I suffered frostbite on my nose in my first 24 hours at the South Pole.

Wide-eyed and not yet in tune with just what the cold here is like, nor yet physically adjusted, I walked from my Jamesway shelter to the main station with my neck gaiter pulled down and my goggles up. When I reached the main doors, a friend pointed out to me that the end of my nose had gone white. I belatedly held a mitten over it but the skin tissue had gone numb.

In the next several days, my nose scabbed, peeled and eventually healed just fine. After you’ve had frostbite, though, that skin is doubly prone to get frostbitten a second time. My friend Ryan, a “fuelie” in his second year at South Pole, constructed a fleece and duct tape nosepiece for my goggles – not an uncommon sight here at Amundsen-Scott – protecting my somewhat tender nose and making me look a bit like a low-budget knight from a Monty Python production.

I’ve been here for more than a month now and I’m shocked to say I’ve completely adjusted to the cold. It only just broke minus 40 for the first time this week. Yet yesterday, I had to take my coat off while shoveling snow outside – fleece was just enough to keep my core warm.

Adjusted or not, things certainly are different in a climate this cold, and you can never forget you’re in Antarctica. I still get a kick out of seeing people outside without their goggles on – eyelashes will frost up in five or 10 minutes, leaving people with a caking of mascara-esque ice. “Don’t ever hold a pencil in your mouth when counting out bags of frozen powdered milk in the dome,” a cargo worker told me. “The graphite will freeze to your tongue.”

On one afternoon, I decided to try to run from the bathhouse to my Jamesway with wet hair. About 15 strides into the 30-stride dash to my Jamesway, I could hear the clinking sound of my frozen hair bouncing against my head. I learned: Always wear a hat, and always tuck wet hair into a cap before venturing outside, no matter how short the distance.

Frostbite, especially for those new to the station, is still a common health risk of being at South Pole. Frostbite is a contained cold injury that happens when the deep layers of skin and tissue freeze. It usually affects the extremities: fingers, hands, toes, feet, ears and nose.

As long as you’re careful of those extremities, though, being outside is remarkably not all that bad. In fact, there are a lot of recreation activities you can do outside. Cross-country skis and boots are widely available on-station, and especially as the season warms up (to, say, minus 20 F), skiing out into the huge snowfield that is our patch of Antarctica is a common pastime.

Megan, one of the bulldozer operators, likes to build sledding hills for us in her off time – for Thanksgiving, she plowed out a steep toboggan run by running the D7 bulldozer backward down a pile of snow bigger than our station while dragging the bulldozer’s blade.

Coming up soon, we even have the opportunity to try winter camping. I plan to tent outside for a winter-weather survival weekend, in Antarctica. I’m not sure what kind of sleeping bag is rated for the minus 30s and 40s, but I guess I’ll find out.

There are a lot of things to adjust to in living at the South Pole. Close living quarters, little access to the outside world, fewer amenities – and the simultaneous risk of sunburn, snowblindness and frostbite if you go outside unprepared. And yet people can – and do – adapt to the harsh environment here, as best as our situation allows.

Judy, a fellow Amundsen-Scott resident, was one of the first women to make an overland traverse from the Antarctic coast to the South Pole. I can’t imagine what that journey must have been like. “Why did you do it?” someone asked her.

“Because I could,” was her reply.

And there is your answer for so much of life at South Pole. What people are capable of achieving – just as what we are capable of adapting to – is usually far more than we initially would believe to be possible. With a little perseverance, a little time – and occasionally, a frost-nipped nose – we can learn to live within the most unusual of extremes, and thrive.

Meg Adams, who grew up in Holden and graduated from John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor, shares her Antarctic experiences with readers each Friday. For more about her adventure, information about Antarctica and to e-mail questions to her, go to www.bangordailynews.com.