Crepuscular

The daylight is being squeezed out of this place like water from a dish cloth. What we see of the "day light" begins around 6 a.m. and ends before 9 p.m but long shadows need sunlight; and the gaseous star that gives this Earth such time telling slants, has long been dulled behind low level storm clouds or ground blizzards. As the equinox approaches the color of our world grows dim. To try and find one's way over the many directional drifts is a weird sensation in this gray light which is called,"flat". In flat light, the whole of the space you exist in is no more or no less the equivalent of the insides of a white plastic bucket; the proverbial, "bowl of milk". The "ups" are surprisingly more sudden and steep than the "downs". One must lean their whole body forward as when climbing a slope. But, unlike most stable slopes belonging to Terra Fimra, the soft unconsolidated snow sloughs off and you are slipping backwards again into your own boot prints. Once summiting this 4 Ft wave of snow, you walk softly, blindly, though all around you it is bright white. The depression, or trough is approaching.... is approaching .....is ,here! and you are either now already "down" it, on the some- what flat, some- what hard-packed "mean" level of the Summit of the ice cap or, you are falling off the drift, laughing at yourself for being so childishly clumsy.
It is not over. Though the typical, historical, weather pattern brings warm temperatures and high winds from the South, this year it has been blowing from all directions of the compass. This causes many drifts to stretch out across the landscape, similar to a confused sea whose breaking swells, still having a dynamic nature, while moving and growing, become solid. In this region of white, tormented by a now almost month long gale, it is impossible to predict what face you will be struck with which you must ascend and then when will you tumble to the bottom.
We have yet to face extremely cold temperatures this Phase. By "extremely cold" I am making references to the, anything from-minus 40 F and below -type cold. The coldest day to date, -20 F, lasted only a few hours.
People often ask,
"Have you seen any examples of Global warming"?
"Yes".
What more of an example could the thawing of a snow trench-freezer, and thereby its contents, used for storing meats and stuff, in a root cellar -like -space beneath an insulated hatch cover in the floor be? Or these strange weather "patterns" that do not seem to have any pattern in mind at all, unless a pattern can become a continuous cycle? Or the design and chemistry of the snow flakes themselves; no longer so often dry, tiny, needles, but plump, maritime -powder- day -stuff which we are more inclined to see falling upon Mt baker, back home, in Washington state.
This past July, Steve and I visited my Parents in rural Maine. We visited many friends and even had the chance to speak, though briefly, at a local international language school where my very dear friend, Patti works. In front of the Penobscot School's students, I talked about Greenland. Most specifically, the languages spoken there, being Greenlandic and Danish. During the questions I was asked the inevitable, almost breathless: "haveyouseenanysignsofclimatechnage", question.
I told a story about a fact I had read in the New York Times a while back:
In Greenland, first of all, you are not permitted to buy land, but can request it and then claim it for as long as you live. The boundaries of a recently claimed piece of land were simple; from the salt water up to the glacier, being so wide. The Dane, reporting to the 'Times, had said that the climate had warmed up so much he had now much more land (than when he started out). The glacier, of course, has been retreating back into the ice cap.
Though this is excellent for farming, it is, or at least I consider it to be, also an excellent example of climates changing.
I hope you like rubber boots, potatoes and shaggy cows, and though our future can at times seem rather crepuscular, just reflect upon how moving that dimming light can be as it sparkles in the cleavages and crystal like facets of the ice.

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.

As care takers of this remote, Arctic- out-post, there is plenty of time to read;
Konstantin Dimitrich Levin thinks: "In infinite time, in the infinity of matter, in infinite space, a bubble - organism separates itself, and that bubble holds out for a while and then bursts, and that bubble is -me". -From, Leo Tolstoy's, Anna Karenina.
Yesterday afternoon I was skiing in a very odd flat white light towards an undefined place. Not an horizon, not a vanishing point, or even a place made soft, as in fog, but towards nothing. I wondered if I had died; how could I prove I had not? Was this skiing into muted whiteness "heaven" or purgatory? The more I began to think about the home made peanut butter cups Steve had made, sitting behind me on a warm shelf back in camp, the more I began to think, "This must be Hell. I am 4 miles away from those little delectables and I cannot see in any of the seven directions. Further more, they may all be gone when I return"!
Luckily, there were three left when I arrived, though a friendly little skirmish immediately broke out between the four of us over who would get to eat them all.
Now I am on to reading Plato's, Timaues. My interest (and my goal) is to be able to read, with comprehension, Casey's "The Philosophy of Place". Casey's book, written in the late 1990s, is about cosmogony (the theory of the creation of the universe), cosmology,( the study of the creation of the universe) mythology, Being verses Becoming, nothingness, sameness, chance and causation.
I was drawn to this title while digging around in the depths of a used book store on my way to Greenland. I had imagined it would be a difficult read what with its infinite references to Kant, Hildegarde, Descartes, Schopenhauer, Ovid, Plato, Homer and Zeus. I did manage to read 100 or so pages last fall, but quickly realised I had some major shortcomings; I had never studied Greek Mythology, I was rusty, at best, with Genesis (to say nothing of the rest of the world's creation myths)- had never read any of the great philosophers, and, I had not yet been able to accurately define cosmogony.
Were I at home, this heavy reading would not be allowed the same amount of time that I so generously can give it here; for I would be stirring the compost, digging in the garden, tinkering with the old 'Benz, visiting friends, learning about bees, skiing down "the Mountain"or puttering around in the shop.
One also has time to pay strict attention to being disciplined with a physical fitness regiment. I became inspired after running with a friend in Kangerlussuaq (and reading a Russian novel largely about suffering) . She, not being much older than me, proved much stronger than me. I reflected upon another friend, at home, who only a few years ago not only would not have been able to imagine what she is doing now on a bike, but would have died trying. Now I am unable to keep up with her, unless we are climbing up a mountain, but even that may have changed.
I suddenly understood that my nonchalant character of being able to hop on a bike and ride 25 plus miles or to pull on some running shoes and pace out 6 miles up a logging road without training, would either come to a screaming halt or might just never get any better. The only marathon I ever ran, though it was over snow, and was in Antarctica, was slow.:5.5 hours.
I was so slow the recreation crew, putting on the event had packed up the finish line and had gone "home". Only Steve, who had been skiing alongside of me, congratulated me. Two USCG cadets, off for a hike, gave us the time as neither of us had thought to wear watches.
And so, out of the blue, I decided to reclaim an old desire; to race an half Iron man. A half Iron man covers 70.3 miles in one day, and is divided up between swimming, biking, and running that is if you haven't had your jaw broken by some one else's flailing foot). I found a race on August 16 . 2009 at Lake Steven's, Washington. I will actually be home then and so have set my sights towards this date as a new training goal. I have been riding the spinning bike, rowing the rower, cross country skiing, lifting weights, stretching and following along with the athletic (impossibly fit) dancers featured in the NY City Ballet conditioning program (Gulag) DVD.
Wednesday is my rest day. After work, I eat, then promptly prepare for bed. I read allot on Wednesdays- and research geeky stuff on the Internet like triathlon training, sports nutrition, dry-land swimming techniques (swimming out of water) growing oats in western Washington, milk cows, plow horses and chicken concentration camps. That is, coyote and raccoon proof chicken keeping.
The highlights of this past week at Summit have been Steve's carving up of a fresh watermelon, the peanut butter cups, slot car racing, watching, "Waking Ned Devine", a moment of fair weather in which we actually saw the sun, last night's brief, full moon, and my having recently discovered that 3 out of the 4 of us love banana pudding!
Steve does not love banana pudding.
We have half a dozen #10 cans full of banana puree, lots of real whipping cream and cases of Nilla wafers.
I am placing a bet that Steve doesn't really know that he secretly loves banana pudding and that by the end of our time here, we will be all out of banana puree.
"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy".
-Stephen King

Thou shallt not eat only the fruits of the freezer trench

Tonight we are being treated to an authentic Mexican dinner by chef Andy and his assistant, former Mt Washington Weather Observatory Meteorologist, Kate. We have an abundance of fresh cilantro, limes, avocados, and tomatoes. Well, fresh as in, they wont be coming from the insides of a can.
Today the wind is blowing 20 knots which means the ambient temperatures are in the high teens. I had to turn the diesel sauna down to low.
We are all recovering from eating banana sourdough pancakes with maple syrup from Vermont and bacon from some noble pig whose life did not originate down in the freezer trench from whence he came. The freezer trench, is a long, narrow excavation in the snow where the bulk of the frozen food is stored. There are about 25 steps to descend down into this high Arctic supermarket from which we can take food for free; though this can pose problems for us when we return to the "real world" and have to remember to pay for our food at the check out counter, it is one of the luxuries of care taking a remote geological observatory.
Early this morning, before I had my tea, we began discussing the Paleo Diet. This is eating nothing that has been processed by any one other than yourself. Of course, meat, eggs, herbs and vegetables are easy, bee keeping and dairy become more complex and the most labor intensive of all: grains. I have been researching the different grains and legumes we might be able to grow in our valley. I have discovered that, out in the San Juan islands, there is a small farm that received a grant to experiment with rye. I caused a big sensation saying that I could take my sea kayak out to this island, fill it up with rye, paddle back to Bellingham and tow it back out to our home in the bike trailer. The grain that is, not the kayak.
I have a cousin, Jeff, who worked for his father, my Uncle Steve, who was a Mill Wright. I remember Jeff showing me a miller they had purchased at an auction that would thresh and grind grain into flour, sift it and then bag it. The whole machine was made mostly out of wood. In Tolstoy's Anna Karennina, the existential land owner, Levin, goes to the feild to cut with the Muzhiks (peasants) and falls into meditation scything from which he finds peace. I begin to day dream about hand scything 2 acres of leased river valley land, and possibly finding an old wooden milling machine like the one McRee and Associates acquired from some antiquated realm of the South.
We are fortunate to be here with another couple that shares not only a similar philosophy about the importance of simple living: self sufficiency by local farming, renewable energy, health and vitality being restored into the earth and arguably more importantly, into the community, but also has a similar sense of truly absurd humor and precious wit.
I suppose it is obvious that we have time to dream up here. Maybe it is a by product of the wide open landscape, like the ocean. Maybe it comes from not having any cares other than our routine chores. Last night I dreamed of ravens soaring over head and of swimming in an eddy in a river in up state NY. But those are not the dreams I nurture. No, I move about through my time here carefully considering such things as the Paleo Diet, the scything of oats, the milling of grains and the tending of bees. If I have learned anything from these years of contract work it is that one can be a fisherman or a farmer, or a ski bum or a polar gypsy mechanic. Even if one does not know how to play the accordion, does not mean they cant dare to dream of it.