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.