Deprivation

Life is pretty comfortable in Antarctica, especially in McMurdo. There are things we learn to live without. Fresh food of any kind is a limited commodity. I recently purchased crackers from the station store that expired in 2006, but they tasted OK. This fresh fruit showed up in the office about a week ago and whoever brought it back from the galley is out in the field for the next few weeks. There is a hoarding instinct that kicks in here. Fresh foods of any kind are limited, so there is a tendency to hoard just a little bit of it. But then, people watch it shrivel up because they couldn't bring themselves to actually eat it since it may be the last real fruit they see for a long long time. It's understandable.
When we are in Antarctica, we surround ourselves with a few comforts of home or things that remind us of home. I personally think that the barren brown and white landscape of Antarctica can be quite beautiful, but we do enjoying surrounding ourselves with pictures of warmer places, happy times away from here, photos of family and friends, fresh food and fake flowers.