Arrival

Yesterday, the 25th of March, Steve and I arrived on the world's largest island, Greenland. The sun was shining and the sky was blue with only a few broken clouds high overhead. The temperature was in the high 20s F'. The granite face of the cliffs glimmered in the sun. Ravens soared. The snow on the ground is barely deep enough to fill ones boots. I watched three children play on a giant mound of plowed snow; they were immitating dogs. Clothing hangs brightly on the lines outside the cheerfully painted homes.
Stepping off the plane we all went straight to work. Steve and I helped Ed with the cargo while Sparky drove the rest of the crew over to the KISS building. All told there are twelve of us here right now; three carpenters, four science support, two specialised mechanics, two camp staff bound for Raven, ( a remote sight up on the ice cap) and one project manager overseeing the carpenters.
The carpeneters are busy assembling a weather port, this is a large tent set up ontop of isnualted plywood flooring panels measuring about 40 feet long by 10 feet wide with an apex of about 6 feet. The weatherport gets set up every year prior to "put in" in order to detect any major issues or missing parts. Once erected, it will be taken down again and stored away in boxes for shipment on to Raven.
The mechanics are working on repairs to the two grooming machines a Pisten Bully and a Spryte, which will go out with the Raven crew in a couple of weeks.
Some of today's tasks for the science support crew (Ed, Sparky, Shannon and Steve) included helping Lou and Mark (the Raven bound camp staff) sort, repackage and store thier frozen food, shuffel cargo around the warehouse, make minor reapirs to a front end loader, do paper work, assist Ed with IT (information technology) repairs to our network and shovel out an old truck that was shipped back to NY aboard one of this morning's 109th flights.
We are all moved in and quite pleased to be here. The crew is a fine bunch of people, mostly the usuals, a couple guys from the South Pole Antarctic program and the mechanics, no strangers to either pole who hail from their homes in the Sates.
The sun rose this morning around 0600 and set just after 1800 this evening. The length of daylight will increase by leaps and bounds untill the solstice. The auroral activity is high though tonight is cloudy. Steve just returned from a ski. Aafter almost 10 days on the road between Oklahoma City and Schanectady NY it is wonderful to have a kitchen again, though figuring out the food thing here in Greenland is challenging. Our resources are so varied and interesting, this is the best way I have to say that Kangerlussuaq's only grocery store is not the sole provider; still, it will take a week or two before we are trully settled in with a decent larder.
Greenland potatoes grown in the far south western region are some of the world's best. Greenlandic shrimp, cod, turbot and char can be purchased locally as well. Tonight we dug into the provisons we brought up from NY as we have yet to procure a well rounded menu. Steve made buckwheat pancakes which we enjoyed with yoghurt, bluberries, walnuts and maple syrup.
Two long days and a landscape of muteable scilence cause me much pause. I hope to write with much more of an introspetive style blending the daily life with the feel of the sky and the cold clean hills that sweep away like the wind.
As I walked over to one of the warehouses this early morning, I stopped to watch the distant hills capture light. In a sky full of clouds, down through which a very tiny soft snow fell, I saw the rolling hills turn a shy blush of gold as if there was a light within, but it was only some of the sunlight's rays brushing long agaisnt the yellowed winter grasses far far away.