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I have been reading up about blogging in my, Blogging for Dummies manual. I have an announcement; it should now be OK for you to leave your comments. I had the comment format radio button ticked that would only allow subscribed readers to leave a comment. Sorry for that! That is why some of you have had trouble with this before. Why I did not appreciate your troubles earlier, can only be blamed upon my own ignorance of the formatting capabilities left in my control as an amateur blogger. Now let's see if "commenting" works. I do not expect you to comment if you are not so inspired, but if you are enticed at all by something or have a question or want to point out mistakes or wax philosophical, please do so. The true beauty of a blog is that it is not intended to be all about the author. At least this one isn't.....But is about the author, me, sharing my thoughts with you, and you should assume a clear freedom in sharing your thoughts with me.
Naturally, if you don't have any thoughts you feel you want to share, then I will not begin to wonder about you by singling out the whomever it is that hasn't left a comment by writing about the person or persons who haven't left comments, thoughts or random baloney.
Speaking of random baloney, it is -41 F right now and the waning moon can be seen standing out amongst Cassiopeia, Ursa major and Orion. The snow is squeaky hard like a Styrofoam drum. Before all this, at about 6:30 PM, the setting sun painted the snow pink and shadows stretched out for what seemed to be one eighth of a mile. Last night there was a pallor of green in the northern sky, the first hint of Aurora Borealis.
I am on to reading Aristotle now. His interpreter is much more difficult to digest than was Plato's. It is like being able to be reading, while being inside of a tornado of fascinating ideas while being, just being.

Swashbuckler

The blur of whiteness coddles the cold. Though the sun shines, and will soon enough set, I must walk with my face looking down. I study the carvings of wind over snow. The relief of crystals, drawn violently across drifts extending, has the grain pattern of wood. We walk out one mile. The light is turning ocher. My wrist grows numb from the wind working its way in between cuff and sleeve and skin and bone. All morning we discussed vacuum presses and glue lams; we want very badly to build our own furniture. This conversation continues now as we walk into the wind. It sounds to me as though I am talking into a tin can packed with goose down but somehow, Steve responds to me. Maybe it is the big, fur hat over the small, wool beanie muffled by the neck gaiter and hood that causes words to sound so flat and long.
The building, that is the most aesthetic here, is the sauna. I don't really mean that, but in a a way, it is. It is modular. It is built of scrap plywood. It is small and tidy. It has a wooden interior with a small window and river rocks that sit in a stainless steel tray on top of the oil burning stove. There is a pleasing scent of oils: eucalyptus, lavender, and tea tree. The place is kind to the soul; warm and quiet and soft. Even the fueling of the day, tanks and drums, reminds me of a home- style farm chore. My work feels separate from the rest of camp's scientific duties. My tasks are both necessary and voluntary and that alone makes me happy. When I sit in the sauna I think about our friends and I think of home. I think about ways to save the world from ignorant, wasteful, car -dependent sprawl . I imagine building  large, geometric solids-- perhaps out of wood--if not, at least, from toothpicks and gumdrops. Do we have any gumdrops?
This energy is strange. I am tinged with the melancholy that comes from being steeped in the constant hum of a generator, working out maybe a little too much, planning projects for home, and reading philosophy. I wish for the green grass of home and the wormy earth. I am pulled away, as if a leaning tree in strong winds, towards being home, far away from this see saw sphere of an arctic space station. But following what we know to be good advice isn't always as fun, or as interesting, as it is to go pounding through the challenges of life. Enduring the suffering makes good books.
The strongest medicine about this place is the reality of its isolation. Accepting this, working with this, casts an odd illumination over my being, welding together the euphoria of the ice cap's splendid uniqueness with the temperament of it's cold cold song, sung from so lonely a pair of frozen lungs that ever breathed on this earth, builds character.
Somehow, we are not of its world and we will not stay.
I go now to sit and listen to the colors of the sinking sun.

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.