Monday

Back at work today, we began sorting through the mounds of science gear we have already received or had stored over winter. We also started pulling allocated items from our own stock such as tents, shovels, Coleman stoves, small portable gas generators, Nansen sleds, stove fuel, waste oil drums, batteries, solar panels and snow machines. Each science group has submitted a project plan from which we work, These plans vary. Some are 15 page pdf documents that lay every detail on the mark; who is flying when and who is flying where, what is going here and which is going there, when some stuff must be at this place and please have shipped by now, ten boxes of one quart zip lock bags, 3 iridium phones, a medical kit and maybe we will need a helicopter on the coast. Other plans are just a single page of line items: 3 tents, 2 stoves, 1 HF radio.
The day is over before we know it.;129 batteries weigh almost 14,000 pounds. These will be flown North of Thule and then re-distributed to certain sites around Greenland, both on the inland ice as well as along both sides of the coast. The world famous climatologist, Konrad Steffen, (along with a group of his under grads), is using these remote, automated weather stations (AWS) powered solely by batteries and solar panels, as an integral part of his research. The weather stations continue to collect and transmit data all year long, entirely autonomous from any human actions.
The river is making noises. I walked as far as I could along the smooth granite back of the earth to the ice edge. Here I paused. There was a small gurgling music, the unmistakable sound of flowing water unseen amplified by the ice. The ice itself groaned and checked and spoke a dialect of seal and porpoise. It is alive and the river wants to run. A snow bunting chirped and whistled and bounded away though the cold morning air. If I were to count the steps I am able to walk from our back door to the ice edge of the Watson, I am certain it would equal nearly an eighth of a mile. In late June or early July, when the river is at its flood, a dangerous growling, boulder smashing torrent of glacial silt that will choke and subdue every last millimeter of its bed, I will re count these steps and find them less than several meters long.