I was cutting rocks in the machine shed about 3 weeks ago when I heard the deep bass roar of the elephant seal beachmaster- a sound I hadn't heard since October, and the official Macquarie Island indicator of the end of the summer. The big boys have returned for their moult, their massive bodies stacked in bickering piles on the beaches and in the tussock. There aren't many- it is very rare for a boy to survive to the beachmaster age (less than 10%) but what they lack in numbers, they make up for in bulk. Garden Cove, the beach at the north-east end of the station is devoid of seals- walking through there the other day, I pondered this. All summer there have been ellies here. Why not now? Then I realized that the beach is too small for these boys. They are so big, they don't fit on a beach. 3-4 meters, 2-3 tonnes. Also returning are the first of the weaners, back from their first journey south. So I guess they aren't weaners anymore- they have now graduated to under-yearlings. Just a few are here now, big and fat, looking beautiful- did a great job out there on their first foraging trip! I feel so proud of them. This is their mid-year haul-out. Mid-year! Autumn! Already!

How did it go so quickly (quickly, yet I feel like I have never lived anywhere else...) ? I remember when I first got here, it seemed like I was going to be here forever, had heaps of time to get all the work finished that I wanted to. The last few weeks have been a little frantic (hence the long silence, for which I apologize) fitting in those last sites, collecting those last samples, trimming and packing and packing and packing....The weather has been terrible for the last month, which hasn't made anything any easier.

Now, six months and three notebooks and seven volcanic sections and three sheeted dike sections and two mantle sections and two paleomag sections and one deformed gabbro section and miscellaneous Ar/Ar date, U/Pb date and fission track samples later (for a grand total of 348 samples all trimmed, slabbed and packed in 14 flour drums and five boxes, deposited in the quarantine cage pallet last week) it's time (as they say on the Texas oil rigs) to flange it up and go to the house. I accomplished so much more than I did my first season, as would be expected, and I feel incredibly organized and on top of things, ready to get going with the rest of the analyses. Although I am a little tired. Six months is a very long field season, no matter how wonderful the field area is.

I have many conflicting feelings about the end of the season. On the one hand, I am ready to go home. On the other, this place makes me feel so connected to the natural world and to my mind, sometimes I feel I could live here forever. It has been a good season and I have achieved everything that I wanted to do, and I feel - well- finished, I guess. I am so looking forward to that first piece of fresh fruit. Berries. Avocado. Banana. But I am going to miss the penguins. I am not going to miss working in the wind and rain. Not at all. I have a gut-full of bad weather right about now. I am a little worried about driving again (and as many of you know, my driving is, shall we say, exciting, or, perhaps, creative, even when I have been on the road a lot), but looking forward to eating in restaurants, going to hear music, going to the movies, shopping in supermarkets, any or all of the above with you, my friends. Handling money again will be awkward at first (many people forget to pay their first or second restaurant or bar tab after returning- I too have had to sheepishly return to a cafe the next day to hand over my AWOL payment to a laughing waitress. Luckily, most of the businesses in Hobart are used to it, with the hundreds of returning Antarctic expeditioners that pass through each year.) I am having trouble remembering my bank PIN. (I know I wrote it down, somewhere logical...) I am looking forward to sitting in a cafe on a Saturday morning, reading a newspaper printed that day and watching people walk by that I don't know. Seeing children. Trees. Swimming. I will miss the impossibly clean fresh air, drinking crystal clear water from streams. I can't wait to see my family, kiss my nephews, hold my cat, warm and purring. Longing to sit on Trudy's deck on a HOT and sticky Austin evening drinking Mexican Martinis and eating chips and salsa late into the night. But I will miss watching the seasons pass with the cycles of the sub-antarctic animals and plants.

And most of all, I know I will miss getting up in the morning and going to my job, which consists of wandering under a sky wider than Wyoming, thinking about the processes of the earth, looking at rocks on this magic little island in the Southern Ocean.

The big orange Aurora Australis arrived early on Wednesday (bringing Sharon Mosher and Mike Coffin, my supervisors) and has been here for five days as I write this, while we re-supply the station. At this time, the station population has tripled. All of the field huts have been filled to capacity, and there have been two chefs in the kitchen, plus additional slushies (passengers from the ship, who wouldn't otherwise get to come ashore) to deal with all of the extra mouths and bellies. Chaos reigns. Beds in the carpenters' workshop, in the video rooms, on every scrap of floor space. Nathan and I took Sharon and Mike out in the field for three nights, and day-tripped today (Sharon has been here before, so it was Mike who was initiated to the land of Macquarie. He has: Walked over most of the island tracks. Seen every rock type, from the mantle to the sea floor, and listened patiently to long and probably annoyingly enthusiastic descriptions of these rocks by his student and post-doc. Walked at least part of all of the major featherbed stretches. Broken through said featherbed. Put one leg into a rank seal wallow. Suffered through the stench of the penguins, the rotten kelp and the seals. Tussock hopped. Flown over the island in a helicopter. Visited the submarine volcanoes. Seen every penguin species. Seen the beachmasters. Been snowed on, rained on, blown on, and sun-shined on, all in one day. All in all, not bad for five days.) Tonight they are snug back on the ship and waiting for us. Tomorrow. We get on the ship tomorrow.

Do I close with something deep and philosophical? Do I need to? I thank all of you who have written to me, reminding me that I haven't been forgotten in the real world. I hope that all of you have a new appreciation for this little remote corner of your planet where bombs and guns and crime and politics don't matter. Where life and sex and death and survival rule. Where the cycles of the earth are the cycles of the earth and we people are a part of it, both as respectful observers and peripheral participants. I hope that I have provided a diversion every month or so when you could remember me, your friend and/or colleague, working and living at the end of the earth. I feel content in the knowledge that each and every one of you can now say with confidence, "Ah yes, Macquarie Island...I understand that it is the only complete section of ocean crust uplifted in the ocean basin in which it formed."

Thank you so very much for coming along on the trip- I hope you have enjoyed the ride.

All my love,

Karah