Anne Grunow

Seag:

This is Morgan Seag, and I’m speaking with Dr. Anne Grunow, who is Senior Research Scientist at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center and curator of the Center’s Polar Rock Repository at the Ohio State University. Today is April 4, 2018, and we’re speaking at the Polar Rock Repository. Thank you so much for talking with me!

Grunow:

You’re welcome!

Seag:

So, let’s start at the very beginning. What was your upbringing like? Where were you born?

Grunow:

Okay. I was born in southern New Jersey in a little town called Pomona. My dad was a potato farmer. My mom was a schoolteacher. I worked on the farm all my life until I got into college, and I loved being outdoors, just loved it. So, I always thought I wanted to go into, well, political science, work for the State Department. I knew I wanted to travel. But then when I got to college, they make you take one science class, so I thought, “Okay. Geology will be easier than a premed bio or chemistry,” so I took geology and I just loved it. So, I switched over from political science to geology.

Seag:

Where do you think the travel bug came from? Did you travel with your family?

Grunow:

My mother loved to travel. I mean, with my dad a farmer and my mom a teacher, we didn’t travel anywhere, but in the States, pretty much, but we loved to travel. My grandfather, also a farmer, he wanted to look up his family history in Germany, and so he, with my mother and grandmother, took one grandchild each time they went to Germany to look for ancestors. So, I did one of those trips and I just loved it. I was in Switzerland and Germany and I just knew I liked to travel. So yeah, I think it was a lot my mom for traveling and my dad for just love of outdoors.

Seag:

What kinds of outdoor experiences did you have as a kid?

Grunow:

Well, mostly working on the farm outside—you know, eight hours a day hoeing and moving irrigation pipe and digging potatoes and stuff like that—and we did some camping.

Seag:

As a family?

Grunow:

As a family.

Seag:

Do you have siblings?

Grunow:

Yes. I have two sisters and a brother, all older.

Seag:

Oh, wow. Did they also like the outdoors [overlapping voices]?

Grunow:

No, not necessarily. Indifferent, I would say.

Seag:

What were your early experiences like with science? Did you not have any, or did you dislike the ones that you had?

Grunow:

I didn’t really like it. I really didn’t like biology and dissection. I just really did not care for it. I guess I liked environmental science when I had it as a freshman, but I don’t know. It just wasn’t…I wasn’t passionate about it. I love history. I’m passionate about history, and so geology combined that love of history with being outdoors because it’s the history of the Earth.

Seag:

What kinds of schools did you go to?

Grunow:

So, when I graduated high school, I went to first…I started at a place called Lehigh University for a year and a half because I had an Air Force ROTC scholarship.

Seag:

Oh, wow.

Grunow:

But I found that I really wasn’t cut out for the military.

Seag:

Why did you decide to start with ROTC?

Grunow:

Well, because I could get a scholarship, and I thought the military would be a way into the State Department and doing international travel, international assignments. I mean I loved international politics. I used to get a little magazine as a high school student about international affairs. So, I thought that might be a route for me to get overseas.

Seag:

Was there military experience in your family?

Grunow:

My dad was a World War II vet of the Pacific. I guess that was it, my dad.

Seag:

Did he encourage you to join the military?

Grunow:

No, not necessarily. My parents were really relaxed about letting their kids do whatever path they chose. But he was always very patriotic and involved with the VFW and stuff like that.

Seag:

So, you started at Lehigh with ROTC and then?

Grunow:

I didn’t care for Lehigh. It had just gone coed a few years earlier, and I think the transition, for me coming from a farm to college, was going to be a big transition no matter where I went. But it was especially so at Lehigh for me. I didn’t care for it. So, then I switched to Wellesley College outside Boston.

Seag:

Why Wellesley?

Grunow:

It wasn’t necessarily that it was a women’s college, but that they had cross-enrollment with MIT. It’s a beautiful campus and I just thought, well, that would be a better fit, a smaller school. So, I gave that a try. My mom made suggestions for me. She was always encouraging of a women’s college. She went to a women’s college when she was in college. It’s no longer a women’s college; it’s been coed. But she enjoyed that aspect. Her friends were very close to her. So, she was always a positive influence for me to look at that and I did, and I liked it. So, I switched to Wellesley. I went up to Wellesley, you know, but then I had to do my Air Force ROTC at MIT and that was just a logistical challenge.

Seag:

So, you had to continue with ROTC. That’s where the money came from?

Grunow:

That’s right. So, I had to find a school where I could continue with the ROTC, but after…To make the ROTC on Saturday mornings, I basically had to go down and sleep in the library overnight because the T doesn’t run after midnight, so I couldn’t get down to Boston. Once I did this for a couple months, I thought, “This is really not…This is just not for me.”

Seag:

So, what did you do?

Grunow:

I gave up my ROTC scholarship. I was still able to do that. Sophomore summer you commit. You become truly enlisted.

Seag:

And this is in your sophomore year that you’re making this transition.

Grunow:

Yeah, so I left, yeah, at the end of my sophomore year.

Seag:

What was Wellesley like for you?

Grunow:

I loved Wellesley. It was small and I made really good friends and we just had really a lot of fun. The geology department was small, which was great because we all got to know each other. In fact, my advisor from Wellesley, she and I continued working together for, I don’t know, 10 or 15 years working on projects in Boston and around and up to Nova Scotia.

Seag:

Had you already transitioned to geology?

Grunow:

I had, yeah. I had taken geology spring of my freshman year and I knew then I really wanted to do it.

Seag:

Because of the natural history?

Grunow:

Yeah, I mean you know, and my professor was just really an old guy. He probably didn’t do much research, but he was a great teacher and I just loved it.

Seag:

It’s funny that so many people who I interview can cite the teacher who made them want to be something.

Grunow:

I don’t recall his name, but I just remember he was an old guy. I didn’t have to do the lab, so I didn’t take the lab. So, I had to do it my sophomore year because at that point I knew I wanted to switch.

Seag:

Did the fieldwork aspect play into your decision or was that just a happy benefit?

Grunow:

I think that’s a happy benefit. I just found learning about the Earth to be really fun. I enjoyed that. I mean it was history, but it was outdoors.

Seag:

So as a geology major at Wellesley, did you have a sense that you would eventually be joining a very male-dominated field, or were you pretty insulated and supported?

Grunow:

I have to say that never came up in my mind ever. I don’t know. I just wanted to do it. I just loved it. I was so passionate about it, and that’s all I wanted to do. I knew I just wanted to keep studying it, so for me the path forward was always going to be graduate school because I knew I wanted to learn more. So, I didn’t really even think about jobs.

Seag:

Did you go straight to graduate school?

Grunow:

I did. I worked a summer as an intern for Chevron out in La Habra between my college senior year and my first year of graduate school. That was interesting, you know, working for an oil company. It was fun, but I found that probably wasn’t what I would want to do for a career.

Seag:

How did you pick Columbia?

Grunow:

So, I applied to, of course, different graduate schools, but I really wanted to get out West or I wanted to go overseas for my Ph.D. work. So, Columbia was easy and I got accepted there. My project, my Ph.D. was supposed to be in the Falkland Islands. This was 1981, so needless to say, no Ph.D. in the Falklands. [Laughs]

Seag:

How did the Falklands…did you already have a sense that you were interested in high latitudes as you were planning to [overlapping voices]?

Grunow:

Nope. I just wanted to work overseas; I didn’t care where it was. But Ian Dalziel at Lamont, that’s his area, was South America and Antarctica.

Seag:

So, did you apply to work with Ian Dalziel specifically?

Grunow:

I did.

Seag:

How did you pick him?

Grunow:

Because I wanted to continue doing sort of structural geology, and so I just picked professors around the country that I thought worked in interesting places. So, University of Arizona was the other one I was really thinking about. I don’t recall the other schools I applied to. So, I picked Lamont, and you know, I pretty much went sight unseen. I had never actually met Ian.

Seag:

Oh, wow.

Grunow:

I mean I know that’s…You know, people don’t do that now anymore, but I just applied, got accepted, and went there the first day of school. [Laughing]

Seag:

And this was for the Ph.D., not just for a Master’s.

Grunow:

For the Ph.D. Yeah, for a Ph.D. Well, I guess…yeah. At Lamont you kind of go for a Ph.D. right at the get-go.

Seag:

So, you were making a long-term commitment in that program.

Grunow:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I don’t know. I mean again, it didn’t occur to me that I wouldn’t get along or whatever. It just didn’t occur to me.

Seag:

So, when you applied, you were applying to do this research in the Falkland Islands specifically?

Grunow:

So, when I applied, Ian had different projects that I could potentially work on. The one that he was funded for was the Falklands, and that’s the one he kind of had set aside for me to do. I didn’t have to do it, but that was just the plan.

Seag:

Okay. So how did your research evolve when you realized you could not go to the Falklands?

Grunow:

So, at that point, I did a project in South America.

Seag:

Instead of the Falklands.

Grunow:

Instead of the Falklands, for the first two years, kind of like a master’s project. Then Ian got funding for Antarctica. So, then I went down in my second year of grad school to start Antarctic work.

Seag:

So, before we get to that, because I’d love to ask lots of questions about that, can you describe what Columbia was like for you? Were you at Lamont in Palisades or were you in the city?

Grunow:

My first two years I lived in the city and took classes, and then after that I was out at Lamont in Palisades. I loved Lamont. Again, really close friends. Everybody was just a nice group. We talked about…You know, I knew Robin [Bell] and Terry Wilson and just a lot of people that were there, and they never…You know, everybody was just passionate about their science. I never felt any kind of, I don’t know, hassle about it.

Seag:

How big was the graduate community?

Grunow:

Well, that’s a good question. I don’t know. There must have been 40 or 50 of us, I would think, and there were always post-docs. I mean it was a big group around.

Seag:

My understanding of Lamont at the time is that there were plenty of people working in Antarctica there. Were you introduced to the idea of Antarctic research pretty early on?

Grunow:

Oh yeah, because that’s where Ian had funding. I mean it’s not that I went to go and work in Antarctica. It’s just that’s what he had available for me to do.

Seag:

Do you remember whether the Antarctic work had any special appeal to you, or was it just what came along?

Grunow:

I’ve got to say whatever came along. Because I just love geology. It didn’t matter if it was sedimentary rocks or igneous rocks or metamorphic rocks. I was happy to work on whatever was needed.

Seag:

So, can you tell me about the master’s-era field work that you did?

Grunow:

So that was pretty much the first year or so, and I did a study on conglomerates, looking at conglomerates. Terry Wilson had worked on the general area and then I zeroed in on this one unit. So, I did that two field seasons, and then after that, that ended and then started the Antarctic work. So, the South American work, we got around using a little pickup truck that Terry Wilson had down there. If we couldn’t get the truck somewhere, the local estancias would loan horses to us and they’d take us out on horseback to where we needed to be and leave us and come back and get us. It was fun. We had times where…I mean it was one of those little tiny pickup trucks. We got stuck in the river and a gaucho came by on his horse and tried to pull us out of the river with his horse. [Laughs] We got it out sooner or later, but – it was good.

Seag:

It was just the two of you?

Grunow:

Not Terry. It was a field assistant and I, and sometimes Ian came along. In fact, one time we did a hike down the coast south of a place called Punta Arenas. There were no roads and we came to this old estancia and a man there—old, old man. He had all these really cool things in his house. He was one of these people who went around whenever there were shipwrecks and salvaged stuff. He showed us his garden and he had these strawberries that somebody had given him. I don’t think he realized—it was his first year of growing them—that they had to turn red, so he handed us green strawberries and said, “Oh, try these!” and we said, “Okay…” [Laughs] Ian tried to tell him, “They need to get a little redder.” [Laughs]

Seag:

So, you ended up having these amazing international cultural experiences even though your focus is rocks.

Grunow:

Right. Yeah, yeah. It was really fun. It was just great, and you know, meeting these people at these estancias out in the middle of nowhere, I mean they would just do everything to welcome you, you know? They would make you these wonderful meals. They were so happy to have company and foreigners who barely could speak any real Spanish, but sign language and…You know, you can usually make yourself understood.

Seag:

How long would you spend in the field each time?

Grunow:

About six weeks. Yeah.

Seag:

Did you get homesick?

Grunow:

A little bit. You know, back then, of course there was no Internet. You might call once or twice. It was expensive.

Seag:

What did your parents think of you doing this?

Grunow:

You know, I wonder sometimes. I mean now as a parent, I worry about what my kids are doing all the time. I can’t even imagine what they felt. They must have just had to kind of close a little door in their brain and wait for me to get back.

Seag:

What about your siblings?

Grunow:

Oh, I think they thought it was pretty cool. Not something they would want to do, but yeah, they think it’s pretty cool.

Seag:

So, the trip that you took with Margie Winslow, Ian…

Grunow:

Dalziel.

Seag:

Dalziel. Was that during your master’s as well?

Grunow:

Yeah, that was during this first two years of grad school.

Seag:

Would you mind retelling that fantastic story? [Laughter]

Grunow:

Yeah. So, Ian Dalziel and Margie Winslow and I got dropped off about—I think it’s about 100 miles from the last bit of road on Tierra del Fuego, the north coast of Tierra del Fuego. Got dropped off by helicopter so we could study the outcrops down around the bend of the last bit of Tierra del Fuego. So, we got dropped off before a really major river because we weren’t sure we could cross the river, but we knew we could hike out if we couldn’t get over the river. So, we crossed this river with our backpacks above our head and got the other side and found an old, abandoned estancia. So, we had shelter, we could stay there for a couple nights. Margie, though, wasn’t feeling well, so she couldn’t continue with the geology. So, Ian and I did this trek. Literally it was a 30-mile round trip out to the end of Tierra del Fuego and back.

Seag:

In one day.

Grunow:

In one day. No trails. Just up and down along the coast, the beach, up the cliffs, and back down again. I was just my first year in grad school and it was just…All I could think was, “He’s testing me.” [Laughter] Am I worthy to be a student or not?

Seag:

Do you think you proved yourself?

Grunow:

I think so, yeah. I made it. [Laughs]

Seag:

So, I’ve been reading this book of Margie’s called Over My Head about early experiences with field work and being in over her head. Then she discusses as she moved on being able to mentor younger women in these experiences. Did you ever feel like you were in over your head in the field?

Grunow:

You know, because that first year I had Ian or Margie or I had Terry Wilson, they were the leaders so all I had to do is just follow along and keep up.

Seag:

You must have learned a lot.

Grunow:

And I did learn a lot. Margie was a great person to be in the field with. She was fun and relaxed, and she was always trying to teach me because my experience at Wellesley was great, but it was limited. So, the more things you see, the more you know.

Seag:

So then at some point you transitioned to Antarctic work. How does that come about?

Grunow:

So that came about because Ian got funding for Antarctica, a big international project with the British Antarctic Survey and the US. That kind of fell into my lap, so I ended up doing that.

Seag:

Did you have to do anything to receive approval for the field work, or Ian appointed you and that was the end of the administrative work?

Grunow:

I guess Ian appointed me. I don’t…[Laughs] I was his only student at the time that was a beginning student, so it just kind of fell to me.

Seag:

Do you remember what kind of…Did you have any training for Antarctic work?

Grunow:

Oh no, none. Absolutely none. I was in charge of what was called the paleomagnetism part of the project where we would drill rocks with a little chainsaw motor and drill little cylinders of rock. I studied the magnetization and that would let me know where these pieces have moved around through time in terms of latitude. So that was my part of the project. So I had taken a class at Lamont in that, and Ian and I had gone out and practiced drilling to make sure we knew how to do it. But you know, going down—Drilling in Palisades where it’s 50, 60, 70 degrees outside and drilling in Antarctica are two different things. So, we got down to Antarctica and it was, of course, cold. We got dropped off in the field in a place called the Thiel Mountains, and it was so cold when we got off the plane. I think it was around 7,000 feet. I have pictures. You know, we’re just dropped off with all our gear and left. The Herc just leaves us and we just have snowmobiles and these sleds and our food and that was about it.

Seag:

Did you have experience with cold weather before?

Grunow:

No, other than…

Seag:

Boston.

Grunow:

[Laughter] Well, yeah. Other than a Boston winter, but of course you live indoors. So, I had no experience with camping in the cold.

Seag:

So, you would have flown into McMurdo first?

Grunow:

That’s right.

Seag:

Do you remember what it was like landing?

Grunow:

Oh, it was so cool. I mean you know, they only had those little tiny porthole windows to look out, but it was just…You know, your first time in Antarctica is just mind-blowing. It’s so exciting.

Seag:

Were you in a C-130?

Grunow:

Yeah. Yeah, I know now it’s a little fancier, but ours was a C-130.

Seag:

Yeah. I flew in a C-130 once and I got sick all over that plane. [Laughter]

Grunow:

Yeah, you sit in the web parachute jump seats. That was the biggest thing, was at that time…They have so much cargo stuff in the plane. There’s only that little pot, that little can for women to use, so I knew ahead of time that I really just needed to try not to use it the whole trip.

Seag:

Was the deal that you would just…That was the only option? Was there a curtain?

Grunow:

I think there was a curtain that the loadmaster would come back, lower the can, pull this little curtain around you.

Seag:

Oh, because it’s in the back of with the cargo…

Grunow:

It’s in the back of the plane.

Seag:

…so it has to be set up if—

Grunow:

Yes. So, if you want to use the can, you have to get the loadmaster. Yeah.

Seag:

And the guys have their own bucket.

Grunow:

They have a little hole. Well, the guys in the back have a little hole that they pee out of, not very far from the can. So, I just tried not to use it. In subsequent years I did because it’s like, “Oh, this is silly.” Then I tried those devices that women can use, which I was not a big fan of.

Seag:

Yeah. So, was it just you and Ian from the US?

Grunow:

And a mountaineer. And, let’s see. Who else? We had one other…The first field season we had a scientist from California, a fellow.

Seag:

You were collaborating with how many British scientists?

Grunow:

They were a field team of four as well—two mountaineers, two scientists.

Seag:

So, you’re seven.

Grunow:

We were eight.

Seag:

Right, eight.

Grunow:

We were eight. Yeah. I was the only woman, and I was the first woman to work in the deep field with the British Antarctic Survey.

Seag:

This is 1983.

Grunow:

Yes.

Seag:

So, at that point BAS officially does not allow women in the field with them.

Grunow:

That was my understanding, yeah.

Seag:

How did they receive you?

Grunow:

Oh, they couldn’t care less.

Seag:

Really!

Grunow:

Yeah. They didn’t care, not that I noticed. I might have been just naïve, which could well have been, but I didn’t get any sense that…You know, it was Bryan Storey and Bob Pankhurst. They just…You know, I don’t think they cared. They were good guys. Now Swithinbank came out and visited us. He seemed to care that I was there. Yeah.

Seag:

How did you get that impression?

Grunow:

He just wasn’t very…He was very abrupt.

Seag:

But he was warmer with the US guys?

Grunow:

Yeah. Yeah.

Seag:

What was the overall project? So, you were doing the magnetisms of…

Grunow:

This magnetism part.

Seag:

The whole project was about what?

Grunow:

So, the whole project was trying to understand where these bits and pieces of West Antarctica came from. Some people were mapping the units and structure and doing chemistry and dating, and I had the magnetism part.

Seag:

What was an average day like out there?

Grunow:

Well, generally we used snowmobiles to get around, so we would snowmobile to the outcrop. That might take an hour or two. Then we’d work on the outcrop all day and then come back to camp.

Seag:

So, you previously told me a pretty hilarious story about the food situation. Do you remember that?

Grunow:

I don’t know.

Seag:

The wooden boxes…

Grunow:

Oh, that’s right. Well, the British provided the food boxes in those joint project years, so they were BAS. They call them FID food boxes, Falkland Island Dependency, and so each food box had a couple pounds of butter in it and Cadbury bars and oatmeal and these little dry packets of pemmican, they called it. It was pretty basic. Some of them were years old. By the time we got them and had them in the field, they were giving us food boxes that were like packed a few years earlier. It was all frozen, so it was still fine.

Seag:

Where were you staying? Were they Scott tents?

Grunow:

Scott tents. Yep.

Seag:

Did you rotate? Did they put you in your own tent?

Grunow:

No. I shared a tent with Ian Dalziel.

Seag:

Okay. What about like house mouse duties or cooking, that kind of thing? Was that all rotated?

Grunow:

Yeah. I mean we just kind of shared that. So, the four Americans, we were in two tents. We would rotate which tent had cooking each night, and we’d just go back and forth between tents.

Seag:

What did you enjoy about the season?

Grunow:

Oh, it’s just beautiful. I mean it was just so spectacular, and seeing these rocks, I knew no woman had ever been to any of these spots and that was cool.

Seag:

But you had an awareness that you were a pioneer in that?

Grunow:

Well, I have more awareness now. At the time I was just driven by the science and didn’t really think about it. In retrospect I think about it more, but it was fun. I just loved doing the science and that’s all there was. You know, we had to get up in the morning, make breakfast, then go out in the field and come back. Drilling the rocks we used antifreeze, so it’s really slippery. So, every night when I came back, I would have to clean the cores in hot water and then label them. So, I didn’t actually do as much cooking, not that dried pemmican and mashed potatoes require much, but I didn’t do that so much. I spent a lot of time getting the samples labeled when we’d come back at night. So that’s probably true all the time, although I love to cook, but I didn’t do a lot of cooking on workdays.

Seag:

Did you find anything…You said the cold was challenging. Was there anything you didn’t like about the season?

Grunow:

Well, so in drilling these holes with the antifreeze, the antifreeze gets on—We had polypropylene gloves to keep our hands warm, but after a while they get soaked with the antifreeze and never dry because antifreeze doesn’t really ever freeze unless—[Laughter] So my fingers got very cold. I think I’ve got not as much sensitivity in my fingertips now. They get numb pretty quickly in the cold.

Seag:

Was that from the first season or from 12 seasons’ worth of cold?

Grunow:

I think it’s largely the first season because it was very cold. I wised up in later years. [Laughs]

Seag:

How long were you in the field that year?

Grunow:

Pretty close to two months. Yeah.

Seag:

At what point did you know that you would like to return?

Grunow:

Oh, I knew as soon as I got down there. I loved it. Yeah. It was just exciting.

Seag:

Did you spend much time at McMurdo?

Grunow:

We would spend four or five days there getting gear packed up. We’d do a day, survival course day, and we would do a day with the Skidoos just making sure we were all good with that. You know, happy camper, learning how to use the radios, little snowmobile half-day to learn how to repair them and stuff like that.

Seag:

Do you remember your impressions of the McMurdo community?

Grunow:

[Laughs] Well, you know, all the science support people were great. They were so nice. Yeah, I can remember going to the bar at night. We would tend to go to the NCO bar, which I think that probably doesn’t exist, but it was just kind of a different world in there. [Laughs]

Seag:

So, the NCO bar, that would be the…?

Grunow:

The non-commissioned officers, so the…

Seag:

So, a lot of Navy folks.

Grunow:

Yeah. So, they had the bars split out. There was an enlisted bar which I don’t think we ever went to, and then there was the other bar that all the scientists and then the officers went to. But I remember thinking that the bar scene there seemed to me like in the movie Star Wars in that first movie where all these unusual people are at the bar. It was just kind of a crazy place—I mean people I never would have dreamed I would meet in terms of, you know, everything. [Laughs] It was crazy.

Seag:

Did you feel like it was easy enough to talk with non-scientists, with the civilians and the Navy folks?

Grunow:

I think so. I don’t recall talking to very many Navy people, though, I have to say. But certainly the other, the support people for sure. Yeah.

Seag:

Did you feel like there was a community of women on station or was it pretty intermingled? And I guess there weren’t too many women at the time anyways.

Grunow:

Yeah. I mean there were women up at the BFC. [Chuckles] You know, I have to say I never really thought about that stuff when I was down there. I just felt like I was part of the group and my sex did not seem to enter into my brain about being there.

Seag:

It’s really cool doing so many interviews with women who worked down there in the ‘80s and seeing that – that’s the mentality that people had. It’s pretty cool.

Grunow:

Is that right? Yeah, because I don’t know. It just didn’t occur to me about the woman part of it, other than the British…you know, Swithinbank. Other than that, everybody didn’t seem…Nobody seemed to care, that I could tell.

Seag:

So that was ‘83-’84.

Grunow:

Mm-hmm [yes].

Seag:

Did you go back again the next season?

Grunow:

Went back ‘84-’85. We went to…Let’s see now. That year we went to Thurston Island, Pine Island Bay—or not Pine Island Bay. Jones Mountains. Then we went back…’85-’86. ‘85-’86 I went to Elephant Island. The years get a little jumbled. I went twice a year some years, so…

Seag:

Twice a year?

Grunow:

Yeah, because I did some seasons down on the Peninsula.

Seag:

Huh. So, what were you doing that required so many different field sites?

Grunow:

So, let’s see. I guess probably toward the late ‘80s when I was finishing my Ph.D. but also starting my own grant, I would do field work up on the Peninsula. So, some of that field work was April, May.

Seag:

Oh, okay. Different animal.

Grunow:

Yeah. That was easy. Yeah. [Chuckles] So I’m trying to think. We went to Thurston Island ‘85-’86. Pensacola is ‘86-’87…Yeah. And we did cruises. That’s right. We did Polar Sea and Polar Star cruises to West Antarctica. That was a little bit different, you know, being on board with a bunch of the Coast Guard guys.

Seag:

In what way was it different?

Grunow:

You know, then I think perhaps it probably entered into my mind then that I was really just a woman on the ship. [Laughs]

Seag:

Just in general attitudes or—?

Grunow:

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. It was fun, but it was not the kind of fun when you’re out in the field working or on Polar Duke or something.

Seag:

How many people would be on those ships?

Grunow:

Hundreds.

Seag:

Wow. How many of them would be scientists?

Grunow:

20 or 30.

Seag:

Oh, so that’s a very different group dynamic than doing remote field work.

Grunow:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. We would eat in the wardroom with the officers. It was very formal. Yeah.

Seag:

Did you have to dress up for dinner?

Grunow:

I don’t think we had to dress up for dinner, but we all had our places and it was nice china set out. It was really…It was a different experience.

Seag:

So, I’m trying to get my bearings chronologically. What we’ve talked about so far is all kind of during the ‘80s when you’re doing your Ph.D.

Grunow:

Yeah.

Seag:

How did all this field work fit into your dissertation?

Grunow:

My dissertation ended up being kind of split in half. I had the magnetic side, which was the deep field in Antarctica, camping and everything, and then I had this other side up on the Peninsula where I worked up on Elephant Island where Shackleton’s men were marooned and some of these outer islands doing dating of the rocks and studying the metamorphic history. So completely separate projects.

Seag:

But in one dissertation, not in two.

Grunow:

One dissertation.

Seag:

Wow. When you submitted your dissertation, did you stay at Lamont?

Grunow:

No, not really. I was there for a few months after my Ph.D. ended, but then I came here with a post-doc at Ohio State.

Seag:

Oh, okay. Who were you working with here?

Grunow:

Well, you know, I didn’t really work with anyone, but David Elliot sponsored me and I knew Terry [Wilson] was here.

Seag:

Oh, wow. Is that how you knew about the program here?

Grunow:

No, because this place has always been a polar place. So even during graduate school I had to come out here for meetings and things. So, I knew that this would be a good place to do a post-doc. But I already had my own grant, so I didn’t need to have anybody to work with. I just needed to be sponsored.

Seag:

What was the grant for?

Grunow:

That first grant was…must be something on…paleomagnetism on the Antarctic Peninsula, I guess. Yeah.

Seag:

So, was that ship-based or land-based?

Grunow:

Ship-based.

Seag:

Ship-based on Hero?

Grunow:

Polar Duke. Yeah.

Seag:

Did you sense that your research agendas were changing once you had finished your Ph.D.?

Grunow:

Well, I knew I wasn’t going to get money for the metamorphic rocks with the dating.

Seag:

Why is that?

Grunow:

Oh, I just didn’t feel like that had the obvious direction in terms of an exciting project, so I continued with the magnetism and that’s what I did all through the ‘90s with the magnetics projects.

Seag:

Was most of your research in the ‘90s on the Peninsula?

Grunow:

The early years were on the Peninsula. The later years were all the Transantarctic Mountains.

Seag:

Oh, wow.

Grunow:

So ‘94-’95 we did a season down in a place called the Scott Glacier, and then the next year we did one on the Shackleton Glacier. Then I got married, had kids. I still had a project, so I sent people down the next year to a place in the Beardmore. Yeah.

Seag:

Over the course of this – 12 seasons in roughly 12 years? Is that right?

Grunow:

‘83…Probably a little bit more. ‘83 to almost…’83 to ‘96. Yeah, 13.

Seag:

That’s a lot of fieldwork. That’s cool. Were you generally doing field work with the same group of people or did that change?

Grunow:

In the ‘90s it was the same group of people, kind of a little research team that we formed.

Seag:

At OSU?

Grunow:

No, he’s…Well, one of them was a post-doc here at OSU and then…Actually, they both did post-docs here, but they have gone on elsewhere. But we continued to work together.

Seag:

Who was the team?

Grunow:

Tim Paulsen, who is at Oshkosh, and then John Encarnacion, who is at Saint Louis University.

Seag:

And you worked together whether you were on the ships or in the mountains?

Grunow:

No, we did all…Those two guys, we did all the Transantarctic Mountain work. The ship-borne work was a guy named Sam Mukasa and his student. Now Sam is an African American from Uganda originally. And his student, a young woman. So, we worked on the Peninsula together.

Seag:

When you look back at the many parts of the continent you’ve been to, do any stand out as having been more meaningful or rewarding or enjoyable?

Grunow:

I don’t know. They’re all really different and beautiful. I like them all. Peninsula is easy, but I think I like the deep field a little better.

Seag:

Only a polar scientist would say it’s easy to do science on the Antarctic Peninsula!

Grunow:

Well, it is, though! [Laughs] I mean it’s no different than weather around here in the winter.

Seag:

Do you have any particularly strong memories of your time on the Peninsula?

Grunow:

Lots of penguins, lots of seals to get around to get into the places I wanted to sample. I remember we were working on Elephant Island and we went to this…We were using a Coast Guard icebreaker, the Glacier. That was another…back in the ‘80s. We got dropped off on this little tiny island that was like a huge beach of animals, of penguins and seals. This fogbank rolled in, and we never go anywhere without some survival kit. They couldn’t pick us up, so we had to spend the night. But the NSF program manager at the time came with us on shore just so he could get off the ship and see something.

Seag:

Who was that?

Grunow:

Herman Zimmerman. But he didn’t bring anything with him survival-wise. [Laughs] So we’re on shore with this little biology group and our group, and so we had to just kind of share tents and sleeping bags and bundle up and get through the night and hope the next day we could get off the island.

Seag:

Did you get off the next day?

Grunow:

We did. We got off the next day. So, they did try to send in a boat to get us, like a little Zodiac, but there were too many ice flows out in the bay at that point, so they couldn’t get in. But they threw this bottle of scotch, Johnny Walker, onto one of the ice flows.

Seag:

You’re kidding!

Grunow:

And our mountaineer went out and got it. He just hopped flows and picked up this bottle of scotch. But they couldn’t get the boat all the way in. It really was a stupid thing to do. [Laughs]

Seag:

Were you delighted by it at the time or…?

Grunow:

Oh yeah, everybody was. Everybody was psyched. Yeah.

Seag:

That’s so funny.

Grunow:

But it’s like oh…The things you do, you look back on it and you realize it was kind of stupid. [Laughs]

Seag:

What about from the Transantarctic Mountains?

Grunow:

I loved working in the Transantarctic Mountains. Back in the ‘80s we landed…I mean we always have kind of cool things that happen to you. We landed up in the Pensacola Mountains, because again, fog rolls in off of the Weddell Sea, so we couldn’t land the Twin Otter at camp. So, we had to land way five miles up the valley, of which there are crevasses on each side of the valley. So, he landed way at the top of the valley, broke some of the wing struts—these things that tie the wing to the ski—because it was such a hard landing, and he was just sweating bullets. He was a British BAS pilot. So we landed and now we’re in this fog. We can’t see the valley on either side of us, so we’re following snowmobile tracks all the way back to camp.

Seag:

Whose tracks were they?

Grunow:

They were ours, because we had snowmobiled up the valley. So, working in the valley, we use snowmobiles rather than the plane, but the plane had taken us much farther away. But he couldn’t get back to camp.

Seag:

So, this is after a break in McMurdo or something.

Grunow:

Oh no, we were out. We were camping in the field. We were out in the deep field at that point, and that was a joint British-American project.

Seag:

Was this your first season?

Grunow:

Third season in—was the Pensacolas.

Seag:

You continued to collaborate with the British.

Grunow:

Right. Yes.

Seag:

Was it the same project?

Grunow:

Yeah. It was, actually. That part was, yeah. So that first project was three years with the British Antarctic Survey. Then the next one was something called SPRITE. I did one field season with them on Pine Island Bay, and that was Kiwis, Brits, and Americans. Then that was the end of my international…Then I went off and did my own thing. I graduated and started my own research projects.

Seag:

Did you think that…Did you notice any differences or similarities between the international projects and the national projects?

Grunow:

Well, so for me, doing just the national project, just my own, is easier, because you just have all that control. The international projects were fine, but they just take a lot more work to get off the ground.

Seag:

Yeah. You mentioned, when we spoke last summer, that the British would have had some incentive to do these international collaborations because they had—I don’t remember if it was they didn’t have the aircraft or…

Grunow:

We had the fuel. We could get the fuel in. They had the aircraft, but to get the fuel that the aircraft would need would have taken all these trips to fly fuel in on a little aircraft. You know, it would be incredibly inefficient. So, the US could fly in fuel and put it into these bladders. Now I don’t know if they…Yeah, I guess they still do fuel bladders.

Seag:

Yeah.

Grunow:

So that was the reason for the collaboration.

Seag:

So, it’s a logistically-motivated collaboration…

Grunow:

It was.

Seag:

…not a scientifically-motivated collaboration.

Grunow:

Yeah. It was logistics. They had the plane; we had the fuel.

Seag:

What about other collaborations you were on? Were they similarly about logistic collaboration?

Grunow:

Yeah, largely. The logistics could be made. I mean the scientists, we all knew each other, and so there was a commonality of what to work on. But it was the logistics that drove it.

Seag:

So, the US has this massive logistics operation.

Grunow:

Right.

Seag:

What’s in it for you to do these collaborations?

Grunow:

So, at the time, with the British, we didn’t have a Twin Otter. We couldn’t get into the deep field with a small plane. They did start to get Twin Otters, but they stayed much closer to McMurdo and the Transantarctic Mountains. This Twin Otter stayed with us for weeks. That would never happen in the US program.

Seag:

So, the pilots were based with you?

Grunow:

They camped. Yep, they camped with us. Yeah, we got to know them really well. It was fun.

Seag:

Oh, wow.

Grunow:

Yeah. So that was the huge difference. With the New Zealand-British project, I’m not sure what the Kiwis brought. Maybe gear, or I don’t really know. On that one we seemed to bring the lion’s share of the logistics.

Seag:

So, you’ve seen a lot of different kinds of projects over 13 years or so, and I wonder if you could reflect on changes that you’ve seen in Antarctic fieldwork generally between ‘83 and…Was it ‘97 that you left the field?

Grunow:

‘96 was my last year. Well, in the ‘90s people started to take out satellite phones. They were very uncommon, but they were there for an emergency like at a bigger base camp.

Seag:

Previously it would have been…

Grunow:

Nothing. Oh well, just radio. So that would be the big thing. And then we used to get mail maybe once in a season. But now people…When I left in the ‘90s you could get…Well, we could get mail more frequently and email when you were at the base. Yeah, so it was a huge difference. Because when I first went down, when I got out of the field my first field season, I hadn’t been in touch with my parents. I can remember going into the Chalet into the radio shack and using, “Are you there? Over,” I mean just the whole radio lingo. I was patched to my parents through a ham operator phone, so yeah, it was a really different time.

Seag:

Did they think it was cool that you were down there? Were they nervous?

Grunow:

I think they thought it was cool, and I’m sure they were nervous. They never really let on, but now that I’m a parent, I can’t imagine they weren’t scared to death, you know, because they hear nothing at all for weeks and weeks on end. There’s no way of knowing what’s happening.

Seag:

So what other ways did you see the science change? Were the scientific priorities and agendas changing in that period, or the methods?

Grunow:

I think that in the ‘90s it started to change to…There started to be a lot of really big projects on the ice, so I think there were fewer and fewer geology projects. I think that’s been true in the last 20 years. In terms of hard rock geology, it’s gone toward more glaciology or climate or very modern things like biology and…just not the hard rocks anymore.

Seag:

Why do you think that hard rock geology would have fallen to the wayside when these big projects took over?

Grunow:

Because I think it just doesn’t have as much societal relevance. You know, it’s an easy sell to worry about receding glaciers.

Seag:

It’s a little more political concerns than scientific concerns.

Grunow:

Yeah. And those are huge problems, I mean obviously, whereas worrying about where pieces of Antarctica had been and how they fit in the puzzle is more of a historical thing rather than…you know, doesn’t have as much relevance to people.

Seag:

So, within your 12 seasons, did you find that your own research questions were evolving, or were you continuing to reproduce in different sites?

Grunow:

It was probably a combination of the two. I worked a lot of different regions, which I was very fortunate. Most people get in an area and they stay put, but I was everywhere from the very tip of the Peninsula down to the Pole. My work mostly focused on older…When it was just me in the ‘90s, it was the same topic in different regions, and in the ‘80s I worked on some different topics in different places.

Seag:

Were your methods changing? Was the technology changing?

Grunow:

The technology did not change when I was doing it, other than, of course, the computer aspect.

Seag:

So, you were still using a chainsaw drill…

Grunow:

Chainsaw drill and drilling out the samples. The magnetometers didn’t really change. They still haven’t really changed.

Seag:

Do you think that that has to do with the funding being diverted towards other fields, that there wasn’t tech innovation?

Grunow:

I don’t think so. I think that in that particular field of magnetism, the technology…Maybe it’s improved a little bit, but it’s no big step forward. It’s just incremental.

Seag:

Can you describe to this lay person what you were finding?

Grunow:

So, when I worked in the Transantarctic Mountains, I was working on rocks that were about 500 million years old, and we were finding that those rocks formed on the equator, even though they’re now at 85 South. So, we could determine where Antarctica was and how it fit in with Australia and South America.

Seag:

And at the time, this is not very well established.

Grunow:

Not—yeah. People had theories, but there weren’t a lot of facts to support it.

Seag:

So then mainly what you’re looking at is the history of movement of plates and things like that.

Grunow:

Right. Yeah, exactly.

Seag:

Were you presenting at conferences during this period?

Grunow:

Yep.

Seag:

And publishing a lot.

Grunow:

Yeah, yeah.

Seag:

Were you teaching at all?

Grunow:

No. I only taught one class here at Ohio State because I was not connected to the Geology Department. So, I taught one class and I loved it, but they pay very poorly so it didn’t really pay to teach.

Seag:

Did you notice field cultures changing between ‘83 and ‘96?

Grunow:

I don’t think so. I don’t think so, no.

Seag:

What about anything in the administration, bureaucracy coming out of NSF?

Grunow:

Well, that’s always changing. [Laughs] So I’m not sure…It’s just the rules always change. So, in the ‘80s it was certainly much more you could…There was much more freedom. By the ‘90s, the whole recycling thing, everybody had to recycle, was very well established and people were very aware of it. But when I first went down in the ‘80s, man, Ian and I didn’t do this, but the other two Americans, when they finished with a can of food, they’d just toss it out the tent door and let it blow downwind.

Seag:

Some archeologist is going to have a field day one day going across the continent. [Laughter]

Grunow:

Yeah. Swithinbank did not like that. He was quite perturbed about that, and I say rightly so. But they were both from the western…kind of easygoing, just…

Seag:

Were there any other ways that you noticed this shifting, sort of a tightening of NSF rules manifesting?

Grunow:

Well, in the ‘80s being a graduate student, I didn’t have to deal with the bureaucracy, so I got to just go and enjoy it. So, I don’t really know what it was like that much in the ‘80s with NSF versus when I came into it in the ‘90s.

Seag:

Did you become a PI for the first time when you were in your post-doc work?

Grunow:

So, I think I got my first grant in ‘89. Yeah.

Seag:

And then you were a PI from then on?

Grunow:

Yeah.

Seag:

How did that change your experience, or did it?

Grunow:

I liked it because I got to do the organizing. I’ve always loved logistics, planning, and I really enjoyed doing that, planning my field season.

Seag:

Did the way that you felt about the field work change with time?

Grunow:

I don’t think so. I loved going.

Seag:

Did you get sick of it?

Grunow:

Oh no, I never got sick of it. No, never. In fact, my ‘94 season was down at the Scott Glacier and I ruptured my disc in my back to the extent that I had to have surgery. So, I wasn’t even sure I was going to be able to get down there. So, I sent my two guys, Tim and John, down. They were going to do all the drilling for me. You know, the top of Scott Glacier is bitterly cold. It’s 8 or 9,000 feet and the wind chill is at least -30. So, I finally, after my surgery…You know, I just did all this therapy of just walking. Like my neurosurgeon said, “Walk, walk, walk,” and I did that. After six weeks I was allowed to go down.

Seag:

Wow!

Grunow:

And I had to get through the hurdle of NSF at the Chalet letting me go in the deep field. That was kind of a battle.

Seag:

You were already…You had PQ’d…physically qualified —

Grunow:

Yeah, but then they still, you know…Bresnahan was like, “Mmm…” [Laughs] Yeah. So, they still weren’t sure they wanted to let me go out in the field because I wasn’t supposed to carry anything more than about 10 or 15 pounds on my back.

Seag:

I can see their dilemma, but I’m also surprised that they’d be willing to waste all the money they spent getting you down there just to keep you at McMurdo.

Grunow:

I feel like at that time that money wasn’t as tight as it is now. So, I think it’s— And I was the PI.

Seag:

Right.

Grunow:

Of course now they’ve gotten really strict, I think, but they let me come down because my doctor said I could.

Seag:

Did you notice McMurdo changing during this period?

Grunow:

A little bit. They built the new dorms—which aren’t new anymore, but they were new then—and so there started to be a little bit of a culture of the “new dorm” people.

Seag:

Was this the 208, 209…

Grunow:

Probably, yeah.

Seag:

The big brown ones?

Grunow:

Yeah, the big brown ones. It used to be everybody got stuck at the Mammoth Mountain Inn, and what’s the other one? Anyway, those two over there. Hotel California. So, there’s a very big living quality difference between those and 208 and 209.

Seag:

Did that make a difference, do you think, in people’s experiences? Do you think that it attracted more scientists to the field as it was getting more streamlined and maybe higher quality living quarters?

Grunow:

You know, my perspective would be to say no because I think if you’re a scientist, you’re driven by your science, and frankly, the living conditions really just…That’s just a perk. But that’s my viewpoint. I don’t really know scientists who aren’t really fundamentally field people. Maybe that is really important to them and I just don’t know. For me it wouldn’t be. I don’t care. [Laughs] You’re only in town…For a field geologist, you’re only in town for a week or so anyway.

Seag:

Right. Did you notice anything about the McMurdo culture changing? People mention the garbage a lot in that period, that it got cleaner.

Grunow:

Oh, for sure it got cleaner. Yeah. I don’t remember McMurdo being dirty, but there was a dump. You know, obviously people didn’t think about the trash the way they do now, and even in the ‘90s we had to recycle.

Seag:

Did you like being at McMurdo?

Grunow:

I liked being at McMurdo for a few days and then I liked to be gone. Yeah. You know, I had nothing to do in McMurdo, so there wasn’t any reason to stay.

Seag:

So, I’m soon going to start asking questions about things that are not about Antarctic fieldwork. Do you have any other memories of the field that you’d like to share?

Grunow:

I mean I have stories of exciting things that happened. We broke a tail rotor on Elephant Island and had to auto-rotate down to the ship. That was exciting. [Laughs]

Seag:

Please tell that story!

Grunow:

[Laughter] Well, there isn’t much to it. We were at the top of one of the peaks on Elephant Island, and the Coast Guard icebreaker helicopter came to pick us up. When he landed, he thinks he threw a pebble from the rotor up onto his tail rotor and it cracked it. So, he didn’t tell us until we got back to the ship, but at the time we got on board and all of a sudden we’re just like zooming down this valley with cliffs on each side down to the ocean. We thought, “Wow, this is an exciting ride!” you know?

Seag:

You had no idea what was going on.

Grunow:

No, we didn’t know until he got out over the ocean and he said, “Well, I cracked the tail rotor blade, so I wanted to get down as quickly as possible to the sea in case we needed to ditch.” It’s like, “Okay!” But he made it all the way back to the ship, which was only a few miles offshore, so it wasn’t very far.

Seag:

Did you often feel that you were in high-risk adventure situations?

Grunow:

You know, when you’re doing it at the time, you don’t think about it, but afterwards yeah. I mean we’ve had rock falls. It’s like, “Geez, if we’d stood one foot over, we would be…It would be a different story,” and things…You know, we ran aground in the Polar Duke in the Beagle Channel coming back from a field season. It’s the middle of the night and it had been raining a lot and flooding and chilly. We had a Chilean third mate on board and he was talking to the Chilean pilot. The view is that maybe they were just talking so much that he forgot to change at the waypoint, change the ship’s course. We just sailed right into this bunch of rocks and tore holes from the front to the back of the ship. So, it didn’t tear the inner hull of the Polar Duke, just the outer hull.

Seag:

So, you stayed afloat.

Grunow:

So, we stayed afloat. We were listing. We were actually just not very far from Ushuaia, so then they had to issue a mayday and the Argentines had to come out and get us. Then we got on…So we got onshore, but Argentine Airlines were on strike, which was very common at that time. So, we got stuck in Ushuaia for a few days. Then we finally were able to leave. [Laughs] But there were all sorts of…You know, we were supposed to be in Chile, and the Argentines and Chileans at that time were not particularly friendly with each other. So, it was a lot of red tape.

Seag:

When you look back at your era of fieldwork, do these kinds of adventure memories stand out, or does the science or the landscape? What do you think of?

Grunow:

I think I remember the adventure things. You know, of course those are clear in my mind, but I love all the places. I can remember the outcrops, and I loved doing the science. It was fun. I remember Thurston Island. My second season down there I roomed with a grad student, another grad student, and I brought all this coffee down, you know, because coffee was kind of a luxury. If you like good coffee, you had to make it with a filter. He just kind of went through my coffee so quickly. You know, we had gotten caught in these storms where we couldn’t leave the tents for days on end, these terrible blizzards out there. He went through my coffee and I can just remember that being a very stressful time because like, “Wait a second. I brought this for the whole field season and we’re only three weeks in and we’re out of my coffee.” So, it’s just little things you remember. I can remember that out there on Thurston Island, the weather was so bad we set up radio calls at 5:00 every night to make sure everybody was okay in camp because you really didn’t want to walk between the tents. The wind was so strong. I know Christine Siddoway over in Marie Byrd Land, her tents were shredded.

Seag:

She told me that story.

Grunow:

Yeah. I think we are very fortunate that ours were not. We had dug a snow cave for a survival shelter because we knew the weather was bad out there on the coast. It could sleep four of us.

Seag:

Did you have to use it?

Grunow:

We did not. We used it for Christmas dinner. So, we could pack eight of us sitting in there, but it’s like sitting in your freezer for Christmas. But it worked—because we were still the British and Americans. So, there were eight of us plus the two pilots.

Seag:

What did you have for Christmas dinner?

Grunow:

Ham.

Seag:

Wow! Did it feel festive?

Grunow:

It did. Well, again, I was the only woman in the group, and I brought down little Christmas handmade ornament to give to everybody. I brought little decorations and stuff like that. I don’t know if I’ve got one sitting here. I made different ones. Oh, I don’t. They must be home in my Christmas stuff. I made little things that were…I put a little paleomag core and a little stocking and everybody’s name and stuff.

Seag:

That’s funny – I’ve heard a number of stories like this where a female has thought about these kinds of things, and until now, I didn’t realize that I did the same. My second year I was the one who made Christmas stockings out of paper bags for everybody and stuck candy and stuff in them! [Laughs]

Grunow:

We must be wired that way or something because the guys did nothing. [Laughs]

Seag:

Do you have any idea…You said that during this period, not thinking about the gender stuff, and in retrospect realizing how cool it is to be a pioneer. Do you have any idea what it was that changed the way you look back on this kind of thing?

Grunow:

I don’t know. I think that as we got into the ‘90s, 2000s it seemed to become more, I don’t know, in the news or in the public eye. Maybe as I got older I reflected back on it and realized, well, you know, you kind of did something pretty different. Whereas at the time I was just so focused on my science and the adventure. I didn’t really think about it.

Seag:

Do you think…Well, instead of asking a leading question, I’ll just tell you. A lot of the interviews I’ve done this year have referenced things like #MeToo, Hidden Figures—all these sort of big cultural moments that have created this thing for people to think about. I think Hidden Figures is one that’s come up a ton. But have those sort of cultural shifts been part of your consciousness? Or the SCAR Wikibomb on women in Antarctica, that kind of thing.

Grunow:

Yeah. I mean I thought that was really cool, and that also brought to my mind, thinking back over the years of the things that I did. I mean for me the #MeToo thing was never…I never had any issues. But I’m certainly more aware of women being on the ice and doing science down there now than I was.

Seag:

Yeah. When do you think it became…if “normalized” is the word…?

Grunow:

I don’t know. I thought in the ‘90s there were quite a few women.

Seag:

A lot of people have said mid ‘90s.

Grunow:

Yeah. You know, the ‘80s there were not so many, but the ‘90s for sure.

Seag:

So, what are you doing between ‘83 and…Well, I guess between ‘89 and ‘96 when you’re off the ice? You have a post-doc. Are you analyzing data? Were you…?

Grunow:

Oh. So, between ‘89 and ‘96 I am still doing field work. I’m doing the peninsula work mostly.

Seag:

But what about when you’re off…when you’re not…?

Grunow:

Oh, when I’m not in Antarctica. Oh. So gotcha, gotcha. I’m doing the analyses. I have a lab and…

Seag:

Here.

Grunow:

Yeah. I don’t have it any longer, but I had a paleomagnetism lab. So, I would do the analyses, write papers.

Seag:

Did you enjoy the lab work as well?

Grunow:

I did. Yeah. You know, I think growing up on a farm where we did the same thing every day—you know, hoeing cabbage or whatever—I’m able to sort of get into a routine of just doing stuff that may not be very exciting, but I’m okay with that. It’s alright. I don’t need a technician to do it. I’m fine to run the samples.

Seag:

Were you able to stay at OSU during that whole period? Did you extend your post-doc or…?

Grunow:

So, let’s see. The first year I got here I had a post-doc at OSU. Then I had two years at Oxford in England, a NATO post-doc. So, I did a project. When I was at the NATO post-doc at Oxford, I did a project in Patagonia (paleomagnetism).

Seag:

Oh, wow! So, were you also doing Antarctic work?

Grunow:

And I was also doing Antarctic work, so I was gone a lot. [Laughs]

Seag:

Very fun! Having a time of it, it sounds!

Grunow:

Yeah. So, I had funding from the National Geographic Society to do work in Chile and Argentina—well, mostly Argentina.

Seag:

Was it magnetism work?

Grunow:

More magnetism, yep.

Seag:

So, I know the National Geographic work now comes with all these strings about outreach and that kind of thing.

Grunow:

Oh, that was not true. It was pretty much, “Go do your work.” Yeah. There were no strings.

Seag:

Did you ever interact with the public sphere, outreach, politics, that kind of thing through your research?

Grunow:

I mean I’ve done a lot of school talks and things like that, and now here at the repository we provide an educational kit for elementary and middle school that has like 40 rock samples. We send those out free of charge all across the US.

Seag:

So, two years at Oxford and then back to OSU.

Grunow:

Mm-hmm [yes], and then once I got back here, I just stayed on as a research scientist ever since.

Seag:

Oh, great. Can you tell the story of how you stopped doing Antarctic field work?

Grunow:

[Chuckles] Well, so my last season was ‘95-’96. I had met my future husband by that point. We got married in ‘97 and I was already 37 years old. We wanted to have a family, so we chose to do that, and I’m good with that.

Seag:

Yeah. What did you do professionally during that time? Did you take a break or were you…?

Grunow:

I was very fortunate in that I was able to work part-time. So, I worked full-time the first two years when my son was born. Then when my second son was born, I went to half-time.

Seag:

At OSU.

Grunow:

At OSU.

Seag:

Were you a research scientist during that time as well?

Grunow:

Yep. Yeah, so I stayed as a research scientist.

Seag:

Doing lab work?

Grunow:

Lab work, and then in 2003 the Rock Repository.

Seag:

When was the repository founded?

Grunow:

It opened in 2003.

Seag:

So, you’ve been here since the beginning.

Grunow:

Yeah.

Seag:

Were you involved in the establishment of the repository?

Grunow:

Rosie [Askin] did most of the groundwork, and then I helped Rosie at the end during the construction phase, not that…I mean it just meant you had to kind of keep track of what these contractors were doing.

Seag:

Can you describe the repository for those who are not familiar?

Grunow:

So, NSF started the repository in 2003 as a place for Antarctic rock specimens to be curated and made available to scientists around the world. So, we have 46,000 samples, and growing, here that we make available. I just sent some out to New Zealand a few weeks ago. I’m sending out to Brazil tomorrow. People use these because it’s so expensive and inaccessible to get these samples again.

Seag:

Yeah. I guess with funding drying up for rock geology, it’s very useful.

Grunow:

Yeah. So, some people are still just even doing projects from monies they get from their departments. Like Tim Paulsen has had a lot of papers, including one in Nature, using samples just from the repository.

Seag:

Wow. And it’s an international community that makes use of them.

Grunow:

It is. Yeah. So, under SCAR, you’re supposed to make data and things available, and so this facility makes those samples available.

Seag:

Is it still NSF-funded?

Grunow:

It is NSF-funded.

Seag:

How has your work here evolved with—I guess it’s been 15 years.

Grunow:

Initially we didn’t have very much money for IT, so we started with a very basic database that put things online. So, it’s really the database side that’s changed the most dramatically, is making things available easily for people to discover.

Seag:

I looked at the website last night, and it is so cool. You can search so much.

Grunow:

Yeah. So that’s really the key because most people don’t actually come here to look for their samples. They make requests to me and I help look for them. We look for the kind of samples they want.

Seag:

Do you find that you’ve had to branch out of your expertise to be able to accommodate people’s requests?

Grunow:

Yeah, I’m certainly learning more about the Cenozoic rocks that I certainly didn’t know much about, so I’m learning more about that. But I’ve been really lucky in that my experience has taken me to so many parts of Antarctica and so many different age rocks that I feel that I’ve been an asset hopefully to scientists because I have a knowledge base that’s pretty broad.

Seag:

Are most of the rocks Antarctic?

Grunow:

Some are South American, and some are dredges off of the Antarctic coast all the way up toward South Georgia Island.

Seag:

Anything from the Arctic?

Grunow:

Nothing from the Arctic.

Seag:

Oh, wow. So, it’s definitely southern…

Grunow:

It is, only in part because that’s where I get my funding, is from the Antarctic side.

Seag:

Oh, okay.

Grunow:

But also, the Arctic, it’s really tricky to get samples. So, there are samples in Alaska. Well, most of the people in Alaska have kept their samples. The Canadians keep their samples. The Norwegians and Russians keep theirs.

Seag:

I guess it’s either easier and cheaper to access, or so much harder to access.

Grunow:

I think it’s so much harder to access because you have to hopefully find someone willing to lend you samples. I keep hoping to get Greenland samples one of these days.

Seag:

Are folks doing hard rock geology in Greenland?

Grunow:

They are. So, at some point, again, I’m hoping I can get some of those. But it’s a lot of work because at this point in time, there is no mandate from the National Science Foundation that samples need to come here. It’s just a labor of love if somebody wants to donate their samples. So, it’s really after people retire or pass away that I get collections. Fortunately, somebody like Peg Rees was willing to make the effort to get her samples here. Because active researchers, they can just keep them forever. Now if you drilled a sediment core, an ice core, a lake core, the cores go to national facilities. You have to go there and sample them. Then there’s a moratorium period, and after—I don’t know how many—three or four years, those cores are available to the public.

Seag:

Oh, wow.

Grunow:

But if you’re a field geologist and you collect your rock, you can keep it and put it on your gravestone, even though both were collected with NSF money.

Seag:

That surprises me as a former support contractor who was not allowed to keep any rocks.

Grunow:

I know. Go with a scientist and then you can keep them; put them in your yard. It’s just crazy, and I don’t know if NSF will ever change that policy or not.

Seag:

So, during this period now, ‘97 to today, you’re raising two boys?

Grunow:

Yeah.

Seag:

What do they think about your former adventures?

Grunow:

Well, I think now that they’re getting older they’re realizing it was pretty cool. My son’s at Notre Dame and he was saying that his teacher was talking about the ice core facility here, and he said, “Oh! Well, my mother works there.” So, I think they’re starting to realize that maybe I did some pretty cool things. My other son is a junior in high school and loves geology and thinks he might go into geology, which is amazing. I mean I didn’t encourage him. He and I tend to, you know, not always see eye to eye. So, you know, I think now as they get older they’re starting to see that maybe it was pretty cool.

Seag:

Were you able to continue spending time in the outdoors and traveling?

Grunow:

Oh, yeah. We camped a lot with them when they were younger, and we’re always taking them places as much as we can, travel-wise. Overseas—we really try to get them to be overseas so that they get that multi-cultural aspect of their life and not US-centric.

Seag:

That’s awesome.

Grunow:

So yeah. So, I think six or seven years maybe, then I’ll look to retire and pass the torch on to someone else.

Seag:

So, looking back, are there any accomplishments that you’re especially attached to, experiences, things you’re proud of?

Grunow:

I don’t know. I felt like the work that I did was very solid and I think will stand the test of time. I was always a “principle of least astonishment” kind of scientist, in terms of I think that the answers are probably right in front of us. I don’t need to look for a meteorite impact or some celestial event to explain the problem. So, I tend to be a more conservative geologist, and I think that my data have…You know, people are still citing it 20, 30 years later. So, I’m proud of that. I’m proud of the work I did.

Seag:

And you were recently recognized in a very cool way by—is it Mount Grunow?

Grunow:

I think it’s Grunow Peak.

Seag:

Grunow Peak. How did that come about?

Grunow:

Well, Terry Wilson is a close friend. She nominated me for that because I’d been working in Antarctica for, what, almost 30 years—more than…No, not quite. 25 years at that point. So, it’s a long time. And being at the rock repository, I’m just exclusively doing Antarctic type stuff for people. So, she nominated me. We chose a couple different locations as possibilities where I had been and knew that things had not been named. There was a peak out in Thurston Island when I was there in ‘85, a beautiful little spot with double wind scoops. Nothing dramatic, just a really beautiful location, and that was the spot I always wanted. But nobody ever submitted it and they named it after some, you know, I don’t know, glaciologist who had never even been there, or weather person. So, then I thought, “Okay, this is silly. If I see some spots, I’d better make a little list.” I gave that to Terry and they picked something. So, I think Grunow Peak is a place…Either I’ve sampled at the base or I sampled very close by, a granite there.

Seag:

So, you’ve seen it.

Grunow:

I’ve seen it. It’s very inaccessible, very cold. It’s the top of Amundsen Glacier, near the top of the Polar Plateau. It’s really windy and really cold. Hence why probably nothing is named because there’s only been one or two expeditions that have ever been there. There was one in the ‘60s that was there and then a little bit in the ‘70s; there was one expedition, and then that was it. We flew in for a couple of sampling sites.

Seag:

I’ve heard people gripe that they got a glacier or a coastal spot and they don’t think it’s going to last very long…

Grunow:

Oh, wow!

Seag:

…so it sounds like you’ll have yours for a good long time!

Grunow:

I didn’t think about that! Interesting!

Seag:

Yeah. Somebody was joking that he had something on the coast and he was worried they’d have to change it to atoll or whatever, that it was all going to be submerged pretty soon. [Laughing]

Grunow:

Oh, wow. I didn’t think about that. Yeah, so mine should be fine. [Laughter] It should be a nice, good peak for a while.

Seag:

Well, that’s sort of a lovely note to end on, unless there’s anything I should have asked or anything else you’d like to share.

Grunow:

No, I can’t think of anything else. Hopefully you got enough.

Seag:

Yeah. Thank you so much.

Grunow:

Yeah, you’re welcome!