Dramatis Personae

We have just received word that we will be leaving camp officially, weather permitting, if the other group, somewhere else on the island who also contracted "our" chartered plane doesn't cause us any further delays, on, Thursday, the 13th of November. Seven people are coming in to our little camp, four of them will stay. Then, seven will leave again for Kangerlussuaq on the west coast of Greenland via a twin otter turbo prop with skis. The twin otter will not need the skis to take off or land in Kangerluusaq, only here, on the ice cap covered with drifting snows which have been blown into rock hard formations called sastruggi. After a night in Kangerlusuaq, we will all depart for Copenhagen, Denmark where some of us may visit for a short time before returning state side.
We are all very excited. We get along, we are not running out of things to eat or things to do or things to say, or read, but are well aware of being tired of eating from out of the freezer or from a can. We find it harder and harder to push ourselves, to keep active, (mentally and physically) or to do the dishes. Tonight, over lasagna, we talked about corn syrup, ( have you ever noticed that it is in everything) Agri- pork, bicycles, and Robert Falcon Scott, the famous, dead Antarctic explorer. He died because he arguably may not have had enough corn syrup.
I jest.
We then laugh at number one of the last two pineapples. It looks like it was run over by an ATV with green moldy tires. I cut it up anyway and we eat it.
The sun set tonight was a dramatic visual display of alto cumulus clouds ribboning through the various hues of the color mariners find comforting at night. Red. Beneath the setting sun's spectacular performance was another maritime shade, though one not so comforting: green. This horizontal pallor was intensified by a muffled, rolling ground fog that crept in underneath the awning of brilliance so slowly, so carefully it was as though it was intending to either not disturb the harmony of light or to ruin it quickly. But then came darkness and the stars.
We have all made lists of the things we must get done or hope to get done before the little plane arrives. I find myself giving pause to my normal chores. Relishing them for their strange detail. Giving them the significance they are deserving of. I toss large blocks of snow broken off from a corniced drift, by the sheer weight of the Cat, (having traversed nearby on another rendezvous earlier in the week), into the snow melter. I feel a previously cold sensation grow warm through my muscles working. The blocks splash into the scalding hot water and begin to melt, adding to the, always being in a state of depletion, camp water source.
The science technicians use paint brushes to delicately brush off the heavy rime ice which builds up so beautifully on their tiny, plastic, anemometers.
These feathery ferns of ice astound us by their resilience from the wind, indeed they are born of the wind. Prints, made by our boots last weekend, now stand several inches above the current level of the snow. Everything is buried or carved or etched or embossed or drifted in; sealed shut. Even the very surface of the snow itself is harder now. Nothing can be done without first shoveling.
But the four characters of ACT I are growing tired of having to go stumbling over new, sperm- whale- sized -drifts -of -snow parked daily, by random, in their front yards and of having to dig their way into buildings. They are beginning to remember, what their teeth feel when they bite into fresh, tree -ripened organic apples. They miss their soft, purring or wet, wagging pets. They dream of grass, leaf sodden forests and song birds. They prepare to exit stage left.

Cold strange

Late yesterday afternoon Steve received a phone call from the Greenland Police. They rang to tell us that they had received a signal from an emergency, position indicating, radio beacon or, E.P.I.R.B., registered in Peru. This beacon gave it's location as being just 18 miles E.N.E. of camp. The Police, who are in charge of launching search and rescue missions, told Steve they were not concerned however as anyone traveling into or through the National Park (yes, it may seem odd, but most of the ice cap is a national park) must first register with the Greenland Home Rule authorities and they had had no such Peruvian on their list of expeditions. But, with less than two hours of daylight left on our side, we decided that it would be unethical for us to not at least go out to the location and have a look around. Once the decision was made, Steve began boiling water for the thermoses. He then entered the postilion we were to go to into one of the hand held GPS units. I brought the snow machines out of the garage and hooked one up to our Poly Pod, a light weight plastic tow behind camper shell. Katy gathered up some food, the trauma bag and sleep kits. Andy and I dressed for two or more hours out in -48 F, plus wind chill, loaded up the poly pod with the gear and set off into the setting sun. We had fairly decent visibility but for some patches of ground fog. Each of us had in our own minds different scenarios: a privately owned turbo prop airplane had crashed, a guy on an unregistered winter sledging expedition had to toss in the hat, a drunken expat Peruvian, now living in Greenland got cabin fever and struck out on a stolen snow machine........ As we made our course over ground we kept our eyes out for any tracks in the snow or for a bright flare igniting the dulling sky; anything that might be out of place. Later, back in camp we both remarked about how the changing smudges on the horizon as it grew dark seemed to be smoke, and how it felt that we were surely heading for the edge of the world. To have that feeling of increasingly encroaching upon "there might be dragons" corner of the known universe, here in the 21st century, was a remarkably bizarre, but sincere sensation. When we got to the position, we looked around through frozen binoculars which could not be focused and of which we each had one lens too fogged up to see through. We drove around for another 2 miles in the general area and finally decided, through deductive reasoning, that anyone out here smart enough to have an E.P.I.R.B., not to mention, to have set it off, would have a camp and would by now have heard our snow machines and set off a flare. Or so one could only hope. The sun had set and we were cold. We pulled out the iridium phone and tried to make several calls to camp. Andy's fingers were numb form having had to check the GPS on our way out so I punched the tiny keys on the phone pad by repeatedly pulling my bare hand out of a mitten, entering three numbers, and shoving it back in again. Finally I broke into the tool kit under the seat of the snow machine for a phillips head screw driver with which to poke at the keys with. Though we sent about seven phone calls out, none of them worked. We gave up on the phone calling and decided to just get back to camp. Following our own tracks in the dusk with the last of the day's color lingering on the horizon to our backs, we crouched our bodies behind the wind screens and zoomed along at 80 kmh. After about 35 minutes we could see the lights of camp. As we approached the garage, we could see Steve and Katy by the back door of the shop with head lamps on waiting for us. We both gladly gave up our snow machines for them to take care of and went inside to warm up. Even after eating the fine fish diner which Steve cooked for us, and a having seconds of the lemon meringue pie that I had baked earlier that day, it took a couple hours for both of our bodies to reheat. Katy said she had wished she had taken our temperatures as soon as we had returned, but accurate core temperatures on potentially hypothermic individuals requires rectal thermometers, so we were quite relieved she hadn't thought of the idea until it was too late.
I fell asleep on the couch in the Big House after being lulled unconscious by Peter Sellers' simpleminded sleuthing of the mysterious jewel thief, the "Panther". When I awoke at that magical pre- dawn hour , and walked back over to the Green House, the Auroras were out and so were all of the stars and the Milky Way. I stood for a moment underneath the heavens admiring the sight until the cold began creeping in again. It was -51F when I crawled back into my own bed at five A.M..
This morning, Andy, tuned into the signal of the mysterious Peruvian E.P.I.R.B. on the single side band radio but there was no signal. This made us feel much better as it confirmed every one's initial suspicion of this whole ordeal being rather too weird to be true. We are all very happy that no there is no possibility of any one being out there needing help; a normal, lazy, Saturday could begin. Steve is cooking crepes, and reading, dreamily about the Azores, Andy and Katy are going to do their daily science rounds and I am anticipating a few more decent strikes with my recently discovered driver and precious collection of five golf balls, painted bright green, for snow fairways, of course, before I loose them all in the soft drifting cold strange world we are living in.

Evolution

I just sent an email off to some friends of our's stating how this blog might very well be undergoing a state of transition. I began writing it pretty much under the influence of chocolate cake and the encouragement of another friend, who said it was easy and could be done just like that (snap your fingers)! The impetuous was to leave a trail for where on the planet Steve and I are and what we are doing there. A blog seemed to have a much more serious level of commitment to it than say, e -mail. Which I was never committed to. Secondary motivations were there too: Greenland does not offer up much literature published in English explaining what Greenland is. As our friends, whom we were eating this cake with and speaking to about blogs, are both travel writers with a very successful book about Mexico, now in its 13 edition (or is it 14Th?) do this for a living, I received much encouragement about blogging on the subject of Greenland. Also, as one posts on their blog, they are nearly daily, writing. This is good fodder for the hopper. But as one writes in this freestyle format one lacks an outline or a goal to meet or develop any congruent idea. The way I blog is similar to the way I ski down the mountain; I may know the general area I am going to go to, but for the life of me, I wont know what I am going to ski until I have skied it. And so my writing about Greenland has evolved into my witting about writing. I guess I have developed a bad case of, writers blog.
What I don't believe is that for any one who is consciously recollecting memories of a past that was at times fabulous , though at other time, traumatic, the experience would be easy or pleasant. There is the desire to burn all the damn stuff I have inscribed with my thoughts during those years on the sea and forget about it, though we all know this isn't possible. ..The forgetting about it. There is also an urgent expectation for myself to cull through it all, as I did the fish and the crab, sorting out what is worthwhile from what is just crap and preserving the "keepers".

Fishing

Ever since I started thinking seriously about writing a book, I have begun doing some light research on the state of the Bering Sea crab fishery. Any one who considers their self to be an, up to date on contemporary affairs, kind of person, will be able to guess what the biggest hitter is out there on the world wide web even if they, like me dont watch TV.
The television series, The Deadliest Catch, produced by the Discovery channel corporation. Not only does TDC pop up all over the screen whenever the key words, crab, Dutch, Bering Sea or commercial fishing are used, but the site itself offers up a myriad of further links: the local newspaper of Unalaska, the Aleut corporation's own history of the Unangan peoples (named Aleut by the Russians), employment in the fishing industry and a hyperlink to the USCG.
From TDC's home page I can navigate around and look at boats I used to be familiar with captained by men whose faces I at least remember, though a few of them, I knew. I even worked for one of the captains who will be featured in this season's upcoming or already on going show.
And so, I posted a comment on the TDC's blog site which featured this old skipper of mine who has been married for 15 years, has two children, (and admittedly likes spending time with them) and prefers gardening of all things during the off seasons. If you were to spend some time surfing around in TDC's website, you would find this a rather unusual dossier compared to most of the men who captain the boats. For example, in an interview with the skipper of the, Wizard, when asked about his family, you could tell he had become a little bit uncomfortable. Or maybe to be fair, he was embarrassed, caught off of his tough macho guard. He blushed, made bashful movements in his chair and finally said, "The most important thing in my life". The trouble was, he had already given away this answer, between the lines so to speak, in regards to how he felt about fishing, his boat and being a captain on the Bering Sea. So before I posted my comment, I carefully read through all of the other people's comments. I did not want to sound arrogant or sentimental or God forbid, to say something that might cause a row of some sort. But there didn't appear to be anything overly spellbinding or even pertinent, mostly just fluffy little 3 liners about wanting a date with one of the crew members or a pep- o -rally inspired , "GO Deadliest Catch Go"!
Sigh. This is difficult for me, but also inspiring. I realise I am supposed to be writing about Greenland but in a way, Greenland is writing about me. Fishing thoughts and memories have always been flowing through me as if they had a tidal current all their own. I don't expect these sensations to ever completely go away, and so I write:
I introduce myself as having never watched the deadliest Catch, but of having worked on the decks of such boats for eight years. I then give sensitive honest credit to Capt F of the Early Dawn, a very good man indeed who was never out of line, rude, crude or unimproved. Perhaps that is why he has a wife of 15 years. I thank him for having the guts to hire a women and for paying her full share and allowing her to work one of the most prestigious positions on a crab boat deck, the rail. After I sign off, I leave for the green House. Thoughts start flooding in: What if he contacts me and asks me to be a crew member and I become just another character on the Discovery Channel? What if the Discovery Channel contacts me? What if no body even cares?
After all those years out there in Dutch Harbor beating the docks for jobs on boats that are now famous actresses in a popular documentary, I sense the Ego beginning to rise. If I were a "guy", maybe there would not be such a loud voice coming from the previously so well silenced Id, but as far as I can tell, in over four years of production, not a single "girl" has ever stood upon the working deck of any one of those boats and that irks me, because I know, it cant possibly be true. And now there is a connective thread between me and one of those boats. It is weird, but even from a capitalistic point of view, although I tend to be more of a socialist, if I were to be hired as a TDC crew member, I could really market this unwritten book of mine. ...I mean, "come on!" look at what the making of Hollywood's The Perfect Storm did for Linda Greenlaw! Besides, worrying parents and concerned, loving others, seriously, compared to the days when I fished, (when there were no camera crews or crab rationalization laws to keep the danger level in check), this stuff today has got to be a piece of cake! Plus you get two pay checks for being a sailor; one from the boat and the other from TV!
But according to the great philosophers , there is no such thing as chance. Which means, be careful what you wish for. And, as Steve points out, I am training for a triathlon..........
As a testimony to this life, we have all too make sure we do our best. If not to ourselves, then at the very least, to others. Of course, without doing unto ourselves first..........anyway, I was once interviewed by an anthropologist who had received a grant to go to Antarctica and talk with the women in the trades. Up until that year, there was little to none of this type of historical data. She felt it was very important. The number of women working on the Ice had increased from less than 2 percent in the early 1970's to over 45% in the later part of the last century. I reluctantly told her my story and she was almost annoyingly adamant about having my picture taken in the shop next to the bulldozer I was working on. I refused, saying that I was no different than any of the other "guys". I had learned this behaviour as a survival mechanism (in fact one skipper wrote my name out as Shawn in order to get around the companies policy of not hiring women due to fear of sexual harassment suits) called, don't act like your special. This developed into a credo. I even worked for a women who owned and skippered her own crab boat, who once gracefully bowed herself out of a television interview with the Anchorage daily news. I forget what she said verbatim, but it was roughly, "I am not special".
The thing is, she was. And she still is.
I did not live through the women's liberation movement. I have seen a few females act obnoxiously about their modern day emancipation. One moment they wont allow a door to be held open for them, then the next they are bitching about having the man not open the door in front of them. I understand that I may have taken allot of things for granted in the past, but some world traveling and some maturity (a grey hair) have inspired me to re think most of these things.
The sexes are different. Men can be flight attendants and women can be crabbers. But, it is wrong when they do it to prove some kind of a point or to get some sort of self aggrandizing attention from there position. But whenever any minority goes against the grain led by adventure or desire, passion or curiosity, there should come, from society, an awareness of this unusual circumstance. An acceptance. And certainly, if a documentary is going to call itself a documentary, it should do its best to document the truth and to learn how to at least try and partially dissolve its mantra of rough neck tough guy machismo in which they have steeped this "real life" depiction of the industry in. After all isn't it enough that we as humans have almost depleted all of the worlds seafood stocks without having to make it seem like a bunch of Quipeqags are still out there with harpoons and tattooed faces killing the leviathan? Shouldn't we take a pause from all that manifest destiny style guts and glory and show the more meaningful side of this rapidly diminishing life style? Rather than scare people out of their armchairs into a deeper and deeper depression for having to go to an office job which requires a commute (actually more people still die in traffic accidents than on the sea) why not show that there are still a places in the world where we can spend our lives with nature. There are still fisherman and skippers and gulls and sunsets and cold sparkling mornings at which dawn is all your own....
I have seen grown men break down and cry. I have seen guys leave the boat with their head hung low after only one short trip. I have seen them fight each other over loosing a bet on a ball game and I have seen them shaking from the DT's so badly they cannot light their own smoke.
I have also seen them hugging each other and calling their Moms over the single side band radio just to tell them they are OK.
I doubt any of this gets shown either.
I felt a glimmer of hope when surfing TDC' links.; there were two "crab related blogs" posted by seemingly female names. I was thrilled that they might be women deckhands, but no. One was a women who wrote erotic romance tales. The other was a relationship advisor who loved crab fisherman. Wink Wink.
My head is smart enough however to recognise that even though two of the world's oldest professions, like peanut butter and chocolate are, "two great tastes that still go great together" there has also got to be a more modern version in which this stereotype is abandoned for valor.
I suppose all writers need to have their minds re-steeped in that which caused the idea of a great enough subject to write about, in the first place, from time to time; to get the description of any fine tea down well enough to seek its flavor, one must not merely recollect a memory, but have a sip from a freshly brewed cup. Though the experience may be different the writer is too, and this is exactly the point, if the writer is aware of having changed, then how can he or she write honestly about that which has changed too?
And how could she not be in the least bit be tempted by a chance of being documented in a role so unique, so familiar so inspiring, whose televised image of, "smart like tractor strong like bull" could use some serious censor.
I would defiantly wear a tutu.