minded, generous human being.

28:08He would make these mountains out of the snow so that on New Year's, is it New Year's? I think it's New Year's. I was trying to remember if it was Christmas or New Year's. It's New Year's where we basically spend anywhere from say 12 to 18 hours sledding and and like just being total kids that's so cool that's the best of snow and we just have an absolute blast right we just do we get we get silly we get crazy we wear costumes that sounds so much fun that sounds incredible it's it's a lot of fun there is like yeah as soon as you're saying moving snow around like snow for it come on yeah yeah yeah exactly exactly i mean the kid in you comes out right everyone just becomes the kidney is always out that's what you said i'm just imagining you all throwing snowballs at each other now yep yep all of that altitude brian i would throw about two or three and be like we're done right now that's right yeah you get very wind inside that ski lodge environment again get that warm beverage exactly so you um Amy, you said that was around New Year's.

29:21Is that what you just said? I was trying to remember which celebration that was. It's either our, it's a big deal where we get two days off at Christmas and two days off at New Year's, which is huge because usually we get one day off, if even that. So when I was just in the Arctic at Summit Station this past winter, no days off. So seven days straight. Oh, really? Yeah. Really? Yeah. So to get that time off and then to do it in such a fun way, right? And be so playful and have such a good time. So I was just trying to remember. I can't remember if it's the New Year's break or the Christmas break.

29:59So that was actually one of my questions was to kind of hear how maybe holidays were acknowledged or not acknowledged and kind of how you handled things that traditionally here would be like moments of family and gathering and festivities. And, you know, I would imagine some people probably got quite homesick. Yes, yes, definitely. And again, you know, more some people more than others. But we do honor those holidays. And so it's funny, too, because I've had a lot of people ask me over the years. They've said, oh, you must not celebrate the holidays because Antarcticans don't celebrate the holidays.

30:36And I think they're thinking the native Antarcticans. Yeah. And so your listeners know there's no native, no native. But I think we're thinking of maybe like the Inuits up in, up in the Arctic is probably what they're thinking of. So, um, because we are a, because our stations are U S stations that yes, we, we very much celebrate the holidays at all three of the stations. And so we celebrate Halloween. We dress up. We have a big Halloween party. Cool. We celebrate Thanksgiving where, again, those chefs and their team just make an incredible meal for us. And we gorge ourselves just like at home.

31:17And then we have same thing. We have a big Christmas meal. We put up Christmas decorations. And then we celebrate New Year's. So that does help for people who are really missing their family and really having a hard time being away from from their family. That that definitely helps quite a bit. Now, working seven days a week, too. And as hard as I imagine that helps maybe because there's a focus and you have a purpose, maybe that helps also the time go by faster as well. yeah it's you know time is really strange there it has that whole feeling of simultaneously moving really slowly and yet going super fast and the next thing you know the season's over so it's really strange because there's definitely a monotony to your days and and i know you know probably a lot of listeners can can relate to that i mean i think with a lot of careers there's a sense of monotony to them.

32:17But because we have that end in sight, because we know, okay, my contract ends at this time or during this month or whatever the case is, that then you have that end in sight. And I think maybe that partially, that's what makes it also go fast. It's just a strange feeling. Well, there's a finality, right? Yeah, yeah. Because there's an end date. You know there's a deadline. And so because of that deadline, well, especially in the summer seasons, we are, oh boy, we are going full speed. We are, that's when all the research is taking place and we are just going 100 miles per hour in the summer months.

32:58And definitely with that deadline, we feel it, I would say, probably feel it the strongest at the South Pole Station. Because the cutoff is really, really severe there where it's like, it's just literally one day it's summer. and the next day done it's over it's it's winter um we are we are racing the clock to get everything completed to get people out in time because if we don't get you don't get that summer crew out guess what they're staying another nine months they're not leaving right it's just so wild to me that it's that it's that final or strict or i don't even know what i'm trying to say here Yeah, yeah, definitely.

33:39I mean, you feel that. You definitely feel that. What is something that you wish people understood about living and working in Antarctica? Oh, gosh. Oh, I'd say there's several things. So for me to get a little bit more on the serious side is the science that takes place there. A lot of it is so unknown. And I think some of the misconceptions when people know that just generally speaking, that there's research that takes place there, that it's research that's important to our entire planet, that it is not, it's not a vacuum where it's just about researching that, um, that certain place just to research that place that, uh, everything that happens at the poles, both poles, North pole and South pole, everything that happens at the polls affects our entire planet it's all it's all connected so i think with that um i really wish more people were familiar with that and we talk about that a lot in science where you know unfortunately we we do not often talk about science in just the common language or common person language right where we use all this jargon and and um and people don't

34:59Amy J. Brummit:familiar yeah as i'm doing my research i i have tried to be as real as and amy i apologize for cutting you off oh no problem i just i i do want to you know for the cast that are here both cast members that are here i just you know trent week week after week month after month had to learn you know all about aro terms you know he had to learn about uh the doms oh yeah and for the ice cube lab and you know he he he can recite but he'll be the first to tell you i have no clue what i just said but it sounds good oh yeah i don't memorize any of it yeah like i'm cramming for a test i gotta read it once good regurgitate it yeah yeah right but i the difference from being a stage actor huh trent where you well it's like look i you know i can fake it for as long as we need to have that taken then after that do not count on me to give you any scientific knowledge It did not stick.

35:55I apologize, Amy, for cutting you off. No, no, no problem at all. No, that's a valid point. Yeah. And so it's sometimes it's hard to to break that down in a simpler way for for the general public to understand that it does impact them. Right there that that it's not this I mean, it is far away, obviously, but it is not this far away thing in the sense that it doesn't have some sort of impact on their lives because it has an impact on our planet and weather systems and climate and all of those things that we could go deeper into. And then I think the other thing, well, no, there's probably a couple more.

36:35I would love for people to know that it's not just researchers down there, that there is the people behind the scenes, so to speak, who run it, who do the logistics, who run the place that if those people were not there, it wouldn't happen. It couldn't happen. They have to have that support staff in order for those researchers to come down for often very short periods. I mean, they may come just for a few weeks to do their research and then they're gone and that's it. And we, the ones that are behind the scenes, have to have everything in place and everything ready for them. And when it comes to that in terms of logistics, it's extremely complicated and there's a lot of planning ahead of time and trying to foresee every possible scenario that could take place.