An open letter to my kids

Hi girls!

I really miss you guys. I like being your Dad and I’m sorry I can’t be with you now to hug you and hold you. You two continue to amaze me with how smart and kind you are. Your mother and I very blessed that God trusted us with you two.

I wanted to write a bit about the people I'm meeting here and the job I'm doing to maybe explain why I'm not home now. Your mom and I teach you that God loves you. Well, a lot of people in the world don’t hear that and don’t know that. Sometimes people think they have to do something different for God to love them. We know that’s not true. In my work, I can help people meet the God who loves them no matter what.

And down here in Antarctica, there are all kinds of people. Since I can’t be with you now, I thought you might be interested in learning a bit about the people here and the work they are doing. Most everything America is doing in Antarctica is about science. You know I used to be a science teacher, and I know that you two enjoyed some of the museums and books about science, so I think you might like this. You may not understand it all now, but when I get home, I'd love to tell you more.

Last week, I met Johan who has been working on Antarctica for at least 13 years, mostly learning more about Earth's atmosphere. We know our planet is changing, but we don’t all agree about why. Johan is convinced that we people are making some changes here faster than Earth has ever changed and he’s worried about what we’re doing. For example, we started measuring the amount of one certain gas (carbon) in the atmosphere when Grandma and Grandpa were your age and that level has been steadily increasing. One of the ways this is happening is the smoke out of our cars. To make sure their measurements are correct, there are different scientists working on this and they are using different techniques. One group has been using the exact same type of bottle for about 60 years, and some of those bottles are that old! Johan let me hold one.
Here's some heavier science stuff: Some people think a carbon level we can live with might be 350 parts per million (that’s a way we measure the amount of one thing when it’s mixed up with a bunch of other things) and when I was talking with Johan, he read the current meter and we were up over 384 ppm (we haven’t been below 350 ppm for over 20 years).
We’re pretty sure this will have an impact on our planet – probably the temperature, possibly other things as well – but folk are still debating that. I’ll be honest that I don’t know all about the science, but it seems we are changing the air on Earth and that's not good. I hope we aren’t messing up this planet up for you guys too bad. From down here in Antarctica and from the other places of the world I’ve seen, this is a beautiful world, a gift from God, and we need to take good care of it.

Speaking of that, will you guys go camping with me when I get back?

I first wrote this letter to you in my journal, so I'm going to keep copying it more or less as I wrote. At the time, I was sitting inside one of our LC-130 “Hercules” aircraft – the ones we see flying around our house – getting ready to go to the South Pole Station. The flight I'm on today, as you can see from the picture below, is pretty empty. The South Pole Station needs fuel to run all winter long, so one of the reasons we fly down there is to bring them gas. We load up as full as we can from McMurdo, fly to the Pole, and then offload as much gas as we possibly can before turning around to fly back to McMurdo. They put me on the plane as well since I'm going for the day, but it was pretty empty.

This flight is pretty exciting for me, so I want to tell you about that. You probably remember that I went to the South Pole last week. It’s about 800 miles away from McMurdo, where I’m usually working, and takes about three hours on one of these planes. We have skiis on the plane as well as wheels, so we can use whichever one we need (today it’s skiis).
The South Pole is a pretty unique place, as you might imagine. Less than 250 people live at the station now, but about 70 of them are part of building a new science project which they'll finish up next year. In their winter months, about 30 people live here, mostly to keep it running until the other 200 come back. The current station was dedicated two years ago, it’s the third station the US has had here. (The first one is now covered in snow and the second we dismantled to ship off the continent.) There's a picture of it here.

People here get along real well with each other and are pretty friendly. There’s no keys on the doors and they trust each other a lot. They have to: they are pretty brave to live out here at the bottom of the Earth. It takes about two months to drive here so the main transport they have are the planes. They get visitors regularly, some for a few hours, some for a few days. When chaplains come to visit, some of them really like seeing us and some of them could care less, but I’ve discovered most everybody likes to have someone to talk to who takes an interest in their lives and their work.

When I went up to the Pole last week, it was pretty foggy, so we had to delay our flight by several hours. That meant that the evening worship service I’d planned had to be pushed back later which I thought was fine. But what I didn’t realize is that some people had to go to work or had to go to bed and so they missed church. A guy named Bob emailed me when I got back to McMurdo that he’d missed the service and hadn’t had communion in six months and really missed it. I asked around and within a few days, I had permission to go back to bring communion to Bob. So that's why I got to go back.



I’m carrying with me something pretty special called the Erebus Chalice. It’s at least a 100 years old and there are a couple different stories about how it got down here. It's got a connection to one of the early explorers here (it might even have been on his ship when he sailed here). About 25 years ago, it was donated to the chapel here in McMurdo and dedicated to Robert Falcon Scott, an explorer who died here in 1912 on his way back from the South Pole. Each summer, we bring it to the chapel and at the end of the season someone brings it back to the Cathedral in Christchurch, New Zealand, where it stays all winter. This chalice is pretty famous and while I’m the chaplain, I’m in charge of it. I talked to the pastor in New Zealand that watches over it in the winter and we both agreed that it's famous and valuable and pretty, but it's also supposed to be used, not just looked at. So, I’m taking it with me to the South Pole to celebrate communion. Someone who came to church took my picture with it.

I think I'm most excited about this trip for two reasons:

1. I’m going to the South Pole! I will be standing at the bottom of this amazing planet, at the axis where we spin around. My mind still can’t totally grasp that.

2. I’m going through all this - six hours of flying, six hours on the ground, the elevation change - so I can bring a visible reminder of God’s invisible grace to someone who needs that reminder. Psalm 139 has a great image of God being everywhere, that there is no place we can go to escape God’s presence: as far as planet Earth goes, I get to be a part of reminding people of that.

Something else about the South Pole that’s pretty amazing: The water we drink at the Pole is made by melting ice from a deep well. The well is so deep that the ice fell to the Earth about 2,000 years ago as rain or snow. So, the water we drink and flush and shower in at the Pole (well, not shower, they are allowed two 2-minute showers a week there!) was rain when Jesus walked the planet. Incredible, huh?

So anyway, I wanted to tell you about some other really cool people I’ve met here. Yesterday in church was a lot of fun. I think I surprised some of the people – I made them talk and help out a lot in the service. Some of them had planned to do something, and some of the other folk who have gotten to know me a bit know that I want them to help out. For the sermon, I asked a lot of questions and expected people to answer: they were kinda quiet at first, but eventually caught on. Danny was a lot of help: he’s leaving Thursday but I’ve known him since I got here. He’s a real kind man, a “salt of the earth” person as your Grandma Marvel (and Jesus) would say. He’s an electrician and I’ve seen him smile so much I’ve wondered if maybe electricity is that much fun? Frederick played his violin which was cool. I don’t think he used to go to church much, maybe not at all, and he’s still learning a lot about God and Jesus, but he can really play his violin; yesterday at the bottom of the planet, we were treated to Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring as a gift that he played to God. It was pretty amazing. Gabe prayed for us in church – his parents were missionaries and he’s been to seminary. He’s also a skilled radio technician and is here working with the radios that contact the planes when they want to land or take off. He’ll be the official leader of the chapel over this winter after we all leave, so it’s good to have him helping out so people get to know him. He’s a guy on a very fruitful journey. I’m glad I’ve met him.

After church I met a whole bunch of other people. Chris has traveled all over the world recording nature sounds. He said he used to record music but when he started listening more to the sounds of nature he got tired of music. He’s recording sounds for a new BBC program that I think will be called “Frozen Planet.” He also helped make “Planet Earth” and “Blue Planet.” We talked about New York a bit – he’s been up our way recording bird song and lecturing at Cornell. He let me listen to what he was working on: orca songs!

In that same room of the science lab, I met up again with Jack and Bill. I got to know them when I flew down here – we were on the same plane – but they took off soon after we arrived in McMurdo and spent a couple weeks in tents in a place called the Dry Valleys. There’s not much snow in the Dry Valleys and I’ve heard that some scientists work there to examine what it might be like to visit Mars! I had breakfast with Bill on Saturday when they’d returned and he invited me up to see their project. When I got up there, I learned they are actually working on a couple different things. Their big project is a three-year study of wind patterns and dust in the air here. We are still exploring Antarctica and so all different kinds of scientists are down here working on stuff and cooperating with each other to learn even more. They have been measuring how the wind blows down here and also how the rocks have been formed. While walking around setting up their wind contraptions over the years, they noticed that some rocks here had familiar patterns to them. Some are flat and some look like squashed three-sided pyramid. But most people, including them, think that they've been laying there for thousands of years and they wonder why they haven't been blown to sand over that time. So they collected some of these and when I got there, they were scanning them into 3-D images they could rotate and move on the computer. As with the other project, they are very excited and curious. It made me think a lot of you two: you guys ask us questions a lot and want to know about things around you. These scientists were the same. They reminded me of little kids who never really grew up – well they are bigger and smarter than when they were kids - but they are as curious and interested in the world as you are.

I also met Roy last week who listens to satellites. Actually, he controls the receiving dishes that listen to satellites. Some satellites are on an orbit around Earth that passes the South Pole regularly, so his job is to listen to them and collect the things they are seeing. Each satellite pass lasts about 10-15 minutes and with the eight satellites he’s watching now, the dish is busy about once an hour. This is Roy’s second time here and he’s having more fun now because he’s made some great friends. One of his friends got a little hurt a few weeks ago and she doesn’t really want to tell her boss because she wants to keep impressing him so she can come back next year. I went and asked the doctor here about it and he looked kinda sad and said that happens sometimes. She’s in a tough spot, and I hope she’ll be ok.

Sunday night I went to a lecture about penguins and seals. The scientist was explaining how these animals are changing where they swim and where they go hunting for food. His theory – and he had some pretty convincing evidence – is that the Earth is getting warmer and it’s changing these animals’ patterns.

As I said before, I wrote this on the airplane. I went up to the flight deck and talked with some guys I know and learned something really cool. For the first hour that we flew, we were over the Ross Sea which is frozen solid so we call it the Ross Ice Shelf. We are now getting close to where that ends and the continent begins (we call the “transition.”) McMurdo, where I live now, is actually on an island formed by still-active volcanoes in the Ross Sea. The water for the sea comes from the Beardmore Glacier which is one of the largest glaciers in the world. It covers the south pole which is over 9,000 feet high and flows down to the ocean. Of course, glaciers move really slowly, you can't see them move. I just learned that a piece of ice that starts at the south pole can travel the Beardmore Glacier out into the Ross Sea near where I live at McMurdo. But to give you an idea of how fast glaciers move, it would take that piece of snow about 10,000 years to travel those 800 miles.

Well, that's all I'm going to write for now. There are some pictures below of me at the South Pole (both of them). I miss you guys a lot and look forward to seeing you in about a month!

Daddy