Bird Roast

Sometimes a rash proclamation becomes a creative germ.  Thought itself generates existence:

I flamingo therefore I am

This is what happens when a friend mentions they need something to decorate their door—or more accurately, require an identifier in order not to drunkenly stumble into the wrong room in hallway of nondescript doors.  I gathered intel that this person is a fan of philosophy, art, and flamingos, and so whipped up a cartoonish illuminated manuscript to grace the entrance of his abode.

The easygoing pace of work in Shuttles has also allowed me to volunteer some time in the bakery.  This year’s bread guy is great, churning out delicious sourdough, rye, seeded, and all manner of excellent loaves.  He didn’t even really need help with the 2,000 Thanksgiving dinner rolls, but I was nostalgic for manual labor, and he was happy to let me scatter some flour.

Highlights of the holiday weekend included: 

• a reunion show by the band Condition Fun, featuring original tunes about eating bacon and C-17 planes; sunny-blue-sky hike to Castle Rock
• shotgunning my first beer (I’ll do better next time!)
• laughing until breathless while my suitemates played the hit new video game Euro Truck Simulator 2, wherein you real-time drive a semi on a highway from, say, Olsztyn to Gdansk, including stopping at red lights, getting gas, and sleeping
• debating the merits of parenting a seal pup versus a human baby

And there was ham, so I didn’t have to eat turkey, which was fabulous.

Here’s another postmodern sculpture piece, brought to you by the airfield:

Suck it, Rothko.

Binding Resolution

When it is still, and quiet, and the sky is shrouded with cloud, the snow falls as in a snow globe.  The flakes are improbably large, their broad hexagonal arms defined with laser-cut precision.  Sunday at 3am is one of the few times no heavy machinery insistently beeps in reverse, and nary a helicopter domineeringly beats the air.  Sitting just so against the rocks one can meld into the hillside and become the scenery.

Also, there is a soundproofed rehearsal(???) room in the big gym.  This is another quiet refuge.  Or rather, it retains sounds within its walls.

For some reason, when driving alone in the van, I relish the most terrible pop and rap played on the radio.  The contrast between the majestic scenery and the artless music makes me laugh every time.  Such music taps into an emotional current of wild possibility that usually requires being drunk enough to find dancing to said music fun.

The funny thing about such incongruity is that sometimes man-made intrusions—aged shipping containers, cumbrous fuel tanks, air traffic control towers/shacks on skis, and ever-varying cargo piles—somehow assimilate with the stark beauty of the icy mountain landscape.  

two complementary forms

a field of sunflowers

Midnight Delta Driver

Not only is that the name of one of my favorite songs, it is also now—well, me.  We got Tina Marie back from the garage and I took her out to do some wheel packing, which means driving back and forth over mushy piles of snow that develop on the snow road.  And even though it’s light outside around the clock there is still an appreciable difference in the sun’s angle, providing dusky pinks and oranges from 1 - 5am.  It is also quiet as most of the rest of town sleeps, particularly so as it’s been overcast and the weather has kept planes away, meaning I get plenty of time in the office with my knitting project.

view of Hut Point from the beach, 1am

Quite a stretch of cloudy skies has also meant soothing heathery grays:

inadvertent modern art sculpture at the airfield

So far the hardest part of working nights is figuring out what day it is.  Instead of making plans for “tomorrow,” my fellow midrats say, “See you in the lounge after the next sleep.”  (Midrats is a fun term leftover from the Navy days, shorthand for “midnight rations,” a.k.a. lunch.  It’s what we call the nightshift.)  So far the best part of working nights is waking up on my Saturday morning, eating breakfast, and heading to the bar to hear some bands because it’s 9pm.  Even after partying with my daytime friends ‘til they pumpkin, I’m barely halfway into my day off.  Then the nighttime hush steals over McMurdo once more, and we midrats revel in the speedy internet, explore unlocked corridors, and sit uninterrupted in the ethereal underwater murk of the observation tube to listen to seal space-laser noises.  Click to listen!

Night Lights

And just like that, it’s like I never left.  In this place, seasonal workers, wanderers, wilderness guides, bush pilots, and disaffected office workers rest their itchy feet and enjoy the sense of community.  My suitemates’ creativity transformed the bland white rectangles in which we live into a cozy den/entertaining hub.  Cat refers to “the house” and decorated her front door with a plastic cat skeleton; Will picks his banjo and eats lentils by the bearskin rug; Julie fills the air with bird calls and patriarchy-toppling dialog; and I look starry-eyed at the rocks and snow and invite people over for fancy cheese.

me and Gale on the snow road

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Sidebar: As someone once eloquently put it, there is an elasticity to time here.  The endless sunlight combines with the long work days, the long long weeks, and the high frequency and intensity of social interaction to transform time into something simultaneously fleeting and abundant.

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So I drive a van!  And a giant moon rover thing called a Delta!  But, um, not very often—at least, not yet.  The squally weather and subsequent delay setting up the airfield means we have fewer people to drive around.  We’ve done a lot of training and sharing of cautionary/mocking tales of accidents past.  There are checklists and daily duties, checking of dipsticks and lug nuts, and hours and hours of leisure reading.  Also, I’m working the nightshift the first half of the season.  The uncanniness of eternal light and eating breakfast for dinner just unleashed a new dimension of time.

The sun about to emerge from a week-long cloud bank.