Waking up
The end of every research cruise is disorienting . For weeks, I have seen the same finite group of people , and we spontaneously formed a miniature society. Then all of a sudden, I am back where I started - in this case, home in Woods Hole - and surrounded by an entirely different group of people. It feels almost like waking up from a really good dream. I took some time off after the Heroic Age cruise . In fact, the day after I stepped off the ship, my husband and I flew to the Midwest for a long weekend with my family. My experience at sea slipped entirely out of my mind as I played in a water park with my 6-year-old nephew. The Labrador Sea was nowhere in my thoughts as I cheered with my sister-in-law at a kitschy dinner theater. If the expedition was a dream, that long weekend was the delightful delirium that comes in the early light of dawn. So here I am friends, back at home. By day, I write my dreams on paper , asking the funding powers-that-be to grant me more ...