Redhead Amok in Antarctica
Overheard in Mactown: Vignettes
At the sandwich line today at lunch:
Lined up 6 deep at the sandwich line, Barry the Helo Pilot two ahead of me, reaches the sandwich maker. The sandwich maker is young. Unlike usual days there is no list of spreads indicating what's available.
Barry, pointing to a tin of green stuff: "Is that avocado?'
Sandwich guy: "No, but we have guacamole."
Restrained grins from the remainder of those of us in line.
*****
Several fuelies waiting for the 12:30pm Shuttle from DJ in town to the Ice Runway. A few minutes to spare and the van hasn't arrived. Alex heads of towards the closest building saying, "I'm headed to the toilets."
Wendy, waiting with the rest of us, says, "Oh, would you like us to hold it?"
Silence from the collected fuelies. Extended silence. Wendy rethinks her offer, "Ummm...I mean hold it...the...ummm...shuttle."
Alex, blessedly, as quickwitted as he is, did not hear anything as he walked away. We all smiled.
posted by: coldwish at 02:52 |
link | comments (1) |
fuels 2006-07
Touching Continent
We started the day off fueling the C17 that arrived with a load of cargo from Christchurch on Wednesday morning. We saw the white cargo boxes with black tops that indicate Package Mail, and cheered the unloading of them as we stood fueling. The C17 had parked sideways to us, and in that view it was much less an intimidating monster than head on & looming at me. Already, it approaches de rigeur, this behemoth feeding we do. But not really, I am still impressed.
We’d also fueled the Twin Otter several times on its way out to the Cape Reynolds Fuel Cache, delivering the bright orange 55 gallon drums cached there for the helos to use. At 5:30pm we had only one more flight to fuel later in the evening, and we headed out the door of the warm up shack, over to the Ice Runway Galley to catch a quick hot meal, before dashing back for the last fueling.
Halfway down the steps the radios we wear crackled with the distinctive, lightly Kiwi-accented voice of Bodie, our foreman. Wendy picked up the call, I listened, slightly bewildered by the request. The look on Wendy’s face was ominous and depressed upon the news, but hope was starting to unfurl in my chest at the hints of understanding I had. How different our reactions: Wendy thinking, after 5 seasons in Fuels, of the long hours and hard work ahead, and Brand New Fuelie Genevieve barely containing her rising glee at the mere idea of the task ahead, no matter how late or hard.
We were told, with little notice, that we would be accompanying the Twin Otter an hour up the coast to dig out the old drums, sample the fuel therein, and organize the placement of the new drums, 16 in all. Fifty-five gallon drums full of 50 gallons of fuel (five gallons ullage in each drum to allow for fuel expansion in the warmth of the constant summer sun, the drums weigh 400 lbs a piece. We were to lose our 15 minute supper time, catch the shuttle back into the Fuel Barn (home base for Fuelies), where we would find the truck (150: One Five Oh by name), and the necessary gear to dig out, tag, and sample the old drums of AN8 diesel. Flight time 7pm. But first we’d have to load One Five Oh with the gear, haul ass back to the Pits, and fuel the Twin Otter on which we would be working pax.
No problem. I tried to contain my glee in the face of Wendy’s unglee. But I couldn’t help myself. I tried to pay attention to the explanations of our responsibilities, hear her stories of Fuel Cache Testings past. I think I may have squeaked a few times, certainly my grin was becoming painfully permanent, and if possible, larger than my face.
We fueled the Twin Otter, and pilots Dave and Chris, of Ken Borek Air, a Canadian company who hold the NSF contract with us for small ski-equipped aircraft, loaded in the drums, filled them from our nozzle inside the plane, then loaded us up and strapped us in too. By then, I was unmistakably unable to contain my complete lack of cool in the face of this adventure. Not only have I never been in a plane this small, but I’ve never been off Ross Island any further than the ice surrounding it, that is really the solid sea between me and the continent of Antarctica.
Our Twin Otters are tiny and red and distinguished to us Fuelies as they land by their mosquito buzz, in comparison to the awful jet pulse of the C17 and the pounding blare of the Herc. The pilots looked like teenagers, blithely confident in that way that the young so often are; insouciant with their experience and knowledge. I did not doubt them, daredevils though they seem to be--with their tiny landing and take off needs, and incredibly light maneuverability--within the pilot community here. Wendy and I sat in the back, belted in the only two seats, behind the drums, behind the wings, looking up the narrow metal tube of the aircraft into the open cockpit. Maybe this craft was as wide as my mother’s kitchen table is long.
Off we flew into the windless night, a rare treat. Following the sea ice out of McMurdo Sound, continent and mountain ranges, glaciers and peaks to the left of us we headed North. It didn’t feel like flying at all, though I was certainly looking down from up high over familiar features I’d never been over before: Tent and Inaccessible Islands, the Razorbacks, Barne Glacier and the backside of Mt Erebus. Erebus looks naked from that view, she shows us her best side in town, covered in snow with ice falls and crevasse fields and smoothly sloping snow pack. On her backside she is bare but for the thinnest of shimmering white on the black rocky scree of her volcanic slopes. From the back she is explicitly volcanic-shaped, iconic like Fuji., but unremarkable
Soon after the familiar views faded behind me in my right side seat the view beneath us exploded with a beauty inexplicable. We flew over the sea ice past where the open water met the seasonal more permanent flat white of the year’s ice pack. Where water meets the ice there is a world of words I cannot find to describe it. I did try though. My camera took hundreds of shots, trying to capture in pictures what my words could never do justice, until my picture-taking failed in the face of the poetic metaphoric explosions in my mind gazing down. I pulled out my green brain (a green notebook that fits in the front pocket of Carhartt overalls, distributed to all RPSC folks) and pencil to try and record what was taking place inside me in response to this. Tears stood unfallen in my eyes, my face was tight with smiling, my chest tight with breathing. I leaned into the seatbelt impatiently the entire trip, seeking broader views, to get closer.
I’m not sure I can organize the stray bits found in my green brain, so they make any sense to you outside my mind, but I will try, perhaps devolving into senseless fragments:
At first the white sea ice was simply fractured by the dark midnight blue of the cracks, the sea like blue knives, scythes, and odd blades, scimitars curved and sharp, or daggers thin, narrowing to fine hairline cracks. Then the ice became lace, quilts made of tissue, colours of white dictated by the thickness or thinness of the ice, the amount through which the blue sea shone. In the thinnest of tissues torn and thrust up against each other you could see the seismic upheavals of the tidal advances and the gashing ripping retreats folding and stretching into itself. I saw jagged crooked teeth, I saw pressure ridges from on high like scar tissue reknitting once joined bits of white ice, bone after a break the whiter line solid across the transparent bone in an x-ray of the event.
The blue of the sea was so dark as to me black, but the windless sky did not detract from the liquid black and transparent clarity of it. Within this liquid depth floated patches broad and wide of ice circles, in which the ice froze like pancakes round and oval, but just beyond the neighbouring patch of solid ice could be find other ice fragments like transparent flat glass broken into shards of only cornered shapes, broken squares, gatherings of hexagons, rectangles and geometric improbabilities.
My mind boggled with the whats the whys the hows of sea ice in Antarctica, specially the whys. Why in some areas were all the shapes round, and in others squares, why the knitted fingers of ice like in prayer? Why did the ice behave like this? It was the only question I could ask of such vivid and breathtaking evidence of a life of Ice.
We passed over areas of ice like skin cells, wrinkles, patterns significant and immense yet unfathomable, uncontainable by poetry or science. There were soft rounded layers of ice frozen to different depths in the sea, like the delicate advance of frost against a dark winter window, or white sand beaches retreating into the blue with depth. I saw large patterns crossing intimate designs, cracks for miles. What great pressures and ceaseless breathing of the oceans produce this rhythm, the seasonal doubling of the continent, the daily curved clean cracks delineated by blue, straight lines like longitude receding into the horizon.
Bordering all this on Wendy’s side of the plane were the Trans Antarctic Mountain ranges I only glimpse from McMurdo every day, somehow golden white with glaciers innumerable and seething off the continent into the sea ice, racing to the fungible solid sea, puckered seams of ice like fabric rucked as it corners a mountain to freedom at the ocean. We passed ice tongues, where the thick glacier ice moves out into the sea ice for miles and miles like a tongue of ice, jagged like a bee sting, holding the sea ice firmly hooked in its sides. The immense headlong rush into the sea unchecked for miles, glacially slow to cease, breaking off and birthing icebergs. These glaciers, inimaginably huge and patiently undulating out from the continent give up chunks of themselves into icebergs, tabular and flipped, who remain trapped in the seasonal ice.
From the air the continent and its jagged mountains looked so gentled by the ice cover, smoothed and covered by sheets of sheer soft white, the snow wrinkled baggy and puddling around the bends and ankles of the range, striations like stretch marks opened by the pressures bold and endless. Even with the snow and ice this continent would be harsh and inaccessible, never worn down or cushioned by fertile earth, plants, greenery, loam.
Endlessly we flew this hour past this landscape below us and to our left, up the continent, until the plane took on the tilt of descent into our destination. An alarming tilt, looking up through the cockpit windows to what seemed like the nosedive, nothing but the approaching ice coming us at us. We landed on the ungroomed snow, piled out and got to business. Not a stitch of wind met us, the sun shone goldly and obliquely down us, lighting everything in a gorgeous glow. The previous years’ drums had melted into the snowpack until they were trapped in ice up over their sides, where they rested on their sides, side by side. We dug, we chipped, we hammered, trying to free these barrels from their grip, until one of us dinged a barrel, causing a tiny leak. The focus then became freeing the one barrel, moving it upright and plugging the leak.
The pilots were nearing the end of their legal can fly time that day, and we had little time. We sampled the dinged drum, got it upright, sampled one other drum and then had to pack back up and fly back, after this hour and half period of intensely frenetic and physical effort, ensconced on a snow field just south of an immense volcano almost pink in the evening light. I barely had time to look up from my tasks, I took a few pictures, and we piled all our stuff and us back into the plane for the trip back. The swift bumpy take off alarming and adrenalin-producing got us into the air with seemingly little effort. Still on the right side of the plane I had the continent out my window as the sun threatened its endless threat of sunset without set. Tired, I photographed the sun through the newly arrived clouds from under the plane wing. Wendy leaned her head against her window, sunglasses hiding her eyes from me. Perhaps she slept. I rested my head, exhausted and blessed, euphoric and fatigued, and watched the view, heart full, head silenced by the wordless awe therein.
Home late, we debarked at McMurdo, and closed the pits down for the night by midnight. I hope my thanks to the pilots were sufficiently expressed, for the gift they’d given me was one that will make my season, no matter if I am in McMurdo fueling planes unbudged for the remainder of the season. This was an unexpected adventure, a marvelous gift, an opportunity I couldn’t have ever anticipated, and will never forget.
I love my job. Who else in the world outside of we select few down here in paradise get these opportunities. I know how precious was this trip, how to value it no matter if it becomes a regular event. The excitement will not fade for me, it cannot, or I no longer deserve to be here.
I am one lucky person.
posted by: coldwish at 02:42 |
link | comments (7) |
fuels 2006-07
Halloween Cleavage
Saturday was McMurdo’s annual Halloween Party at the gym, replete with costumes and competitions. Any costume party in Antarctica is an almost entirely McGuyvered affair, in which skua is a noun, a verb, an adjective and a way of life. Plans start the season before with the returnees inspired and reminded of the creativity possible down here. FNGs, some of whom have been warned of the importance of this party to the social whirl of the season, come somewhat prepared, or find themselves in a mad scramble the week before to come up with an idea. The town is consumed for a week with the creation and scramble for ideas and necessary items.
I wasn’t interested last season, didn’t dress up, just did a quick five minute tour of the costumes, then left the fray to those who actually enjoy people. This season was different. I work in a job that is less people-oriented, more honest and hardworking, and higher up the social scale. As a direct result I enjoy people more this season. I still need to retreat from them to recharge, but my social batteries are not so completely drained so frequently as they have been in the past. I have more energy and patience.
I am also touching base with the people I sought out last year, who performed the invaluable function in this gossip-ridden rumour-mongering incestuous community, of acting as sinks and support both. It takes sometimes a few seasons to develop the safe ear, the people to whom you can spill your angers, your petty hates, your frustrations and fears, and watch them be absorbed to go no further. We all need, in this too close world--where your boss may be watching The Life Aquatic, dressed so convincingly as the Bill Murray character of Team Zissou that he is not initially recognizable, in the lounge chair at the end of your bed as you are changing immediately post-shower behind a thin curtain into your costume—a person who does not spill your secrets, into whom you can pour the tiny evil thoughts and not be judged, who makes you laugh, hugs you when you need it and plays pool with you when you need it; people with either a cynicism to match mine, or an honesty that may get them in trouble. Some people simply have the unflappable intellect and focus that remains unswayed by my arrival in the Galley at midrats (Midnight rations, old Navy speak for the midnight nightshift meal) sporting Halloween cleavage that swerves forks from their intended targets.
I had no idea what to be for Halloween. Working PM Pits had removed me from the social fabric of the town in its headlong tilt to the event, I was thinking that I would not even go. I would be getting off work later than everyone, the party would already be started, and I had fun dress up clothes, but no clever theme to go with them. So I did my usual grumpy hermit, anti-social grumble about not going, one that usually means I don’t go. Socializing in groups would probably be so much easier for me if I drank.
Inadvertantly, one of the Ken Borek Air pilots, Chris Poppit, tall and handsome (what is it with pilots anyway?) delivered to me a KBA ball cap, in black cotton with a Twin Otter image and Ken Borek Air embroidered on it in their signature colours of red, white and black. Enviable swag, this hat. There was some talk, some people asked me how I got the hat, or how they could get one.
Friday night I lay, disgruntled and idealess for Halloween, in bed, convinced that I would not be attending the party at all. It would be an early bedtime for me. I had my eyes closed and was far from sleep, mind awhirl from my week’s adventures, and my sweet hat, when it came to me.
I had picked up the dress for $2 Kiwi in Christchurch at the Sally Ann just the day before I came down. For two dollars I could afford the fun of it. It was actually a slinky silky spaghetti-strapped nightgown in bright Twin Otter red, cleavage guaranteed to cause men’s minds to stutter when they saw me. Okay, so I brought the cleavage, but the dress framed it quite nicely. On the center, on the torso, were two wide black stripes that led at a downward angle around the waist to the back, starting at the center on a large white diamond. Ken Borek Air colours. Cut off a few feet to just above knee length, wear sensible shoes, black tights, the KBA hat, face made up to an extent I have never achieved before with the works: foundation, powder, blush, eye shadow, mascara, eyebrows penciled in; add a brown paper bag labeled Flight Lunch (the ubiquitous meal available on all flights on continent) and I was ready for take off.
I went as a Ken Borek Air Flight Attendent.
I don’t exist. I was a fantasy, an Antarctic improbability.
My tribute to my great adventure.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t wrangle the perfect accessory: an actual pilot.
I made it to the top five costumes in the Antarctic-themed competition, but lost to a woman dressed as a helicopter. I left before the dancing, feeling overwhelmed by the people, headed for an early bed.
But instead I stayed up talking in the Galley, dressed like this, to the most unflappable of male friends here: Mike Manzi of the Guard. Dialogue, Socratic and delicious, steeped in sociology, mysticism, literature, art, gender roles, history, and the complete improbability of this artificial society, yet a microcosm of society at large it is, how bizarrely amplified are everyone’s behaviours. Challenging conversation as only Mike can deliver until the wee hours of the morning. I stumbled, freezing my everything off, to bed at 4:15am, well satisfied with my week, happy with my Halloween, content with my friends here.
posted by: coldwish at 02:41 |
link | comments (2) |
fuels 2006-07
Fuelie Stylin'
I’m not cold. Please don’t worry that I am cold here. I have reported some pretty severe weather conditions in passing when discussing work as a Fuelie, but I do not feel them. It is not a source of complaint, though occasionally one of wonder and marvel, as I realize the strength of this continent to kill, and I witness its efforts against me.
But I am not at risk. I dress well, I am warm, I work hard, I have kick ass boots. I wouldn’t say I was stylin’ exactly, but my insulated windproof Carhartt overalls are blessedly black. I can indulge my innermost goth even while at work, layered 5 deep in black. My underwear is black, my Hot Chilly Peachskins are black, my polypros are black, my expedition weight fleece longjohns are black, and my Carhartts black too. My boots, Rocky Blizzard Staklkers, are black. My balaclava is dark grey, my hat liner is black, my wool hat is black, my goggles are black with brown lenses. The exceptions to this are my fleece jacket: army green. To go better with the red hair and green eyes that people who know me only in my work gear never see. Then the blond and stiff Carhartt jacket, ugly as sin, stiff as a wool sweater frozen on the clothesline one late fall day. Perhaps, if the Carhartt jacket is too much I wear the bright red windbreaker, the colour of big red, but thin and windproof.
I wear, and swear by, Smart Wool socks. My Hot Chillys rest, soft and sleak, against my moisture-starved skin like a layer of warm comfort, worth every penny I spent. I wear polypro glove liners, issue gear, in blue, under my once soft and golden deerskin work gloves lined with 800 gram thinsulate. Occasionally I wear a pair of heavy suede mittens, when the cold is great enough that separating the fingers is a risk I cannot take. But I shift even then from mitten to glove, depending on work needs.
I’m not the most stylin’ of Fuelies. I lack the quilted nylon down jacket the Guard have (not like this one so much, the Chinese Underwear we have down here have a more rounded quilt pattern). Windproof and thin it is the perfect layer under a Carhartt jacket, or sufficient unto itself as a final layer on the warmer days. I’m working that angle. This jacket and the black Carhartts define the Fuelie silhouette to most people on station.
With all this, and hard work, I am warm. If I am cold it is incidental and passes quickly, on a very cold day I might add Toe Warmers to my boots, or another gaitor around my neck to pull up over my face when the wind blows. I am often sweating, huffing & puffing with effort, in all these clothes. It has taken me several weeks to be less stunned simply by the weight of all my gear, easily an extra 20lbs plus. I walk differently, I swagger, I swing my legs, I step heavy. It’s a walk universal to the large and small of us who wear this gear for work. We have presence. Fuelies just have a slightly more fragrant presence than others.
We also take up a lot of room in the toilets. First to go are the gloves, the goggles, the overcoats, jackets & fleeces peeled off. The balaclava and hat removal are optional, and I do, in the effort to save time, often look like a slightly sweaty half naked, disheveled ninja while peeing. Stalls are tight around us as we enter to disrobe. Some thought has to go into this, because if you undo the braces on your overalls, the top of which is heavy with pockets filled with green brain, pencils, Sharpies and whatnot, you could lose things into the loo if you undo facing it. But if you flip the shoulder straps up over while facing the stall door, you run the risk of dropping them into the loo in that direction too. So, I have discovered, undo perpendicular to the toilet, two buttons on each side next, lower everything slowly, wait for the clang, clunk of whatever has fallen to the stall floor (immensely preferable to the dreaded splash), then turn 45 degrees and start peeling off the other under layers. Fleece long sleeve top pulled up, fleece pants pulled down, military-weight shirt pulled up, polypro long johns pulled down. Hot Chilly top up, Hot Chilly bottoms down, underwear to follow. At this point, there is so much gear puddled around my midthigh that when I bend in the middle to sit, my knees are not as flexible as they ought to be and it’s more of a semi-controlled half-lean half-bend until gravity takes over and you fall on to the seat from about 6-7 inches up.
With so much wrapped around my mid-thigh, do you need me to describe in detail the difficulties of the wipe? I have, in desperation, stood to wipe on occasion. I’m not proud.
Peed and wiped, it’s time to get repacked. Layer by layer alternating bottom & top until I am completely wrapped, then I pull up my Carhartt overalls, undone and held up about my waist, I lurch forth semi-dressed from the stall into the wider spaces beyond, tucking in my last shirt and buttoning the sides.
Then there is the bend over, flip up the backstraps so I can reach them over my shoulders, sometimes hitting myself in the back of my own head with one or both of the brass hooks. Stand up gripping both, hook to the front. Turn and wash hands. Wipe, grab fleece, jacket, polypro glove liners, goggles on, then last gloves and swagger out.
I’ve gotten it down from 15 minutes, sans actual peeing time, to about 5. Peeing time is a wildcard.
I’ve also learned that, as a Fuelie, you pee when you can, not when you need to. The Fuel Barn, our home base, doesn’t have any plumbing and we have to go outside to building 175, a rabbit warren of offices and cubicles, to pee. We are often out and about near no building, or between buildings. We anticipate the times and places we can pee while we can, because we will be in a toilet-less desert of pipes and hoses and tanks for however long.
The Fuelie men, quite easily, pee outside, pee wild against tanks and milvans and against nothing. I have yet to be caught out to that extent. I hope that I will not need to. I’ll be sure to report back if I do.
Because then? I may be just a little cold.
But until then, I’m not cold. Not enough to complain about, barely enough to notice. I feel the chill here and there: tendrils of Antarctic wind will reach into my gear and stroke the back of my neck; my feet standing on a metal tank will be leached of their comfort; my gloved hands holding the dead man while fueling do need to be switched back and forth as the metal sucks them dry of warm circulation; my nose left outside my balaclava to breath will go numb until I adjust the cloth back up over it; my fingers stripped to the blue liners to manipulate tiny valves as we change hose become stiff when the fuel spills on my hands and I must keep going with the task or spill more: the balaclava through which I breath freezes solid, frosted white with my breath through it.
I recognize these things, and each tiny experience says to me: I am working outdoors in Antarctica. I love my job, I love my fat-assed wide swagger in my work gear, I love the wild hair I sport after freeing it from my head gear, I love the bright blush of windburn on my cheeks after a morning outside, I love the sparkle in my eyes and the smile on my mouth at the end of my day. I love the evidence of this place on my body and my need to protect myself from it. I understand cold better, and should I get sent to Pole I will understand it even more explicitly.
Until then, please don’t worry about me.
posted by: coldwish at 15:13 |
link | comments |
fuels 2006-07
Fountain of Youth
Last year I watched myself grow old.
Every time I looked at myself in the mirror here during my Housing Season, I saw a grey-faced, rapidly wrinkling, unhappy, stressed woman, with grey hair popping out all over her buzzed head. I mourned myself at these evidences of age, which thus far I have managed to disregard or avoid. I have always had people say “No way you are ___ age!” and guess 5 or 10 years younger.
Last year, soon after I celebrated my 41st birthday, I felt 41. It wasn’t a numbers game, or a mental game of realization that accompanies those kinds of milestones. It was the literal feeling that I had finally caught up with my chronology, or that it stalked me. I was getting old.
Looking in the mirror so critically each morning last season, I felt my first doubts about my being in Antarctica. I know the damage the sun does to skin, I AM a redhead after all. I have had a contentious relationship with the sun throughout my life. For the most part I have avoided it, only happy in it on foggy cloudy days, or if I was completely engaged with doing something, and distracted from my awareness of its burning qualities. I am also not enamoured of the heat, preferring the cold of the two extremes.
But the sun in Antarctica, during this summer season, is not only ever-present, a constant threat in the sky, 24 hours out of each day I am here, but we are not protected by the ozone layer that shields much of the world from the UV rays. Indeed, this year, we are sitting under a rotating ozone hole that engulfs Antarctica, larger than any previous hole in the ozone layer since measurements began in the 50s. Here at the edge of the continent the hole may or may not be parked right over us on any given day, but given the enormity of it this season, the likelihood is high.
But last year, I sat in a windowless office all day long. I watched the cargo crews come in after their 12 hour shifts at the runways, even with sunscreen diligently and regularly applied, they came in looking beyond sunburnt, and more like microwaved. It wasn’t skin damage I was witnessing on my own face. I thought about this as I looked in the mirror every day.
I yearned to work in Fuels. I sought after it. I volunteered in my time off, used my comp time to do more of it. But doubts niggled with every new wrinkle, with the evident lack of elasticity in my face. I looked haggard. Would Antarctica age me prematurely? I do not live without vanity, and pride that I am attractive. Would my love of Antarctica require the sacrificing of the last dredges of my youth and appeal?
This season, I am here as a Fuelie. I am working outdoors under this ozoneless sky with which we humans have cursed ourselves. It is dry, it is cold, I am exhausted a lot, eating bad food and not enough of it. I apply sunscreen like I butter my bread, thick and often, slathering it on. I cover my face even when it is not that cold.
But, gracious me, I have a constant smile of bliss and joy, a full feeling in my heart that has yet to abate. I look at my face in the mirror each day, peering close with tinges of anxiety, looking for the betrayal of my skin. I find NONE. I am looking at a HAPPY face, I look 10 years younger than I did last season, my skin is brighter, my eyes sparkle, my heart pounds with the euphoria of loving this place and finally having a great job, a great boss, great co-workers, and working OUTDOORS.
Yes, every day is a physical challenge, every task is humbling while I learn it. My mind plays games on me and tells me I’m stupid, simply because I am not already With Knowledge the way the returning Fuelies are. I know this is silly, and that I will learn this and become the knowledgeable comfortable one. It takes time, time I don’t have to steal, because the department is set up in such a way that teaching is the norm. It is recognized that each of us learns differently, with different needs and speeds.
Despite the occasional fleeting doubt about my worth in Fuels, I know I can do it. I feel confident I’ll get there and do a damn fine job. On the way there I look in the mirror every morning and I see the falling away of age, the peeling off of stress, the youthful effects of happiness.
This year I am watching myself grow young.
This is my fountain of youth: Antarctica.
posted by: coldwish at 17:33 |
link | comments (4) |
fuels 2006-07
It's The Pits
The C17 landed and started taxiing over to the fore pits, headed straight for us, loud and intimidating in that phallicly military way large grey pointy planes have. Jet engines vibrated the space between my ears and rattled my brain, even with earplugs firmly in place under my balaclava, my fleece hat liner, and my wool hat rolled twice over my ears. My face was covered with the balaclava up to my brown tinted goggles that engulfed the top half of my face, from cheekbones to mid forehead. You couldn’t see it under all those layers but as I looked up I was adrenalized with fear. The noise was stupendous, the slow approach was head on to the pumphouse of the nose of the plane, four jet engines blasting, and this puppy was coming in to fuel.
I have been moved to PM Pits for the next three weeks, and will be working with the Admirable Wendy Mahovlic, or Wendelicious as I have heard her called, from Noon to 10pm each day, Monday through Saturday. I am a lucky bugger indeed; not only did I get the shift I wanted most but to work with the person I wanted to most, on the task I most wanted.
Wendy, the ever calm and collected, directed me in what to do, and Lisa Keller from the AM Pits crew came over to help, as this was the first plane I’d ever be fueling. Yeah, way to go, Genevieve, start with the largest plane on continent, why doncha? Her ability to get my brain back in gear, and slow my heart rate down to medically reasonable, by breaking the task down to the little things I’d already learned, was great. It’s scary how urgent and mindless I felt when that big plane pulled up and asked for us to top it up with 2200 gallons of diesel. All my training and notes were for naught when the panic tightened my mind.
So out we went to this behemoth of an aviator, to be met by the military end of the fueling operation: another woman, Kelly. Tell me how cool is that? Four women under the wing of a gigantic plane in Antarctica, feeding the ravening monster. Amongst us we got that thing juiced for the turnaround back to Chch (Christchurch, New Zealand). Walking blithely under wings two stories overhead, signaling back and forth, jet engines idling above us.
There was one moment of subdued beneath our balaclavas hilarity when Kelly handed us a US Government credit card to pay for the fueling. I considered, as I looked at it in her hand, that I could probably buy myself a Maserati and a nice summer home off the coast of Maine with that before they twigged to the fact that it was stolen. Just take the card, memorize the numbers and go shopping. What with the cost of fueling up in Antarctica nowadays, it’d be awhile before they noticed. We wrote out a chit for the fuel and had her sign it, since, I’m so sorry, we don’t take credit cards in Antarctica at the Fuel Pits. Surreal.
Meanwhile an LC130 Hercules had pulled up at the aft pits and Tim O’Connor (new Fuelie, quiet, smart guy, learning fast! He was a DA last season) and Lisa K had to rush off to fuel that. Moments after we filled up the C17 we dashed down to the aft pits to help with the Basler DC3 that had just pulled up behind the Herc. All we needed was a Twin Otter to complete the winged aviation picture of the US Antarctic Program in our pits. But they haven’t made it across the continent yet, some of them are still at Pole waiting for a weather break to let them continue on.
All this took place under the calm eye of Mt Erebus under a blue sky, the sun shining warmly down upon us for the first time in ages. This season has been overcast and chilly so far, continuing the weather theme of Winfly, where those poor souls who came down this season caught barely a glimpse of the glories I feasted upon every day as I dodged between buildings last year: sunsets and nacreous clouds and auroras galore.
Today was a beautiful day in Antarctica, and I fueled planes, big ones and small ones, surrounded by the blues and whites of the crystalline sharp, snow covered mountain ranges sliding glaciers between their ranks down to the frozen sea, all the possible views around us lit up bright and clear in the light, unobscured by blowing snow.
Catching the shuttle back into town at the end of our shift, Wendy and I stood in the quiet by the side of the road, looking up at Erebus wreathed in streaky clouds, barely a snort of smoke showing its true vigour. The ice falls strewn down its flanks sparkled in the changed angles of the sun, standing out on the soft white flanks. I commented on the beauty toWendy. She admired it too. It was a good day.
I love my job.
posted by: coldwish at 17:32 |
link | comments (5) |
fuels 2006-07
The Holy Shit Moments
Yup, they still happen. No matter how comfortable I may be here in McMurdo, I still get them. Indeed, they have increased this season. They are hard to resist, and I do not try. They make me happy.
They are the Holy Shit I’m In Antarctica Moments:
Yesterday out at the Ice Runway in front of town, wind blowing fierce and cold, whipping snow past us like fast forward static, drifting up downwind of every tiny thing in instants, flights cancelled for the day. I was flaking the hose we use to fuel the Hercs (LC 130s) and a gust came up and smote me, stealing my balance. I turned around to face it. There I was working outdoors in Antarctica. Holy shit.
The other night walking home hatless and gloveless into the wind, in my right hand a glass of hot water, in my left a glass of cold soy milk from the Galley. A 1 minute walk into the wind between buildings: 155 to my dorm, 211. A trip to be scoffed at, not one to remind one of the nature of cold. Who needs clothes?
Well, ha! That wind in those few steps. Never have my fingers so quickly lost sensation, so completely. They froze to the plastic of the glasses I held. I had no feeling in my finger tips. They were solid, cold, and red. I reached the safety of my warm dorm and one by one I placed a cold finger in my mouth to bring it back to life. They were so cold they were like a burning in my mouth, ice to my tongue, not my own flesh. No harm done. I was truly dumbfounded by the speed of it. Holy Shit. That’s right, I’m in Antarctica.
Walking around Bulk Fuel Tank M-3 (Mogas) into a headwind so strong I was forced to my knees to hang onto the ground. HSIIA.
One AM, emerging into the outdoors, full daylight, though shadows long and blue. It’s familiar, but it reminds me. HSIIA.
Walking up the steps of my dorm after a late night dancing, steam rising from my body, and the view to Mt Discovery shimmers in a low golden light. HSIIA.
Hugging a friend in the Galley, just back on Ice after his mother’s death. Saying nothing, not needing to. How far away from home we are. HSIIA.
There are so many tiny moments, and larger grander moments, that bring it home to me where I am and what I do here. These moments put the smile on my face that keeps me coming back. They place me back in context.
I am only one tiny human on a tiny planet in a vast universe. But, oh my, what a gorgeous corner of the universe I have been blessed to be in.
Holy Shit. I’m In Antarctica.
posted by: coldwish at 15:55 |
link | comments (5) |
fuels 2006-07
The Other Genevieve
There was talk on station.
At first, I felt threatened. I was here first, I had established my reputation through trial and error (often quite a bit of the latter) over two previous seasons, and I did not need a newcomer’s arrival diluting my impact.
Everywhere I turned, every meal, strangers would meet me and exclaim, “Oh, you’re the new dispatcher!” I would frown slightly and say, “No, I am a Fuelie,” with a touch of scorn in my voice for the uninformed.
There was some confusion. Then friends from previous seasons would chime in, and say there will be another Genevieve on station. I imagined a younger prettier blonder Genevieve usurping my place on station. I experienced vague pangs of jealousy.
Then at 6am of her first morning here she accosted me in the bathroom of our dorm. She had been hearing descriptions of me, replete with red hair and nose ring I was easily ID’d, and introduced herself.
We immediately bonded. The cost of living with the name Genevieve, and the world’s inability to spell it, remember it, pronounce it, was acknowledged, as was our pleasure in being named so. It’s a unique and beautiful name. We derided people’s attempts to call us Gen or Genny, insisting that we neither of us are Jennifers.
I like her.
She understands.
I am the Original Genevieve.
By no means am I the Other Genevieve. SHE is the Other Genevieve. She’ll be the first to tell you this. We are both correcting people across station. I’m hearing this.
I am proud of my fellow name bearer. She’s got a lot to live up to, and is doing a stellar job.
Though the presence of another Genevieve has given rise to some new vocabulary. Last night we Double Genevieved a fellow. In the Galley.
I believe he may still be in recovery. There was some fainting involved, but no pictures were taken.
Just call me Genevieve. I am the Original Genevieve, OG, or Fuelie G.
I’m a Fuelie. She’s a dispatcher. Welcome to McMurdo Station, Antarctica. We never do things by halves.
posted by: coldwish at 15:52 |
link | comments (3) |
fuels 2006-07
Sea Ice Training
Am I already becoming jaded?
I have forgotten to write of my Sea Ice Training last week.
Sea Ice Training is a one-day course, companion to Snow Survival School (known colloquially as Happy Camper), for those of us who work and travel on the Sea Ice. I had never had the class, because in my first season I arrived after the sea ice was no longer safe and all ice based work had shifted to Williams Field on the permanent ice shelf. My second season I was an Admin and deskbound, with no reason to be on the sea ice.
So here I was in my third season doing the training. Most of my classmates (9 of us) were FNGs. I arrived in the classroom at SSC (Science Support Center) at 9am in full ECW gear, and after an hour of basic training we were off in a Hagglund (an awkward, ugly, two pod, bright red tracked vehicle) for the Barne Glacier in the direction of the open ocean. We were on the trail of the unique features of the sea ice: rollers, cracks, pressure ridges. We were out here to learn what was safe and how to determine that, and what the ice does. It heaves, it thrusts, it releases pressure, it folds, it separates, it creaks, it snaps. It thrives with motion and life, making it unpredictable and dangerous from moment to moment and day to day.
I rode shotgun out there; Thai Verzone, the instructor, drove. It was his last day out on the ice before he left the station for South Africa. We spoke of his future and interests as we drove into the blowing white snow, wandering around the bottom of a glass of milk, occasionally reduced to 3 flags in the swirl, mostly trundling along the trail of green flags seeing about 8-9 out ahead of us. Flags are typically placed at 50 foot intervals, so visibility varied from 150-50 feet. The morning began overcast but soon the sun was blasting into this white live world we drove in so we glowed from the inside, fast moving and radioactively white. Moments of sheer bright like the inside of white heat. No view, just the leaning forward to the next glimpse of the next flag out.
I knew we passed features magical and wonderful, views magnificent and nonpareil in the world, to both sides of us. But none was revealed. Thai would announce that we passed the Erebus Ice Tongue to our right as we traveled, but he only knew this through the magic of his handheld GPS system. I strained to see this white feature in the white haze to no avail. So we talked, companionably, of film, of the Ice, of futures.
We stopped at some rollers at the end of the Ice Tongue, where this long saw-toothed looking glacier feature thrust itself off the low hip of Mount Erebus in a permanent feature upon which the sea ice ground itself. The Ice Tongue grows, the sea ice heaves with the tides and pressures from the surrounding islands, the ice forms rounded rolling hills, with cracks atop them. Out of the Hagglund we tumbled to explore this in a pea soup of constant blowing snow, requiring leaning and tilting into the hard cold wind. We followed Thai trustingly into the white up this feature and stood entranced less by what was beneath our feet, though impressed by that also, than by our circumstances. There we stood in the weather we read of in Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s Worst Journey In The World, in the adventures of Shackleton and Mawson and Scott.
This felt and looked like what we imagined Antarctica to be, not our town-based reality of warm meals three times a day, huddled in an ugly brown town protected from our own worst curousities and adventurous impulses by our corporate minders. This was danger, of a mild and gorgeous sort, but we could smell the acrid possibilities here in the white. Cameras emerged from armpits and beneath our Big Reds, pictures were taken of the vague outlines of this feature, and ourselves framed blurrily in white, ugly and vulnerable in our gear.
Back into the Hagglund, and I gave up shotgun to a FNG. When next we emerged it was a short distance to the Barne Glacier by Inaccessible Island, and the sky had cleared and the blowing snow fallen to about hip height. Blinking and stunned I looked up with adoration and amazement at this new view of Mt Erebus, looming and smoking calmly there against the blue sky, the Barne Glacier shining and glowing in the low light, a feature so enormous that even at our distance we were dwarfed. The wind still blew, but the snow had fallen to a more revealing level, one about shoulder height, waist height. I could see where I stood and the snow blew violently across the features of the ice, every tiny ice pebble streaming a few feet of snow downstream of it, if I stood overly long in my awe, I, too, developed tiny drifts. The snow and cold blew in every crack of my gear, found my cheeks, the tip of my nose, my wrists, my ass. I was not cold, but I knew its tug and insistence.
I had already worked a few days outside by this point and had grown respectful of the true cold, and time spent working in it, so I was prepared. Some others were not and they grew cold easily. I saw the stamping and shaking of the chilled trying to warm themselves. I stood motionless off to the side of them, facing the Barne and Erebus, witnessing this beauty through the parameters of my tinted goggles, huge and sensible against my face, all other skin covered by a balaclava that soon froze with the moisture of my breath through it. Frost started to develop inside my goggles where my body heat generated moisture. But still I gazed, entranced and gladdened by being there able to see this. I caught glints of light on ice falls on Erebus’s flanks, I leaned against the wind, resting in the harsh comfort and steady solidity of it as I watching the snow blow past, winking the feet of Barne in and out of a scrim of existence like the view into a magical neverland. I smiled beneath my gear, sparkled with the love of this place.
Thai showed us how to drill and measure the cracks we stopped at, to reveal depths of ice, and widths, and to judge it safe for our vehicle to cross. He was the only one of us not in standard ECW gear, he had his own gear from years of mountain guide work in the snow and mountains of the northern and southern hemispheres both. He looked invincible and unaffected by the cold as he taught us, unfazed at best. He was capable of taking care of us.
Taking care of us was necessary, as one young firefighter disregarded the evidence of his own senses--perhaps in some blind macho impulse to be silent and manly, perhaps simply because the environment was so startlingly alien and new he had no idea—and developed frostnip on one cheek. Thai spotted it immediately and forced him to address it properly. He forced us to consume hot beverages we’d brought. I protested. I was warm and fine and toasty, marveling in the effectiveness of my Carhartts and Big Red in fending off the stealthy theft of my body heat. Even my hands and feet were warm, and that was no illusion. But he insisted. I drank a few tiny sips and was rewarded with an unbelievable full body flushing response of warmth. Odd how I hadn’t noticed that my body had cooled down too.
Eventually we had to peel ourselves away from the view and the entranced group of us followed Thai obediently, a staggered line of awkward red & black penguins in the wake of his black and orange profile, back to our vessel. Some of us were very cold and remained cold on the trip home. Some of us not so much. An hour or less outside of town the same firefighter with the frostnip declared quietly that his toes were numb. Yet he would not make moves to deal with it when I mildly suggested a solution. I’m afraid I got a bit stroppy with him at that point. I knew the dangers of the cold seeping in & up your bones and taking the life away from limbs and extremities. Unless he/I did something about it in the next hour it was not going to get better, only worse. So I swore at him, raised my voice, insisted that he remove his boots and accept my proffered toe warmers (much like charcoal oxygen activated hand warmers, but made smaller to fit in boots). He protested. I continued insisting, rudely under any other circumstances. He consented. We got his toes warm. We dozed against the chill in the back of the Hagglund, heat seeping away from us through the metal seats until our arrival back in town.
The cold is an amazing thing, and I am learning it anew this season. But I was blithely unaffected by it on this trip, to my bemusement. For someone who is known to get cold easily while sitting in a cubicle in air conditioning, I handle the real thing quite well.
Every day outside in Antarctica is a beautiful day for me. I have no complaints.
posted by: coldwish at 23:17 |
link | comments (1) |
fuels 2006-07
Party Like A Fuelie
I am not myself here, not as anyone off-Ice knows me. I am a much more cautious and careful individual in my personal dealings outside of this environment. It is not that I take risks here, none that affect my job or my ability to stay safe and healthy. My job is my priority. However, the social environment is so completely bizarre, yet safe, with an abundance of freedoms and intelligence the likes of which I have not seen since my Mount Holyoke College years. I can have any conversation I want about anything I want, brain unedited, tongue uncensored. This is returned to me in kind at speed, snappy repartee, dirty talk, double entendres, political insights, social statements, deep discussions of wit and intelligence that I crave in my life all the time. I have not had this pleasure in ages, of being surrounded by such funny, clever, interesting people. We bring a lot to the table, each of us.
I’m afraid my life has been quite staid in my States-bound decade plus since I left Japan. The people are interesting here, and they are interested in kind. It is not a collection of the incurious, the disinterested, saddled with the settled and limited minds of so many Americans who refuse to challenge themselves with change and difference. It feels as if everyone here runs full tilt at life, and does not just live it for the house, the SUV and the better school for their children. Passions are large here. Most of us have made deliberate choices and sacrifices to be here.
Here, I go to a 70s party in a blonde wig, a short brightly patterned polyester dress, my cleavage up around my collar bones, vertigo-inducing when I look down and indelibly irresistible to a vast number of people here. To onlookers I am drunk. I am dead sober. I dance all night, I kiss Kiwis half my age, I do the bump and the grind and I get carried out the door into the cold, steaming with my own dry ice sweat off bare skin as I hit the -10F cold, over the shoulder of another Kiwi, caveman style. I am laughing the whole time.
I love to dance. I had forgotten as I aged how much dancing was essential to me. I can recall the years in Halifax and Montreal where my raison d’etre was the music that drove me forward into the future, a veritable obsession with what was next on the horizon. But I lost interest in being surrounded by drunken men obsessing on my breasts and my red hair. I grew to hate the smoke in my hair, in my skin, on my pillow and in my clothes. I could no longer bear the sore throat every night, necessitating a constant rotation of cough drops in my mouth as I danced. I was disillusioned by the new music that developed. And I went to Japan for 5 years. I discovered Kodo and they changed my heartbeat irrevocably, all other music went pale in comparison.
But here I dance. I dress up in costumes that surprise, shock and titillate the people who know me in my jeans, baggy sweatshirts and Carhartts, buzz cut or bad hair. I even dance to disco, a genre of music that was never mine to be nostalgic about. Yes, I dance to disco music, a music whose era I lived through as a David Bowie-loving soon to be black clad punk goth. Disco was anathema to me. I danced at Les Foufounes Electriques on Rue St Catherine in Montreal to reggae, punk, industrial, goth, alternative, underground Canadian and British and French music. I fell for Slow, The Nils, Berurier Noir, Einsturzende Neubauten, Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, Marianne Faithfull, Patti Smith, 39 Steps, Skinny Puppy, Bauhaus. I dressed in black and grew my hair long and wild and spent many a night veiled in my back-combed hair just moving inside the music. Alone on the dance floor. I ignored the men who tried to find out what sign I was (Scorpio) when I went to the bar for a glass of water. They tried to get past my defenses. I wasn’t there for that, it was the music that drew me and the men who tried to join me on the floor annoyed and irritated me.
Yet, on Ice, I’ll dance to anything, WITH anyone. I dance with friends, I dance with men I don’t know, I dance against them, and around them. I dance for myself, but enjoy this new dancing in pairs, highly charged, often sexual dancing. Dancing that implies things, carries messages of interest and temptation, and promise. I am watched as I dance, and that’s okay. The music is almost irrelevant to the dancing.
Some of this is reveling in being female in an environment in which there are many more men than women, the resulting gender imbalance creating this highly sexualized context of interest and banter. It is startling to be on the radar after so many years off it. I am 41 going on 42 next month, and I have relaxed into the ease of being less obvious in public. I keep my hair short, I wear no make up, I dress in jeans and t-shirts, I move through my life largely uninterrupted by the catcalls and stares of my teens, 20s and thirties. In the world at large, that is a relief.
Here, where I know everyone, in this finite universe of people with whom I share every meal, dorm-living, and everything I do, there is a safety in the fun. It is an odd combination of being in the safety of a small-town where everyone knows who you are and the context in which you work/live/play, and the anonymity of being in this bizarre world of strangers who are not from HOME. We are an intense lot, insane with the commonality of surviving in a bizarre environment.
Yet a safe environment. So I dance, I flirt, I say things taboo and shocking without fear. I know there must be talk of my behaviour, assumptions and judgments. I don’t care this season, I have no one to impress, I have the job I want, working in the best department on station. I’m a third season returnee, and with that seniority there is freedom. I have a job I don’t have to take “home” with me after 5:30pm.
I am free this year. I am not entangled in the sturm and drang of people’s problems—“Oh my gawd, I’m so sorry your pillow is too hard, your mattress too soft, you can hear your neighbors talking and you can’t bring yourself to communicate with your roommate about the things they do that irritate you enough to bring you into our office to move out”-- trapped in an office on Highway One in Building 155 (main hallway of the main building on station), severely unhappy, with my ass in a chair all day, living to wash pots just to get out of the windowless airless office doing a job that drags at my soul and exhausts my ability to care. That’s not my shit anymore.
I am a Fuelie: with that identity comes ascension to the ranks of the cool on station. Occasionally I feel like an imposter, but I’m still learning my job, so it’ll come to me as an identity I can claim with authority. There is an odd social invincibility that adheres to me with the confluence of being a third year returnee and a Fuelie both. My job feels valid this season, not tangential with makework brought on by the population of the station. I am proud of that, I am justified here, as opposed to just another warm body pushing paperwork around, or supporting the support staff. I did not anticipate this. I knew I’d be in a great department doing a great job, but I had not planned for the response I get when people ask me what I do this season.
For the first time in my life I am proudly proclaiming my job as my identity.
I am Fuelie. I work hard, I play hard.
posted by: coldwish at 23:10 |
link | comments (5) |
fuels 2006-07
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
