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.