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.
