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.