The McMurdo metropolis: no village life at all.

The South Pole Traverse is now 25 miles from the Pole. After a week of de-fueling at the Pole they will turn around and head back to McMurdo. In less than 4 weeks from today, Steve will be done with this most amazing chapter of his life. I look forward to hearing his stories and listening to what he has seen out there -traversing where less than 30 people have ever gone before.

On Sunday, we finally talked for almost 45 minutes-three phone calls worth. Every 15 minutes the connection between the iridium phone and it's satellite would fail. Steve would then call back and we'd talk for another 15 minutes. I learned that he is tired but in a good mood and that most of all he wants to buy a brand new suit when he gets to Christchurch.

The weather continues to remain above freezing. We are all anticipating the annual deluge of water from a huge melt pool at the top of the hill above town. This melt pool is drainage from off of a glacier; it can be quite dramatic. The skua gulls are bathing in mud puddles begging for food which no one is allowed to hand out due to the rules about engaging with the wildlife as written in the antarctic treaty. The sun has been relentless. I go to work in one layer ignoring my hat and gloves; sunglasses and sunblock are more important now. For diner tonight I had fresh mixed greens with radishes and peppers. For the main course I had a lentil cake with brown rice and mushroom gravy. There were fresh sticky Mejoodal dates and a coconut pineapple pound cake for dessert.

In my room I read more about a little Aleut village I had been to once called Nikolski. Nikolski, some anthropologists believe- is one of the oldest continually inhabited places in the world. Recently there was a news article in the Times mentioning the difficulty the one room school is having with funding. They need ten students to get federal funding but the village of 28 people only has nine school aged children.

Nikolski is an amazing place. It does not have a harbor but it does have a gravel runway. It is 1000 miles west of Anchorage. The average income is below the poverty level. The Aleut langauge is still spoken in most of the households. The village consists only of some modest wooden houses, plywood skiffs, an old Russian Orthodox church, a clinic, a small power plant and some graves. There are no roads. I do not remember seeing any cars. Only four wheelers.

The island is rich in wildlife: sea ducks and fox, caribou and wild Icelandic ponies (imported for sheep and cattle ranching) and- I shouldn't have to mention this- all the crab and halibut and cod and clams and seagull eggs, wild berries, driftwood and glass fishing floats your cell phone-less heart could ever desire to find.

In the Antarctic, people imagine only isolation and wilderness but the pace of life at Nikolski today is more like McMurdo was in 1912 than McMurdo is today. Granted, 'Mac-town' only occupies a sliver of a toothpick of a portion of the continent but here we are: carbon emitting workaholics rushing from place to place, eager for the 5:30 "whistle" of freedom so that we might be able to walk away- just far enough from it all- to be able to listen to the seals breathing and the creaking of the sea ice.

I have been reflecting allot on the years I have spent living in the Aleutians, in the arctic, on the ocean in the ice pack, and most recently-on the flat white snows up on the ice cap. These memories are strange....like a lucid dream...sometimes I wonder if they were real......

When I went ashore to Nikolski, on Umnak island, I went by skiff. An old Aleut man took us in from our halibut schooner the Sunset. The tundra was bathed in the deepest of high, lush, summer greens. The domes of the little Russian church were painted a crisp fresh blue. Foals nursed. Mares grazed. All around the fireweed bloomed and the bright fishing buoys lay bleaching in the sun. Out beyond the kelp bed our schooner bobbed on the hook. When my boots hit the cobbles of the beach I was enchanted by the shaman or the raven or the horse's windy manes and tales. I ate pickled kelp and octopus signed the guest book, snapped some film, called home and sailed away.

Adaptation or-The Mid Season Blues.

For the past three winters my body has been in the northern hemisphere where winter has come with it's gradual descent into darkness. At Summit station, on the Greenland ice cap the night belongs to the winter. It feels natural; twilight lingers, lingers, blushes and then dims completely. The moon walks around in the sky full of stars and the northern lights dance to a silent pulsing drum beat. Our life slows down but we do not hibernate. The cold is tight and crisp; a clean snapping white bed sheet in a house without heat.

Now we are once again in the southern hemisphere where the sun is king and a relentless one at that. "Round and around he paces beaming rays from ever higher and higher domains in the sky blue sky. The snow, once soft and blanketing, offered a gentler, muffled white, is nothing now but clods of frozen melting dirt. Streams run down the sides of the roads gurgling. Soon the Norwegian ice breaker, Oden will come smashing down the sea ice where just yesterday planes were still landing. Whales and penguins will follow in the slow- blocky wake.

The Sun's constant radiance drives this energy making people crazy. Bosses are moody or seem manic. The town is either gummy with mud and the streets wet with water, or there is thin ice and cold wind. Nobody seems to have the ability to stop and chat. Friends that haven't seen one another in years wave hurriedly as each other passes by shouting, "we still have to get together "!

Everywhere forklifts are forking and lifting their back up alarms shrilling with agitation and warning. Large front- end loaders grind up the steep hill bearing pallets of cargo. Red, muddy pick up trucks full of leather faces, sun glasses, ball caps and beards zoom around to work on: plumbing, broken office furniture, ice machines, air compressors, doorknobs. Helicopters whirl and thrum, they lift into the air to depart, beat time and return from far off magical places: Mount Erebus's lava lakes, the algal platted shores of lake Fryxell, Marble point, Black island, Blood Falls.

It is difficult to get enough rest during the summer solstice at the bottom of the world. The base operates 24-7. Always there is equipment driving around stinking up the air with exhaust, splashing mud; there are people walking around working. On the stoop of the fuels barn, my hand on the worn bronze door latch, I pause to watch the light gilded, crossing over the mountains woven with flossing silk cloud scud.

Steve thinks that the reason most of the people drink so much down here is to fill the void of dullness with the unpredictable. They have come to Antarctica expecting grand adventures, excitement, bizarre encounters at the bottom of the world. They want to go diving with giant fish, sledding with emperor penguins, cruising on ice breakers- whale watching. They hope to get to someday be sent out to help assist some scientists. They threaten to get fired by climbing mountains pronounced off limits, or visiting any one of the all too numerously unsanctioned special places of interest and merit and mind boggling alluring beauty.

But it is, after all a job. Those of us who have come here to earn a living as a blue collar worker on this brown industrialized chunk of rock -that just so happens to be surrounded by the pristine dazzle of what everyone thinks of when they think of Antarctica- have made a compromise: for our often under appreciated, and therefore, disgruntled efforts, we might see an iceberg, or a penguin or two.

Part-way

Steve has written from the traverse: things are "boring" and for that he "is glad". Every night they shut down around 7:30 pm. After fueling the equipment for the next day and shoveling snow into the melter, for water, they enjoy each others company by warming a frozen, pre-made meal. Every morning they begin rolling before 8 a.m.. Steve eats as healthfully as he is able to; instant oatmeal packets for breakfast, left overs for lunch. In his tractor he stretches, listens to Danish lessons and does isometric exercises with a large rubber band. The convoy is now almost half way to the South Pole- having covered almost 500 miles out of the one thousand (and some odd change) they still have ahead. Steve seems to be happy or at least, has maintained his sense of humor. We miss each other much more than usual. Normally the one of us that has gone away to work misses the other but the other is then home with "the cat" living the life of a millionaire. This time we are both in the Antarctic, that is, we are both away from home and working; but while I remain behind here, in McMurdo, on Ross Island, Steve is "crossing the ocean of white"- if you will- "sailing to the Pole".

Because nobody thinks to ask about what they could never imagine life in Antarctica to be like, the things that are weird are worth mentioning: a person, walking out from a building dressed in a huge red parka eating a banana, mud puddles, getting mail order catalogs from the post office which we don't even get at home, fashionably dressed people attending thanksgiving diner in Manhattan styles; fur ruffs, dresses, suits and ties. A piper played his bag pipes- kilt and all.

An ER doc gave a disturbingly frank lecture- complete with cadaver and not yet cadaver (but looking like soon to be a cadaver) slides form the ER rooms he has served in over in Iraq. It was certainly one of those, drives the point home - types of lectures in which you walk away feeling a bit sorry for yourself that you're NOT being shot at because everyone else in the world seems to be being shot at. Then the reality strikes you and an overwhelming feeling of thankfulness swells up from inside; our life is pretty darn simple, pretty darn fantastic-and we are getting paid. It irks the be-jesus out of me to hear people complaining about things. They whine about the corporation, having their liberties taken away, or how the food doesn't suit them or they mumble non-stop about their jobs. Some simply prefer to stand around pumping at the bellows of a constant topic particularly favorable among the dramatists: chaos and dysfunction, all as if this were a society taken over by a de facto governance and not a contractual six month job one (eagerly) volunteered for.

Out of the hundreds of people down here , less than 2 dozen attended the Doctor's slide show on Iraq. I would have thought that more people were interested in hearing the story right from the horse's mouth. This Dr. (who has three children and a wife) even admitted to disliking the former president, was not shy about harboring disgust over all wars, shed tears during a recount of a particular death he witnessed in the OR and has been compassionate enough to send many many Iraqis out of Iraq to the States or to Germany for the care they had to have in order to survive.

I went up afterwards and shook his hand thanking him for the lives he has saved, for the efforts he has made spreading "light and love" as he himself exclaimed- where there has before been so much "darkness and hate".

These are the things that make this place so interesting-you never know who you are going to meet or what new idea will enter your mind. Being quite mercurial myself, I have recently taken to drawing out flow charts to better map my ideas; typically spawn from a book or an inspiring interaction, I leap into other worlds, dreaming. It is fascinating- if not in the least bit- grounding, to bring new awareness to the origins of these thoughts. Looking back over some of the charting, I can see patterns and may even be able to predict what reading a certain book might conjure up in me (currently I am reading a post doc thesis comparing aboriginal law and home-land rule in Greenland, and Nunavut. Naturally now, for instance, I want to become a lawyer for the Inuit of Greenland).

Nobody said that those of us who wander to these far flung fringes of the world are not a little bit different.

Work: fixing small lawn mower type engines that drive centrifugal diesel pumps, or peristaltic water pumps, nozzles that fuel as well as de-fuel military aircraft, gate valves, 6 inch hose fittings, large filter vessels housing four foot long fuel filters and miscellaneous broken other things: driver drill chucks, rotary hand pumps and bikes.

Food: we have been eating tons of fresh fruit and veggies this season: blood oranges and kiwis from New Zealand, cherry tomatoes and raw carrots. Why yesterday morning, during our safety meeting, someone passed around real blueberries and raspberries!

Events: there was a mild mannered game of touch rugby played down in the snow on the sea ice this past Sunday afternoon. I have volunteered to weld up a cribbage tournament trophy. The open water is 15 miles out. The barber is busy.

Leave Taking

The South Pole Traverse, from here on out referred to officially as, SPoT- departed the local area on Friday morning at 1100 hours. The team consists of nine members: Terry Billings- leader, Steve Zellerhoff-equipment operator, Kristy Carnie-equipment operator, Dave weimer-equipment operator, Rob - equipment operator, Wayne Lundeberg-mechanic, Tom- mechanic, Jason-mechanic and Gallen-mountaineer and Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) operator. As Steve commented later in his email, they left to, "absolutely no fan fare". In fact, most of the community of a little over one thousand people are still not sure whether or not the traverse has left or turned around or is surprised to hear that they had not yet made it back. Suffice to say, although we are living in a technological age of instant messaging, here on the ground- the big chiefs of this remote science station felt it wasn't all that necessary mentioning their departure. Nine people driving tractors to the south pole; what of it? Its been done before. I should mention then that they are pulling sleds equipped with yacht like living quarters, a machine shop, a generator module with a snow melter and almost 90,000 gallons of diesel fuel stored in bladders of 3000 gallons each all the way to the South Pole! Picture this: in front of the whole convoy tracks s a bright red Pisten Bulley (a ski area groomer). It is equipped with a boom extending out in front of it- much like a bow sprit- on which is affixed the ground penetrating radar. As Gallen drives across the ice shelf he is also reading the radar screen imaging looking for anything suggestive of a crevasse. The most heavily cravassed area, respectfully known as the Shear Zone-was crossed safely yesterday. The Shear Zone is worked for weeks in preparation of the traverse by first locating crevasses large enough to swallow tractors, blasting them with dynamite and then back filling them with snow pushed by D8-Caterpillar bulldozers. Crevasses occur here because the unyielding continental bedrock is resisting the hummocking roll of force created by the pressure of the constantly moving ice shelf. From the other side of the Shear Zone the route follows the path of least cravassed territory proven by satellite imagery, the GPR imaging and ground proofing of the six past traverses. The rules of glaciology and the known lay of the terrain being crossed have proven this to be the safest route to follow. Steve reported last night that they made camp in a white place surrounded by white and was surprised to learn that this was surprising to him. He called his revelation, "interesting". It was his turn to heat up diner. Diner is the only meal they eat that has been prepared for them and served hot. These meals were cooked ahead of time by a catering firm in Christchurch and come as large frozen entrees. I imagine family sized lasagnas. Last nights meal was pub cod, mashed potatoes and cauliflower- "white food". For breakfast Steve indulges himself with packets of instant oatmeal which he enjoys with the soy milk he brought along from the store in McMurdo. Lunches are cold cuts, PB&J or tuna on, what I hear- is lovely bread- baked in New Zealand. They do have the ability to use the Internet, though as you can imagine-as it would be at sea, the service is slow and quiet limited. There is one computer for nine people. I went out to see Steve off on Friday and got a tour. I saw his tractor which he has rigged up with various anchors for an isometric rubber band (the kind a Physical therapist would give you) which he plans to use to quell boredom and keep in shape. I saw his bunk which is in the main living module which shares the kitchen, the computer space, and some more bunks on the opposite end. In Steve's quarters, which he has labeled, "us" are four bunks. In the foreword berthing which he labeled, "Them" are more bunks. An additional bunk house unit separate from these quarters also exists and is labeled H2. I don't know what that means.

Meanwhile in McMurdo I have been informed that I will be getting a roommate. Her name is Jill and she is a scientist. She claims to be tidy, smoke free and incapable of snoring. She should be leaving about the time Steve returns...sometime in January. A blizzard came through last night. We have all been anticipating our first holiday in three months: a 2 day weekend in celebration of Turkey day (which I think should be re-named Pumpkin pie day). However the man in charge of calling the shots out on the ice runway- which will soon need to be moved out onto the ice shelf before the annual sea ice break up- has announced for us all to stand by to stand by which means, in his parlance: "y'all might have to work over the Holiday weekend". Though this has us all in a dismal mood we have been promised that we would get our 2 days of freedom the following weekend and, would still be served thanksgiving day meal someday near thanksgiving.

My guess is that in less than three weeks, if these strong southerlies keep up, the salt water will be tossing waves ashore here and we might even get to see some of the world's most coveted wildlife: penguins!

If anyone has questions for Steve, post them in the comments. I will try my darnedest to get them relayed out to him and reply to you through this blog which I now have time for and am happy to be writing again.

The cheese here (flown in from Christchurch)is fantastic and money is going into our bank account. Malcolm reports that Jamie and Marcus are better "house-guests" then Steve and I and has yet to shed a tear in our absence. Maybe we should get a dog.

McMurdo Station

The use of the word skua has been derived from the noun, skua gull, a notorious Antarctic scavenging sea bird. Skua, as a McMurdo Station colloquialism has become a verb; the act of people searching for things other people no longer want, skuaing. There is even a building devoted to skua. It is a goodwill bin sorting room lacking organization, cleanliness or price tags.

In the heated, modular, Korean war era T-5 building known as the, skua barn I look for whatever just for interest. There is an assortment of Westerns, sci fi and romance novels, a feather boa, a snoopy sno cone maker, a nappy yellow bean bag, silk flowers, worn out clothes, a curling iron, dirty coffee mugs, text books and plastic toys. I collected a wooden dradle, a three inch tall plastic tree stump- complete with a wedge notched in it and a bag of balsam needles from the Maine woods.

The act or art of skuaing offers visual and creative stimulation, a short respite from the 60 hour work week.

The view out of our third story window is of the other brown sided building full of brown creaky wardrobes and brown spongy beds. The food is good and someone else does our dishes after every single meal.

Today is Sunday and so we can all relax. I took a hike up Observation hill, this morning, still, in the soft glow of a magma hot sun rise (plus 5 degrees F). We ate fresh baked bagels and fruit and drank our tea, idly chatting with friends.

A glaciologist wears a blue crocheted octopus hat with googly eyes. A man at breakfast dressed as a penguin. One man plays the ukulele in the stairwell at night after work, another friend plays the fiddle. Dawn occurs at 6 am and dusk comes 12 hours later. The colors are tropical and almost give off a false sense of being warm. There are afternoons when the sky is alive with nacreous clouds, swirling cirrus wisps pf electric mother of pearl unique only to these high latitudes.

One of the dish washers was formerly a graphic artist for Victoria's secret.

This place can feel as strange as science fiction with the giant geodesic communication domes perched like static moons on the hills-especially when the temperature drops to almost 100 below zero Fahrenheit with wind chill. But beneath the luminous lens of a storm cloud formed by Mt Erebus, there are cigarette buts tossed in the snow and ford trucks driving around and the droning noise from the power plant. People are busy all the time here either putting radios on penguins and cameras on seals or baking 20 loaves of bread or fixing things with parts wrapped in cosmaline bearing a hand typed part number on yellowed paper or with duct tape that lost its stick sometime shorty after the end of the cold war.

Facts

This picture shows me standing in the middle of the ski way at summit station on the Greenland ice cap. The reason it is called a ski way rather than a runway is obvious if you really think a little about physics and airplanes, verses snow and cement. You can see the flags vanishing to a point in the distance. The point in the distance is less than 3 miles behind me. This picture was shot on a calm day in the fall. I would say the ambient temperature was around -20 F, or even warmer, because I am not wearing a neck gaiter or my big- issued, down parka. The down parkas we are issued, weigh about 12 pounds new and cost over 800 dollars. I have a radio in my back pack along with a thermos of hot water, snickers bars (which have already frozen into jaw breakers). Steve took the picture, so someone is with me. Further more, other people know that Steve and I had set off for a hike.
Mexico covers 756,006 square miles of land. The ice cap of Greenland- covering five sixths of the worlds largest island, is roughly the same size as Mexico; since Greenland's total land mass is 840, 003 square miles.
Imagine yourself now being lost on this ice cap in a blizzard. You cannot think about the blizzards you have seen in Michigan or Connecticut or Maine, because in fimiliar contexts, your imagination will be biased: you might be traveling home from Christmas caroling with a church group, you might be out on the side walk shoveling- everything is still near and the lights can be seen, motors heard, your chances of dieing are nil. It would be better for you to try and imagine being lost at sea in a fog in the arctic in a skiff that has run out of gas. You didn't tell anyone where you were going-which doesn't matter since you are not where you were going. You are lost. You don't have a radio or a flare or a tent or even an issued parka.
The temperature is well below freezing. It is minus 35 F. The wind is blowing a gale. The only navigational aids are flags which have long ago become obscured in the frost and wind and blowing snow. There is nothing else to delineate your landscape. Remember you are at sea, far off shore, or in the middle of the flattest part of the storming Sahara; you are on top of the world,s largest ice cap, alone. Your chances of dieing now, are superb.
On the 16Th of this month, unbeknownst to Steve, or anyone else up at camp, two of the camp staff went for a joy ride on snow machines. Maybe they even had had something to drink. They went out into fresh winds- not yet gale force. They followed the bright black flags down to the end of the ski way ducking behind the wind screens, exhilerated and then, ideling the engines at the far end, they were overcome with the immidate knowledge that they had better go back. But they lost one another and themselves. The mechanic stopped when he knew he was lost and dug a hole with the shovel that had, by luck, been on the back of his machine. After 16 hours living like a sled dog on the trail, he dug himslef out, started up his machine and went back to camp where he was shocked to learn that his friend was not home.The other man, the man now in the burn center of the University of California, at Davis, kept going. In fact, his machine, when found 3 days later, was far away from the ski way; you will have to forgive me for not being able to cite the exact distance, but roughly 13 miles, and was run out of gas. As soon as it was known that a person was missing out on the ice cap, Steve launched a search and rescue mission involving every resource they had. For three days he was beside the phone and radio maintianing communcation links; catching only short naps, he continued with the neseccary camp duties required of him while commiserating with and encouraging the three remaining crew to remain hopeful.
The only news story I could find relating this incident was published by Fox news, who repeated the National Science Foundation's blurb. Giving no names, other than, NASA, the NSF, the Royal Danish Air force, "people in Kangerlussuaq", and, the 109Th Air National Guard, I found it outrageous that the photo they slectected, encaptioned, "Ariel view of the ice cap" was a floating ice berg. If you watch this crap, shame on you for being so unintelligent-you are probably still trying to figure out what the differences are between a runway, and a ski way.
After 60 hours, the lost man was found. He was spotted by a colluege of ours, a man of both Danish and Inuit ancestry. A man named, Basse. Basse and I spoke on the phone a few days after the lost man was found. Basses described to me what he was looking for as being what is known as a body drift. He happened to be driving a tracked snow cat when he noticed a "speck on the windhseild -but it wasn't a speck". He kept his eyes on the mark and as they neared the body drift, for after 50 hours lost man was presumed to be dead lost man, the "body drift", stood up! He was 12 miles from camp.
The damage done, was mostly to his hands. Leather, thinsualte lined mittens with no cuffs had slid down below the wrist bone and were no longer able to be pulled up, once the hunting stage of cold (as low as minus 50 with wind chill) had set into the fingers. After this, ischemia occurs, which is loss of blood flow. Next, cells begin to die. When his clothes were cut off of him, inside the warmth of the station, his mittens and socks were not among the articles removed. Ice crystals held them to flesh. Lost man, thought to be dead man, now found man, was medivaced first, to the hospital in Nuuk, (the capitol of Greenland) and later, to the UC Davis burn center near his family. Last I heard, he had gone in for a surgical procedure; a final analysis of the vascular and cellular damage sustained before what we are all presuming to be amputations of both hands from mid wrist down.
Over 4000 years ago, the Inuit migrated to Greenland form North America. They developed senses which enabled them to survive sea ice travel, long dark winters subsisting off of raw meat, isolation- stymied only by mythological visitors: the northern lights, understood to be the spirits of their ancestors, senses that were accute and as critical as instincts. Basse and I have spoken a few times about the knowelged of his people's past and the responsibilities of being aware still, divided by intersecting aspects of modern times. I listened to him well. As soon as I heard that he had gone up to the ice cap, a place no ancient Greenlandic person ever would have gone-for there is nothing there to offer the living, other than death; I knew he would find the man he was looking for. I dint know that he would find him alive.
To give some perspective on how the people of Greenland view this story, I could find no mention of it in their news. It is no where as near as extraordinairy as recent findings of methane gas or integrating schools with non native speakers. To them, it must be not so much a moment's story- now told between family over cell phone or via email, as it is a permission slip into recollection; an ability to beleive again in a past now thought to be more incredible than real. Life goes on. Back at home In Kangerlussuaq, on the west coast of Greenland, Basse sips his coffee, plays with his kids, surfs the hundreds of thousands of satellite channels on his wide screen TV and gazes out at the changing fjord: it is begining to melt, slowly. He might even be thinking about trying again to grow a lawn this summer. Or maybe he is thining about a speck, on a vast, white, seeminlgy endless surface of 40 below where someone from the spirit world lingered- just long enough, to help show a lost, white man, his blundering way home.

Defrost

This picture of Steve, standing on the Greenlandic ice cap, looks cold-too cold for bees-, but is at least: sunny and bright. Steve reports that things at camp are moving along well with a wonderful crew of four. They are preparing for the Summer influx on April 23, when an LC 130 cargo plane will land on the ski way ;delivering fruits and vegetables and people. Steve will leave then, for the coast where the emergence of spring will welcome him . Meanwhile, here in Welcome Valley, spring has sprung! I have been fortunate enough to be able to walk the four miles to the rural bus stop a few times this first week back in school. These early morning wakings allow for me to really notice what kind of an environment I am apart of- as does turning the compost. I notice, not only what is in bloom or what is in bud at the eye level, but observe the delicate castings off of those plants I cannot see in the upper canopy. I pause at the river to watch a beaver swim up current. I listen to the singing of the birds. I loose my breath for a moment as suddenly, where there was none the day before, an ocean of tiny white violets reflects back the dawn. I laugh at robins tugging at worms and I think about nothing.
Yesterday, I received two packages of bees. The packages are wooden shoe - box sized crates, with window screen sides. They contain: a can full of sugar syrup, roughly 10,000 worker bees (females) and a queen, sequestered in a cage of her own, plugged with a cork. My friend Lorena, herself a beekeeper, helped me empty the packaged bees into the hive boxes I had prepared. This is a weird operation for the novice; though I thought I knew what I was doing, I was rather haggard from my first week back at school and a spontaneous, 12 mile hike home the day before - the bus broke down - I was lucky Lorena was there with me. I pulled the syrup can out: bees began to fly. They were loud and sounded angry. I hadn't taped up my wrist cuffs or my pant legs. I didn't wear gloves. The bees crawled on my hands. One went up my pant leg. I remained calm and slowly pulled the queen box out. Lorena brought tiny marshmallows for replacing the cork with- the bees will eat through the marshmallow releasing their queen. I wedged the queen's cage in between the frames in the hive box and then inverted the package of bees over the queen. Then I put the lid on and walked very carefully, like a man with elephantitis (or so I would presume) over to the compost area to release my little companion who did not sting. The second pacakge went smoother, as most things do after dress rehersals.
Today, in between studying and turning the earth, talking on the phone, petting the cat, and ignoring the dishes, I checked on the bees. Honey bees tend not to fly when temperatures are below 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Somewhere around 3pm the weather in the valley soared to 52 F. The bees were humming about and settling in; crawling in and out of their respective hives and orienting themselves to our humble estate. I placed extra sugar water jars in the hives along with one pollen patty each; food enough for the bees until the natural nectar bloom becomes sufficient forage.
I did not manage to plant the onion starts or seed potatoes, but the trillium and the rhubarb are up and the old apple tree will be white before the moon is half way gone.

Do your part to create a confidence virus!

"Hear the voice of the bard!
who present, past and future sees
whose ears have heard
the holy word
that walked among the ancient trees"

"O earth o earth return!
arise from out the dewy grass
night is worn
and the morn
rises from the slumberous mass"

William Blake. - 1794

If you are still feeling gloomy about the economy, I invite you to visit the following site. Published by the American psychological association's president, Dr James H Bray, this bit of intelligent thought is worthy of contemplation. I learned of this site from my psychology course and still visit it frequently for I find it offers a rather cognitive dimension to our society's behavioral traits, our contemporary issues, or "news".
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/03/pc.html (bare with me as I get this link to work)
Meanwhile, I walked through the woods along the right hand bank of the Middle Fork river this morning listening to the robins sing. If the robins are back in your neck of the woods, please remember to drive slowly along rural fields. There take off trajectory cannot out pace that of the hurried windshield. Now that I am walking the four miles one way to my bus stop, I am noticing some robins, worm still in beak, who have met their automobiled fate. But spring has indeed arrive in welcome valley. This does not mean it is still not freezing at night, or that it might not snow, but that the sun is much higher in the sky, the shadows longer and the potential warmth of the day significantly greater; even the swallows arrived late, yesterday afternoon.

Steve is still patiently awaiting better weather on the ice cap for his flight up to Summit (below in the links, there is a hyperlink called, WHO WE WORK FOR, showing summit station's weather etc). He wrote this morning saying he hoped to go for a long hike. There is 6 inches of snow in Kangerlussuaq where spring is but a short allegro composed for the grandeur of summer.
I sat in my chair after my walk this morning with my tea and looked out over the hills from which the sun would soon be shining. I was listening to Bach's Brandenburg concerto Nos 4 in G. really listening, and it seemed freshly composed that instant for the sun cracked over the tips of the trees and shone in upon my face and I smiled. May you all have a wonderful day.

Return of the blogger

Dear readers,
This post title is not creative but the picture is. In fact, I hope it inspires at least a little humor. The reason I selected this picture is because I felt I needed a rather neutral ice breaker to get things going again. Although I have not written one single post in the past five months, it was most certainly not due to having a submerged groin. I began college. I made a phone call to enquire about enrolling inn spring quarter three days prior to winter quarter's start up day. The kind receptionist asked, "are you available to begin this winter"? Of course I said yes. That following Monday morning i was tested and administered to and after registering for my classes was able to make it to my first class just one minute before it began. I dint really have the time to consider what i was doing, only why. Being human, we feel a need to define every thing we do with perimeters. Bees do not. Bees build waxen hexagonal honey comes because they must, not because they or any other busy body thinks they should. So it has begun with my schooling, omitting hexagonal wax. And so I am evolving along with my course work. I am now focusing on completing the voluminous amount of math classes required before I can declare an associated degree major. This is fine with me. I love math and am aiming for a transfer degree to Western Washington University, (our local four year University located, naturally, on top of the biggest hill in down town Bellingham, WA) in science. But which science? Physics. Yes, physics. Why? Because we do things which are governed by laws of nature; bees make hexagonal combs, light travels in waves, gravity allows things to exist without floating away. I think that I want to teach. I know that I I want to learn and I want to grow our own food, even oats and rye and millet. Id like to be able to watch all of the seasons change from one location on the planet. Id like to be able to keep laying hens and maybe even someday get a goat. Steve and I love the thrilling adventure the Polar programs afford us and we love working to support scientific research, but we are privy to the fact that in ten more years time, we will have been doing seasonal contract work for 30 years , and will want to enjoy the work we are putting into our one acre estate; the fruit and nut trees, the berries, the (soon to start up honey bees), the flower gardens and most of all; our wonderful community of bee keeping, food growing, friends. Therefore, a new career objective instills. Lets face it, fixing log trucks or city buses for a living when I'm in my 50s and 60s does not have much of an appeal. Teaching college level mathematics or science does! And when I'm relay old and want not to work very much outside the estate, I can subsitute at the local High School in Deming, only a bike ride away.
I am about to finish my first quarter with a 4.0. I don't even yet know yet, exactly what that means, other than its what universities like to see when one applies and hopes for a scholarship. Spring break begins next Wednesday and I have a long list of gardening and grounds keeping projects tojoyfully attend to, not to mention repairing an inherited 1967 Mercedes Benz sedan which Steve's uncle Russel gave us. I hope to have it running well enough that I can pick Steve up at the airport in it accompanied by Uncle Russel who will be 92.
Speaking of Stephen, he has gone off to Greenland for the spring and summer. He just arrived in Kangerlussuaq via Denmark yesterday and will be waiting there at the KISS building (where we lived and worked all of last spring-summer season) until the weather improves enough up on the ice cap for the small twin prop to fly in. He is filling in for a person who was medically evacuated less than 2 weeks ago This was not in the cards, so to speak, but since it allows for Steve to return home earlier than originally planed (July 17th as compared to Aug 20th) we both decided he should go for it! He has just written me telling me that he has gone out for the day as a volunteer with some biologists to collect reindeer urine. The biologists will measure these samples to see exactly what state the caribou's diet is in. I will try my best to keep a Steve update running within the body of this blog. I will try my best to keep this blog running, but it might be difficult at times as course loads oscillate.
I hope everyone out there is doing what they find to be fun and enjoying life.
If you have a set up which enbales you to watch movies, and have an ecclectic movie rental rescource such as a library, or netflix (sp?) look for MINDWALK. In this film, a physicist gives her, Systems Theory dissertation in a most unassuming way; as three strangers walk about Mont ST Michelle discussing life.
One worker (female) bee flys over 20,000 miles in her lifetime of just six weeks.