Angel in Antarctica
This post was written late on Saturday Nov 26th, but due to internet & phone services being cut off between here and the US, I could not post it until Monday later in the day. No one could phone off Ice all day on Sunday and half the day Monday.
Yesterday was a bad day anywhere. Today is a good day in Antarctica. Yesterday we got off work about an hour early and as I was leaving the office a man yelled at me to not leave. He was short some linens on his bed. I was standing there at the door with a Tupperware container in my hands, hat, jacket & gloves on, sunglasses on my head, obviously NOT working. I went back into the office, looked for what he needed in the closet. We didn’t have it. So I grabbed the laundry room key and headed over to get some linens. Came back, handed him the bits he needed from the full linen pack I’d fetched, and left.
I was not polite, nor was I sympathetic, I was not nice. There was no evidence of my customer service skills in my manner. I didn’t want to be there, I wanted to get the fuck away from all these awful people, friends included. I had already been accused of being a grump by a few friends when I would not join their table of 4-6 people and growing at lunch, but I was desperate to be alone. Another friend came in at lunch and said he’d see me at supper. When I demurred, indicating I was in no mood to be at a table full of people, even with him at it, he told me to get over it. I said he’d have to drag me kicking & screaming from the dark corner I’d be in to join that table with so many people. He said that could be arranged. Big guy, strong, I’m sure that unless I latched onto the table with all four limbs he could relocate me without breaking a sweat.
But I wasn’t even interested in that kind of contact. I had reached the end of my rope with people here, through no fault of their own, and I needed to be left alone. In the real world when I work full time surrounded by people, dealing with people for my job, I get to go home and have my meal alone, spend time alone in my home doing alone things. I can go to a movie and see no one I know, I can go to the bookstore, or walk along the seaside all by myself. I can lie in bed reading, I can shower as long as I want, cook for myself what I want, fart without guilt or comment. I live a life in which time alone is precious and healing, in which I envy myself when I have lost it. Down here, I have lost it. I am bored with my job and have no time off from people, and it has made me lonely. Extremely lonely. Not for other people, but for myself.
Last night I had no intention of giving up any time I could have for myself, even to good friends. So I ducked into the Galley with my Tupperware, grabbed some food really quickly, filled up my water bottle, stole a fork, swiped a salt shaker from a table and scooted on back to my room. I was in my room by 5:20pm. I stayed alone (but for a short visit from my roomie) the entire evening. I read a bit but my mind was restless and inattentive, so I broke out the quilt squares I have been working on down here and let my mind just go. I traveled far & wide as my hands stitched embroidery thread in the ditches between the dozens of fabrics I had sewn onto each square. I had colours and textures and patterns to absorb my senses, which allowed my brain to relax and wend its way around what ever I was feeling.
Lonely. Trapped. Vulnerable. Hateful. Resentful. Yearning. Sad. All those and more. So I stitched and I quilted. Occasionally thrilling myself by licking the lime and the lemon I had found at supper and was sticking my pins & needle into. The room became delicately suffused with the sharp fresh scent of lime & lemon, and each whole fruit bled when I stabbed it. So I cleaned it by licking it. Each taste was a whoo hoo smile of wonder experience in this sense benighted life I lead down here. I quilted until I got tired, and was to bed by 9pm. I had barely rescued my day.
This morning, Saturday, Thanksgiving, I woke up anticipating a foul day of dodging people and avoiding interaction. I lay in bed in the darkness thinking I Need To Get Out Of Town. I trotted out into the hall to the door at the end to see what the weather was doing and was BLINDED by white, white everywhere, white blaring & glaring & coating every surface out the door. It had SNOWED in the “night” and we had 3-4 inches of fresh undisturbed powder everywhere, not a breath of wind, and no footprints at 7:30am before me!! I stumbled blindly, eyeballs unable to adjust, back to the dark, back to my room and groped around for my clothes, determined to go for a walk, direction unknown. I took my clothes out into the hall under the perpetually strung net of rainbow Christmas lights and dressed.
The world was transformed like we all dreamt of as children, waking up on Christmas morning to a fresh white snowfall, cleansing the landscape even in this work camp of ugly buildings and raw dirt. The hills around us were white and softened with their blanket of snow, no black bones showing through to sharpen their edges, the sea ice was soft & white & smoothly powdered, the runway & roads were covered. There were no features left to see, it was all soft & rounded. I have never seen Antarctica look so gentle and forgiving as this morning. There was no wind to disturb this precious coat of clean, and flakes still floated down tiny & shy from the low sky. The only colour in the world was this infinitesimally pale blue stripe of sky with the Trans Antarctics barely distinct in front of it. A slim stripe of blue along the horizon, a blue like robins eggs bathed in milk.
I headed out of town toward Hut Point & Scott’s Hut out there, it promised the most white, my only company a set of footprints obviously laid in the middle of the snow fall, as they were partly filled in already. I was the only one up and about. Everyone else had started their Holiday weekend in alcohol and anxiety on Friday night and was sleeping in hung over. Someone else had been out and about but I knew I wouldn’t see the owner of the footprints at all on my hike.
It was so unbelievably warm, windless, smooth, soft, white, delicate and welcoming that I walked along kicking my feet through the snow, charmed and thankful for the gift. I turned my face up as the flakes continued to fall, off & on through my hike, and they did not bite or slap me as snow is wont to do here, they softly caressed me with little nibbles & kisses of coolness. I hate to anthropomorphize the world, but I am partial to animism, and when I am out in the world I do commune with it, as if indeed each thing were alive and responsive. I walked along smiling, saying Thank You Thank You Thank You out loud to Antarctica. Thanking the world for having timed this glorious version of the Ice, my beloved continent, for my own private viewing just when my mood could not swing any lower. I kicked up my feet, swung my arms, smiled, laughed out loud, and yes, of course, I cried. I’m easy that way.
I hiked up the ridge beyond the Hut, up a sharp volcanic scree-built edge that rises to a steep cliff overlooking the sea ice, a tumble down it would be easy. In hikes past I have set out on a windless day only to reach this ridge and be battered by hurricane force winds gusting so powerfully that I and my hiking partner at that time, holding on to each other tight, could barely stay anchored to the ridge. Our Big Reds were essential against the ungodly cold of that wind, but they did not serve us well otherwise. They are so big we were simply larger targets for the wind. It was like wearing a square-rigger. That wind is probably the strongest I have ever encountered, I leaned sideways into it, cliff to my left, death that way too if I slipped. That time I gave up, for fear my feet would come untethered from their tenuous gravitational hold and I would be flung as far as the Royals across the way, to splat right up against the side of them. I got the hell down off that ridge.
This time I rose effortlessly up the ridge, floating on joy, hat off, wearing just my coat liner and sunglasses. I reached the sharp A-shaped peak of the ridge, where walking along it is tricky in a wind, and I barely felt a breath on me. I could see by the gentle drifting of the fresh snow that there had been some wind, as always in the prevailing direction down off the cliff side. But the stones were covered in snow, it was white and gentle, the drifts were blankets slightly tousled, long, downwind of each stone. But for the previous hiker’s drifted over footsteps I could have lost the trail. There are cairns built of the volcanic stones, with wooden posts stuck in them, but they are not always close enough together to tell where the logical path would lead from one to another. With the snow covering everything, it was a different calmer land I trod on.
Each time I paused for a breath, to rest my thighs, I looked up. I saw more of the mountains revealing themselves in that blue strip, sun shone down on them and long stringy grey clouds started doing their tutu-thing across their midriffs. The cloud cover over me parted, winking blue sky and round fluffy clouds at me, every now and then. I was enchanted, in love, amused and grateful to be alone. Just before I parted from the ridge and the view now behind me I stood there facing the world I loved and I bellowed “Thank you!” into the miraculous silence that had enveloped me since I left the confines of town. I am not in the habit of that, but I was on the tipping point of crying Yippeee! and Whoo hooo! And I did not want my yawlp to be quite so barbaric, so I thanked the continent for the gift of this morning.
I headed down the inside of the ridge towards the Golf Ball, as the satellite dish is known, and back into town. Once off the ridge the snow became deeper and fluffier, having been protected from the wind, as minor as it was, and I was hard-pressed not to fling myself face first into some of the deeper spots. But under that snow there are science experiments and wires strung along the ground. It is vital that we not step on the wires, so we stay to the flagged trail in that area. The flags were the only evidence of where I should walk, and my predecessor’s footprints were occasionally a bit off-piste. In one spot there was the trail going that way and the other way there were the footsteps trudging off through some thick snow. I paused less than a second before heading off into the deep snow myself, after those footsteps. Once in the deepest part, on a slope, I succumbed to temptation and fell backwards up slope into the fluff, landed in powder and made myself my first ever successful snow angel in Antarctica. I extracted myself from the angel and looked down proudly upon, what felt to me at the time, the most perfect, the most beautiful, the most ineffably angelic of snow angels I had ever seen in my life. Yeah, it was just that good. It was just that satisfying to create.
The last part of the hike is on a road, and there was one truck’s tracks on it, then my footsteps kicking up the snow along side it. Here the stones are bigger, and occasionally as I gazed upon this all white landscape, the black volcanic stones would jump out at me, white patches of snow stuck to their bellies, making them look like penguins each time I glanced away.
It was here that I felt my company, hiking with me this whole way, I knew I had Sue and Mr. Harris in my heart, Dad was there puffing warm breaths, Danny gamboled around us puppy-like once again, Sirius shot ahead and flung himself down in the path to await me, meowing raspily, smiling largely. Geisha trotted elegantly ahead, tail in a black question mark deigning to join us. Armorel was decked out in black ski gear tearing down slope near me. All the dead were with me as I hiked through this bowl of white, and I missed them all, but knew I wasn’t alone here. I think I had been given a gift of silence and alone time in order to recognize how shortsighted was my loneliness in the face of this place I love so much. I was reminded of just how lucky I am to be here.
Down the hill I returned to town, having felt buoyed up by my escape throughout the hike. But as I turned the corner, I felt this shroud of anger and resentment return to me, sitting heavily upon me. I looked at this ugly town with its ugly ugly squatting of humanity upon it, and I didn’t want to be there. I could have gone on for hours alone, but the Hut Point Ridge Loop is the longest trail we can hike solo.
I returned to my room, happier for the alone time, sat down, phoned home and then there came a knock on my door. It was Gretchen and she wanted to know if I’d like to go outside for a walk. Guess what? I did. And I did. I finished my call to Mom and went out and hiked the ridge again. Bless Gretchen for asking me. She is a good person whose company I enjoy immensely. The hike was as good with her as it was alone. Having had my time on it alone I knew I could do it again with her. I had the joy back.
And that was my good day in Antarctica. Once more the beauty of this place poured balm on my troubled waters, succored me to its white bosom, blessed me with its glory, shared with me some peace & quiet when I most needed it. I can only whisper out over the Ice my heartfelt thanks for this day.
Halfway Hunger
We here working at the bottom of the world are working our US Thanksgiving day today, Thursday. Tomorrow it’ll be Thanksgiving back home and it’ll be our Friday. We’ll still be working. Saturday we get the day off. Now, let me emphasize how rare this is, because it’ll give us the completely unheard of Two Day Weekend. Our first since I landed here on August 22nd during WinFly. Yup, I’ve been here now three months. Shocking, eh? Already two weeks longer than my entire season last year, and all of it stuck inside at a desk.
We don’t get any stateside holidays here, like Labour Day, and all those other holidays y’all seem to take for granted. But we do get two days off in a row for Thanksgiving: Saturday & Sunday. By this time in the season we are jonesin’ for a two day weekend, so severely that you can see the round pinwheels of need spinning in our eyeballs. We are all desperate for the comforts of family, friends, home, the rituals of gathering in the kitchen to cook and then sitting around a table to eat together. Even when our family rubs us the wrong way with too much intense contact during the holidays, we still miss them down here.
So, as the desperation rises and the “holiday” nears, we have all entered into a round of negotiations matched in intensity by, maybe, in a bad year, the UN. Because there are so many of us to feed, and not enough seats in the Galley at any one seating, we have been split up into three different dinners: 3pm, 5pm and 7pm. We are required to sign up for the seating we prefer, and that’s been going on all week. Meal time communications have consisted almost entirely of people trying to find out who is eating during which shift and with whom. The tables here are limited to about 6 people max, so you have to choose your tablemates carefully.
Everyone wants the 7pm shift because then you can linger at the table longer without being cleared out for the next shift. But I don't really want to hang out at a table in the Galley in the formal circumstances. So other negotiations are also taking place. A friend has reserved a lounge in one of the dorms for the entire day where a lot of us will be taking our food to hang out unhurried for the afternoon/evening. The next level is figuring out who you want to spend the dinner with, trying not to insult people by choosing the wrong people (limited table sizes, 6 max) or by not choosing them. Everyone's trying to create a family of their own down here for the meal, and invitations are being negotiated, rejected, accepted provisionally, wiggled out of, avoided, angled for subtly or overtly. I've expressed my interest in eating with various people, invited a few others to join me. Some of them may not exactly mix well, but I still want them with me for TG.
It is weird when different worlds mix. Sometimes friendships are more exclusive than others simply by virtue of shift similarities or differences. I'm working the regular Mon-Sat 7:30-5:30pm schedule that the vast majority of office people work. Other depts go for 5-12 hour days and often have to work on Sundays when the rest of us have off. Or their shifts start 6-6 (am-pm & pm-am both), 5:30-5:30, or 9am-9pm. It puts them at odds with our meal times and a lot of our recreational activities. The ANG (Air National Guard) work 6-12s from 4-4, covering both shifts. So the people I'm trying to corral for my table work the normal shift, some work 10pm-8am, some work 4pm-4am, some work 8am-8pm. We all have this Saturday off though, and I hope I can get them all with me. It could be an odd mix. But it should be a good TG, even if not spent with my family & friends at home.
It does feel odd though, to be putting all this together like puzzle pieces that don't quite fit. We also have no control over the food preparation, so it's simply Line Up with 350 other folk, many of us dressed in our holiday gear, until they let us through the buffet, choose your food, scramble for a table (whoo hoo! Look! Table clothes! Napkins!) then eat quickly before they kick you out for the next 350 people.
It has reached a point where I am so disgusted with the secret discussions and changing seating arrangements that I really don’t even want to engage at all. I may just abandon the meal, wait in line, grab my food, fuck the table and scamper out of the Galley with the food wrapped securely against the outdoors. Plastic wrap won’t work against the skuas, but if they mess with me and my tray there will be a definite bloody shrieking breach of the Antarctica Treaty happening. I am feeling misanthropic right now.
I look around me and there are new & interesting people all around, coming & going, and I don’t want to have anything to do with them. I sit at a table of 6 people for lunch and all of us are dragging so hard that there was No Conversation. No small talk, just people nodding their heads or looking off into space. Occasional comments were lobbed into the middle and some laughter, there was actually a piece of ham hurled too, but that’s a different story. I scooted out of there early, unable to handle even the people I like who I have known since WinFly.
The population here has been divided in my head between Mainbody & WinFly folks, since the day the first Summer flight came in after 6 weeks of no flights and a peacefully small population. I did not expect to be so completely stunned and abhorrent of the “new” people as I was when they arrived. As time has gone on it has not gotten better, only worse. I am less & less likely to engage with strangers, to make the effort to pull out my Getting To Know You face & conversation. I have no interest. I have withdrawn to my WinFly homies., and even there they are beginning to wear on me. It has very little to do with them, it has to do with the sheer exhaustion of our day here. I singularize that deliberately, because the night won’t come until I am gone from here.
Yes, the 24 hour daylight is affecting me, my sleep is broken and sad, even if I spend 9 hours in bed wishing for it to be deeper and sounder. We have the window covered, I sleep with a hat pulled down over my eyes and with earplugs in. But I find myself waking up in the middle of the night with very little on my mind but the awareness that I am not asleep. I am not able to put myself back under with the mind tricks I have used before the Ice. If I am unable to fall asleep I can usually take my mind away from whatever it is preying upon by thinking about quilting. I deliberately move my thoughts to something I find pleasant and peaceful. I sort through fabrics and choose colours & patterns quite contentedly until I doze off.
That doesn’t work here in the middle of the “night”. I am awake, but barely conscious, no mental activity beyond the awareness of being conscious when I seek otherwise. I lie there eyes closed, blank and quiet, and I do not return to a state of sleep until it is just late enough to make the alarm going off a blasphemy to my need for more rest. I have started turning off my alarm and rolling back over and falling asleep again. I don’t do that in real life. I am a get up out of bed and start the day immediately person. I cannot succumb to the temptation to fall back into bed once it goes off. I hate waking up badly enough that to do it several times in one day is a terrible terrible thing. That’s why I avoid naps. I HATE waking up. There is never enough sleep to be had in my world.
I have even tried sleep aids lately, a few times: Tylenol PM in a panic one or two nights. Oh. My. I’ll not be doing that again anytime soon. I could take one at 8pm and still be struggling under a severe drug hangover at 3pm the next day after having had a deep drugged sleep that alleviated my exhaustion not one whit. In fact, I am in worse shape for the use of it than not. It is like having an entire week’s worth of PMS squat on me for the duration of the hangover. I am irritable, tired, emotional, weepy, unfocussed. Ah hell, my PMS isn’t even that bad.
So I have reached that point in the season where there is not much joy in my life. I yearn so hard for the two day weekend, yet I am still stuck here. I wish I could just leave McMurdo behind, though I am not at all interested in leaving Antarctica. I wish to leave the boredom, the bureaucracy, the food, the people, the repetitiveness, the exhaustion, the closed nature of the socializing, the same shit all day every day. None of that has to do with Antarctica, none of it.
I have three more months now, and I can’t imagine it. I am so tired, underfed, under-slept, under-occupied. I need something to shake me up and grab hold of my mind & senses, wake me from this semi-slumber in which I spend these days.
I am not depressed. Do not worry. This is very different from depressed. This is burnt out, wiped out, fed up, blinded by fatigue, mindless slogging forward. I need some joy back, and I’m not seeing it inside me even when I do look up between buildings at the horizon that reminds me where I am. I do smile, I do still notice it, but something inside me is numb enough that the joy isn’t sneaking in quite as powerfully as it has before. Am I greedy to expect to be able to sustain that kind of joy always? Can’t I have that startled by life feeling again? Please? Either that or a good night’s sleep, for a week.
Drug Seeker
In the other part of the world where I call home, I once worked in a medical clinic for several years, in reception. I loved my job, I loved my co-workers and I learned a great deal while there. I also learned the ugly face of addiction. Any medical clinic has a certain share of patients who have learned to manage their pain with a liberal application of prescription meds, and who abuse those meds beyond their pain. We called them drug seekers. They go from clinic to doctor’s office to emergency room complaining of their extreme & mysterious pain, their symptoms magnified by their fear of whatever pain started them on this long road. They get multiple scripts for pain meds from multiple doctors, and spread the pharmacists who fill the scripts out as well. Often these patients would get recognized for what they were.
More often, in our clinic, these patients were female, and young, even depressed and poor. It is hard to separate those two latter conditions from being female in many areas of the world. We medicate women more than we should for a great many things, chief among them being unhappiness. Feel like a misfit? Poverty got you down? Exhausted by caring for those kids? Can’t handle the indignity of being paid $6/hour to smile at assholes who don’t even see you behind the counter? Have we got a drug for you…it sounds pretty like a flower or a new sports car...it’ll perk you up, make life seem less overwhelming.
One day a woman came into a clinic, with no appointment to see one of our doctors, trailing 2-3 kids behind her in the waiting area. She was a known drug seeker, and she had often exhausted our resources and our patience with her multiple demands. That day she was at our window many times asking about the doctor’s availability. We told her to wait, if we had a space, we’d get her in. Her children were bored and tired and made the waiting room feel fuller than it was. Her demands got harder, and she was often insulting; if not directly then just rude & abusive. Knowing what she was here for, and having seen it before, we did not have much pity for her. You do lose your sympathy around people like that. They are so single-minded in their seeking, that they do not see anything but their need.
I tried & tried to calm my ruffled feelings and my resentment of her needs each time she came to the window to hear the same thing, but it is not easy to remain respectful & kind in the face of their awfulness. I tried to understand the circumstances of her life, how small it may have gotten with the pain she did experience.
I can recall being in pain, to the extent that when the pain hit me I was dropped to the floor sobbing & gasping in astonishment at this complete betrayal of my body, barely able to call enough air into my lungs to ask for help from my family. I have experienced pain severe enough that it made my world close in on me in darkness & panic & fear, enough so that I vomited in response to it. I know that kind of pain, though my mind skitters away from the actual memory of it in fear, even now many many years later. I cannot apply my mind to bring that pain back into the realm of anything but alien and foreign and ancient, I do not want to remember it viscerally. While I was struggling with that kind of pain, which struck every now and then out of the blue, I knew a fear I’ve never known before. I feared life & living. I feared the pain, the solid pincer-like spasming of deep sharpness that would come upon me. I hated the narrowing of my world to nothing but the pain.
I went to the doctor. She gave me painkillers, should it happen again. It did. I took them. Ah, the surcease of pain was a miracle, the cessation of mental activity a side effect I didn’t appreciate except for that it took me that many hours into the future away from that pain when I finally woke groggy & exhausted. The pain thrashed me and my body, I tensed so severely, full-bodied, all my muscles against it, that I was bone achy with soreness for days after. I felt at best like I’d just lost a match in kickboxing, at worst like I’d just been through a hay-baler, sideways. I was weak. But the painkiller stopped that, the painkiller eased that and floated me past everything into sleep.
I loved my painkiller as much as I feared the pain. My fear started working on me such that I would not leave the room I was in without carrying the painkiller, my love, my ease, with me. I walked from the first floor of the house to the second floor of my house with the bottle clutched in my hand. I would barely let it out of my sight. I knew where it was in relation to me & my pain at every waking second of my day, I slept with it by my side. I started taking the painkillers at the mere twitch of pain, pain I had scoffed at before, as light as that of period cramps, vague & uncomfortable, but not to be medicated. Not now. I feared the pain so badly, I took the pills before it started, just in case it would.
Somewhen in there, during this period, I realized what I was doing. I feared this budding addiction of mine. I forced myself to take the painkillers only when I felt pain, not in anticipation & fear of the pain. I don’t know how I did this. Nothing about me makes me especially brave or strong, or able to handle pain like that, any better than the next person. My only fear stronger than the fear pain was my fear of losing control. That is the fear that prevents me from drinking or doing recreational drugs. It is probably the fear that keeps me from having a successful long-term relationship. But only that fear stood between me and an addiction to painkillers. I stopped taking the painkillers, my pain went away. I was lucky. I chose to wrestle with other demons in my life, not that one. But first & foremost, my pain ended. That was sheer luck.
So I stood behind the window of the clinic and I knew her fear, I could smell it, it smelled like me back then. But I also could not extend my pity so far out there to her that I could let her stomp all over me in her selfishness. I also resented her, and on a deeper level, because I had conquered my fear and had gotten lucky with the pain, judged her weak. I didn’t like her. I feared her.
Her kids continued to pull on her, to make demands on our patience, and annoy the other patients in the waiting area. The older one was sent out to the car to get some toys, or snacks, something to calm the younger ones. She was only about 8 or 9 years old, and her mother had no time for her or her siblings. Five minutes later she was led back in shrieking in pain, having just slammed the car door on her fingers. The door had shut tight and she had been rescued by a passer-by. She reached up to her mother, sobbing & hiccoughing, her finger bent severely sideways and the skin split badly and bleeding. I rushed back to get a doctor to attend to this poor child. The doctor came immediately to the waiting room to take care of the child.
Her mother spotted the doctor as she came through the door and pushed her child aside & behind her. She stood in front of this doctor and told her about her need for drugs, because she was in such pain. She prevented the doctor from accessing her weeping & scared child in order to present her case to her. That is the mind of a drug-seeker. No other pain before hers, not even that of her daughter.
The doctor snapped at the drug-seeker and bent over the child to care for her finger, directing us to call the hospital and get the ER ready for their arrival. She would need an x-ray and stitches. But we would have to send her with her mother. We feared that if any painkillers were prescribed for her daughter that the mother would take them, but we did not need to warn the ER as they had a previous history with the mother already.
I don’t understand the mind of addiction, beyond my minor flirtation with it. I have seen my vulnerability, and I emerged relatively unscathed. Enough so that I can joke about it, with the knowledge that real humour contains pain & knowledge oft unexpressed.
But I am a denier. I deny myself things. I have learned to ease up on the extreme denial, I do not need to maintain some mythical and unattainable purity in anything. I can & will do sweets, I will not deny myself the pleasure, knowing that in denial comes extreme need. Been there, done the binge after falling off the sweets-free wagon. A 3lb package of spice drops in one sitting cannot be any healthier after a year without refined sugar than a few handfuls a bit at a time over that same year.
But recently? Just recently, I was introduced to a new substance. Some would call this man a savvy marketer. I would call him a drug dealer. The store manager here came into the housing office with an open bar of chocolate, of the Cadbury’s sort, new to him, new to me. So he offered me a piece of this chocolate out of the alleged goodness of his heart, but really, because he knew that if I tried it I’d be completely hooked, sucked in to needing this chocolate bar with a need generated by my having been in a state of denial (or just a continent of denial, this place is not well stocked that way) for the last 3 months. Cadbury’s Dairy Milk (don’t you sniff at my classless appreciation of the lower sorts of cacao products) with little crumbled up bits of Crunchie in it. They call the golden bits Hokey Pokey in NZ. So stick your right foot in, folks, and shake it all about. This is a 240g monstrosity of a chocolate bar, a slab of chocolate so luscious and intimidating--shot through with the crunchity pieces of snap crackly golden goodness--that I have done my best to addict others under the aegis of being a generous person who shares her precious stash.
I realize I am an addictive personality. I confess my weakness. An hour after the first taste I was standing outside the door of the store when it next opened, four US dollars clutched in my sweaty paws. I shoved aside the line of booze-seekers, hip-checked a small lady reaching for tampons, and dove through the broad Carhartt-clad bodies of two hefty ironworkers scanning the chips. Grabbing a bar, I swaggered to the check out. My drug dealer was there. I glared at him with the fresh glare of the newly addicted, early enough in my addiction to still resent the addiction and the dealer for his control over me.
I had scored. Ate all of it in the next 24 hours, except for those pieces I shared in my joy and sugar high, thus perpetuating the addiction across the station. I am a chocolate-seeker. My behaviour has been egregious since I landed here. My boss fears for me, and I expect to be hauled to HR any day now. I can barely do my job without asking people for chocolate in return whenever they thank me. It has worked quite well so far. Chocolate comes my way far more frequently than makes my boss comfortable. It could constitute undue influence over the supplicants to this office.
But in all seriousness, you know those painkillers I took years ago?
I still have them. With me. Here in Antarctica.
Just in case.
Because, the fear? Still there. Tiny, but ever present.
I feel safer knowing I have unfettered access, come pain again.
But for now, I medicate with chocolate.
Hiking the Gumdrop
I have been neglectful of you, my readership. I have delved inside myself lately, denying you the adventures Antarctic and true that I have had lately. I have been tired, is my excuse. I have witnessed such amazing things that to write about it is to filet my raw soul for you when I do not think I have the energy to recover from it. However, for you, I will pick at that scab.
I hiked the Castle Rock Loop a week or so ago. At the prompting of my boss, Mike, and a co-worker, Jeff, I decided that on a Saturday after a 6-day work week would be as good a time as any to make this hike. Castle Rock is a rock that juts up from the snow & ice on the arm of land between town and Mt Erebus. Up close it looks crenellated much like its namesake, square, red and bold in a landscape of cold white sloping muscular snow. It is quite the contrast to other rock fixtures around us. From a great distance it looks as if someone dropped a large dark, slightly skewed, gumdrop on the long saddle of snow between us & Erebus. It sticks out. It sticks up. People wanna climb it.
We three dressed in our ECW gear, short our Bunny Boots which are the worst possible thing you can put on your feet for any kind of activity that requires any one of the following: traction, comfort, agility, distance, endurance. We had on our wind pants, our Big Reds, fleece tops, long underwear, serious socks, gaiters, face masks, goggles, hats (several layers). We carried snacks and water bottles, bearing cameras too. We had none of us made the hike before.
Many hikes out of town require you use the buddy system when you go out, they also require that you sign out a handheld radio from firehouse dispatch for the trip. The Castle Rock loop can be hiked or skied. Depending on your fitness level, your mode of travel, whether you wish to do the whole Loop or do the Castle Rock & return, it can take from 2 hours to 6-7 hours. We chose to walk, and we decided to do the whole Loop. We left town around 6:30pm.
You can do that, y’know, down here during the summer season. Start a 6 hour hike at 6:30pm. It’s not like the sun is going to go down. It won’t get dark like in the rest of the world. We have sunshine 24/7 now, so it is irrelevant when you set out and when you return. But still…what the fuck were we thinking doing a 6 hour hike at the tail end of a 60 hour week?
Radio collected, we headed up the long road out of town through the gravel pits and waste collection area, up the hill into a cold headwind. Ok, did I mention cold? Uphill? Long uphill hike into a headwind? Yeah. Needless to say there was some questioning, as we slogged up that road into the cold wind, as to whose bright idea this was. Fingers were pointed at Mike, the originator of this brilliant idea. We were all carrying the extra weight of our ECW gear, and every inch of skin was covered. We looked like aliens, bugs even, quite stupid really. There is no way to go out in the cold in Antarctica and look in any way elegant, just sensible and awkward.
Oddly, parts of me were cold (head, ears, face) when other parts of me were sweating profusely with the effort. We hadn’t even made it out of town and I was listing my regrets in my head. I hiked the entire hill up with my Big Red completely unzipped, hell I hiked the entire way to Castle Rock with my Big Red unzipped. Just to regulate the weirdly contradictory temperature zones in my body. No, my ass did not get cold this time, but my tits did. Not in such a way that cooled me off, or chilled me down, they just were cooler by a few degrees below that of my core temperature. It was an odd sensation. It took several hours after the hike for them to regain the same temperature as the remainder of my body. They are just fat, really. They don’t serve much purpose in the cold, nor do they hinder my body’s ability to regulate its temperature. With my coat open to cool me off, they got cold. How odd.
We continued this uphill slog, moving from the road to a groomed snow trail once we lost track of town, but still the grade was uphill. By now we all three had exhaled enough hot steamy breath that our face masks had started developing frost. Jeff’s wool hat had a wonderful lacy fringe of delicate rime ice all up & down one side where the wool hairs stuck out. We each of us had white frost covering the brows of our hats and the front of our face masks, eyelashes gently iced when they were exposed from beneath the goggles.
No, I did not enjoy this part of the hike. Yes, turning around and looking out over the ice from the heights above town was magnificent in the cold white light of the sunshine sparkling on everything behind us. Ob Hill had been reduced to a tiny black pyramid sticking out above the slopes we climbed, Mt Discovery was visible from across the way, White Island was starting to reveal itself. Ahead of us was Castle Rock looming larger & closer & bigger bigger bigger with each step. But we walked largely heads down to the wind, pausing to catch our breaths only to be surprised by the new views revealed since our last stop. Mt Erebus beckoned to us, slightly obscured by a fringe of pale grey clouds moving across it. Heads back down we slogged on.
Our first real rest point came with the first Apple. There are three emergency shelters available to hikers of this loop: two are red dome-shaped Apples with emergency rations & overnight gear available. We ducked in there to drink some water, and to shelter from the wind. By the time we’d left there and emerged a few yards beyond, the wind had disappeared completely, not even the red & green flags marking our route fluttered vaguely.
The early part of the hike, with the wind, had been marginally unpleasant. The snow was not solid and vibrated & squeaked under our feet with every step. It is exhausting to walk constantly with insecure footing, and the odd vibrations travelled all the way up my legs to my hips so my entire body ached with the effort. It is not a smooth feel like hiking in sand dunes and losing ground, the snow rubs together in this environment in such a way that the grip has a rubbery feel. I don’t explain it well, but it is enervating, like walking on a ship’s deck with the engine vibrating constantly. When it stops, you are startled by the silence in your bones. I can only liken it to a day at sea on a lobster boat. When you pull into dock and the engine shuts off, your entire body notes the absence of the engine’s vibrations and relaxes, exhausted, into the physical silence. You suddenly notice the aches of the day as they settle into your muscles.
The hike from the first Apple to the second Apple was short and spectacular. The views out over the ice to our right were blue & shadowed & flat abstract lines of sky & cloud & ice. The horizon stretched flat, limned by a line of white light just on the edge of where the delicate grey blue cloud cover touched down on it. This was only matched by Mt Erebus ahead of us, almost obscured by Castle Rock rising upright, a rich golden red in the lowering angle of the sun. The sun was behind us and all before us was perfectly exposed in the long light. I had never before measured the size of Castle Rock quite so personally.
The wind remained silent as we approached. Climbing up the sharper icy slope to its base we were in some shadow, and did not experience the exposure to the wind until we emerged over the saddle to look out to sea. Yes, sea. Though still frozen at this point, we were able to see out to where I had been dive tending: The Razorback Islands, The Delbridge Islands, Cape Royds, Cape Evans, Barne Glacier, and beyond that the tabular icebergs caught in the sea ice, sitting square & white on the horizon. Around which the ships would come. If this year proves to be a normal year then all this sea ice may just break up & blow out. Our B15A nemesis iceberg, who had blocked the sea ice from blowing out now for 5 years, had moved on & out. We should be exposed enough to refresh the ice this year with new ice. We hope. Five years worth of old sea ice is not that easy to deal with. It has been weird since that part of the ice shelf broke off. We have rollers & pressure ridges where they have not been recorded before. The pressures are coming from somewhere and our sea ice experts are not sure what will result. Will we lose a chunk of the ice shelf? Will the ice actually break up & blow out this year?
We climbed into the lee of Castle Rock looking out toward Erebus, Ross Ice Shelf down slope to our right, sea ice and the islands down slope to our left. Castle Rock loomed at my back. Mike & Jeff chose to summit. I chose not to. This gave me a precious 30 minutes of complete solitude facing the largest view my heart has ever beheld. I was overwhelmed by the beauty, the sharp, distilled danger of this place; the greatness, the vastness, my own ineffective place in it with my tiny beating heart. I sobbed hard & loud & ugly. I swore out loud to the elements for taking so much pleasure and injecting my heart with it. I was joyously & sorrowfully weeping. Every emotion I had ever felt came roaring through me bidden by the glory of this place. I missed people long gone and recently lost, every grief I have ever had echoed loudly inside me. I wished I could contain just one tiny part of this place and share it with people. Take it home with me, hold onto it for the rest of my life, make things better with it. The tears froze on my eyelashes and chilled my cheeks with salty ice.
I do not always understand my response to this place, nor my unceasing amazement in its beauty. I resonate deeply with the landscape here. I am not one of those people who marvel that my feet are the first or few to step in this place, my eyes the rare to witness it. I am not stunned by the historical newness, and the grand efforts of the explorers of less than 100 years before. Certainly the context of this place in human history is great, but my upwelling of emotion comes with my absolute love of the landscape. It is so large & obvious with the efforts of the creation of the world. It abounds with energy trapped & seething. This continent is in constant motion, the glaciers adrift and aflow with millions of years of accumulated snow, moving ever out to the edge of the sea. Antarctica never rests, it grows and shrinks in a transcendent life cycle of summer & winter, snow & ice, sun & stars. Antarctica is the source of all the world’s weather patterns, it is the source of all the seas’ food. It is not a bleak and awful continent of cold and wind. It is for me the most beautiful place I will ever be, and generous to allow me to live right here right now, to dwell heart beating in such awe. It could kill me with a blink.
I have always preferred winter, with snow & ice & the gentling of humanity’s hard & dirty edges. When it snows I am transported into a fresh new world each time. Nothing cleanses quite like a snowstorm, nothing beckons to me like a fresh laid field of snow. I have driven along country roads on moonlit nights, headlights off, engulfed in the blue all around me. I have stopped at streams edged in ice, crisp clear water reflecting the trees above it, glowing in the sunshine. I have played in snowstorms day & night, snowflakes kissing my face tiny & cold & intimate. Antarctica writes this love larger and colder than I knew possible for me to contain, and some times, I wonder that I contain it at all, that I do not break down each & every moment I am here.
Antarctica is very different than my memories of winter. It is a new love, everything changes here. I am vulnerable to its beauty, around every corner, with every glance, in the interstices of a season spent in a windowless room at a desk, I am felled every time, constantly off balance.
I have little ability to describe the view that made me sob. Not that would do it justice. I was seeing the ice fields and eruptions of crevasses so delicate blue & cold on Erebus’s flanks, the volcanic plume white & smoky & rounded peeking through the drifting clouds, the smooth muscled white snow between the patterned blue, the flat vast ice shelf with cloud shadows gently bruising it, dappled light traveling across it. The blue grey of the end of the world swallowing up the slopes of Terra Nova & Mt Terror to Erebus’s right, gently and with pastel intent crawling up it, shadows absorbing the shape inside it into one single-hued gradient.
I fail.
Mike & Jeff came down from Castle Rock to find me still there, my core body temperature having dropped what felt like 20 degrees. My hands were cold, I put on real gloves (as opposed to the glove liners I had worn all the way there). I had zipped up my coat, my feet were chilled. I had stopped moving, I was no longer climbing and the wind was strong where I was resting. It was time to move on.
Ahead of us was the downhill slope back to the ice shelf, merging into Willie Field Road. Downhill. We yearned for sleds. Absent that, we sat on our asses, slick wind pants exposed, and screamed & whooped our way down that slope faster & faster, whipping around feet first, head first, sideways & every which way. When we reached the trail again, we got back up. I never looked but I imagine my ass sported quite the rainbow of bruises, for that ride was not soft, nor smooth. But it sure was fun. Castle Rock & Erebus receded behind us and we continued down the hill to the flat, wind once again absent. We passed the crevasses we had been warned about, marked with crossed black flags off to either side of the trail, and discovered a new crevasse opening up a thin long crack right in front of us, like a puckered snow scar. We could see the break stretch as far left as it did right, and I knew the movement of the ice beneath us. As solid as it all looked, as flat & smooth as it seemed, there was still constant life under our feet, unknown pressures. The wind had scoured the snow around us into marvelous flat textures, and the crack of the new crevasse presented a delicate interruption to that flatness. I stood astride it where it crossed the trail, one inch wide. I felt the danger, just as I disbelieved it to be dangerous.
We reached the flat and the trail disappeared into the blown snow we had had in our recent Condition Two snow storm. We followed the flags in fresh snow. We were exhausted by now and yet still we marveled at the ice fall on one side and the cliffs on another. The sun had gotten lower and threatened to leave us in shadow behind the cliff, the light was shiny white and felt later. The light, even in 24/7 daylight does change, the sun does move across the sky casting us in shadow, elongating our shadows. As the sun moves the snow changes, things pop into relief or disappear into a icy blue shadow with few edges. Erebus, in particular, last year, as I drove back & forth to Willie, revealed startling and subtle changes as the sun moved over it. It wasn't until this year though, with the short days of my arrival that it remained so long in shadow, with the occasional refracting ice sparkle from deep inside an ice field.
Joining up with the Willie Field Road we trudged our way along the route I had driven last year so often. For the first time I walked across the Scott Base Transition, in this season solid & icy. I described to my companions the feel of driving in three feet of rice pudding or mashed potatoes, when the sun became strong and melted the road here.
We rested in town at Scott Base, visited the pressure ridges from a respectful distance, then began the hike up Scott Base Hill. None of us looked forward to the final leg home on the road. Halfway up a Kiwi stopped and picked us up, to our great relief & gratitude. It had been 6 hours almost and we signed ourselves back into the firehouse just in time.
It was a long hike, the weather couldn’t have cooperated better, and I was grateful to be back in town. I wouldn’t hesitate to make the hike again. I know that each visit to that view will be unique, just as each drive out to Willie last year was new & special, even when I did it over a dozen times in one day. This place will never fail to astonish me.
Birthday Ghosts
When I was very young, lo’ these many decades ago now, I was invited to a birthday slumber party by a girl my age. We were maybe 10 or 11 years old. She invited many girls from our school. I was not very popular, being fairly new (i.e. not having been there at least 3 generations), and she was not very popular either. I was excited to be invited but also hesitant. I didn’t really know her. I knew where she stood in the social hierarchy of girls, and I knew I stood not very much higher. But all the other girls were the cool ones I liked, so I accepted.
On the day of the party my mother dropped me off at this girl's house up on the ridge. I arrived thinking I was the first and soon found out I was to be the ONLY guest that night. All the other girls had canceled: sick, busy, grounded, not interested and too polite to reject the invitation right out, or just didn’t show. It was easier to come up with a last minute excuse not to go. I was mortified as I watched the realization dawn on her that no one else was coming to the party. Her mother had sent away her brothers, had cleaned the house, had slaved to be the great invisible hostess to this pile of pre-teen girls who she expected to be up giggling and talking all night long on the glassed-in porch floor. She had blankets, pillows of all shapes & sizes & colours, mattresses wall to wall. She had plates full of white bread sandwiches with the crusts cut off: baloney & cheese, tuna, egg salad, salami, ham & cheese. Each plate piled three layers high in a pyramid of yummy goodness, layers alternating by contents. Scattered around the edge of each plate she’d placed pretty wrapped candies: butterscotch, mint, chocolate, etc. There were bowls of snacks & munchies, we had popcorn, corn chips, pretzels and the Nova Scotian favourite, Corn Puffs. There were Cheetos too, but my heart was with the corn puffs. Do you know how long I have yearned for corn puffs since I left NS? I returned for my 20th high school reunion a few years back and LOOKED EVERYWHERE FOR THEM. This is how much I loved the airy puffs of greasy corny yellow goodness.
We were also completely stocked with several cartons of Pop Shoppe pops of so many different flavours I could not believe my luck.
This girl & I circled each other somewhat awkwardly after her mother delivered the goodies and I got the news I was the Sole Guest. I hardly knew her, she me the same. But we had snacks. We had TV. We had games and we had the complete insouciance of two young girls thrown together into this unusual situation of a two-girl slumber party. I was not the perfect guest, but I spent the night laughing and giggling and sharing girl secrets with her for all I was worth. I had a damn good time, ate too much, slept too little, but never without looking at her to see if I was enough. How much did she hurt? I could easily imagine being on the receiving end of that kind of resounding rejection. It terrified me to watch it. It terrified me to have it so damn close to me.
On Monday at school we both told everyone what a fun party they had missed, we presented a united front of We Don’t Care, while bragging about all we did.
We didn’t become friends after that, but friendly. I don’t recall her name or her face, though I recall her house, and the snacks her mother provided with that worried look on her face, grateful to me almost too much for saving her daughter’s party by showing up.
Yesterday was my 41st birthday here on the Ice, today it is that same birthday back in North America. Earlier this week I decided to throw my own birthday party, because y’know, dammit, I was turning 41 in ANTARCTICA. And how often do you get to do that? So I sucked in my gut and tamed my fears of rejection, dwelled a bit on that party decades earlier, and sent out an invitation to my friends & co-workers here to join me at the Coffee House to celebrate my 41st Birthday. I dressed up and walked down there.
And guess what? They showed. They came, they stayed, they had fun. It boiled on way past my witching hour of 9:30 until the Coffee House closed at 11pm. I ducked out at 10:30 myself.
I cannot describe how exceedingly grateful I am that these people, near strangers many of them just a few months ago, filled the Coffee House to the gunnels with laughter, flirting, fun and easy conversation. Because it was my birthday. I received a few wonderful gifts unexpectedly, but most of all I received their smiles and their hugs.
I don’t think I have ever before had the ghosts of that birthday party of yore laid to rest quite so resoundingly. Happy Birthday to me.
Happy Birthday!
This has been a rough season on me. I am doing a job that for the most part bores me, though I enjoy my co-workers for they make coming to work worthwhile. I am inside at a desk all day long dealing with unhappy people, and lately I am overwhelmed easily. I thought after the first week or so of feeling this way, when I heard about Mr. Harris’s death, and my friend Sue's death in the same week, that I was dealing with it ok. But I think maybe I am not. It's not so much that I want to leave Antarctica, this is such a place of joy for me when I have the chance to get out and witness it. But I am lonely when I am normally just alone. Not that I even get enough time to be alone here. So I am lonely in full view of everyone at meal times, and in crowds of friends. I yearn to create deeper friendships, more sustaining connections to people down here, but it is an odd society. We are all so balls to the wall exhausted and the 24/7 sunlight (midday sunlight: bright & sharp at all times) has such a powerful effect on our inability to relax enough to get good restful sleep. We seek connections, yet they are ephemeral, since at the end of the season we all scatter to the four corners of the earth, not necessarily to return here next season. So there is a lot of short term relating happening here, either sexually or emotionally. Which can be exciting but is only temporarily satisfying.
We are all dealing with events & stresses on Ice, but our home lives go on. We are still in communication with family at home, involved in the efforts to save relationships that have begun to wither with the distance, made irrevocable choices about our futures, revealed lifelong secrets like little bombs we are not there to help clean up. People here have fled divorces & break-ups, difficult home lives, small-minded small towns, futureless cubicle jobs, the daily exhausting demands of our pasts. We are all here for different reasons, some of us hoping that by being here our lives will improve (financially, emotionally). We are seekers, many of us.
Despite being so very far away from home and the troubles there, we do feel the pull. We are all keeping secrets from people down here. Secrets that could get us fired, arrested, ostracized, gossiped about. Secrets that put our decisions here in a context we’ll never let you in on. So there is knowing and a great deal of unknowing of our co-workers, friends, dance partners, lovers, mealmates. We try to build that trust, because we need to be able to trust in such an environment. Some secrets are revealed and I hold them tenderly and appreciatively in my heart when I am on the receiving end. I do not share so easily.
So I hold onto my grief and try not to let it show so broadly that people are made to feel uncomfortable in my presence. But it preys on my sleep, it affects my appetite. I peer over my hill of sadness at people, sort of hoping that maybe one of them may have the strength to invite me to tell them. But they are all so tired and dragging hard and dealing with their own issues that most of them cannot hear my tiny meep meeps of dismay.
I am exhausted, not sleeping well, and not eating well. None of these things however, impairs my ability to be utterly shocked & delighted when I am smote with the beauty of this place. Perhaps when I witness it I am more prone to sobbing, than quiet tears, in this state I am in. But still it is worth it. I wish so much I could bring this place with me to show you all who are not here. I wish so much to tell you the stories, to expose how much of an impact this place has had on me without scaring you. I wish I could share this.
Happy Birthday Genevieve! Welcome to 41!
My co-workers here in Housing just sang me Happy Birthday and gave me a handmade birthday card tailor-made to recall some of my more “exposed” moments during WinFly. Thank you! It made me laugh.
Lull in the Wind
I have been out of town a few times since I last blogged. Last Saturday on the town-designated Halloween I was dragging my feet all day as the town around me prepped for the Halloween Party to take place in the gym. Talk of costumes and getting drunk and the obligatory sexual panic that overcomes so many people here as they listen to the OAEs say that you must hook up by Halloween, or not hook up at all. But me, I had returned to my same ol’ anti-social self, where I do not see the point of dressing up in a costume and competing with a whole whack of strangers (for this is who they are to me) for the best response. All the FNGs are excited, many returnees are excited. The dorm was hopping with partially put-together costumes and women in the loo applying odd contact lenses and sparkly princess or green monster make-up. The more I saw of it the less I wanted to go and the more alone I wanted to be. But THEY WERE EVERYWERE. Drinking & socializing in the dorm halls. I had to leave.
As I was wandering back from my dorm to 155 (Galley, Housing office, etc) I bumped into a friend I knew from Shuttles last year, one of my pax. I asked him if he too was going to the party and he said he wasn’t because he was headed out to Willie Field. I nearly leapt into his arms and said,,”Can I go?” He was glad for the company.
Thirty minutes later he was fed and I was partly dressed in my ECW gear, but very casually. I did not even bother bringing Big Red or fancy gloves, or anything I should have. I was in my L.L.Bean down liner for my windbreaker, black knit cap, windpants, boots & glove liners. I did bring my camera.
He met me in DJ with a MatTrack, which is a truck with the wheels replaced by triangular tracks. It is a very slow-moving, easily broken vehicle. Never been in one, never driven one. Not sure I want to do it again. It took us almost 40 minutes to get to Willie. But the weather was perfect. Not a breath of wind, not a hint of the cold that bears down on us with that wind, I could feel the sun on my face and the heat of it in my bones through the truck window. It was spectacular. Okay. So it was about 0-5F out, but relatively speaking…
Wille is not yet up and running as all the buildings are over at the Ice Runway, so it is largely ungroomed and unpopulated. We were in the middle of the white expanse, sun shining on us, snow patterns like sculptural textured mysteries all around. The wind blows perpetually. The snow blows endlessly. The patterns created in the snow are spectacular and fascinating. Friezes of implied movement sculpted and carved by all that is blown. I could have been in the Sahara or on a sand beach after the tide has left its tracks on the sand in retreat. But I wasn’t. I was in the middle of the flat white of Antarctica, Erebus off to my back, McMurdo a black smudge under Ob Hill, contained a bit by White Island and its muscular snowy slopes. I saw little of the view as I walked around listening to my feet, watching the snow as it revealed its quiet art to me.
Then my friend beckoned to me and there was a drift, left in the lee of the hut he works in. The wind blows always in the same direction and snow collects downwind of anything stationary. A drift, hard & white & sleek. Begging to be slid down. My L.L.Bean coat is a slippy fabric and I was down on my back legs curled up like an upturned turtle pushing myself into the trough with a shriek and a squeal. I rolled onto my belly at the bottom giggling like a fiend, got up and did it again & again. Yes, I was sliding in Antarctica.
You’d think that, y’know, the land of ice & snow, a forever white always winter wonderland, would render up a few more opportunities to PLAY in the snow. But there is very little actual loose snow and very few safe places to play. Raytheon is so worried they will lose someone that all chances to play are limited, and gawd forbid we actually experience some of this place while we are here.
But there I was rolling in the snow, sliding on my back down a drift and shrieking with the joy of it. Eyes squinting in the sun shining off the ice, feeling no cold whatsoever, not even the slow sneak of below freezing chill. I tried several drifts with their swoopy curves and shadowed troughs, laughing happily the whole time, eyes sparkling with the fun.
Alas, it was time to go back to town, but I was energized and satisfied with my small escape. I came back to my room, dressed in black and spent 10 minutes doing a quick run through of the party. I checked out the costumes, duly impressed by the clever creativity or juvenile stupidity of the costumes. Slid between the unrecognizable drunks grabbing for me and headed right back outside. Went to the Coffeehouse, where I ran into a few other friends hiding from Halloween, and stayed up chatting until about midnight. Well past my witching hour. Then I went home to bed.
I was woken from a deep sleep at 6:30 am by a friend who had forgotten to fetch some keys she needed for work from the Housing office on Saturday when we were actually open. I got up in my jammies and ran over to get them for her. To little thanks. She had called me since she figured I was most likely to be up and not drunk/hung over. I was indeed sober and awake. I had spent the night rolling in bed, thoughts boiling randomly & unbidden to the surface, unable to turn off my brain at all at all. At 6:30am I was indeed lying in my warm bed, awake. But, still, lying in my warm bed on a chilly Antarctic morning. Awake be damned, I didn’t want to get out of it even if I wasn’t sleeping.
I don’t know what it is about having only one day off a week. I spend the whole week thinking, every damn morning as my alarm goes off at 6:30 am, that I cannot wait to sleep in on Sunday. Then I stay up a bit later Saturday night, in anticiaption of this delicious opportunity to grab some extra sleep. But do I sleep in? No, if I am not woken up, I wake up on my own at the latest at 7am. I yearn to sleep until 10am. I yearn to sleep until 11am. But it has yet to happen. I wake up deprived of sleep, disgruntled, emotional, tired as fuck with hours to go before brunch starts at 10am. I linger, I socialize in the relatively quiet galley with friends, waiting to eat, hungry, tired and looking forward to food. Only to find I can’t eat shit there because it all has cheese in it and the line for real eggs is 20 minutes long or more. I just can’t do it. I’m too tired, so I grab a bite of faux scrambled eggs (if indeed they haven’t decided to add cheese or ham to them for excitement and fun Brunchy goodness) and maybe an English Muffin. Some OJ, water. And try not to cry yet again in exhaustion and my disappointment at the food.
The food this past week and a half has been so bad for me, that I am dumbfounded to find myself starving in between meals, really fucking hungry. I get to the buffet line, scope out the food, and either there is nothing for me to eat (mashed potatoes, frozen peas and a brownie again anyone?) or the veggie option is so bland that when I do sit down to eat I get only a few bites into it, my hunger abates and my complete & utter lack of any appetite kicks in. I stop eating. Out of sheer disinterest or even disgust. So I have really not been eating enough to sustain myself and have yet again lost weight. I am so hungry all the time, and so perpetually disappointed by the food that I cannot believe I am not crying to think about it.
But my meals are not all that bad, because I have begun to create a set of regular mealmates, with whom I have some continuity already. I had not realized until recently how enervating it is to always be beginning a friendship, having the introductory conversation, the Getting To Know You exchange. It is perpetual down here. I did it all WinFly. But come Mainbody I retreated from the fray, I wasn’t interested in anyone new anymore, I couldn’t meet the fresh people. I moved into the far room at the Galley, my back to the wall, book in hand; joined by a few other stunned souls seeking silence or quiet company in the noise and crowds.
Now, these few souls have been around long enough, we regularly sit together, so we can actually have conversations that continue from meal to meal. We can refer back to another moment in our short pasts together, another mention of the same topic to enhance the current conversation. We can have serious discussions that flow around the table satisfyingly. I see the satisfaction on my face reflected in others’ eagerness to listen or engage. It is not always animated, often we are exhausted or there is a new element/person at the table, but there is still comfort in knowing my companions better now. I now find peace in the meals in the Galley, safety in friendship, trust that I do not always have to engage in the verbal dance. I can be quiet together. I can call them friends.
It is worth its weight in gold to have reached this point with a few people. My day ends better now.
****I cannot for the life of me access my gmail account, so if any of you are left hanging waiting for an email response, forgive me. I seem to have been rendered incommunicado outside this blog.****
Soapbox
I don’t usually dwell on the crap down here, not much anyway. Not unless it is my own personal crap: y’know, the food disappointment, the lack of getting out of town, the griefs, the sitting on my ass all day. But the bureaucratic crap we have to deal with down here is something I generally stay away from.
Well, it’s beginning to get to me.
This is a work camp. We, many of us, work hard jobs outside in the cold 10-12 hours a day in work gear. They feed us three meals a day, which though I am disappointed by the food more often than not, I appreciate being provided. I know I’m not the only one whose low wages reflect the fact that Raytheon is skinning us alive financially. We are being housed & fed but we are getting paid shit. I make about $8/hr before taxes. No overtime and we all work 14 hours per week overtime by US law. We also PAY taxes here, even state taxes. They spend less than $7/day feeding each of us. It probably costs less to house us.
There are people down here because they love the Ice, doing contract work 5-6 months out of each year, unemployed and/or homeless the remaining months of the year. Some people make good money and it’s all about the money. Some people come back despite the money because they have fallen in love with the place. But we all work damn hard, damn long hours, and we live & play hard alongside each other. Mostly in harmony. Yeah, there are noisy vs quiet people. There are drinkers vs non-drinkers. We have religious conservatives, we have extreme anarchists, we have a lot of individualists of many colours for whom Antarctica is a way of maintaining a lifestyle to support their being Not Part Of The System.
But we are part of the system. We are deeply mired in a corporate culture whose tentacles reach us even here on the Ice. Because Raytheon is a HUGE corporation. It’s a freakin’ DOD contractor, folks. Anyone who is still under the illusion that Raytheon is here out of the goodness of its heart (corporations have hearts?) and its pure & unselfish love of the sciences it supports, has got to get a clue-by-four. Raytheon has a contract with the NSF (National Science Foundation), who provides the grants to the scientists who work down here. It’s a fucking contract, folks. They are in it for the money. There is no other reason for a corporation to try for a contract of this nature if not for the potential profit to be made. It’s all about the profit. For them.
If they can do it, they will take this profit out of our pockets. They are doing this already on so many levels. But, y’know, I still want to come to Antarctica, despite the fact I have no retirement plan and working down here at my level of earning, at my age, will not get me a padded future of any sort. If I get sick or I get injured, or I get too old, I’m outa heah! Involuntarily ripped from the source of my joy. And poor to boot.
But when they start imposing a picayune, illogical DRESS CODE on us down here, then I get pretty pissed off. For other people here, this is just one of many issues this season: the new alcohol policy, the rationing of the alcohol, the safety rules that are hindering work departments so much they can’t get their jobs done but are unevenly imposed, the new safety reporting requirements, the removal of many boondoggles from us (and the bureaucratization of the ones that used to be independently acquired), the extra work without extra pay or compensatory time off.
You’re still thinking about the dress code, aren’t you? Yeah, I can read your minds from here.
Well, yesterday the head of RPSC (Raytheon Polar Services Corp) sent out a Power Point Presentation to all the supervisors about this new “Dining Facility” Dress Code. I put Dining Facility in quotes because for years they have been trying to change the vocabulary here to reflect the corporate environment (Galley = Dining Facility, Boondoggle = Morale Trip). Everyone still refers to it as the Galley but in all official communications we are required to use the words Dining Facility.
So, yesterday’s communiqué about the dress code: Without any explanation for the whys & wherefores of this new policy, they are imposing a dress code on us for when we eat. The three highlights: no sleeveless shirts, no sandals without socks, and we must wear clean clothes.
I have tried to find the logic behind this one, but it escapes me completely. I’m trying to fathom just how dangerous naked arms are to the average “diner” here. I’ve thought about armpit hair getting in the food, I’ve thought about smelly armpits at about face height. I’m short, there are lots of tall men here. It happens. I’ve also thought about the women here who seem to be adjusting to the cold better than I have. They come to meals and peel off layers of clothes to reveal, well, to reveal quite a lot. But not much more than you’d see in an average restaurant, and certainly less than you’d see in a college dining hall. We are talking bra straps in pink peeking out from underneath the narrow straps of a blue undershirt.
What about those moments of sheer pleasure, perhaps restricted to myself and the rest of the female populace, when those built like a brick shithouse guys come in sleeveless. You can see food dropping off forks and heads turning, oxygen gets sucked out of the room, as certain fellows walk through the line picking up food. Silences descend upon any table with more than one woman, momentary conversational hiccoughs as our minds stutter to a halt and we lose track of everything else. The closeted gay men are likewise afflicted, but the murmur that follows the silence is largely female. Please Don’t Take That Away From Us.
The sleeveless thing? Makes no sense at all. Safety? Can’t be. Hygiene? How so? Modesty? Who is the freakin’ turdheel who finds arms & shoulders offensive?
Sandals with socks. It is only in the last 4-5 years I have been able to accept this sartorial phenom without grimacing. With the onset of Tevas and Birkenstocks being worn year round with wool socks, I’ve become a tad numbed to the full-body flinch that used to come over me when I spotted the socks & sandals combo. Down here, however, I see a lot of flip-flops. No, really. Mostly in the Galley, on the folks who live here in 155. They come stumbling down to breakfast in their jammies and their flip-flops. I gots no problem wi’ dat. But there are a lot of folks who wear flip-flops outside too, between buildings, during non-work hours. Because de feets they gets tired of de boots all the time. If I didn’t think my toes would fall off in the cold, I’d be out there barefoot, just to get my confined sunless footskin breathing something other than moist wool sock. I recognize the impulse and I encourage it. I love the flip flops like this. I love the nail polish on the guys’ toes. Don’t judge, the woman who does the pedicures is gorgeous and it’s an hour that includes calf & foot massage. Would you say no to that? Wearing nail polish under those circumstances is like saying Fuck You to the reality of this place.
So, safety issues with flip-flops. I’m thinkin’ I’m thinkin’. It’d be a stretch but perhaps they are worried about their tender toes if there is broken glass on the floor. Or being stepped on by other diners in workboots, or worse yet, in bunny boots. But then, I follow that logic, and I imagine flip flops (non-thong types) with socks. Can that possibly make feet safer from broken glass or bunny boots? No. Unless the glass is flying across the floor.
Hygiene? Hmmm….as long as they don’t stick their feet in the buffet line I’m feelin’ pretty safe from athletes’ foot in the lunchmeats. So it’s the modesty thing again. The shock of toe cleavage in an otherwise booted world? What the fuck?!
Now, on to the clean clothes. If & when they provide lockers, showers and changing rooms in addition to the extra 30 minutes of paid lunch time for the people who work in the following jobs, this one is an absolute crock of shit: Waste, Fuels, Cargo, VMF (Vehicle Maintenance Facility = Heavy Shop), Paint, GAs (General Assistants), Janitors, Fleet Ops, FEMC (plumbers, electricians, boiler techs, etc), etc. I’m sure I’m leaving someone out. But these people work their asses off and come to the galley in their work clothes for lunch & supper. Sure the Fuelies often have this certain eau de diesel about them, the Heavy Shop guys are coated in grease & oil topknot to toe, the Janitors have been cleaning urinals in which the average man can’t aim properly at all, the Wasties have been sorting & packing our garbage for us, the Plumbers have been unclogging our sewage pipes. I could go on. But I don’t need to. This one is the most offensive as far as I’m concerned because this indicates to me the source of this “memo” to be someone who Doesn’t Work On The Ice. Or if they do? They don’t work with their hands and never have. They have been in a tiny office feeling offended by each meal time encounter with one of us working class support folks who make this station function. Yeah, I include myself with that, I still feel Shuttles even if I am driving a desk this season.
But what better way to improve their bottom line, than to make it absolutely impossible for anyone but the office workers to not get in trouble down here with all the picayune regulations. If you ding their bonus for going sleeveless in the dining facility, just THINK how much money you can save. Probably our bonuses cannot be threatened by this, but still, it narrows our lives down yet one more slice. Probably this was caused by one inconsiderate sweaty asshole in a wife-beater who dripped sweat in the lettuce on the salad bar, but is this the way to deal with it?
Let The Games Begin
Mainbody has settled into the constant flux of an overpopulated Summer Season. I'm beginning to emerge from the back room at the Galley every now & then, exposing my back & blinking in the sun. But only after I have eaten with known people in a safe space. If I eat & finish quickly then spot someone on my way out I'll have a seat with them for a bit to socialize. If they are alone. Still can't bring myself to join a table with more than one person at it.
Last week we had a C17 (big plane goes from Chch to McMurdo & back a few times a week during the opening of the station) that came down here with cargo and was leaving with pax, that almost didn't make it off the Ice. Why? You think...major weather issues? Bad visibility? Too cold? Mechanical difficulties? Y'know the typical Antarctic plane delay things. No. None of that. The plane didn't take off from Mcmurdo until over 4 hours later than it was scheduled becasue they didn't want to boomerang. If you have been following my blog you may understand the concept of boomeranging. When a flight is up & on its way and has to turn around and go back to its origin, because of one of the above listed issues. 90% of the time it's bad weathuh! in McMurdo & at Pole. What was odd about this flight delay, was the plane was headed AWAY from the most likely source of the bad weathuh! Namely, Antarctica. It was headed for Christchurch. So what the hell? Ice Storm in Christchurch. No, seriously. There was some worry that the plane wouldn't even leave the Ice for...well...the ice. It did, but if they had boomeranged it would have been only (probably) the 2nd flight north ever to boomerang back south. The only other one I've ever heard of was a mechanical issue. Years ago.
It was quite the thought for us here: An Ice Storm in Christchurch causing a flight FROM the Ice to be delayed. Yeah. Irony.
On Monday evening I walked into the Galley to be greeted by a large bowl of fresh oranges, a captivating sight in their quintessential orangey goodness. I stood there and pondered the brightness of their skin, chose an orange with great satisfaction, and...before lifting my orange (one of the last 10 or so in this white bowl) I noticed one of the saddest most heartrending sights I've ever seen: A tiny spider. In a bowl of oranges. In Antarctica. I was charmed & stunned. I have not seen ANY wildlife in over two months. No insects, no spiders, no birds, no mammals, no cats, no nothin'. (OK, maybe at some of the parties here...) I got all verklempt. I stood there staring at that bowl long enough that one of the DAs noticed me standing there, came over and said, "Having a hard time making a choice?" He had just arrived Mainbody so he didn't quite get the impact of a spider in Antarctica. A smal