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.
