All Saints Day

Last night we celebrated All Hallowe's Eve by dressing in costumes, burning candles, hanging garlic and eating ghoulish foods. I dressed up as the ghost of Joan d'Arc. Andy shaved his head and became Mr Clean. Katy was one of Dr Seusse's beloved, Star Bellied Sneetches and Steve was a combination of characters: Bub Rub, the infamous U-tube, "Whistle Tips" icon and "The Delicious" ( a film short man who found escape from the corporate lifestyle he was leading by dressing up in a red jump suit and by pinching his fingers together as you would to make a bird shadow on the wall, went about saying, "neee na neee nee nee nee").
After we satiated ourselves on amputated finger cookies ( I didn't have enough egg whites available to make the wasp's nests cookies) and maggot pizza (orzo pasta) I read, "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allen Poe, to the crew as they sipped coffee in the candlelight.
It really was a fun night, though no body knocked on our door offering up mid-evil carols in exchange for treats from our lone mansion on stilts, full of toilet- paper- tube- bats and garbage bag streamers and Bach's organ music and an apothecary jar with some green oozing mass suspended in it, labeled, Dark Matter; specimen #6. Now safely we have passed into the day of All Saints. The sun is shining mutely through spin drift clouds causing the world to be but a pink moth. We bow our heads and say prayers for those beloved souls no longer here on earth with us.
This last week and a half we have been very busy preparing for the new crew who will arrive , weather permitting, this Wednesday. However, few minor snafus have already occurred. One of the science technicians, trying to depart Logan Int. Airport in Boston, received a bad airplane; due to mechanical troubles she did not make it to Copenhagen with the others but is stranded in Massachusetts, a rather creepy place to weather Halloween. The second science technician vomited her whole away across the Atlantic (this was not a Halloween "trick") and was taken to the emergency room in an ambulance directly after landing in Denmark. She was accompanied by our supervisor and is doing fine now. Food poisoning, they said. The fourth person scheduled to arrive with the group, has staid on in Wisconsin with her ailing Father, and will probably not be leaving the States at all now, understandably. Meanwhile the other four members, of the original crew of eight, have all arrived safely in Greenland. They are staying at the KISS building in Kangerlussuaq, patiently awaiting the next Airbus from Copenhagen, which will arrive on Monday, with the stricken and afflicted. Meanwhile, Murphy's law has been in practice here during this past week; having groomed the ski way and shoveled out all of the door entrances, a storm blew through camp which has abated, but has not yet dissipated. Winds of over 60 MPH tore sheets of metal flashing off of the Big House roof and so thoroughly buried the Green House that we are now entering and exiting though the roof hatch, as the roof is now level with the snow. The weather forecast is predicting another gale today, with winds subsiding by tomorrow. This will leave us with just enough time to groom the ski way once again and dig ourselves out enough from the storm so as to not scare the incoming crew away (resting their travel weary eyes upon a snow scape, seemingly devoid of any "camp"may simply be too intimidating to warrant their wanting to remain).
Amen.

Orange Chair

If this is any example for my mind set, than I have become not only very dull, but also terribly out of date and worn. I spent the past seven days entranced in a misanthropic day dream about dance. I watched shorts from Don Quixote and Swan lake on U tube. I danced and stretched every day of the week and composed numerous letters to not only the adviser of the dance program at Western Washington University, but also to the few professional dance schools in Bellingham. I began researching ways to improve my turn out (the extent of one's ability to achieve a 180 rotation, from the hips, of the feet) and ways to become even more flexible. Every time I tried meditation to relive myself from this madness, I had to cut my time sitting short as I had to get up and move; Mozart was in my head, or Bizet. I have lost the desire to even try to control my mind any more. It is miserable to be stuck in this nihilistic day dream of something not real, but it is harder still to be quiet and to not move at all. I am not good at being like a sled dog buried beneath the snow; waiting.
So I go outside for some fresh air even though it is -50F and there is absolutely nothing out there to entice or supplicate one's needs. Well, yes, there is the sun, setting ( I do not get up early enough for the sun rise anymore). It rises setting. And as it drags itself along the Northern horizon it bleeds out some very dim streaks of sun - blood. Then the sky fills up with a powder blue fog which appears as a burial ritual and then all is diminished.
It really is quite bleak here.
But we have planned a holiday; Procrastination Day. Two days ago Steve took a 25 pound turkey out from the freezer. I was supposed to have taken it out three days before. It still has not thawed out yet. Hence the name for the holiday. Actually, most of what we do best here is procrastinate. Only a few things really ever need timely doing. Water, when low or empty needs refilling, same with fuel, food needs to be cooked, we need to call in over the radio every morning to let the world outside know we are alive. We need to keep the toilet paper stocked.
There is a little over 2 weeks until the crew change begins. On Tuesday, November 4Th the plane will arrive with four new camp staff , one scientist (who will be made to understand the harsh reality of problems that the mid winter sub sub freezing environment accrues on instruments designed in warm collegiate basements) and three full time company employees.
Together we will spend one week turning over the duties of camp life. Then we will get on the plane and fly away over the bumpy pinking snow-scape to a remote arctic city of 567 people where the earth, already covered in snow, will seem so abundant with life yielding grasses poking through the crust, white hares hopping, song birds chirping, ravens gargling, children playing, dogs barking, smells smelling...
Steve is watching the last of the unwatched, extreme ski movies. I pop around the corner just in time to see some dude land in a pillow of perfect powder. He is surrounded by a vista of evergreens sugared with snow. I walk away muttering, " snows pretty awesome when theres trees and topography".
Katy has just walked in bemoaning her brownies which are ,"bubbling...no they are boiling...there gonna SUCK"! High altitude baking is notorious for being troublesome.
It is four thirty in the afternoon and almost dark. My heavy(philosophically) book requires much page consuming in order for me to reach my goal of finishing off the season here with yet another book: Herman Melville's, Moby Dick. Its important to have goals, after all, without them, what would we have to procrastinate over?

Dance of the cotton grass

Way back in July of this year, drenched in the warm, dry, brilliance of the the high Arctic summer, I would ride my bike up a steep sandy hill to a stream which flowed from out of lake. I would lie in the tall grasses and rushes by the edge of the steam and peer into the clear but turbulent current of the water and watch the Stickleback fish. They were tiny. Smaller than the stub of a well worn down pencil; no longer than 3 inches in length, yet they were strong enough to hold position in a swift current bound for a falls that fell into the saline head of the fjord. I could see them gulp food. I could see them stop their effortless hovering and turn to dart to gulp another quickly passing morsel. They were dancers of another world. Conditioned to control their bodies as the graceful instruments of performing lives. Though every cell of their beings was toned for survival, their efforts were executed harmoniously with the water's motions itself. Like birds soaring on air currents, a ballet of life.
For the past three years now I have been entertaining the idea of going to school again. Why not? I have time off when we are not away working on distant islands or other continents. Perhaps having had so much exposure to travel in the midst of so many professional academics, professors, scientists, artists, etc. has allowed for a culture of thirst for knowledge to grow within the petri dish of my intellect. We are fortunate to have enough free time in our lives to experiment with dreams. If Steve wants to build furniture out of wood in our shop, he can. If I want to take dance classes at an annex of the university, I can. He remodels the house, I build the compost. We walk to the view of the Twin Sister's Mountain range, seen from the north bank of the Middle fork of the Nooksack River, just behind our house. He researches fuel efficient battery powered adaptations that we could make to our little Geo Metro while I plow through the chemical chains found in the emissions comparatively, between Swedish Masonry wood burning stoves and conventional wood burning stoves.
These free form "thinkering,-tinkering", time episodes of puttering , lead to small ideas which blossom into bigger ideas which grow into large "Why -Nots?".
And so my cute little kitten idea of going to school has grown into an enormous jungle cat named, "MR. Whynot". Well, one good reason is that it would significantly cut into my lovely ski bum life style of waking up at 0500 to press the speed dial button on the phone (which instantly rings up the Mt Baker ski report, which usually has most excellent news), and then go racing about the house getting ready to go skiing while singing, "15 inches fresh pow, 15 inches fresh pow....." or something like that.
Another reason of hesitance is the field of study, which has ranged from physics to atmospheric chemistry to math to mechanical engineer, to dance, to philosophy to fine arts to machinist and most recently, from paramedic to information technologist.
Certified.
But back to the fish...........I think they have got it all figured out. Even though they might only live for only one short summer or one very long year, they can dance every day through the atmosphere of their medium and exist symbyotically with this graceful movement, which I call dance, which swimming is a sort of kind of, dance, or choreographed movement designed specifically for survival; could it be that some people have to dance in order to survive. I mean, in order to survive, by using the term, survival, as the purpose driven expression of one's happiness and contentment with life; of feeling alive. We all must have some thing that bring this sort of sensation to it's maximum, causing it to go triumphantly coursing through our veins, trumpeting "life"; whether it be skiing or riding a bike or conversing with friends over tea or coffee, or watching birds, or bees, or loving someone or building something or going somewhere new. So why not dance?
It seems so impractical and self indulgent, a B.A. in dance, after all, I don't want to become a professional dancer; or even a choreographer; we would have to move to the city. And though I wouldn't mind teaching, how practical is that idea? Would I commute to a studio in town or lease one of the old chicken barns near our house on Mosquito Lake Road? Getting a B.A. in studio arts would at least contribute to helping me develop my potential as an artist, or a designer, or a sculptor. And what about all of those other ideas, either continuing along in the trades or working towards being able to become a teacher, or a paramedic, at least those ideas have some sort of practical application.
Maybe having worked for so long in impracticable situations with whatever skills I have garnered along the way has suited me just fine, like the fish in the stream, gliding, and floating and gulping.
And dancing in that sparkling buoyancy of water, the medium of origins.
Why not dance then, "MR cat"?

Dramatis Personae

We have just received word that we will be leaving camp officially, weather permitting, if the other group, somewhere else on the island who also contracted "our" chartered plane doesn't cause us any further delays, on, Thursday, the 13th of November. Seven people are coming in to our little camp, four of them will stay. Then, seven will leave again for Kangerlussuaq on the west coast of Greenland via a twin otter turbo prop with skis. The twin otter will not need the skis to take off or land in Kangerluusaq, only here, on the ice cap covered with drifting snows which have been blown into rock hard formations called sastruggi. After a night in Kangerlusuaq, we will all depart for Copenhagen, Denmark where some of us may visit for a short time before returning state side.
We are all very excited. We get along, we are not running out of things to eat or things to do or things to say, or read, but are well aware of being tired of eating from out of the freezer or from a can. We find it harder and harder to push ourselves, to keep active, (mentally and physically) or to do the dishes. Tonight, over lasagna, we talked about corn syrup, ( have you ever noticed that it is in everything) Agri- pork, bicycles, and Robert Falcon Scott, the famous, dead Antarctic explorer. He died because he arguably may not have had enough corn syrup.
I jest.
We then laugh at number one of the last two pineapples. It looks like it was run over by an ATV with green moldy tires. I cut it up anyway and we eat it.
The sun set tonight was a dramatic visual display of alto cumulus clouds ribboning through the various hues of the color mariners find comforting at night. Red. Beneath the setting sun's spectacular performance was another maritime shade, though one not so comforting: green. This horizontal pallor was intensified by a muffled, rolling ground fog that crept in underneath the awning of brilliance so slowly, so carefully it was as though it was intending to either not disturb the harmony of light or to ruin it quickly. But then came darkness and the stars.
We have all made lists of the things we must get done or hope to get done before the little plane arrives. I find myself giving pause to my normal chores. Relishing them for their strange detail. Giving them the significance they are deserving of. I toss large blocks of snow broken off from a corniced drift, by the sheer weight of the Cat, (having traversed nearby on another rendezvous earlier in the week), into the snow melter. I feel a previously cold sensation grow warm through my muscles working. The blocks splash into the scalding hot water and begin to melt, adding to the, always being in a state of depletion, camp water source.
The science technicians use paint brushes to delicately brush off the heavy rime ice which builds up so beautifully on their tiny, plastic, anemometers.
These feathery ferns of ice astound us by their resilience from the wind, indeed they are born of the wind. Prints, made by our boots last weekend, now stand several inches above the current level of the snow. Everything is buried or carved or etched or embossed or drifted in; sealed shut. Even the very surface of the snow itself is harder now. Nothing can be done without first shoveling.
But the four characters of ACT I are growing tired of having to go stumbling over new, sperm- whale- sized -drifts -of -snow parked daily, by random, in their front yards and of having to dig their way into buildings. They are beginning to remember, what their teeth feel when they bite into fresh, tree -ripened organic apples. They miss their soft, purring or wet, wagging pets. They dream of grass, leaf sodden forests and song birds. They prepare to exit stage left.

Cold strange

Late yesterday afternoon Steve received a phone call from the Greenland Police. They rang to tell us that they had received a signal from an emergency, position indicating, radio beacon or, E.P.I.R.B., registered in Peru. This beacon gave it's location as being just 18 miles E.N.E. of camp. The Police, who are in charge of launching search and rescue missions, told Steve they were not concerned however as anyone traveling into or through the National Park (yes, it may seem odd, but most of the ice cap is a national park) must first register with the Greenland Home Rule authorities and they had had no such Peruvian on their list of expeditions. But, with less than two hours of daylight left on our side, we decided that it would be unethical for us to not at least go out to the location and have a look around. Once the decision was made, Steve began boiling water for the thermoses. He then entered the postilion we were to go to into one of the hand held GPS units. I brought the snow machines out of the garage and hooked one up to our Poly Pod, a light weight plastic tow behind camper shell. Katy gathered up some food, the trauma bag and sleep kits. Andy and I dressed for two or more hours out in -48 F, plus wind chill, loaded up the poly pod with the gear and set off into the setting sun. We had fairly decent visibility but for some patches of ground fog. Each of us had in our own minds different scenarios: a privately owned turbo prop airplane had crashed, a guy on an unregistered winter sledging expedition had to toss in the hat, a drunken expat Peruvian, now living in Greenland got cabin fever and struck out on a stolen snow machine........ As we made our course over ground we kept our eyes out for any tracks in the snow or for a bright flare igniting the dulling sky; anything that might be out of place. Later, back in camp we both remarked about how the changing smudges on the horizon as it grew dark seemed to be smoke, and how it felt that we were surely heading for the edge of the world. To have that feeling of increasingly encroaching upon "there might be dragons" corner of the known universe, here in the 21st century, was a remarkably bizarre, but sincere sensation. When we got to the position, we looked around through frozen binoculars which could not be focused and of which we each had one lens too fogged up to see through. We drove around for another 2 miles in the general area and finally decided, through deductive reasoning, that anyone out here smart enough to have an E.P.I.R.B., not to mention, to have set it off, would have a camp and would by now have heard our snow machines and set off a flare. Or so one could only hope. The sun had set and we were cold. We pulled out the iridium phone and tried to make several calls to camp. Andy's fingers were numb form having had to check the GPS on our way out so I punched the tiny keys on the phone pad by repeatedly pulling my bare hand out of a mitten, entering three numbers, and shoving it back in again. Finally I broke into the tool kit under the seat of the snow machine for a phillips head screw driver with which to poke at the keys with. Though we sent about seven phone calls out, none of them worked. We gave up on the phone calling and decided to just get back to camp. Following our own tracks in the dusk with the last of the day's color lingering on the horizon to our backs, we crouched our bodies behind the wind screens and zoomed along at 80 kmh. After about 35 minutes we could see the lights of camp. As we approached the garage, we could see Steve and Katy by the back door of the shop with head lamps on waiting for us. We both gladly gave up our snow machines for them to take care of and went inside to warm up. Even after eating the fine fish diner which Steve cooked for us, and a having seconds of the lemon meringue pie that I had baked earlier that day, it took a couple hours for both of our bodies to reheat. Katy said she had wished she had taken our temperatures as soon as we had returned, but accurate core temperatures on potentially hypothermic individuals requires rectal thermometers, so we were quite relieved she hadn't thought of the idea until it was too late.
I fell asleep on the couch in the Big House after being lulled unconscious by Peter Sellers' simpleminded sleuthing of the mysterious jewel thief, the "Panther". When I awoke at that magical pre- dawn hour , and walked back over to the Green House, the Auroras were out and so were all of the stars and the Milky Way. I stood for a moment underneath the heavens admiring the sight until the cold began creeping in again. It was -51F when I crawled back into my own bed at five A.M..
This morning, Andy, tuned into the signal of the mysterious Peruvian E.P.I.R.B. on the single side band radio but there was no signal. This made us feel much better as it confirmed every one's initial suspicion of this whole ordeal being rather too weird to be true. We are all very happy that no there is no possibility of any one being out there needing help; a normal, lazy, Saturday could begin. Steve is cooking crepes, and reading, dreamily about the Azores, Andy and Katy are going to do their daily science rounds and I am anticipating a few more decent strikes with my recently discovered driver and precious collection of five golf balls, painted bright green, for snow fairways, of course, before I loose them all in the soft drifting cold strange world we are living in.

Evolution

I just sent an email off to some friends of our's stating how this blog might very well be undergoing a state of transition. I began writing it pretty much under the influence of chocolate cake and the encouragement of another friend, who said it was easy and could be done just like that (snap your fingers)! The impetuous was to leave a trail for where on the planet Steve and I are and what we are doing there. A blog seemed to have a much more serious level of commitment to it than say, e -mail. Which I was never committed to. Secondary motivations were there too: Greenland does not offer up much literature published in English explaining what Greenland is. As our friends, whom we were eating this cake with and speaking to about blogs, are both travel writers with a very successful book about Mexico, now in its 13 edition (or is it 14Th?) do this for a living, I received much encouragement about blogging on the subject of Greenland. Also, as one posts on their blog, they are nearly daily, writing. This is good fodder for the hopper. But as one writes in this freestyle format one lacks an outline or a goal to meet or develop any congruent idea. The way I blog is similar to the way I ski down the mountain; I may know the general area I am going to go to, but for the life of me, I wont know what I am going to ski until I have skied it. And so my writing about Greenland has evolved into my witting about writing. I guess I have developed a bad case of, writers blog.
What I don't believe is that for any one who is consciously recollecting memories of a past that was at times fabulous , though at other time, traumatic, the experience would be easy or pleasant. There is the desire to burn all the damn stuff I have inscribed with my thoughts during those years on the sea and forget about it, though we all know this isn't possible. ..The forgetting about it. There is also an urgent expectation for myself to cull through it all, as I did the fish and the crab, sorting out what is worthwhile from what is just crap and preserving the "keepers".

Fishing

Ever since I started thinking seriously about writing a book, I have begun doing some light research on the state of the Bering Sea crab fishery. Any one who considers their self to be an, up to date on contemporary affairs, kind of person, will be able to guess what the biggest hitter is out there on the world wide web even if they, like me dont watch TV.
The television series, The Deadliest Catch, produced by the Discovery channel corporation. Not only does TDC pop up all over the screen whenever the key words, crab, Dutch, Bering Sea or commercial fishing are used, but the site itself offers up a myriad of further links: the local newspaper of Unalaska, the Aleut corporation's own history of the Unangan peoples (named Aleut by the Russians), employment in the fishing industry and a hyperlink to the USCG.
From TDC's home page I can navigate around and look at boats I used to be familiar with captained by men whose faces I at least remember, though a few of them, I knew. I even worked for one of the captains who will be featured in this season's upcoming or already on going show.
And so, I posted a comment on the TDC's blog site which featured this old skipper of mine who has been married for 15 years, has two children, (and admittedly likes spending time with them) and prefers gardening of all things during the off seasons. If you were to spend some time surfing around in TDC's website, you would find this a rather unusual dossier compared to most of the men who captain the boats. For example, in an interview with the skipper of the, Wizard, when asked about his family, you could tell he had become a little bit uncomfortable. Or maybe to be fair, he was embarrassed, caught off of his tough macho guard. He blushed, made bashful movements in his chair and finally said, "The most important thing in my life". The trouble was, he had already given away this answer, between the lines so to speak, in regards to how he felt about fishing, his boat and being a captain on the Bering Sea. So before I posted my comment, I carefully read through all of the other people's comments. I did not want to sound arrogant or sentimental or God forbid, to say something that might cause a row of some sort. But there didn't appear to be anything overly spellbinding or even pertinent, mostly just fluffy little 3 liners about wanting a date with one of the crew members or a pep- o -rally inspired , "GO Deadliest Catch Go"!
Sigh. This is difficult for me, but also inspiring. I realise I am supposed to be writing about Greenland but in a way, Greenland is writing about me. Fishing thoughts and memories have always been flowing through me as if they had a tidal current all their own. I don't expect these sensations to ever completely go away, and so I write:
I introduce myself as having never watched the deadliest Catch, but of having worked on the decks of such boats for eight years. I then give sensitive honest credit to Capt F of the Early Dawn, a very good man indeed who was never out of line, rude, crude or unimproved. Perhaps that is why he has a wife of 15 years. I thank him for having the guts to hire a women and for paying her full share and allowing her to work one of the most prestigious positions on a crab boat deck, the rail. After I sign off, I leave for the green House. Thoughts start flooding in: What if he contacts me and asks me to be a crew member and I become just another character on the Discovery Channel? What if the Discovery Channel contacts me? What if no body even cares?
After all those years out there in Dutch Harbor beating the docks for jobs on boats that are now famous actresses in a popular documentary, I sense the Ego beginning to rise. If I were a "guy", maybe there would not be such a loud voice coming from the previously so well silenced Id, but as far as I can tell, in over four years of production, not a single "girl" has ever stood upon the working deck of any one of those boats and that irks me, because I know, it cant possibly be true. And now there is a connective thread between me and one of those boats. It is weird, but even from a capitalistic point of view, although I tend to be more of a socialist, if I were to be hired as a TDC crew member, I could really market this unwritten book of mine. ...I mean, "come on!" look at what the making of Hollywood's The Perfect Storm did for Linda Greenlaw! Besides, worrying parents and concerned, loving others, seriously, compared to the days when I fished, (when there were no camera crews or crab rationalization laws to keep the danger level in check), this stuff today has got to be a piece of cake! Plus you get two pay checks for being a sailor; one from the boat and the other from TV!
But according to the great philosophers , there is no such thing as chance. Which means, be careful what you wish for. And, as Steve points out, I am training for a triathlon..........
As a testimony to this life, we have all too make sure we do our best. If not to ourselves, then at the very least, to others. Of course, without doing unto ourselves first..........anyway, I was once interviewed by an anthropologist who had received a grant to go to Antarctica and talk with the women in the trades. Up until that year, there was little to none of this type of historical data. She felt it was very important. The number of women working on the Ice had increased from less than 2 percent in the early 1970's to over 45% in the later part of the last century. I reluctantly told her my story and she was almost annoyingly adamant about having my picture taken in the shop next to the bulldozer I was working on. I refused, saying that I was no different than any of the other "guys". I had learned this behaviour as a survival mechanism (in fact one skipper wrote my name out as Shawn in order to get around the companies policy of not hiring women due to fear of sexual harassment suits) called, don't act like your special. This developed into a credo. I even worked for a women who owned and skippered her own crab boat, who once gracefully bowed herself out of a television interview with the Anchorage daily news. I forget what she said verbatim, but it was roughly, "I am not special".
The thing is, she was. And she still is.
I did not live through the women's liberation movement. I have seen a few females act obnoxiously about their modern day emancipation. One moment they wont allow a door to be held open for them, then the next they are bitching about having the man not open the door in front of them. I understand that I may have taken allot of things for granted in the past, but some world traveling and some maturity (a grey hair) have inspired me to re think most of these things.
The sexes are different. Men can be flight attendants and women can be crabbers. But, it is wrong when they do it to prove some kind of a point or to get some sort of self aggrandizing attention from there position. But whenever any minority goes against the grain led by adventure or desire, passion or curiosity, there should come, from society, an awareness of this unusual circumstance. An acceptance. And certainly, if a documentary is going to call itself a documentary, it should do its best to document the truth and to learn how to at least try and partially dissolve its mantra of rough neck tough guy machismo in which they have steeped this "real life" depiction of the industry in. After all isn't it enough that we as humans have almost depleted all of the worlds seafood stocks without having to make it seem like a bunch of Quipeqags are still out there with harpoons and tattooed faces killing the leviathan? Shouldn't we take a pause from all that manifest destiny style guts and glory and show the more meaningful side of this rapidly diminishing life style? Rather than scare people out of their armchairs into a deeper and deeper depression for having to go to an office job which requires a commute (actually more people still die in traffic accidents than on the sea) why not show that there are still a places in the world where we can spend our lives with nature. There are still fisherman and skippers and gulls and sunsets and cold sparkling mornings at which dawn is all your own....
I have seen grown men break down and cry. I have seen guys leave the boat with their head hung low after only one short trip. I have seen them fight each other over loosing a bet on a ball game and I have seen them shaking from the DT's so badly they cannot light their own smoke.
I have also seen them hugging each other and calling their Moms over the single side band radio just to tell them they are OK.
I doubt any of this gets shown either.
I felt a glimmer of hope when surfing TDC' links.; there were two "crab related blogs" posted by seemingly female names. I was thrilled that they might be women deckhands, but no. One was a women who wrote erotic romance tales. The other was a relationship advisor who loved crab fisherman. Wink Wink.
My head is smart enough however to recognise that even though two of the world's oldest professions, like peanut butter and chocolate are, "two great tastes that still go great together" there has also got to be a more modern version in which this stereotype is abandoned for valor.
I suppose all writers need to have their minds re-steeped in that which caused the idea of a great enough subject to write about, in the first place, from time to time; to get the description of any fine tea down well enough to seek its flavor, one must not merely recollect a memory, but have a sip from a freshly brewed cup. Though the experience may be different the writer is too, and this is exactly the point, if the writer is aware of having changed, then how can he or she write honestly about that which has changed too?
And how could she not be in the least bit be tempted by a chance of being documented in a role so unique, so familiar so inspiring, whose televised image of, "smart like tractor strong like bull" could use some serious censor.
I would defiantly wear a tutu.

The Snow Bunting

I go out like the contents of a glass
into water, into wind.
Diluting, freezing, becoming vapor.
No, I do not go out like this, but in wool and synthetics,
worm -spun-silk, cotton stuffed with eider down.
My feet are in socks
then socks again.
I push them into smoothly smudged rubber boots.
Warm, old, arctic boots ,once white, now have the look of a news paper, worn.
What happened to the small bunting flown so far off his course?
Flying over, then dipping his body low enough to chirp.
He belongs in the turning of the willows near where the sled dogs live,
rattling on towards the fjord.
Not here, up on the void-less ice cap going out, like the contents of a glass.
Into water, into wind, into snow..............


Sometimes birds are blown off of their course or loose their migratory way. Though small flocks of geese have been seen, arctic sand pipers and snow buntings are more common. They appear in the air low and flitting, an obvious anomaly to the summit of the Ice cap where nothing has ever lived or would ever choose to live, except for a few strange people bundled in clothes melting snow for water.
The other day one such snow bunting graced us with his tiny presence. We always put out a bowl of hot water, which will last a few hours in its liquid state. Sometimes the birds take shelter in the lees then fly away. other times they die here and their frozen bodies are placed in special perching places safe from any further harm until they are completely buried in the accumulating or drifting snows.
This little one simply disappeared. We all like to hope that he made it back home to the sea's more temperate shore.

A man out standing in his field.

This morning we ate our oatmeal. With flax seeds and walnuts and yogurt and prunes and for Steve, maple syrup. Real ample syrup. Some people from Vermont brought some up this past summer. I prepared the bread dough for its final raising before the oven and we talked about our plans for the day. I volunteered to take out the trash. Our trash consists mostly of food scraps and cans and plastic bags and cardboard boxes. Unfortunately recycling is not yet an option as Greenland is still burning all of their trash. It is cost prohibitive for the NSF to charter the NY Air National Guard to fly an annual estimation of 4 tons of waste back to the States. However, the NYANG does agree to fly it back to Kangerlussuaq from Summit Summit. I have just tried to give you a hyper link to Summit's own web page, complete with daily weather updates, by writing code. We shall see if it works. But I digress, the trash that Summit generates gets packed into a rectangular box built up on top of an air force pallet. The rectangular box has a lid. So on trash day you go around camp with a sled and collect all the garbage and then tug the sled over to the trash pallet where you try your best to cram it into all of the empty spaces inside the box. Once the trash pallet is full, we go through a process of removing the outer plywood form, drawing up the mess with cargo netting that has already been sleeved inside the box long before any trash was put in.
This may sound confusing so I will make a short film of the transformation when we do it , which we will be doing soon as I can no longer fit down inside of the box to compact the existing trash.
The hardest thing about taking out the garbage is ignoring any whims to pilfer things. If you think it is expensive for the NYANG to fly trash home, think about how much it would cost us! Of course, we do recycle the things none of us could live with ourselves for NOT recycling like ink cartridges, batteries, aluminum and copper.
After taking care of all of my municipal duties, (power, water and waste) Steve and I went back into one of the three, 20 foot long, insulated, heated container vans to count widgets and bits.
It was a most remarkable day.

Culling

While I am riding one of the stationary spinning bikes, Steve is sorting through the walk in cooler. He decides that the pineapples need to be cut up. They are perfect, remarkably so. Eating a slice of this tropical fruit reminds me of the places I have been to, where you can go outside bare footed and not have to worry about your naked flesh sticking to the metal grating and peeling off. Lately I think allot about swimming. I have all of this "ocean" around me but its surface is impenetrable. I go "sailing" off on my skis staring down the horizon. I imagine seeing birds come skimming along the waves. I look into the sun set and the deepness of the cold smells like salt. One of the science technicians tells me that salt particles have actually been detected in some of the airborne particular filters, so this is possible. I fill my lungs twice more despite the sub zero medium. The solitude is too easy to take for granted. The cold too easy to wish against. Other life styles trot across the mind like clouds in the sky. One minute this, another minute that. But the magnitude of simplicity and stillness and peace so gently reminds me that, despite the altitude and the flatness and the eye- lash- gluing freeze from my breath, the challenge here can also represents something so similar to that saline spirit of sailing; by allowing one the room needed to day dream about clouds in an atmosphere so clear, one can lay in bed and watch Sirius blink and flash and twinkle through binoculars, I sense the soul of the universe and my heart is content with just that.

Comments

I have been reading up about blogging in my, Blogging for Dummies manual. I have an announcement; it should now be OK for you to leave your comments. I had the comment format radio button ticked that would only allow subscribed readers to leave a comment. Sorry for that! That is why some of you have had trouble with this before. Why I did not appreciate your troubles earlier, can only be blamed upon my own ignorance of the formatting capabilities left in my control as an amateur blogger. Now let's see if "commenting" works. I do not expect you to comment if you are not so inspired, but if you are enticed at all by something or have a question or want to point out mistakes or wax philosophical, please do so. The true beauty of a blog is that it is not intended to be all about the author. At least this one isn't.....But is about the author, me, sharing my thoughts with you, and you should assume a clear freedom in sharing your thoughts with me.
Naturally, if you don't have any thoughts you feel you want to share, then I will not begin to wonder about you by singling out the whomever it is that hasn't left a comment by writing about the person or persons who haven't left comments, thoughts or random baloney.
Speaking of random baloney, it is -41 F right now and the waning moon can be seen standing out amongst Cassiopeia, Ursa major and Orion. The snow is squeaky hard like a Styrofoam drum. Before all this, at about 6:30 PM, the setting sun painted the snow pink and shadows stretched out for what seemed to be one eighth of a mile. Last night there was a pallor of green in the northern sky, the first hint of Aurora Borealis.
I am on to reading Aristotle now. His interpreter is much more difficult to digest than was Plato's. It is like being able to be reading, while being inside of a tornado of fascinating ideas while being, just being.

Swashbuckler

The blur of whiteness coddles the cold. Though the sun shines, and will soon enough set, I must walk with my face looking down. I study the carvings of wind over snow. The relief of crystals, drawn violently across drifts extending, has the grain pattern of wood. We walk out one mile. The light is turning ocher. My wrist grows numb from the wind working its way in between cuff and sleeve and skin and bone. All morning we discussed vacuum presses and glue lams; we want very badly to build our own furniture. This conversation continues now as we walk into the wind. It sounds to me as though I am talking into a tin can packed with goose down but somehow, Steve responds to me. Maybe it is the big, fur hat over the small, wool beanie muffled by the neck gaiter and hood that causes words to sound so flat and long.
The building, that is the most aesthetic here, is the sauna. I don't really mean that, but in a a way, it is. It is modular. It is built of scrap plywood. It is small and tidy. It has a wooden interior with a small window and river rocks that sit in a stainless steel tray on top of the oil burning stove. There is a pleasing scent of oils: eucalyptus, lavender, and tea tree. The place is kind to the soul; warm and quiet and soft. Even the fueling of the day, tanks and drums, reminds me of a home- style farm chore. My work feels separate from the rest of camp's scientific duties. My tasks are both necessary and voluntary and that alone makes me happy. When I sit in the sauna I think about our friends and I think of home. I think about ways to save the world from ignorant, wasteful, car -dependent sprawl . I imagine building  large, geometric solids-- perhaps out of wood--if not, at least, from toothpicks and gumdrops. Do we have any gumdrops?
This energy is strange. I am tinged with the melancholy that comes from being steeped in the constant hum of a generator, working out maybe a little too much, planning projects for home, and reading philosophy. I wish for the green grass of home and the wormy earth. I am pulled away, as if a leaning tree in strong winds, towards being home, far away from this see saw sphere of an arctic space station. But following what we know to be good advice isn't always as fun, or as interesting, as it is to go pounding through the challenges of life. Enduring the suffering makes good books.
The strongest medicine about this place is the reality of its isolation. Accepting this, working with this, casts an odd illumination over my being, welding together the euphoria of the ice cap's splendid uniqueness with the temperament of it's cold cold song, sung from so lonely a pair of frozen lungs that ever breathed on this earth, builds character.
Somehow, we are not of its world and we will not stay.
I go now to sit and listen to the colors of the sinking sun.

Crepuscular

The daylight is being squeezed out of this place like water from a dish cloth. What we see of the "day light" begins around 6 a.m. and ends before 9 p.m but long shadows need sunlight; and the gaseous star that gives this Earth such time telling slants, has long been dulled behind low level storm clouds or ground blizzards. As the equinox approaches the color of our world grows dim. To try and find one's way over the many directional drifts is a weird sensation in this gray light which is called,"flat". In flat light, the whole of the space you exist in is no more or no less the equivalent of the insides of a white plastic bucket; the proverbial, "bowl of milk". The "ups" are surprisingly more sudden and steep than the "downs". One must lean their whole body forward as when climbing a slope. But, unlike most stable slopes belonging to Terra Fimra, the soft unconsolidated snow sloughs off and you are slipping backwards again into your own boot prints. Once summiting this 4 Ft wave of snow, you walk softly, blindly, though all around you it is bright white. The depression, or trough is approaching.... is approaching .....is ,here! and you are either now already "down" it, on the some- what flat, some- what hard-packed "mean" level of the Summit of the ice cap or, you are falling off the drift, laughing at yourself for being so childishly clumsy.
It is not over. Though the typical, historical, weather pattern brings warm temperatures and high winds from the South, this year it has been blowing from all directions of the compass. This causes many drifts to stretch out across the landscape, similar to a confused sea whose breaking swells, still having a dynamic nature, while moving and growing, become solid. In this region of white, tormented by a now almost month long gale, it is impossible to predict what face you will be struck with which you must ascend and then when will you tumble to the bottom.
We have yet to face extremely cold temperatures this Phase. By "extremely cold" I am making references to the, anything from-minus 40 F and below -type cold. The coldest day to date, -20 F, lasted only a few hours.
People often ask,
"Have you seen any examples of Global warming"?
"Yes".
What more of an example could the thawing of a snow trench-freezer, and thereby its contents, used for storing meats and stuff, in a root cellar -like -space beneath an insulated hatch cover in the floor be? Or these strange weather "patterns" that do not seem to have any pattern in mind at all, unless a pattern can become a continuous cycle? Or the design and chemistry of the snow flakes themselves; no longer so often dry, tiny, needles, but plump, maritime -powder- day -stuff which we are more inclined to see falling upon Mt baker, back home, in Washington state.
This past July, Steve and I visited my Parents in rural Maine. We visited many friends and even had the chance to speak, though briefly, at a local international language school where my very dear friend, Patti works. In front of the Penobscot School's students, I talked about Greenland. Most specifically, the languages spoken there, being Greenlandic and Danish. During the questions I was asked the inevitable, almost breathless: "haveyouseenanysignsofclimatechnage", question.
I told a story about a fact I had read in the New York Times a while back:
In Greenland, first of all, you are not permitted to buy land, but can request it and then claim it for as long as you live. The boundaries of a recently claimed piece of land were simple; from the salt water up to the glacier, being so wide. The Dane, reporting to the 'Times, had said that the climate had warmed up so much he had now much more land (than when he started out). The glacier, of course, has been retreating back into the ice cap.
Though this is excellent for farming, it is, or at least I consider it to be, also an excellent example of climates changing.
I hope you like rubber boots, potatoes and shaggy cows, and though our future can at times seem rather crepuscular, just reflect upon how moving that dimming light can be as it sparkles in the cleavages and crystal like facets of the ice.

Today we needed water over in the Big House. I drove the snow machines out of the shop and then fired up the Cat, and drove it out of the shop. Next I scooped up a 5 yard bucket full of snow and dumped it into the snow melter in order to make water. As the fresh snow is melting, I drained 200 gallons of water from the plastic tank on top of the Generator Module into the "Pig" - remember the "Pig"?. Occasionally I would go back outside to the snow melter to poke down the clumps of snow into the water or monitor the level of rising water in the "Pig". The melter is heated by a waste heat loop off of the generator. It is like radiant floor heating cranked up to 150-160 degrees F. This waste heat circulates around inside a copper pipe underneath a grate in the melter. The primary rule of importance when draining the melter is to leave "seed" water in the tank. "Seed" water is simply enough water left remaining in order to allow the melting process to occur at a much faster rate than it would otherwise. The day is not cold. the wind is not blowing too hard. The sun actually poked out. I could identify clouds.
Once the "Pig" was full of water, I backed the Cat up to the water sled and hooked up to the yoke of the sled. Tracking across the white drifts I peer carefully ahead. The topography around camp is dynamic. One day flat, next day hummocky. The old sled that the "Pig" is lashed to is made of wood and sinew, and requires care. I park by the stairway to the back entrance of the Big House. I climb out of the cab and up the stairs to get the water hose, connecting one end to the male coupling at the indoor tank in the Big House, I then go back down stairs to hook the hose up to the other coupling on the pump.
I plug the pump in to a remote outlet that hangs in the wind and throw the switch. Then I go back upstairs and drink tea while the water fills the inside tank with 220 gallons of water.
After this process I track back over the snow, disconnect the sled, plug it in so that the pump will stay warm and will not freeze and crack, dump more snow in the melter and then, back the Cat into the shop.
Now it is lunch time. Steve arrives around the back of the shop with one of the snow machines towing an insulated panel. He has been building a tunnel into the Green House. Together we lift and slide the panel into place bridging two walls of snow.
I go to shovel out some of the windows of the Green House and one of the buried utility boxes where plumbing and heat trace wires are run.
The wind turbine thrums. The whirring and buzzing of scientific equipment blends in with the muffled engine noise from the power plant.
One day, late last week I saw two small birds, probably migrating sand pipers, fly over.
The sky is so white, the snow seems blue.
Any thing flapping in the wind or let loose accidentally could be a bird or another person or a box or a thought.

As care takers of this remote, Arctic- out-post, there is plenty of time to read;
Konstantin Dimitrich Levin thinks: "In infinite time, in the infinity of matter, in infinite space, a bubble - organism separates itself, and that bubble holds out for a while and then bursts, and that bubble is -me". -From, Leo Tolstoy's, Anna Karenina.
Yesterday afternoon I was skiing in a very odd flat white light towards an undefined place. Not an horizon, not a vanishing point, or even a place made soft, as in fog, but towards nothing. I wondered if I had died; how could I prove I had not? Was this skiing into muted whiteness "heaven" or purgatory? The more I began to think about the home made peanut butter cups Steve had made, sitting behind me on a warm shelf back in camp, the more I began to think, "This must be Hell. I am 4 miles away from those little delectables and I cannot see in any of the seven directions. Further more, they may all be gone when I return"!
Luckily, there were three left when I arrived, though a friendly little skirmish immediately broke out between the four of us over who would get to eat them all.
Now I am on to reading Plato's, Timaues. My interest (and my goal) is to be able to read, with comprehension, Casey's "The Philosophy of Place". Casey's book, written in the late 1990s, is about cosmogony (the theory of the creation of the universe), cosmology,( the study of the creation of the universe) mythology, Being verses Becoming, nothingness, sameness, chance and causation.
I was drawn to this title while digging around in the depths of a used book store on my way to Greenland. I had imagined it would be a difficult read what with its infinite references to Kant, Hildegarde, Descartes, Schopenhauer, Ovid, Plato, Homer and Zeus. I did manage to read 100 or so pages last fall, but quickly realised I had some major shortcomings; I had never studied Greek Mythology, I was rusty, at best, with Genesis (to say nothing of the rest of the world's creation myths)- had never read any of the great philosophers, and, I had not yet been able to accurately define cosmogony.
Were I at home, this heavy reading would not be allowed the same amount of time that I so generously can give it here; for I would be stirring the compost, digging in the garden, tinkering with the old 'Benz, visiting friends, learning about bees, skiing down "the Mountain"or puttering around in the shop.
One also has time to pay strict attention to being disciplined with a physical fitness regiment. I became inspired after running with a friend in Kangerlussuaq (and reading a Russian novel largely about suffering) . She, not being much older than me, proved much stronger than me. I reflected upon another friend, at home, who only a few years ago not only would not have been able to imagine what she is doing now on a bike, but would have died trying. Now I am unable to keep up with her, unless we are climbing up a mountain, but even that may have changed.
I suddenly understood that my nonchalant character of being able to hop on a bike and ride 25 plus miles or to pull on some running shoes and pace out 6 miles up a logging road without training, would either come to a screaming halt or might just never get any better. The only marathon I ever ran, though it was over snow, and was in Antarctica, was slow.:5.5 hours.
I was so slow the recreation crew, putting on the event had packed up the finish line and had gone "home". Only Steve, who had been skiing alongside of me, congratulated me. Two USCG cadets, off for a hike, gave us the time as neither of us had thought to wear watches.
And so, out of the blue, I decided to reclaim an old desire; to race an half Iron man. A half Iron man covers 70.3 miles in one day, and is divided up between swimming, biking, and running that is if you haven't had your jaw broken by some one else's flailing foot). I found a race on August 16 . 2009 at Lake Steven's, Washington. I will actually be home then and so have set my sights towards this date as a new training goal. I have been riding the spinning bike, rowing the rower, cross country skiing, lifting weights, stretching and following along with the athletic (impossibly fit) dancers featured in the NY City Ballet conditioning program (Gulag) DVD.
Wednesday is my rest day. After work, I eat, then promptly prepare for bed. I read allot on Wednesdays- and research geeky stuff on the Internet like triathlon training, sports nutrition, dry-land swimming techniques (swimming out of water) growing oats in western Washington, milk cows, plow horses and chicken concentration camps. That is, coyote and raccoon proof chicken keeping.
The highlights of this past week at Summit have been Steve's carving up of a fresh watermelon, the peanut butter cups, slot car racing, watching, "Waking Ned Devine", a moment of fair weather in which we actually saw the sun, last night's brief, full moon, and my having recently discovered that 3 out of the 4 of us love banana pudding!
Steve does not love banana pudding.
We have half a dozen #10 cans full of banana puree, lots of real whipping cream and cases of Nilla wafers.
I am placing a bet that Steve doesn't really know that he secretly loves banana pudding and that by the end of our time here, we will be all out of banana puree.
"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy".
-Stephen King

Thou shallt not eat only the fruits of the freezer trench

Tonight we are being treated to an authentic Mexican dinner by chef Andy and his assistant, former Mt Washington Weather Observatory Meteorologist, Kate. We have an abundance of fresh cilantro, limes, avocados, and tomatoes. Well, fresh as in, they wont be coming from the insides of a can.
Today the wind is blowing 20 knots which means the ambient temperatures are in the high teens. I had to turn the diesel sauna down to low.
We are all recovering from eating banana sourdough pancakes with maple syrup from Vermont and bacon from some noble pig whose life did not originate down in the freezer trench from whence he came. The freezer trench, is a long, narrow excavation in the snow where the bulk of the frozen food is stored. There are about 25 steps to descend down into this high Arctic supermarket from which we can take food for free; though this can pose problems for us when we return to the "real world" and have to remember to pay for our food at the check out counter, it is one of the luxuries of care taking a remote geological observatory.
Early this morning, before I had my tea, we began discussing the Paleo Diet. This is eating nothing that has been processed by any one other than yourself. Of course, meat, eggs, herbs and vegetables are easy, bee keeping and dairy become more complex and the most labor intensive of all: grains. I have been researching the different grains and legumes we might be able to grow in our valley. I have discovered that, out in the San Juan islands, there is a small farm that received a grant to experiment with rye. I caused a big sensation saying that I could take my sea kayak out to this island, fill it up with rye, paddle back to Bellingham and tow it back out to our home in the bike trailer. The grain that is, not the kayak.
I have a cousin, Jeff, who worked for his father, my Uncle Steve, who was a Mill Wright. I remember Jeff showing me a miller they had purchased at an auction that would thresh and grind grain into flour, sift it and then bag it. The whole machine was made mostly out of wood. In Tolstoy's Anna Karennina, the existential land owner, Levin, goes to the feild to cut with the Muzhiks (peasants) and falls into meditation scything from which he finds peace. I begin to day dream about hand scything 2 acres of leased river valley land, and possibly finding an old wooden milling machine like the one McRee and Associates acquired from some antiquated realm of the South.
We are fortunate to be here with another couple that shares not only a similar philosophy about the importance of simple living: self sufficiency by local farming, renewable energy, health and vitality being restored into the earth and arguably more importantly, into the community, but also has a similar sense of truly absurd humor and precious wit.
I suppose it is obvious that we have time to dream up here. Maybe it is a by product of the wide open landscape, like the ocean. Maybe it comes from not having any cares other than our routine chores. Last night I dreamed of ravens soaring over head and of swimming in an eddy in a river in up state NY. But those are not the dreams I nurture. No, I move about through my time here carefully considering such things as the Paleo Diet, the scything of oats, the milling of grains and the tending of bees. If I have learned anything from these years of contract work it is that one can be a fisherman or a farmer, or a ski bum or a polar gypsy mechanic. Even if one does not know how to play the accordion, does not mean they cant dare to dream of it.

The ordinary day

Every day begins with a read out of the temperature and wind speeds. This morning at 6 am the outdoor temperature was -4'F. with a wind speed of 4 kph. An hour later the temperature had dropped to -17'F. After my morning meditation I pulled on my bunny boots and slipped into my parka. I went outside and walked across the drifts dusted with a fine sugary powder. In the east, there was a pink smudge where the sun was obscured by low clouds and freezing fog. This tender blush of color, unusual to the eye that has adapted to a typically horizon-less white, was touched with a familiar insight subdued; that dawn, in the lower latitudes will yield a spectacular spectrum of colors. This hushing orb of damask rose sat out in the distance just above the snow like a single giant thing. We shared our presences and disappeared, I into the garage, it into the fog.
The "gen shack" is a modular container unit about 15' long by 7 feet wide. It sits inside the first half of the garage tent. Inside the gen shack is the power plant, totally self contained.
I look around inside at all the gauges that make up the waste heat system, at the online engine, at the temperature inside the module, at the fuel level and then I navigate through the soft key screen for the information I need to log from the generator's interface program.
Once I am sure that all systems are well, I go back over the the Green house and read the sight glass on the water tank. The Green House has a 200 gallon capacity water tank plumbed directly from the snow melter which is located just outside of the gen shack. By gravity feed, the water runs through plumbing in insulated arctic piping called, Bondstrand, which is buried deep beneath the snow. To complement the insulating properties of the snow, there is also wired, heat trace; imagine an extension cord that does nothing else but create resistive loads high enough to safely generate heat.
If the tank is low, I simply open a ball valve and let the water fill the tank. This takes a few moments, so I usually sit down upon the stoop in the mechanical room and stare at the wall and think.
The next run is over to the Big House to check on the water status there. The water tank in the BH has a 400 gallon capacity, but this one requires a pig in order to fill it, which is pulled over behind the tractor once a week. The "Pig" is simply a 200 gallon tank mounted to a Nansen sled (think wood and sinew and Polar expeditions) with an electric pump. The "Pig" got it's name from the original mobile water sled which had been covered with spray foam insulation ( giving a most dimply surface effect) and painted pink. Since then, a snout and a tail has been added to the original "Pig", but as this old "Pig' now leaks, its duties are reserved for parades.
After the rounds, I find something that is generally working well, break it and begin diagnosing what went wrong with it after it and I had our confrontation. Usually it is something that I have asked, politely, to come out of hibernation in order to do work in sub zero temperatures.
Snow machines, snow blowers, fuel oil heaters, fuel pumps, electric pumps, door ways, and sleds all seem to suddenly wish they had never signed up for high latitude service. In order to get closer to the tropical desires they yearn for (I blame disillusionment on the snow blower for this one) they refuse to work; guaranteeing a tow or a lift inside.
After work we work out, eat, discuss the day, talk about our dreams for home, or anywhere warm, and go to bed with our books.
All night I am tuned into the hum of the online generator. I is nothing like being lulled to sleep by the waves. It is like being a cross country trucker with an autopilot waiting for an oncoming car.
Eventually I doze off. In the morning, instead of birds and leaves and insects or laundry flapping or chickens scratching there is the sound of the engine purring away.
And maybe a pink blur, warming in the east..............

Burying the Green House

At midnight last night I was still awake. Altitude induced insomnia frequently occurs. We are eating allot of avocados and bananas. This has nothing to do with altitude induced insomnia, but has everything to do with grammatical errors. We also make fresh squeezed citrus juice. The supply of these tropical fruits is abundant enough for us to continue with our "Pago Pago" diet for at least two more weeks. Tonight's diner menu:
Potato leek soup, Cornish game hen with wild rice and wilted spinach and beet salad with a balsamic reduction followed by stewed fruit and scones. For breakfast we have been religious about eating our oatmeal which we garnish with flax seed, walnuts, prunes, soy milk and maple syrup. There is an alternative motive to this abundance of fiber rich foods: the more the toilets flush the less likely there will be any freezing of the outfall pipes.
We have all been riding the spinner cycles (well, all of us except Steve. Since there are only three bikes, Steve "rides" the rowing machine). We work out to cadence specific rock music, selected by our staff of one time bike racing, Andy, or to the directions of the pro cyclist on the DVD. Recently Andy remembered that there are some videos of the Tour dE France around, so now we will be using these as the carrots in front of the donkey cart while at, over 10,500 feet above sea level, "adrenalized" music pushes us into anaerobic states of joy.
Oh and for work? Well, I screwed a 24x6 inch piece of plywood over an intake vent on a diesel powered heater which lives outside inside a plywood box. This, to prevent snow from filling the box over the winter. The heater is only used during the summer to heat the inside of another arched tent where the "do not freeze" science cargo is stored.
Meanwhile, the science technicians, Andy and Kate, launched a NOAA weather balloon with it's carefully calibrated ozone sonde. Steve and I watched. Then I closed the enormous garage door by hauling away on a chain. Glad to be able to utilize my old tall ship sail raising skills, I was nearly tempted to break into song:
"Cape Cod girls they have no combs.........."
But I did not.
Steve got out the soap and the vacuum and has begun talking about shampooing the carpets.
During lunch Andy and Kate have been watching original episodes of Flash Gordon. Steve now wants a shiny black cummerbund. I am secretly fashioning GBI (Galactic Bureau of Investigation)insignias for all of us to wear on our uniform......eh em, I mean, parkas.
Today it is snowing softly, There is not enough of a breeze to change the course of the light powder to anything other than 90 degrees straight down. That's not true, as I look out the window, the 2 knots of wind is just enough to put the Angel dander on a bit of a slant. Yes, Angel's have dandruff too; they don't try to cure their dandruff, but are pleased as heavenly punch that they do have it. This is a very noble act, or I could say, "Angelic" since all the skiers of the world have found such infinite amounts of joy from skiing down, in and through this stuff and are endlessly abundant with giving their prayers of thanks.
Now I must go skiing in order to prepare myself for my day's work.

The Book

A plywood bear painted black has an orange arrow, also painted, bending from the bears assumed mouth to its rump. I ski 3 miles out to this place; the whole distance over white snow. Some snow has formed into Styrofoam hardened drifts called, Sastruggi. over these my skis squeak. Pockets of needle crystals and fragile flakes rest undisturbed by the wind; through these my skis whisk. The sun, midway in the sky, moving through the four O' clock, post meridian, glints a blinking diamond. I push my sun glasses back onto a spot on my face where they will function and resume gliding towards the bear. I do not look behind me yet at the camp. Above me, high in the sky, an airplane passes.
Why am I here? I find the place strange. It is not a sea of water moving underneath a keel. We are not going anywhere but are stationary. A space station. That is a station, in space. Space can be defined by any amount of time and existence taking up room in a vessel. It does not have to be only the cold death of the heavens. If I take off my parka and my mittens, my skin will not immediately crack off of my bones. It would take a few minutes for frost nip to alert the central nervous system.
Steve wants to paint my boots red because they are purposefully, 2 sizes too big for me and look like the proverbial "clown" boot. I selected them this way in order to be able to wear not only socks, but a poly propylene boot liner, a softer, more pliable felt, if you will. After many years of experimenting with different arctic grade boots, this is the warmest set up yet. I am uncertain that the color red will attribute any more solar gain this late in the season, but am willing to be humorous.
Hard buildings: 2
That is, any structure that is built of wood or steel framing having either a wood or metal enclosure.
These are the Big House and the Green House. The Big House so called exhibiting its dominance over all other structures in the camp.
The green House so called to simplify. It's sides are green corrugated sheet metal. It is really made up of several ATTCO buildings pieced together. Presently it is beginning to get buried. We anticipate its total submersion beneath the snow before we are due to leave in early November. This is a normal recurrence. If buildings are not excavated and raised up on some sort of lifting risers, it is inevitable. The Big House was raised this summer. It now stands about 20 feet above the surface.
Soft buildings: 2
The garage, and the storage barn which are both Arctic grade arched tents with inuslated walls.
Temporary buildings: 5+
Shacks, science huts and freezer trenches.
Drifting snow: after just 3 days of winds above 15 knots, will create an entirely topographical landscape. We do not bother to push these drifts away with the 'dozer, or blast them into powdery dispersal by the snow blower, but let them lay, like dogs.
Steve is building a tunnel by the bent of his brow and the heft of a shovel. He has sawn blocks out of the snow and intends to erect a Gamble roof entrance to one of the 3 doors into the Green house that has been recently sealed shut due to drifitng.
I never really gave too much thought to my being in these places; whether out on the Bering sea amidst ice flows, or up at a tiny outpost on the middle of the high, inland ice cap on the world's largest island.
Why?
Lately I have begun to think more and more about the places I have chosen to exist within.
I have also begun to think more seriously about writing "that book". In order to help myself help myself, I have chosen to read classics such as Homer and Tolstoy, listen to Opera, via pod casts (thank you Steve) and to begin researching just how and why I would write a book.
Meanwhile, I ask you this:
Do you think that our contemporary, western society is generally obsessed with or is merely interested in danger (death)?..............
I type in commercial fishing on Amazon .com, in order to get an idea of what the market is selling on the subject of commercial fishing. No surprise, Spike walker and William McCloskey dominate the list. Further searchings bring up, The Deadliest Catch, and again, no surprise, another novel written by one of the TV series's own, Time Bandit. I give you an excerpt:
"Season after season , they bond and battle with its icy depths, determined to reap yet one more rewarding harvest while eluding the ever present threat of sudden, certain death."
Aren't we all mere mortals, or have I missed something?
I do not want to write a book about threatening or cheating death in exchange for commerce. I do not want to write a book about glory, sexism, cold water or dare.
I spent some time discussing, The Deadliest Catch with An antrhopoligist I met while in Kangerlussuaq. Chris, who teaches Arctic life- styles at Berkley felt that after watching so many seasons, it has become a sham. She then mentioned the lack of documented historical aspects on the Bering sea fisheries and encouraged me to at least write an outline.
Now, as I stand on what I presume is to be the lip of another adventure in my life, a time of yielding not to the migratory sequencing of cold white and desolate, but to the thrum of the giving green world and the philosophy of simplistic home steading, I, for the first time, critically begin to wonder, what is it that has motivated me to seek these edges of the fabric of life and why might these thoughts be of interest to the world?

The bowl of milk

No picture is needed today, only an image conjured up in your mind; you are stuck inside a bowl of milk. This is no ordinary bowl, otherwise, you could not fit into it, nor is it really the liquid milk. Perhaps you are muffled in so many layers of clothing that despite the heat of the American South, you feel no temperature extremes at all, you have become a neutral environment, like the insides of a cooler. You are standing in a cotton field during a Storm, but are anchored down firmly. All is white. Maybe you are stuck inside a flour mill during a tornado. This is what it is like here during 40 knots of wind.
The good thing about wind storms here is that the temperature rises. Instead og being flat calm and -20F, it is windy and 20 above.
We can still walk around outside, though from what the wind sounds like, some 30 feet above the surface in a building raised on iron legs, you wouldn't think it would be possible.
I pull my hood up and secure the goggles to my face; a windshield for human beings. I put my head down and find some delineating feature on the snow to follow, be it an old Caterpillar track from the tractor, or a ski runnel, now a raised relief, or the platforms of my earlier boot prints embossed along the surface.
I mark the force of the wind against my body and the direction I wish to travel, roughly 500 feet distant. By this dead reckoning I begin my course, glancing up occasionally to check for the dim gray blur of the garage that will soon appear ahead, looming; a moth in the dark illuminated by some brief moon glow.
This weather is exciting, though it prevents us from doing the chores we need to tend to outside, it allows for the human element to feel, in just 500 short feet, the likes of having crossed the north Atlantic on foot.
Well, OK that may be dramatic, still, I presume it gets the point across; life here is never dull. I wear a whistle on my parka, I carry a radio, we all keep track of each other's where abouts. I reflect upon the experience, standing still within its own being only long enough to try and understand it's gyrating mood. Long enough to feel the spindrift needling its way through my clothes. Enough to decide that there must be an awfully large kitten coming soon to lap up this milk from its ice cap sized bowl.
Reaching the safe harbor of the garage and kicking aside the powder fine drift that has formed so delicatly before the door, I enter into what seems to be the mouth of a whale. Dimly lit, membranous walls heaving and shaking as though alive, snow sliding down along the arches, like water over the back of a leviathan, I stomp off the snow and smile.

The Returning to Planet ice

My absence from writing has dissolved into a need to write again. My thoughts, which have not been absent, have slowly risen to the top of the vessel they have been stored in. But where to begin?
This blog, originated as a means to include my family in the weekly events of our work in Greenland, has evolved into what it was designed to be, a journal. And so, though our thoughts tend to suggest privacy, I am growing more and more comfortable with this medium of thought sharing. My musings and observations are no longer Greenland specific. I recognize that the two weeks Steve and I spent with my Mother and Father in Jefferson, Maine had an indelible affect upon my intellectual reasoning with this going away work and a new found respect for the living world; the world made up fruits and vegetables pollinated by bees, woods wet with fresh animal tracks and emerging late summer fungi. While swimming in the ocean through a forest of rigging tinkling like chimes, or doing my morning laps in the spring fed pond, lent to me by frogs and fish, and while gently walking over the land ,winged by birds and butterflies, now climbing into a particular old tree, with a name, now bending to eat more berries, I felt a pensive restoration of my soul.
Visiting with very dear friends whom I haven't seen for many years, gave fresh insight and perspective; we can all still agree, there lies an humble ideology constantly worthy of our attention on what purposes one may serve in this short life and how to do it without harming others or ourselves.
The returning to Greenland went without any difficulties. We arrived up at Summit Station on the Greenland ice cap, at 10,500 feet above sea level, last Monday afternoon. The air was thin, the sky obscured, we all went to work immediately forming a human train, in order to move all the boxes of fresh vegetables up the two stories of out door stairs, into the warmth of the Big House.
This past week consisted mostly of re-orienting our selves to the camp and it's daily tasks and chores which it demands of each person living here. There were forums each afternoon discussing the future plans for construction and expansion, snow management, going "green" (renewable energy plans) research and the potential for alternative cargo delivery, such as traverses (due to the rising fuel costs associated with airlifts).
The weather has been hovering around zero F with mild winds and solar phenomena. I went out for a ski and as I gazed around, thinking about the conversation Steve and I had had earlier that day, about hanging up our hats and finding work back home, I found myself absolutely alone in a vast sparkling ocean of diamond prisms and phosphorescent snow looking out towards an unbound infinity of quiet.
This morning, as i rattled over the snow in the track loader going for a bucket of snow to dump into the snow melter, I wondered about my being here, at its oddity, not that I am a mechanic in charge of the power, water and life support of this camp, not that I am operating a piece of heavy equipment, or that I'm even here in the first place, but at the general relativity of time and its ability, if we are capable of learning how to become truly aware, of constantly changing our matter.
For though there is certainly a very noble importance and peace to staying at home and growing one's own food, there is also, this. This never ending presence of change, and here, in this unique place, where the sun dips lower each day and the frost stands up like rose petals, I feel as though I am placed underneath some grand cosmic microscope, and so turn to within with a greater understanding of why I am being and where, in the being,I am.