Redhead Amok in Antarctica
Woe Is Me
I am restless. I am impatient. I have this can’t sit still feeling that precursors a flight for me. I tend to get up & flee to places populated with absolute strangers, a bookstore, a movie theatre, a restaurant for dinner when this comes upon me. Or I find a place with no people in it and rest there from the fray of them on my nerves.
But I cannot flee here. I am surrounded by near strangers whose faces are all too familiar to me. I want to step out of the context of my life here.
I do not know what it is I am pitying myself for, I am in the place that I love surrounded by sublime and shocking beauty.
I don’t want to write people back, I owe email to many, I don’t want to read a book alone in my room, I don’t want to be with a group of people. I want to face someone one on one, separate them from the herd of people here, and get to know them. I am not looking for a relationship, so much as a meaningful and intellectual interaction. My life here lacks that, and I am too exhausted by the meaningless social interactions I have when I eat, when I pee, when I shower, when I walk down the hall, to make an effort to have better ones. No insult to the people here but there are just too damn many of you ALL THE TIME EVERYWHERE I TURN.
I want to get up & go. Away from this small town where I am afraid to actually talk to the one person who interests me most but I can flirt mindlessly with male and female alike. Defensive flirting, I call it. If I flirt like this I can keep you at arm’s length, because you will always see me as ironic or sarcastic, and will never see the real me I’m unlikely to ever show you. If I can entertain you, make you laugh, then you will always be distracted from the real me who doesn’t like people very much.
I am trapped here amongst all these wonderful people in this wonderful place and I don’t want to be here right now. I want to be among the strange & the new & the bizarre, or out on an island alone somewhere healing from old wounds with no evidence of other humanity but for the sound of the lobster boat headed up the glassy early morning waters of the cove. I can feel it in my bones, the colour of the water at that moment, and it is like a balm to my soul right now. I want humanity to be separated from me--by an ocean--perhaps visible, perhaps audible, but not in my space. I want to sit there listening to the waves against the rocky shore as they lap their tides in & out. I want to be ensconced in front of a fireplace, good book in hand, fog and dark outside, feeling snug as the sounds echo into me: the loon crying its awkwardly haunting, falling toooo-looow; the fog horn reassuring in its boom, audible evidence of fog even when my vision is delimited by my covers in bed in the dark; the owl’s low hoot; the nighttime skitter of mice feet, or the early morning crunching of mice bones under my bed after dawn has brought Tomoe to another successful hunt. Pray she hasn’t just gummed another poor bat to death and left its carcass flatter & wetter for my startled bare feet.
I want to cook egg noodles with salt & pepper, have fresh haddock pan-fried in butter & lemon with a sprinkling of fresh chives. I want to sautee some baby beet greens in butter & garlic for the glory of the flavour or the balance of the colour on my plate. I want to eat beets. I want to see that rich blood on my plate painting the edges of its neighbours. I want to make an omelette, with one egg only in my yard sale find of a perfect omelette pan, delicate & thin & buttery pale yellow sliding onto my warmed plate.
I want to walk through the woods and look for chanterelles. I want to fall to my knees in wonder as I come across an acre of the golden-rich trumpets delicately scenting the air with the musky fungi & earth scent of apricots. I want to feel dirt between my toes, rich & black hummus of decayed organic material. Dammit, I want spring, I want summer, I want fall.
I am restless and lonely with it, unable to move on as I am wont to do. I want something to happen right now. I want to dance again, I want to find someone to play pounce with, I want to discuss a good book, or better yet write one. I want to go out onto the ice and look into the crevasses I am warned against. All this Ice and no place to skate? The firefighters are bored, they have big hoses and water. Can’t we make ourselves a skating rink?
I can’t wait for the new air of Mainbody: fresh eggs, smoked salmon, packages from home that I packed for myself, apples, bananas, tomatoes, fresh zucchini, fresh people with their new energy. I am already feeling stale here; after only 5 weeks with the sun rapidly climbing the sky to stay there soon for months on end. I look forward to redeveloping the habit of sunglasses and sunscreen.
I look forward because to not do so would be to stagnate. To stop looking forward would be to stop looking up between buildings. I cannot stop noticing where I am even if I do not particularly like who I am at this moment.
posted by: coldwish at 08:21 |
link | comments (3) |
housing 2005-06
This is my day
Alarm goes off at 6:15am. Turn it off. If I shower today, I get out of bed, if I don’t, I climb back into bed and curl back up for another 15-20 mins. I don’t shower every day because the hot water dries my skin out. Shed my jammies, put on my robe, walk to the shower down the hall, greet all the other women doing the same thing, get naked, get wet, get clean, rerobe, back to my room. Moisturize. Moisturize some more (baby oil works for this). Get dressed, walk outside, in inadequate clothing y’all would faint to see me in given the temps of -15F without windchill, about 50 yards to the other building. Multiple good mornings along Highway 1, grab a tray in the galley, plate, line up to see what they’ve got. Do they have Quaker Oats (Apple & Cinnamon) individual packets of oatmeal today? Ok, oatmeal it is. Whoops, need protein, grab a spoon full of faux scrambled eggs that have been sitting in the pan so long they are hard & dry on the edges. Or I can’t face the eggs so I grab a few fluffy plastic pancakes or some brown French toast and put faux warm maple syrup on it. I bypass the melted butter pan altogether. If I’m up to it I get into the line in front of Sherry the breakfast short order cook and get a faux egg omelette with canned veggies (mushrooms, peppers, onions) that remain rubbery even after she heats them up on the grill. If they have English muffins that day I may toast one up as I wait. Sometimes I get a soggy cold pastry with some kind of jam in it. But I am not hungry, so much as compelled to eat by the needs my body has for fuel, and I force myself to make sensible choices. Some days I time it right and the faux scrambled eggs are still moist and egg-like, then I have a bowl of those. I know my need for protein in the mornings but after 20 years of vegetarianism I will not eat the meat products that look no more appetizing than anything else in the line. I would not be healthier for it.
Food on my plate, I get in line for silverware, grab a blue plastic glass & fill it with water, maybe another glass half full with orange juice. Take my plate to the far corner of the room and sit alone at a table if I have made it there earlier than my co-workers, or join them as they eat if I am later. Eat the food, but don’t finish it, take the edge off my hunger, knowing that I will be hungry before lunch rolls around. Get up from the table, get in line as everyone does just minutes before our workday starts at 7:30am to offload our dishes at the dishwashing window. Put my food waste in one chute, the burnables in another, place my tray here, my silverware in there, upend my glass into the holder, thank the hardworking DAs for taking care of my dishes for me, head upstairs to the meeting we have every morning.
The janitor supervisor is unnaturally cheery in the morning, which is oddly necessary to us even as we grumble our good mornings back to her. We talk about safety, things done well, things coming up, things not done, then as the talk turns to who cleans what dorm today, I head back downstairs to the office where my partner, Marisa, sits behind her computer. We alternate days of meetings vs early open of the office. The early office opener often gets trapped in our windowless room by the nightworkers who are full of pep after having worked a 12 hour day. This is their night time and they stay to flirt or head off to day bar (only to be seen later that day at lunch drunk as a sailor) or work out or go to bed. Sometimes they have to be shoehorned out, sometimes they are a pleasant distraction. But we have shit to do and our boss, Mike, has just followed us in. We seat ourselves at our computers, the three of us. People come in for things, with questions, with complaints about their rooms, their roommates, wanting TVs, extension cords, more linens, light bulbs. The phone rings. People wave greetings or pop in to say hi. We are located in Highway One in 155, the building that houses many of the personnel-type offices: Rec, HR, Finance, Housing, the store, the barbershop, the computer kiosk, the ATMs. We are in the building with the only source of food, and everyone comes down our hall. We have no windows, but we feel the cold as the doors on either side of our highway are opened again & again & again and the thundering hordes clump heavily dressed in for meals.
10am, breaktime. Walk 50 feet to the galley, make some tea, sit with other people on break. Back to work. Marisa typing away furiously, brain crunching as she slots people into the last remaining rooms and prays that the people will get along because she’s running out of smokers and snorers to match up. Mike mutters at his computer in disbelief that he could have so damn much email all the time, that he can get nothing done. I sort keys, receive keys, sign out keys, sign them back in, answer questions, put people off who want things we don’t have to give them. I call in work orders on things that need fixing. I do timesheets in Excel on Fridays. I wait for Mainbody when I will be more useful. I soothe a few people, I research things for Mike, I help Marisa check the spreadsheet she has been staring at too long to be able to see fresh.
11am, pachyderms down the hall to the galley as lunch starts for some. Marisa heads out then, I wait until 11:30-45 then head out myself. I do not anticipate a great meal, though I am hungry by then after my inadequate breakfast. I walk into the galley, get in line, grab a blue tray, a white plate and scan the offerings for something I CAN eat. Meat, meat & vegetarian. Quelle shock, the vegetarian entrée has cheese in it. Or I simply can’t tell, grab a cook and ask. Yup, dairy in it. Put a scoop of potato product on my plate, a scoop of frozen cooked veggies, check the desserts. Oh, chocolate cake with frosting. Frosting has dairy in it, I can scrape it off. If I see mashed potatoes I go ahead and have that, even with the dairy in it. Co-workers be damned as I fart all afternoon. Soup is meat again. Grab silverware, grab a glass of water, head out into the seats and scan for people I know. I either choose to sit with them or I start a new table. I would say sit alone, but it doesn’t happen. I will always be joined. A bit more energy to the conversation at lunch, but no pleasure in eating. I know I will be starving again by supper.
Walking into the galley is each meal like being back in school again. There are always people watching as you emerge, either scanning faces for their friends or in curiosity about where & with whom you will sit. I feel watched. I imagine I am no more or less watched but I hate emerging there. I need an empty table or I need a friendly face. I am afraid to scan faces too closely and meet the eyes of people I know as that obligates you not to pass their table & move on. It is unseemly to not sit at an inviting gaze and just to walk on. Perhaps that is just me as the minority female, with the men looking at me like that. So I avoid eyes and hope I will recognize people to sit with indirect sight. Sometimes I don’t even have the energy to look around and I spot an empty table off to the side and head there.
Lunch is eaten after 15 minutes, the next 45 minutes yawns endlessly unless a good conversation has come up at the table and the mix is good. Mostly everything gets sexualized, but sometimes we can talk about pro-choice politics, pirate radio, religion, music, movies, hurricanes, anecdotes from our pasts, or from just this day. Gossip rules the roost here.
I yearn for a place to hide for 45 minutes where I can read my book or play on the computer if I owe a blog entry or some emails. But the office is not the place for me, because time in the office is work time and I am available to people. But sometimes I go back early just because there is nothing to do at lunch, or I am walking away from a conversation I’ve had enough times before I don’t need to have it again.
Back at the office, same work routine until 3pm break. Same break routine. Back to the office until 5:30pm. Rhino herds trotting down the hall toward the galley. Close the door if Mike is not staying late, or abandon him to the office and head to supper. Supper choices sometimes better than lunch, sometimes even labeled properly. The fresh baked bread is exciting, but it turns out to be pasta night. Pasta with marinara sauce, too sweet and not enough veggies in it. Maybe if I’m lucky the greenhouse has produced its last winter gasp of lettuce, but no dressing because it is always Ranch and Ranch has buttermilk (no wonder everyone bloody loves it). Salad bar is cold rice/pasta/potato salads with chicken/ham/bleu cheese etc.
5:45-6pm, done eatin’. Stuffed from the bread & butter. Lately the sous-chef of the pineapple blog entry ahs been kicking ass in the soup division, giving me cream of asparagus with soy milk, veggie minestrone, curry veg with coconut milk, or some such soup to make me swoon, taste buds astonished to be massaged with actual flavour. That can make my meal altogether. But mostly I go 4-5 days without a meal I care to eat.
Stay at the table talking, people rotate through, sometimes there is something to do, sometimes I don’t want to do anything. I don’t bowl, play bingo, sing karaoke, drink in the bars. I head back to my room. Read or write until bedtime at 9:30pm.
Maybe tonight I will get a page from someone who is willing to take me out on his night rounds to the sea ice. Maybe tonight I’ll head over to the coffeehouse to watch people drink, participate in the raunchy conversation, head home to bed at 9pm for some quiet time.
But in the cracks between this boredom, I trot over to a dorm to post a sign and the sun is sparkling through the clouds in the blue sky, I cannot feel my lips move, but there is a smile on my face nonetheless. Or I walk outside and find it is snowing the tiniest of snowflakes, gently falling downward without a breath of air to disturb it sideways. I look up between the buildings and there is the sea ice and the mountains holding up the sky.
And y’know, it’s all good. C'est si bon. It’s all worth it.
posted by: coldwish at 16:55 |
link | comments |
housing 2005-06
Incarnadine & Fog
William Blake came and visited us last week, blessing us with a sunset sky torn from the pages of Songs of Experiences, no Innocence to be found in this bloody scene. But what a song it sang to me. I was walking between dorms and the glimpse of sky afforded me by my route told me there was some colour happening past 208 and 209. So I walked the long way over and fair fainted as I rounded the corner. Cold as hell, wind blasting up my jeans, crisp air sealing my nostrils shut as I breathed in, and the sun was setting over the mountains, redder than I have ever seen it in any hemisphere. This was blood & fire & tongues of ember, streaks of lava. It was apocalyptic and lovely like the end of the world aflame. But lord the cold. Robert Frost could have had it both ways with that sunset.
I stood outside as long as I could, inadequately clothed & defended, took some photos for which the cold defeated my camera in its efforts to move & focus itself, and felt my lungs chill as I sucked in air. Tears froze in the corners of my eyes and I contemplated just standing & dying there with this sight in my eyes. I wanted to turn around and shake the town awake, blaze loudly at the denizens who did not stop to see this as they trotted, heads down, between the gym & the galley & the dorms & the bars. But at the same time I wanted someone to turn to quietly and see the awe in my eyes reflected in theirs. Just to whisper in the corners of the world how wonderful it is to be alive here & now.
Then I went inside, found a window to gaze out for a bit, but I had an appointment to watch a movie. What a wasted evening that was from then on. I should have gone back to my room, changed into my gear and followed that sunset over the horizon to the center of the earth. I love the shape of the horizon here, the way the young, untrammeled by anything but Ice, mountain peaks cut sharply and darkly into a sky incarnadine. I imagine myself a talented woodcut artist taking great pleasure & care in chipping out the edges of that black base for that red seething sky to rest on.
Even restricted to town by my job, in the interstices of Antarctica between buildings and deskwork, I still find the most amazing beauty. Another night last week, as I sat in the computer kiosk desultorily keying in an email message to someone somewhere, I was told by a generous soul about the existence of some nacreous clouds out over the sunset. I shot out of my seat like William Tell’s arrow and flew into my clothes, grabbed my camera & out past the dorms. “Yes…” I breathed as I saw the few lonely clouds in the streaky pale violet and peach clouded sky. Three of these clouds, so magical and gently coloured. Can you imagine making a milky translucent paint of crushed opal & mother of pearl, smudging it gently on the sky, and then sending it drifting toward the wee human smiling in glee for the privilege of the sight? Could you be so generous? Could you love the sight of that beauty as that wee human and still revel in it with the full knowledge that those clouds are harbingers of the doom the human race is bringing down on itself?
What are nacreous clouds? They are the evidence of the hole in the ozone layer and the chemicals we have thrust into our poor atmosphere to cause it. High in the atmosphere when the temperature drops low, so very low, these clouds show their chemical beauty to us, and we marvel each WinFly, even seeking to go south at this time to see them. We did this, and it is beautiful.
We have been short on nacreous clouds this WinFly. But there are always other things.
Last night as I walked home to my new dorm room and climbed, crunching & squeaking, over the humped drifted snow to the metal fire stairs outside to the second floor I saw the sunset reflected in the steam rising from each buildings’ chimney into the cold night air. No other evidence the sun was going down, except these glowing yellow & peach & pink steam streamers rising & dancing in the darkening blue sky.
The sun is back in town, we are no longer largely in shadow though the sun stays on one side of the sky entirely. We have shadows that we cast ourselves, long and dark, but the sun is bright. We must start to get used to wearing our sunglasses outside again. We have gone from about 1 hour of sunlight a day when we landed, though none reaching town at all, to about 14 hours of sunlight 5 weeks later. We lose the dark at a rapid clip. Though I love the comfort & peace of the dark, after crouching down in my windowless cave of a room in 155 for those 5 weeks, when I moved to a room with a window, I knew just how much I had missed my nemesis the sun. The sun streamed through my window and lit up a chair I placed in its path. I sat blinded & pleased by these near horizontal rays in the middle of my room and the middle of my day. Sunshine; soon to be, in a month or more, 24 hours a day. I will crave the dark again, and the peace of WinFly.
Though there are over 400 people on station right now, the community is finite & settled, such that we have patterns and people we greet. Mainbody will blow that peace apart, shred it in its frenetic pace of new arrivals and old departures and the season getting back to summer. I have been afforded a small piece of what winter maybe like and I like it very much. Some day I will winter here, but perhaps not after a full summer. This is a beautiful place but I think I would begin to fade inside to be so long here in this perverse world of corporate hegemony and heedless hedonism. It is a fast pace for an isolate like myself.
I have spent this week recovering from the sensory overload of the party at which I danced. I have a room to myself until the marvelous Marsha, roommate extraordinaire, shows up at Mainbody. And I do not want to dance with anyone right now. Privacy and a closed door are the most precious commodity down here, a rare treat that I spent all last night reveling in. I lay alone in my bed reading a mystery, making all the noises that I may be too self-conscious to make once Marsha arrives. We will survive as we did last year in such close quarters, when I learned not to trumpet my early morning farts quite so loudly until the alarm went off. It is bad enough when I wake myself out of a sound sleep, or my cat (who responds, thinking I have started a conversation with her), but it is not fair to a roommate, no matter how tolerant, to be blasted out of bed by a poot of that vigour.
Today was cold & foggy in town. I had not known what it was like outside until I was sent out to fetch a van for the housing dept driver’s training. Then I walked out into blinding white light and indefinite shapes. The white light of the sun (it is rarely a peaceful loving sunshine here) was bouncing around inside this white freezing fog making town glow white & crisp. What a pleasure to see the edges of this metal town softened, even as my eyebrows froze and I lost sensation in my thighs, then my fingers then my toes and I started getting really really cold for what felt like the first time in my life, certainly for the first time in Antarctica. I have complained before of the cold here, but have not had my bones moan and my flesh ache with the reality of it. We had none of us been informed that we would be doing this training, so none of us wore long underwear or serious boots or proper gear. We all wore our Running Between Heated Buildings In Antarctica gear, not our Standing Outside In Antarctica Learning How to Fluid Check A Van gear. Very different get up altogether.
But, oh my, it was spectacular in the fog. It lifted my heart to be outside, and we drove halfway up Ob Hill to where the nuclear power plant once was. We were above the gentle blanket of fog that lay over town and no where else. We could look back to Erebus, obscured by clouds, down into this white light that hung low over town, pierced only by the steam & smoke from the power plant and a few other more powerful buildings in town. It was surreal to see this boundaried ghostly presence, snug down in the bowl of town. No wind to budge it, the land warmer than the air, settled gently & cleanly & snugly over the buildings.
Even when I do not get out of town, I see beautiful things.
posted by: coldwish at 11:38 |
link | comments (2) |
housing 2005-06
Blacklight, Pagers, & Pegasus
I danced in high heels all night long. My feet ache and I am completely disgruntled that I couldn’t find any of my dept compatriots to take the duty pager this morning so I could go out on the Pegasus Trip.
I know you all have been hearing me mention the Pegasus Airfield (white ice, glacier, furthest from town, driving Ivan) since last year’s blog. Well, a little history of how buildings & local features get named around here would help you in understanding some of the things I am talking about. If you want to name something after yourself here, the best thing you can do is die: by falling through the ice, falling into a crevasse, your plane crashes; then you get something named after you. Or you work here for over 20 years and you get a peak named after you. There are plenty of those to go around, as yet unnamed.
So who was Pegasus? That was the name of the plane that crashed out at the airfield. Oopsie. No deaths, if I recall correctly, but the plane was never removed. Not worth the effort. So the airfield got named after the dead plane. The plane is currently about a mile plus out past the runway, and though I have been out to Pegasus over a dozen times, I have never been to the crash site. Every year they excavate the drifted over plane enough so that people can go out and climb over it, leave graffiti, take pictures of themselves on top of it. Classic Antarctic photo opportunity. The tail sticks up, but the body is almost completely covered by now. It takes a lot of digging some years to expose the name of the plane. I hear stories from years past, closer to the crash, before Antarctic started taking back the landscape, when people could actually climb inside the cockpit still.
Well, I’ve wanted to do that for a long time. But I have the Lockout Pager.
Let me explain, as kindly as possible, the concept of Lockout Pager.
Everyone here lives in a dorm room with at least 1 roommate. All the dorms lock. The station functions in Winfly & Mainbody 24/7. I am in Housing. So, if it is between 7:30-5:30 Monday through Saturday, the doofus who locks himself out (or whose roommate locks him out, most common) needs to call the office, and the person on duty that week will trot on over to the dorm and unlock their dorm door for them.
However, if it is after hours, the on call Housing person who is designated on a rotating basis to have the Lockout Pager gets a page from the Firehouse (who maintain dispatch duties 24/7). A page from the Firehouse at 6:17am when you are in the shower with only one clean armpit. A page at midnight when you went to bed sick at 8pm. A page in the middle of a meal, just after you sat down. A page at 2:30am after you’ve been in high heels all night. A page after waiting in line 5 minutes for a pair of eggs to be fried and placed on your plate, in fact the very moment Sherry scoops up those delectable REAL fried eggs and puts them on your plate. But y’know, it is not my place to hate the people who get locked out it is my duty to let them back in. And in some cases to ask them for chocolate or to be a towel next time it happens. Both would make it less onerous a duty.
But, not a page when you are dirty dancing under black light in high heels with this guy with…well…let’s just say that most guys are lucky to have a six-pack. I swear to gawd this guy verges on a twelve-pack. I lost count halfway down his chest. Several times. Did I mention he could dance? Yeah, that too.
But I wasn’t going to talk about the party, because y’know I wouldn’t want to bore most of you with details of my social life, and Mom is still reading this. You all want to hear about my Antarctic Adventures. Right?
So, I have the pager today; which means I cannot leave the station unless I can get someone else who is responsible enough to deal with the ramifications of a MASTER key to take that key and the pager.
At 10am on a Sunday, when Saturday night was the “Spring Madness Rave” and my dept mates all experienced last nights debauchery drunk, there is no way in hell I can find someone to take the pager. So I didn’t get to go to Pegasus today. Instead I am typing this for y’all up North hanging on my every word and waiting for updates to my blog.
But it’s all good. Because last night’s page at 2:30am? Full moon shining in a dark blue sky, stars sparkling. All worth while. I stopped in the middle of DJ and took a moment to look up and smile in happiness at the gift of that bright moonlight blazing down on me.
Everyone down here promised me a Condition One storm during Winfly, and so far I’ve been gypped. Shit, that’s not a very nice word once you type it out. It must refer to gypsies. Damn. Okay, so far I’ve been screwed out of that kind of weather fun. But I’m not complaining, because I’m still having fun with what I’m getting to see down here.
The other day I had the opportunity to help an electrician out who had to make a trip out to Pegasus Airfield (no crash site op that day). He needed an extra set of hands, and mine were idle and my boss kindly allowed me to go. I was offered the trip & I offered it to my boss first. I’ve done Pegasus, he hasn’t, he’s a FNG, I’m not, surely he could do with a 1.5 hour truck ride out there? No. He didn’t have the time. I hope someday he makes the time. I really do, it’s why we are here.
This was on the day after the temps had risen 50 degrees in a few hours and the clouds in the sky were doing spectacular things with the warmth and the moisture. It was also a day with colours like the pastels I have described in previous posts from last season, some of you may have seen the photos in Snapfish, or through my Mom’s efforts with the prints I left with her. The picture you all have exclaimed over: the blue horizon with the endless pale grey sky, and the endless white earth, the edges of the world bluely glowing in watercolour pastels.
That day last season had the same colours, but the view out to Pegasus tore my heart out this time round. The clouds above us left town and the trip out in shadow, we traveled in flat white light, unable to see the drifts we were driving entirely too fast over in the wrong lane. No I was NOT driving. I am a good, careful driver, and I was not trying to impress the girl in the truck. I had my seat belt on and I could have done with knee pads and a helmet. I was trying to maintain 4 points of contact at all times, one hand on the roof, one on the door, one boot on the dash the other on the floor.
But when we stopped and got out, there we were so close to the view I love. The clouds pulling back just enough to reveal the pale peach sunlight in the purest blue reflecting snow on all the ridges & glaciers & cliffs & sharp angles of the Royal Society, Mount Discovery, Black Island, White Island and heavily cloud-obscured Minna Bluffs. The light was such that even though we could see no features at our feet in the snow, 3-4 feet away from our eyes, the mountains felt right up there in my face leaning delicately over me. Just dabbed on with the most skilled of painter’s hands, a little pastel, some watercolour, a dab of pen & ink, woodcut glimpses.
On our return to town, cloud-shrouded, Erebus was completely obscured such that if you did not know your local features you would have no idea there was an enormous live volcano making McMurdo look vulnerable. Except off to the left on the horizon where the sea ice meets the Inaccessible Islands and Hut Point, where the sun blew through the clouds in 24 carat gold tones and lit up the very foot of Erebus’s reach down to the sea. In that gold light you could see the great wisps of feathery snow blown off the slope onto the flat ice like rain coming in off the ocean in a squall, high & mighty & pregnant-bellied dancing before the wind.
I am in love with the place so completely that I still find tears in my eyes when they light on things like this.
Now that I am well enough to dance, I am well enough to go outside and hike.
Tomorrow I give up the duty pager I’ve had all week. I will be unleashed.
posted by: coldwish at 12:33 |
link | comments (9) |
housing 2005-06
Too Many Parties
It is warming up rapidly down here. Last week we were running a good -25F on average, and then on Wed night the temp shot up to +25F. A full 50+ degrees difference in less than a few hours. We were reeling in shock, going outside to that temperature. We almost busted out our bikinis & Hawaiian shirts. The snow didn't crucnh & squeak, our nostrils didn't freeze shut as our nose hairs froze & acted like velcro, we could see our breath. An amazing feature of the dryness & extreme cold is that you simply don't see your breath at all. It's too cold, the humidity from your lungs just evaporates almost before it exits your mouth, unless of course it is freezing into a solid mask of ice on your face mask.
But mostly my life consists of getting ready for a party this weekend that I will not detail on the blog because, y'know, Hi Mom! =) And it's not unique to Antarctica. Since I'm driving a desk this year. I'm trying & trying to keep things about the place and the marvel of it, and not about the people. Because so far this season, to my disappointment, it is all about the people.
I've got some wee boondoggly moments to report, but no time to write it. So forgive me my silence. I'll try to take some time this weekend. After the party & after brunch, & after the trip to the Pegasus crash site. Yeah, maybe next week?
posted by: coldwish at 07:58 |
link | comments (6) |
housing 2005-06
As Insane As All That
Yesterday was a trip & a half. Booming ship’s sinking!! alarms echoing inside a ball of fabric high on a windstruck hill with the satellite dish rotating into position above our heads. All of us in our red parkas milling around at the base of this thing unable to hear a thing our gracious host, Eric, told us about the science of it. It was yellow inside with flashing lights and the noise of the wind on the panels was enormous with the constant flapping pounding drumming bass ripple echoing against itself inside this ball.
We got a boondoggle yesterday, a whole bunch of us. Mostly FNGs. Almost the best part of it was I GOT TO DRIVE. NO, it wasn’t my beloved Delta or Ivan, just a van. But I was the only one among us with the experience to drive & fuel & chock & brake properly.
I had been up to Arrival Heights as a shuttle driver, dropping people off, picking them up. But I had never been inside the RadarSat ball. This is the huge white fabric ball that hangs around on the hill overlooking town, often referred to as the Golf Ball. It’s in an area we cannot wander into blithely as there are cables running across the ground in that area, all leading back to the science shacks where they gather the information and it means something to them. The ball was cool, even just standing on the leeward side out of the brisk cold wind (I understate this significantly) looking down on town in a grey shadow and Ob Hill opposite it in sunlight.
I could see Erebus, but the sun in this season is behind it so the slopes on our side remain greyed out in that looming 2D way I saw as I entered into town from the flight in. No definition, no sense of the live ice with its crevasses & bulges & swoops, just a tiny tiny puffy droopy cap of smoke to identify it as a live volcano. But still, my smile grew broader and my heart beat harder. I can’t help it, I’m easy that way.
It was great to get out of town during the few hours of sunlight we had available. And to get up to an elevation where I could see the source of the sunlight that has been tempting me to climb Ob Hill. I’m no fool, and will not be tempted. Not until I get something warmer for my ass and a pair of lungs that aren’t half full of crap. It will have to wait.
I was able to point out to everyone the excellent Fata Morganas that were raising the edge of the ice under the continent so that the Royals, Black Island and Mt Discovery all appeared to end in stupendous cliffs, falling to the sea ice below it. Which is not true, if not pointed out & explained the Fata Morgana can really skew ones sense of the things on the horizon. They are basically a mirage along the horizon that stretches the items on the flat ice and pulls them upwards. I have driven along the ice road toward Willie Field and have looked at the parked planes and their bodies have appeared morphed upward to such a degree that they looked 3 stories tall & sea lion fat in the middle. It’s a strange sensation that can lead you to believe that things are closer and taller than they appear.
Yesterday’s Fata Morganas were spectacularly huge, and as I looked out at the few small islands dotting the ice between us and the continent, some of them looked to be echoed and repeated, flipped upside down and mirroring themselves like tipped up islands, feet in the air.
I could barely convince the FNGs of what I was showing them, it looked so real to them, and so logical that the continent would end in giant glacier ice cliffs.
I was surprised to have a feeling of starkness as I looked down over town and the ice beyond. It was so white, and so few shades of white, so bleak looking. In this context I associate brown with life, and I am seeking clues to the kind of brown that heralds spring thaw in the north, that rich fecund topsoil that breaks through just before the earth springs into fresh green. I am going to be disappointed by the brown that shows up. Just as last season the brown grit of town, like we were in an open-pit mine, was sad & dirty to me. I expect spring. It will not come to me here in the ways I subconsciously seek. There will be no great flowering of life here, except for the influx of fresh-smelling FNGs from the North come Mainbody.
I saw RadarSat, Arrival Heights and then as a boondoggle addendum we headed up to T-Site. Now that one was a first for me, I had not seen that view before. And my oh my what a great view. It looks out over Scott Base onto the ice where Willie Field is, Ob Hill framing the view to the right, Erebus peaking out around the corner to the left, plume just evident. I watched a red Pisten-Bully creeping along the ice, emerging from around Ob Hill, headed towards Scott Base. The shadow of Ob Hill, which is a severely sharp-tipped hill in profile, stretched across the white ice like a homemade shiv getting longer & thinner as the sun shifted downward in the sky.
The day didn’t even end there. The wind up on the hills made my ass cold, but my face was ok, my hands & feet were ok. Everyone else was complaining about how cold it was. I was up there in my glove liners taking as many pictures as possible of the view, then putting my camera back into my armpit to warm it back up again every few shots. As result my camera didn’t die once. I even offered my other armpit up to the others in the group but got no takers.
I got the privilege of returning the van, refueling it, and at that point the cold hit me. I was standing there in my glove liners, holding on to the handle of the gas hose, and I got really damn cold, almost lost all sensation in my fingers. I couldn’t operate the gas tank cover with my thicker gloves, and then when I did switch to the work gloves, my fingers, isolated from each other’s warmth, just dipped into the frozen range really quickly. So when I headed back into the office my fingers tingled as I typed for awhile, but no pain as the sensation returned. I hadn’t gone that far. But funny how once I sat down I just lost all warmth in my body and started getting cold feet.
At the very end of the day I got to run out to one of the dorms that has windows looking out over the bay, just as the sun was setting. I looked down at the Fleet Ops crew busily snowblowing huge pink plumes of snow off the new Ice Runway they are grooming out past Hut Point as the sun was setting over the hill. The sun streamed warmly gold into the dorm windows, and slipped between the dorms in a thin pinkish slit of light right to the side of 155. Where I watched this cook, a woman new to the Ice, in her cooks white with no gloves and just a scarf on her head, stand there watching the sun in awe. She was mesmerized. I watched her for about 5 minutes as she tilted her body a bit to follow the line of light as it sank. That was yearning & pleasure on her face, completely trumping the bitter cold. I understand why she’s down here, as insane as all that.
posted by: coldwish at 14:56 |
link | comments (4) |
Under the Blanket
Some days now the sun is up far enough and the sky is clear enough that Ob Hill is lit up by direct light. We have had light for a while now but the light has been obscured, as we remain mostly in the shadow of Erebus. We have daylight, but no sunlight. Daylight is a blue shadowed existence that approaches gloom. Sunlight is a shot to the heart of excitement and pleasure.
Yesterday the sun hit Ob Hill above us. I sat in the Galley and was completely dumbfounded, yet again, by the colours of this world. The sky was a blue that only pastels could capture, pale & perfect, light delicate endless blue delineating the horizon above us. Looking from the Galley we have to look up into the sky, as McMurdo is in a bowl of land, with the only long views being out towards the Royal Society Range across the sea Ice. In this season there is snow on the land, though it is not perfectly white. You still see the brown of the volcanic dirt texturizing the white into dips & shards & echos of the old familiar Ob Hill I have climbed in summer.
This blue sky rested lightly on the sunlit curves & edges of Ob Hill, but so indirectly that the sun hit areas were a glowing delicate pink with gold tones so pale as to be hallucinatory. Where the sunlight was cut by shadow across this landscape the snow on the land was a solid reflection of the pale blue sky. It was not possible to glance up at this during a conversation and in any way remain tethered to the topic, I had to pause & say “Look!” then smile to myself in pleasure. If it had not been a work day, and the middle of that work day, I would have been out there in my gear & up the hill. I cannot imagine the view from Ob Hill back towards my beloved Erebus into the source of that light.
But I had to work, back to the windowless world of Housing with pastel memories dancing in my mind, distracting me from my Excel spreadsheets.
I heard rumours during the day that tonight the auroras were supposed to be parked right on top of us. I had gone out on Thursday night hoping to see some, but did not. Each night I have stayed up late has set back my healing significantly. Not because of the cold outside, but because sleep seems the only way I can gain ground on the crud. I went to the doctor earlier in the week to reassure myself that I did not have pneumonia. Diagnosis: garden variety standard issue Antarctic Crud. He said it will hang around, likely a viral infection, for about a month, and if it does not alleviate some by then to come back in, but otherwise my lungs are clear (as is the crap I am regularly coughing up from them).
Despite two rather late nights--Thursday doing pottery and a quick peak to see if I should head out of town for some aurora hunting and Friday an intense conversation with a new friend--I decided I would force the issue and stay up late enough again to go out and find some auroras.
I got up in my gear, layer upon layer of warm clothing, wearing not the bunny boots they provide but my own Sorel Cold Mountain boots, and headed outside. I bumped into Keith of the great blog outside, his tripod strapped across his chest, and he directed me to a good area to go see them. So off I trudged stiffly, sweating under my gear & learning the cracks in my defenses, through town toward the foot of Ob Hill and the road that passes between it and T-Site to Scott Base, aswathe in the golden glow of the town lights until I passed the oil tanks. Then the shadow of Ob Hill started to protect me from the brightness of town and the sky began revealing itself to me. I walked as far as I dared into the darkness there, as far as I was allowed to go unattended & unsigned out. And the sky unfurled its midnight blue-black velvet quilt above me with its heavy scattering of diamond shards, sapphire chips, emerald sparks & ruby winks. A sky completely alien to me, strange & marvelous with not a familiar sight to be found. Not the sky of my youth, not the sky of m adulthood. I am disconcertingly a Northern Hemisphere stargazer, with little knowledge of its constellations but intimate familiarity with the shapes in the sky. The southern skies do not feel like my world even when I am mostly ignorant of the northern skies. But I have spent my lifetime gazing up into the fixed cosmos of the north and thereby comforted by it when all looks right. I was not discomfited by the southern skies, but without that familiarity I was awestruck in a completely new way. The stars here are so close as to have me reaching up to them in thanks, as if I could pull that coverlet of sky up over my shoulder as I roll on my side in the snow. Yes, I lay down. The sky is never so close or so big as when you lie on your back. Framed by the fur of my hood I could imagine myself adrift in that sky.
But auroras? None as yet. I expected blue, green, red streaks of life across the sky dancing for me, as I have seen in the pictures. This I did not see. But the Antarctic sky did gift me with the palest of gauzy white streaks I at first mistook for clouds. I thought, perhaps Erebus had sent its plume my way to greet me. Until that plume started dancing & stretching & bowing & streaking quietly across the starlit velvet and my heart split open to realize THESE were auroras. These delicate pale impressions of movement were the Aurora Australis. I felt the earth moving through space, the white streaks like wakes kicked up behind us. And I was reminded of fog creeping & retreating around corners on the ocean, appearing whole from nothing and fading back into clarity. I saw no colour but white, gentle soft white, and it was just right. I did not need the explosion of dripping shifting colours I have heard about. Though I had hoped.
Then I was blessed with a shooting star that blinked longly into existence and traveled through on a pale aurora, to make me smile thankfully. With that I was happy, leavening my disappointment I did not experience that blast of colour.
Because that can wait until I winter over here some day. I think more and more about that possibility each day here for WinFly. I like the dark, I like the quiet, I like the finite nature of the human population without the constant busy flux of the summer comings & goings. Mainbody will be a shock & a disappointment, even as I look forward strongly to the return of some good friends.
Once the first week of Winfly passes, and the second week settles down, it is easier to have the long gorgeous satisfying conversations with people you can only glimpse in the intensity and rush of first arrival. The first few weeks are a blur of energy & hypersocialization here, but now we have settled somewhat and can seek out individuals who may help sustain us through the long season ahead.
This place still brings me to tears with its beauty. I am struck to my knees in awe at each glimpse I can afford myself now. Last night, walking back into the wind that always picks up through the pass, I felt the cold intensely. My hands were not cold, my feet were warm and happy, but the tiny triangle of flesh between my eyebrows above my covered nose met the cold wind like a blow to the head and developed a very localized ice cream headache. My eyes teared up constantly and my eyelashes once more sported little balls of ice that clinked together as I blinked, quickly. If I rested my upper lid on my lower lid the eyelashes would freeze together. Occasionally I had to remove a glove, revealing a glove liner with which I had more dexterity but less warmth, in order to clear the ice from my eyes. What a strange sensation to rub ones eyelashes clear of ice crystals down across the upper cheek and away.
As I walked back into the bright yellow light of town I thought again about my lifelong conviction that the choice of Robert Frost was obvious to me: Ice not Fire. I am not Shackleton, I am not Scott, and I do not seek or yearn to be challenged to that extent. And my ass was cold again. I await the person who can explain to me the physiologic logic of the fattest area of my body always getting the coldest the fastest. I cannot fathom walking across the continent to reach the South Pole with a constantly cold ass. The iniquity of it alone is enough to make me huddle in my warm bed under the covers and reconsider going outside until Mainbody.
But never fear, as long as I do not jeopardize my health for the season ahead, I’ll go outside seeking beauty.
posted by: coldwish at 14:24 |
link | comments (2) |
housing 2005-06
C'est Moi, Genevieve:
Loonatick redhead in love with the Ice.
Wanna search my blog?
Send Me Stuff From The US:
Genevieve Ellison RPSC McMurdo Station PSC 469 Box 700 APO AP 96599-1035
Send Me Stuff From NZ:
Genevieve Ellison RPSC McMurdo Station Air Post Office Private Bag 4747 Christchurch, NZ
Links:
Recent comments:
mafidl on Oh, And Since Then.....
Mo'nonymous on Of Ice and Then
rogerdr on Oh, And Since Then.....
Archives:
today
May 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
December 2005
November 2005
October 2005
September 2005
August 2005
July 2005
June 2005
April 2005
March 2005
February 2005
January 2005
December 2004
November 2004
Categories:
between 2005
between 2006
between 2007
between 2008
fuels 2006-07
fuels 2007-08
housing 2005-06
nz 2004
nz 2005
nz 2006
nz 2007
nz 2008
pre ice 2004
shuttles 2004-05
Counter
visited *loading* times
