All Saints Day

Last night we celebrated All Hallowe's Eve by dressing in costumes, burning candles, hanging garlic and eating ghoulish foods. I dressed up as the ghost of Joan d'Arc. Andy shaved his head and became Mr Clean. Katy was one of Dr Seusse's beloved, Star Bellied Sneetches and Steve was a combination of characters: Bub Rub, the infamous U-tube, "Whistle Tips" icon and "The Delicious" ( a film short man who found escape from the corporate lifestyle he was leading by dressing up in a red jump suit and by pinching his fingers together as you would to make a bird shadow on the wall, went about saying, "neee na neee nee nee nee").
After we satiated ourselves on amputated finger cookies ( I didn't have enough egg whites available to make the wasp's nests cookies) and maggot pizza (orzo pasta) I read, "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allen Poe, to the crew as they sipped coffee in the candlelight.
It really was a fun night, though no body knocked on our door offering up mid-evil carols in exchange for treats from our lone mansion on stilts, full of toilet- paper- tube- bats and garbage bag streamers and Bach's organ music and an apothecary jar with some green oozing mass suspended in it, labeled, Dark Matter; specimen #6. Now safely we have passed into the day of All Saints. The sun is shining mutely through spin drift clouds causing the world to be but a pink moth. We bow our heads and say prayers for those beloved souls no longer here on earth with us.
This last week and a half we have been very busy preparing for the new crew who will arrive , weather permitting, this Wednesday. However, few minor snafus have already occurred. One of the science technicians, trying to depart Logan Int. Airport in Boston, received a bad airplane; due to mechanical troubles she did not make it to Copenhagen with the others but is stranded in Massachusetts, a rather creepy place to weather Halloween. The second science technician vomited her whole away across the Atlantic (this was not a Halloween "trick") and was taken to the emergency room in an ambulance directly after landing in Denmark. She was accompanied by our supervisor and is doing fine now. Food poisoning, they said. The fourth person scheduled to arrive with the group, has staid on in Wisconsin with her ailing Father, and will probably not be leaving the States at all now, understandably. Meanwhile the other four members, of the original crew of eight, have all arrived safely in Greenland. They are staying at the KISS building in Kangerlussuaq, patiently awaiting the next Airbus from Copenhagen, which will arrive on Monday, with the stricken and afflicted. Meanwhile, Murphy's law has been in practice here during this past week; having groomed the ski way and shoveled out all of the door entrances, a storm blew through camp which has abated, but has not yet dissipated. Winds of over 60 MPH tore sheets of metal flashing off of the Big House roof and so thoroughly buried the Green House that we are now entering and exiting though the roof hatch, as the roof is now level with the snow. The weather forecast is predicting another gale today, with winds subsiding by tomorrow. This will leave us with just enough time to groom the ski way once again and dig ourselves out enough from the storm so as to not scare the incoming crew away (resting their travel weary eyes upon a snow scape, seemingly devoid of any "camp"may simply be too intimidating to warrant their wanting to remain).
Amen.

Orange Chair

If this is any example for my mind set, than I have become not only very dull, but also terribly out of date and worn. I spent the past seven days entranced in a misanthropic day dream about dance. I watched shorts from Don Quixote and Swan lake on U tube. I danced and stretched every day of the week and composed numerous letters to not only the adviser of the dance program at Western Washington University, but also to the few professional dance schools in Bellingham. I began researching ways to improve my turn out (the extent of one's ability to achieve a 180 rotation, from the hips, of the feet) and ways to become even more flexible. Every time I tried meditation to relive myself from this madness, I had to cut my time sitting short as I had to get up and move; Mozart was in my head, or Bizet. I have lost the desire to even try to control my mind any more. It is miserable to be stuck in this nihilistic day dream of something not real, but it is harder still to be quiet and to not move at all. I am not good at being like a sled dog buried beneath the snow; waiting.
So I go outside for some fresh air even though it is -50F and there is absolutely nothing out there to entice or supplicate one's needs. Well, yes, there is the sun, setting ( I do not get up early enough for the sun rise anymore). It rises setting. And as it drags itself along the Northern horizon it bleeds out some very dim streaks of sun - blood. Then the sky fills up with a powder blue fog which appears as a burial ritual and then all is diminished.
It really is quite bleak here.
But we have planned a holiday; Procrastination Day. Two days ago Steve took a 25 pound turkey out from the freezer. I was supposed to have taken it out three days before. It still has not thawed out yet. Hence the name for the holiday. Actually, most of what we do best here is procrastinate. Only a few things really ever need timely doing. Water, when low or empty needs refilling, same with fuel, food needs to be cooked, we need to call in over the radio every morning to let the world outside know we are alive. We need to keep the toilet paper stocked.
There is a little over 2 weeks until the crew change begins. On Tuesday, November 4Th the plane will arrive with four new camp staff , one scientist (who will be made to understand the harsh reality of problems that the mid winter sub sub freezing environment accrues on instruments designed in warm collegiate basements) and three full time company employees.
Together we will spend one week turning over the duties of camp life. Then we will get on the plane and fly away over the bumpy pinking snow-scape to a remote arctic city of 567 people where the earth, already covered in snow, will seem so abundant with life yielding grasses poking through the crust, white hares hopping, song birds chirping, ravens gargling, children playing, dogs barking, smells smelling...
Steve is watching the last of the unwatched, extreme ski movies. I pop around the corner just in time to see some dude land in a pillow of perfect powder. He is surrounded by a vista of evergreens sugared with snow. I walk away muttering, " snows pretty awesome when theres trees and topography".
Katy has just walked in bemoaning her brownies which are ,"bubbling...no they are boiling...there gonna SUCK"! High altitude baking is notorious for being troublesome.
It is four thirty in the afternoon and almost dark. My heavy(philosophically) book requires much page consuming in order for me to reach my goal of finishing off the season here with yet another book: Herman Melville's, Moby Dick. Its important to have goals, after all, without them, what would we have to procrastinate over?

Dance of the cotton grass

Way back in July of this year, drenched in the warm, dry, brilliance of the the high Arctic summer, I would ride my bike up a steep sandy hill to a stream which flowed from out of lake. I would lie in the tall grasses and rushes by the edge of the steam and peer into the clear but turbulent current of the water and watch the Stickleback fish. They were tiny. Smaller than the stub of a well worn down pencil; no longer than 3 inches in length, yet they were strong enough to hold position in a swift current bound for a falls that fell into the saline head of the fjord. I could see them gulp food. I could see them stop their effortless hovering and turn to dart to gulp another quickly passing morsel. They were dancers of another world. Conditioned to control their bodies as the graceful instruments of performing lives. Though every cell of their beings was toned for survival, their efforts were executed harmoniously with the water's motions itself. Like birds soaring on air currents, a ballet of life.
For the past three years now I have been entertaining the idea of going to school again. Why not? I have time off when we are not away working on distant islands or other continents. Perhaps having had so much exposure to travel in the midst of so many professional academics, professors, scientists, artists, etc. has allowed for a culture of thirst for knowledge to grow within the petri dish of my intellect. We are fortunate to have enough free time in our lives to experiment with dreams. If Steve wants to build furniture out of wood in our shop, he can. If I want to take dance classes at an annex of the university, I can. He remodels the house, I build the compost. We walk to the view of the Twin Sister's Mountain range, seen from the north bank of the Middle fork of the Nooksack River, just behind our house. He researches fuel efficient battery powered adaptations that we could make to our little Geo Metro while I plow through the chemical chains found in the emissions comparatively, between Swedish Masonry wood burning stoves and conventional wood burning stoves.
These free form "thinkering,-tinkering", time episodes of puttering , lead to small ideas which blossom into bigger ideas which grow into large "Why -Nots?".
And so my cute little kitten idea of going to school has grown into an enormous jungle cat named, "MR. Whynot". Well, one good reason is that it would significantly cut into my lovely ski bum life style of waking up at 0500 to press the speed dial button on the phone (which instantly rings up the Mt Baker ski report, which usually has most excellent news), and then go racing about the house getting ready to go skiing while singing, "15 inches fresh pow, 15 inches fresh pow....." or something like that.
Another reason of hesitance is the field of study, which has ranged from physics to atmospheric chemistry to math to mechanical engineer, to dance, to philosophy to fine arts to machinist and most recently, from paramedic to information technologist.
Certified.
But back to the fish...........I think they have got it all figured out. Even though they might only live for only one short summer or one very long year, they can dance every day through the atmosphere of their medium and exist symbyotically with this graceful movement, which I call dance, which swimming is a sort of kind of, dance, or choreographed movement designed specifically for survival; could it be that some people have to dance in order to survive. I mean, in order to survive, by using the term, survival, as the purpose driven expression of one's happiness and contentment with life; of feeling alive. We all must have some thing that bring this sort of sensation to it's maximum, causing it to go triumphantly coursing through our veins, trumpeting "life"; whether it be skiing or riding a bike or conversing with friends over tea or coffee, or watching birds, or bees, or loving someone or building something or going somewhere new. So why not dance?
It seems so impractical and self indulgent, a B.A. in dance, after all, I don't want to become a professional dancer; or even a choreographer; we would have to move to the city. And though I wouldn't mind teaching, how practical is that idea? Would I commute to a studio in town or lease one of the old chicken barns near our house on Mosquito Lake Road? Getting a B.A. in studio arts would at least contribute to helping me develop my potential as an artist, or a designer, or a sculptor. And what about all of those other ideas, either continuing along in the trades or working towards being able to become a teacher, or a paramedic, at least those ideas have some sort of practical application.
Maybe having worked for so long in impracticable situations with whatever skills I have garnered along the way has suited me just fine, like the fish in the stream, gliding, and floating and gulping.
And dancing in that sparkling buoyancy of water, the medium of origins.
Why not dance then, "MR cat"?

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.