Boatloads

After staring across the white plane of the frozen Ross Sea for several months, a boat on the horizon is like a benign UFO, patiently clearing a path from the ice edge, revealing water.  In the distance the icebreaker looks like a new high-rise building that popped up overnight.  It doesn’t seem to move, but within twelve hours, it’s suddenly in front of town, towering above the ice, the insistent drone of the diesel engines joining the industrial chorus of town machinery.  Though slow, it is inexorable: the hundred or so seals lounging in its path lazily shifted position, some encircled by the turnaround loop the ship carves.  Hundreds more seals have convened further up the ice, generously sprinkled across the ridges and melt pools in front of Scott Base.

I finally made it to the bar at Scott Base this season.  A friend played guitar and sang, so the usual boisterous-can-of-sardines vibe was, thankfully, tamed.  And I got to enjoy a Shuttles perk—stealth pick up and ride over the hill when the regular shuttle van was already full.

There and Back Again

Autumn set in all at once, the temps plunging down to the teens, with unforgiving chill winds, and I wore my hat for the first time in weeks.  Shaggy-haired, somewhat-greasy people are returning from field camps, scientists are packing up their samples, and shipping containers are trundling around town, like offerings raised high on forklifts, in preparation for the annual resupply boat. 

This year the boat is packed with construction materials to update and expand station.  But more importantly, it will have some fresh fruits and veggies to perk us up and mercifully end the fascist parade of beige and brown that has usurped the cafeteria.  Some cook friends admitted that we are pretty much down to Scandinavian Blend™ (a sad and non-sequitur frozen medley: cauliflower+green beans+carrots=Norway???), and corn, both cobbed and cobless.  I’m not sure when Iowa tricked society into thinking corn is a vegetable, but it is not. 

To change things up a bit, last night a friend and I got tarot card readings from a bearded, plaid shirted, Alaska ice road construction guy.  It was less of a mystical-read-your-future experience and more a self-acceptance therapy session.  He shuffled and dealt, and the cards provided a jumping off point for discussing troublesome feelings.  Around us, the Coffee House was filled with relaxed Sunday night chatter, softly clinking glasses, trills of laughter and rolled Rs from the Spanish Club, door hinges creaking to announce friends’ arrival, heavy comfortable chairs scuffing across the floor into sociable arrangement.