AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
This year, the musician Natalie Paine crossed an item off her bucket list.
NATALIE PAINE: Going to Antarctica has been a long-term goal. It's something that I fell in love with as a child. And I remember my high school teacher telling me that Antarctica and music were not very compatible career goals, so I should probably try and pick one and stick with that instead. And music was my passion, so I picked music. But it's a dream I didn't give up on.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BAND OF THE ROYAL NEW ZEALAND NAVY'S "LOCH LOMOND")
RASCOE: Natalie Paine plays the horn. Her big, icy break came after years of playing in New Zealand's Royal Navy band. She learned about an opportunity to be stationed at the New Zealand Defense Forces post in Antarctica as a communications operator. After applying multiple times, Natalie Paine got the green light. She packed her bags and, of course, her instrument and hopped on a flight to Scott Base in Antarctica. The internet is not always reliable down there, but Natalie was able to speak with us using a good old landline.
PAINE: When I finally got to Antarctica and I got off the plane, I just could not believe - I just took a second to look around and see the mountains and the ice. And I was carrying my little French horn with me (laughter), and I had to put my hands up in the air, like, yes, I've finally made it (laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
PAINE: It's just the most wonderful sense of vastness. It's this huge expanse, and you can see so far away that it really is quite a trick on the mind that some of the things you can see in the distance are much, much further away. It is so much colder than I've ever experienced in my life. I grew up in Adelaide, where it was very, like, dry and hot in summer and cold in winter, but we didn't get much snow. So to come down here and experience true cold was something very different for me. It's also extremely dry because it doesn't precipitate very much. And so there's ice, but there's no rain. There's no running water. And you have to drink at least two liters of water a day, sometimes three because you just get so dehydrated down here, which was something I didn't expect.
(SOUNDBITE OF JAN OVE FJELD'S "MIRROR DREAMS")
PAINE: The snow petrels that are down here - which I think are my favorite animal down here thus far - they're these beautiful little white birds that are so graceful in the sky. The Weddell seals, which are these huge, fat seals with beautiful fur - they've got seal pups, which has been really, really cool.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
PAINE: We also were really fortunate to be visited by some emperor penguins twice. I did think about grabbing my horn to play for penguins when we saw some emperors a few weeks ago, but I didn't want to spook them 'cause I've heard that if you spook them that they can get quite, like, shocked and go into shock, and then they might die. And so I do not want to go around killing any penguins.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
PAINE: Playing an instrument in Antarctica was really challenging. When I performed for the changing-of-the-flag ceremony, and I had to have the two different gloves on my hands. I had, like, an inner layer that was quite thin of wool, and then I had hand warmers between that layer and my ski gloves, which were holding the trumpet (laughter). And even then my fingers were freezing, and my face was really, really cold and just trying to keep my lips warm to play. So I had to make sure I didn't touch the valves too much so that I could make sure they didn't freeze 'cause obviously, when you play a brass instrument, your breath forms condensation on the inside, and then the condensation in this environment can freeze.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
PAINE: It occurred to me the other day that ancient horns were historically used for communication in the field until about the mid-1800s. And I'm down here as a communications operator and as a horn player, continuing this really interesting tradition in Antarctica many, many years on. You know, God works in mysterious ways, and I can't believe that I've been able to achieve both the career goal of making it as a professional musician and being able to come down to Antarctica. There's just this endless beauty to it and, for me, an underlying theme of just joy, humility and thankfulness to God just for being here and the beauty of His amazing creation.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
RASCOE: That's the musician Natalie Paine, who spoke to us from Antarctica.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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