Ice, White & Blue

In Which the Author Bids Adieu to Her Blog Host

2009-06-17T15:57:59+00:00

Okay, I've done the research and made the decision, I am migrating this blog over to Wordpress. My new blog site is: www.icewishes.wordpress.com Bookmark me, add me to your feed, your RSS, whatever. Come on over to my new home and bid me welcome. I am adding my archives bit by bit, chronologically, so if you want to go back and read my old stuff, starting in 2004 when I first got word I was headed to the Ice for my first season, now is a good time to do so.

Posted by coldwish | Comments Tags: south pole waste winter 2009

Forced Blog Name Change & Apologies

2009-06-13T14:31:06+00:00

Hello readers, I've just been informed by my blog host that they will be changing their name and thus the address of my blog, the URL as you will, as of next week. If you have me on any kind of feed or have a link to me on your blog you will lose access to me unless you change it. http://icewishes.us.splinder.com Because of the short notice and the dissatisfying service I have received from this blog host I am looking to relocate to another hosting service. Other than blogspot and livejournal, does anyone have any suggestions as to where I could migrate my entire archives to whilst handicapped by very limited satellite time and slow internet access. I will maintain my archives with my current host until I can find another place to live. Then I'm outa heah! Pleas email me with suggestions at my gmail account iceDOTspinner and let me know of any good ideas. I'll also be checking comments. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this will cause those of you who follow me. Cheers, G.

Posted by coldwish | Comments (2) Tags: south pole waste winter 2009

La Luna La Bella Luna

2009-06-12T15:29:00+00:00

The difference outside between when we have no moon and the stars blanket the black skies above us like phosphorescence in the ocean, and when the moon is up and full white in the sky is significant. Both are beautiful and peaceful, regardless of the temperatures. The light of the moon fades the stars and dims the auroras, but what it sheds on us, this tiny station of humans struggling to survive the harsh winter in the centre of the polar plateau, is miraculous. There is so much light that it reveals details of the snowscape I cross, the sharp edges of sastrugi, the rounded scales of snowdunes and textures scoured into the hard and soft snow beneath my boots. There are shadows cast before me long and detailed, advancing across the silver blue of the snow in the shape of me like company I have not seen in a long time. I navigate exclusively sans headlamp, my ability to perceive details and objects and direction much enhanced. My eyes catch peripherally on the tiny shadows of the rough landscape, imagining the dark patches are strange runaway human debris, or some small crouched animal, or mysterious holes in the snow. It is bright out with the moon full and white lit, the sky clear and the winds calm. I have not seen the sun, let alone twilight, in so long that my imagination fails to recall this landscape in it, it has been forever in my memory and thoughts this darkened place of peace and fewer people and less industrial activity and noise. I cannot imagine the light of the sun, the heat of it, I cannot bear to think how bright and invasive it will be, forcing the return of tinted goggles, and more people. I have existed for months now seeing only between the slit of fabric of my hat pulled down low and my gaiter pulled up high, alone outside in the dark. Some days the wind picks up, like today. We are about 30 knots of wind at its peak, and this windy day has picked up snow and ice crystals and blown them around us like a ferociously shaken snowglobe. I walked outside between the LO (LOgistic Facility/Arch) and the Dome (the old station, now empty), in the valley there, or pocket in the snow, and the wind struck like fierce sharp explosions of ice, striking my eyes dartlike and painful, but from no one direction, just a swirl of white. I walked out the LO door and judged the 10 metre distance between structures and walked until I found myself close to climbing the dome. I navigated along the edge to the door, then upon opening the giant barn door into the dome, got blown hanging on the door inward with the wind. I rode the door to its inner limit, placed my boots back on the snow and leaned my entire weight into it to close it against the wind and snow blowing in, until I could latch it. Inside the Dome for Food Pull with Erin, I found artificial light and a reprieve from the wind as I helped hunt down the food items we'd need in the station for the next few weeks. But soon we were done, the motley crew of volunteers, and I had to venture outside to check my waste line at DZ: Which triwalls were full, which were getting full, which ones had covers still on in the brisk winds that funneled beneath the elevated station and blew out the backside where my triwalls sat, getting deeper and deeper in the drifted snow every day. Visibility was amusing. The moon is bright and light in the sky, but the snow blowing at ground level, up to about 4 metres, softens everything to a glowing grey blue silver mist. Distant lights on buildings, by which I navigate and orient myself in the dark, appear hazy and indistinct. I could not make out my feet with any ease, let alone the footing. In front of my triwalls grow constant drifts and valleys and cliffs of snow and I fell frequently to my knees, unable to judge how high to lift my boots to climb. A few times I stepped off one of these 2 foot edges and landed with a jarring right up my leg, through my knee and up my spine to my head to make my teeth clack. If I was facing into the wind rushing from under the narrow space under the station I was blinded instantaneously by needles of ice hitting my eyeballs, if I pulled my hood down to protect my face I knew not where I was going except into the wind. Yet when I stopped my pathetic struggle of trying to make blind headway, and I looked up, there was the sky, and the moon grinning benevolently down on my efforts. Clear and easy hung the moon in the dark sky. I love this place more than anything I have ever known. It frequently shaves off layers of my emotional defense system and peels my perceptions of myself and my place in the world back to naked and vulnerable. At times it is unbearable to be so forcibly opened up like that, to respond so viscerally to this environment. I am frequently splayed out on the snow breathing hard in my efforts to contain the shrieking joy and bubbles of light that threaten to explode from me in tears and shouts of astonishment to be such a lucky person. I am no adventurer. I'm just a small middle-aged woman counting the stars and counting them as blessings. I realize my luck to be here. I recognize the often hard journey it took to get here, and I pay fealty to the many gears that have turned to land me on my back under the polar moon light at the South Pole, smile on my face under my frozen gaiter, tears in my eyes freezing into balls of ice on my eyelashes that go plink plink as I blink upwards into the night sky in the dead of winter.

Posted by coldwish | Comments (4) Tags: south pole waste winter 2009

Futbol in a Box

2009-06-13T09:52:00+00:00

Every Thursday after work, before dinner, a small collection of us Polies collects in the gym to play soccer, or football as it is known in the rest of the world. We must be insane. Of course, in the darkness and the cold and the wind it is not possible for us to play outdoors. Even in the summer Polar Futbol is played inside. Just because it is in the relative warmth of the station does not make it any easier. Though I do imagine the outdoors soccer would be more of a killer. We'd have to be wearing much of our ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) Gear, and the run to fetch the out of bounds ball would be unimaginably hard. So we keep it in a warm box: Jeremy, Robert, Ross, Nathan, Emily, Jonathan, Camille, Weeks and me so far. We don't all show up every Thursday and Sunday, but enough of us to get a game going do, and some extras to spell those of us dying on the court. Why do I think this is insane? Imagine, if you will, a warm well-lit gym, a basketball court with blue deeply padded walls and markings on the floor for various sports: from volleyball, to whiffleball, to basketball. It is not the warmest room on station, but with the heat of effort we are soon thankful for the slight edge of Antarctic chill hovering on the air and radiating upwards from the cold floor. The goal for soccer is not more than a 3 foot square duct taped on the wall under the basketball net. Played two on two or three on three, we soccer players face off against each other over an aged dirty white soccer ball with blue tape striped across and around it. The game starts and we are off and running up and down the court, charging into each other, mashed into the corners of the gym fighting over the ball at our feet. The "5th mans" we have along the wall, square padded pillars, add extra corners and unexpected rebounds of the ball. Some of the guys are good enough that they can use the walls to pass the ball to their teammate, but most of the time it surprises us when we boot the ball and it comes right back at us at speed, or ends up somewhere completely out of target. It's a different game altogether from outdoor soccer. Less than 2 minutes later we are all gasping and panting like asthmatics, or chronic and aged sufferers of COPD, bent over supporting ourselves hands on knees. Already I am dying for a break, but the game goes on. There's no sneaking up on an opponent when your lungs are gasping and wheezing so loudly, struggling for breath. The game quickly slows down, and the ball races across the gym ahead of us with no one running after it. It's quite comic really, and I feel only slightly bad for being so out of shape and old when the younger fitter men also struggle much the same way. We are playing soccer in a box at altitude. And as far as I am concerned there's not enough oxygen on the plateau for all of us. Sometimes my need is so dire I can see stars, or perhaps they are oxygen molecules, I wouldn't know, I'm probably also hallucinating. We have frequent breaks for water. None of us is visibly sweating. It is too dry here for sweat to do anything but expire and disappear instantaneously from our pores. We are red-faced, gasping, and feel heated, but there is no evidence of moisture. But it must be so, because soon after soccer ends, I find myself struck with a headache of monumental proportions from the dehydration. I do drink during the game, consuming in 30-40 minutes of playing almost the entire litre bottle of water I brought with me. It's a great way of spending extra aggression, by barging into a padded corner with a man almost always taller and better than myself and struggling over possession of the ball. It's far easier to get all up in their face about it than chasing them and the ball all the way down the court. I've been promised it will get better, easier even, to find the oxygen necessary to survive a soccer game, if I keep on going regularly to the games. And I will. I enjoy this version of soccer, and the company I'm playing it with. Afterwards it is easy to tell the soccer players, even from out of sight, hours afterwards. We are the ones coughing, vigourously clearing our throats and frequently sounding like we are trying to hack up a lung. My lungs are raw, my throat dry and my chest aches with the work I had to do to hunt down and inhale the few dessicated oxygen molecules we have here at Pole. But it is a very satisfying way to spend 30-45 minutes twice a week.

Posted by coldwish | Comments Tags: south pole waste winter 2009

The Search

2009-06-04T17:25:00+00:00

Every week I get a Search Report from FreeFind, the people who provide the search engine for my blog. A lot of the time I get spammed by searches for things like "trisha bathing" or "thai massage girls", probably the safest of a whole host of examples I would want to put on my blog. But lately, it seems a few of you readers have been exhibiting a bit of curiosity about very specific members of our community, and how we relate to one another. Perhaps there is even someone off-Ice who is concerned about his/her partner on Ice and their behaviour, and was hoping that I would be so uncouth as to blog about it here. Ha! Here is the list of search terms recently used on my blog, there are some repeats: spiff flirt romantic sleeping with cheating flirt flirt hookups sex cheating relationship relationship ------------ beeker -------------- doc physician --------- So, based on the searches my blog received lately, as listed above, I'm going to create a story that has absolutely no basis in reality (other than the fierce beauty of all Polie women) to explain the confluence of odd searches on my blog. ***** Once upon a time there was a man who chose to winter at the South Pole. He was a wicked flirt in a committed relationship with his lovely partner ------------. She tried to winter, but failed the PQ process, and couldn't join him. But knowing how excited he was to see the South Pole and its auroras and the stars of winter, she willingly let him go without her. They had a candid discussion about sex and their separation from each other, and decided that though the 9 months would be long, they would remain sexually faithful to each other throughout the separation. This was a very romantic choice. They were in love. What she didn't anticipate, and nor did he, was the large number of beautiful women also wintering at Pole that winter: among them our charming -------------------------------------------, and --------------------------------------------------------- As the winter progressed and it got dark and cold outside, -------- started worrying about her flirt of a man. He had stopped communicating as clearly and as eagerly to her about everything going on down here. The thought he was holding back on her. She didn't quite understand this distanced feeling she had from him, and suspected that he may be sleeping with another woman. She knew her partner had a weakness for women ---------------, and focussed on those few wintering with him. In her anxiety, and in his lack of communication, she started haunting the blogs of Polies wintering with him, searching for the names of the women on station who might be hooking up with the men on station. She looked for pictures, but stumbled into some of the SPIFF films on YouTube. She didn't realize that the South Pole International Film Festival is a summer activity, so the images of the beautiful women of Pole she encountered there would not be the ones her partner could be cheating on her with. But the level of beauty and creativity and intelligence among the women she saw in those short films worried her mightily. So she came to this insignificant blog, stumbling across it via a Google search of "Antarctic blog" and quickly spent a few days searching for evidence of stories of her partner and another woman. And found nothing. Please note that this story has absolutely NO basis in reality and is not meant to impugn anyone's morals either on or off-Ice. Because though I may get really personal and reveal a lot about myself, I don't talk specifically about other people unless it is positive, and even then I usually get permission to do so before posting it. Occasionally I mention names, if they play a role in my story, but if I don't have anything good to say about them I don't say it. I sure as shit will imply it, but never identifiably. I don't gossip about shit like sex and relationships and hookups. Yes, we are 43 strong, and 10 of us are women. Yes, several women are in committed relationships with partners here on Ice with them. All of whom met each other on Ice in previous seasons or this most recent season. There are a few free agent females here, single and smart and gorgeous and funny, and most of us straight. And yes, there is flirting going on, there must be hook ups but if there are they are being kept very much on the down low. There are many men yearning to see their off-Ice partners again, who talk to them every night on the phone when the satellites come up. We haven't had any major relationship issues down here, no awful break ups to split the station loyalties between former partners, no great romances developing between former strangers. We are much too preoccupied with how unhappy so many of us are with this winter, with so much happening down here, to be gossiping about who is fucking whom, let alone blogging about it. We talk about program policies, events, meetings, the change in contractor, and frustrations. We also talk about food, and sleep, and travel plans off-Ice, or adventures in the past. The FNGs have many questions for the more seasoned few about New Zealand. We are already fantasizing about fly fishing, hiking, sitting on beaches, getting massages, going to the hot springs, running the hell away in a rental camper van, or going diving in Australia. It is early in the season for this behaviour, but it keeps our minds free of the carping and bitching and gossiping and clusters of disgruntled unhappy Polies gathered all over this station in dark corners fomenting. This season the station seems to have embodied the immortal words of Jake Speed, a five times in a row winterover here: "Beat the rush, go toast early." We have. It's only June yet. ****Please note that this story has absolutely NO basis in reality and is not meant to impugn anyone's morals either on or off-Ice. But I have been requested to black out the names used.****

Posted by coldwish | Comments Tags: south pole waste winter 2009

Bitter Endless

2009-05-30T22:24:00+00:00

I'm here at Pole during the long night, about 5+ months to go before I see grass and trees and cats and exposed skin and birds again. 5+ months before I taste an avocado again. 3 more months before I see the sun again. Right now it is a sky filled so full of stars and the moon bright shining silver blue on the snow and auroras dancing green and purple like writing in the sky. I am here at the station with 42 other people, the same people without change since Feb 16th and I will see no one else, no one new, before Oct 17th or later. I miss faces, familiar faces of friends who are not here, the softness of my cat's fur and her purr as she licks my neck, her greeting as I walk into a room. But I also know after 9 months with nothing but what I have here now I will be shocked and scared by the faces of people who I haven't been looking at for the whole winter. Friends from last summer will be orange and shocking and scary to me, even as I grab them in hugs so tight I may knock them over with the force of my need to hold them. I know if you handed me my cat right now I'd squeeze her so tight in my need for comfort that I would probably kill her, or drown her in my tears of joy. This winter is long and many of us have been toast since very early on. Too early. There have already been incidents where good members of our community have lost their shit, loudly and with bad words directed at good people who they will have to live and work with for the next 5+ months without cease. Some people have become paranoid insomniacs reacting defensively to everything, even as simple as how soft the toilet paper is, others drink alone on their rooms every night. Some people argue just to argue, taking stands on wrong issues in wrong places where they are afraid to admit they are wrong. There are hatreds developing, people being avoided, people avoided. We are simply too much for each other. We can't get away. Some people have gained weight, others have lost it, some continue on either trajectory. Some people are afraid of the dark and the cold and rarely venture outside and looks of pity cross their faces as we who work out there get dressed for the cold. Some of us prefer the outdoors, the dark, the stars in the sky, shooting and blinking and blanketing the black moonless firmament above us. Some of us only find peace outdoors. Some of us would rather shovel the same snow over and over again than face another hour in front of the computer, or a minute interaction with someone whose simplest personality quirk, once endearing and curious and unique, has turned into the one thing about them they could get murdered for. Some of us work alone, invisible. Some of us work always in a team, with the same people every damn day, every damn hour. Some people overreact, some others underreact. Some are overwhelmed, some underwhelmed. Some people work more hours than they should, some others hardly work. Some of us miss family, some of us miss sunlight, some of us miss Indian food, some of us miss the touch of a pet, a hug, the kiss and caress of a lover, a spouse, a stranger. None of us miss advertisements and commercials and the constant pounding of consumerism and the artificial needs created in us by clever marketing. But that does not mean that some of us don't buy and shop and lurk online in the world of untouchable material goods, shipping boxes of fantasy goods to family and friends at home ready for us to open when we get home, with the glee of the NEW deprived, the joy of the bargain hunter, the lust of the consumer long denied. Some of us spend money even here, some of us spend nothing at all. Some people don't sleep, others can't wake up, some people do both depending on the day. Some people separate from others, sit alone. Others are never seen alone, cannot be deprived of their chosen company, their safety. Some people drift from alone to group top alone again. Some people are like children and tattle on others, some people don't give a shit about the small stuff and have no opinion. Some people think we are well-led, well-guided through this winter. Others don't. Some people are universally liked. Most of us aren't. We are 43 diverse and odd people foisted upon each other by proximity and boredom and repetition, into relationships we would never have chosen outside this rare isolated space. Some of us will leave here never to speak to another 2009 Winterover Polie again, done with it, over it, exhausted by it. Some of us will leave here but here will never leave them, never feeling quite right unless it is with someone who wintered with us, like soldiers who served in some strange war together, have a rare bond shared by only just under 1600 people in the entire history of the world, those few of us who have wintered at the South Pole. Some of us pace the halls, restless with wanting to go somewhere else. Some of us browse the webpages of our dreams, thinking about our futures post-Ice: vacations, other people, other weather, other horizons, other jobs. Other. Some of us plan next winter here, unable to escape the pull of Pole, the cocoon of security, the illusion of comfort, no matter the strain of disgruntlement that runs through this season. There is no escape from here. We are tired. Our patience is limited, we are snapping sooner and sooner each month before our two day weekend comes around. Weeks grow long, tempers grow short, frustrations bring anger and tears and depression and drinking and bad behaviour and judgment and sleeplessness and a host of other ills both social and private. There are only 43 of us, and we dream of each other, we dream of this place, we wake to each other, we wake to this place. We can't leave. I look at the horizon, the faint silver blue line of snow that touches the black of night, the stars almost at my feet in the dark that covers us. I look up and get dizzy and tearful at the Milky Way, its galaxies cold clusters of light against the dark, more detailed to my naked eye than I have ever seen. I watch the auroras dance and hurdle and unfurl like cats tails, cuneiform writing in the sky, telling me stories I should be able to read. I see the moon so bright in the sky and the ice crystals in the air between us making huge rainbows that touch the horizon, circling that fat white moon, a Moondog. I have watched auroras spell names and tell secrets, whip tails across the sky, flash low on the horizon green and blue like the moon on the wrinkled sea above my head forging a path to the horizon, a way out of here. I have countless times made wishes on the shooting stars, swift flashes of "Ooooh!s" and pointing and gasps of "Did you see!", fallen over backward and lain flat on the bumpy cold snow gazing upward, trying to see more, more sky, the whole sky, afraid to miss a single spark, a change of colour from yellow to red to green to blue of these bright jewels in the frigid black velvet of the heavens. Yet still, as much as I love winter, I am tired of it. Tired of being here and no where else. I want a different winter, one in which I don't mind coming inside and seeing my fellow travelers on this tiny station. I love the snow, the dark, the cold, the wind, the drifting, the impossible tasks accomplished slowly and carefully, the sky, the peace outside. I want to be able to come inside and share this miracle, have it sustain me, energize me to survive the next months to come, or even moments. I just wish it were as peaceful inside, that there were people inside to whom I was eager to return, to tell of the sky the dark the cold the effort that brings joy to my skin and bones and flesh and heart and mind. I come inside wanting to hug someone with happiness. But then reality hits. The ones I want to hug are not here right now. So I retreat to my room. And that is as far as I will get away for the next 5+ months.

Posted by coldwish | Comments (5) Tags: south pole waste winter 2009

Polar Paranoia

2009-05-25T19:17:13+00:00

Some of you may have noticed my latest post up for less than 24 hours, then removed. Well, as innocuous as it may have seemed I reconsidered it for fear of getting in more trouble, or getting other people in trouble. None of us, especially me, needs to be reprimanded or punished any further for even the most innocent of missteps. So if you are reading this and going "Wha?!" because you missed that 24 hour window to read it, feel free to email me at the address to the right of this page and I'll email it to you. Introduce yourself first. And then don't forward it, or post it elsewhere. This paranoia may be unjustified, but I simply don't know what can get me or others in deep shit, or even shallow shit. I've already dug myself out of a veritable shitstorm once this season, and I don't need it again. That last one packed a financial punch. Hope to hear from you.

Posted by coldwish | Comments (5) Tags: south pole waste winter 2009

Current Polie Winterover Blogs

2009-05-20T00:06:00+00:00

Since I don't post that often, nor do I include photographs, I thought I'd pass these blogs on to you. These are all people currently wintering at Pole with me. Nathan Greenland: Freeze Dried Engineer Nathan is the FEMC Project Engineer. Erin Wilkinson: Erin on Ice Erin is our Grub Lugger. Patrick Cullis: Calvinball Cully is a beaker (scientist) for ARO, and our best photographer. Jeremy Johnson: Frozen at the Pole Jeremy is our Work Order Scheduler. Marc Weekley: Capt. Splash on Ice Marc is a beaker for ARO. Weeks Heist: The Year of Winter Weeks is the Facilities Engineer, and a whole lot more. Michele Gentille: Harriett's Tomato Michele is the head chef, and my goodness can this woman cook. Keith Reimink: One Long Night Another cook, and filmmaker. When you get bored with my words, head over there. Hopefully between the bunch of us you'll get your fix of South Pole lurking even when our brains turn to mush and we become non-compos mentis and incommunicado as winter progresses.

Posted by coldwish | Comments (3) Tags: south pole waste winter 2009

The Cold That Pauses

2009-05-20T21:41:22+00:00

I was steaming. Literally. I stood outside at -72F, in a windchill hovering around -110F, and I had shed my Big Red parka, taken off all but my thin wool beanie, and was in my polypro liners. But still, I was steaming in the cold from the heat radiating from my body. My face, if you could have seen it in the dark moonless night of blowing snow particles and snow fog, was bright red. Sweat rolled down my cheeks, but mostly froze the instant it oozed from my pores. My eyelashes were rimed and sticking to my wet cheeks, eyes brimming with warm tears moistening my dry eyeballs. I formed my own fog, heat rising from my body, and still I could have disrobed to my skin against the elements and been quite comfortable. This was my first ever outdoor hot flash at Pole. I am menopausal. I had begun skipping or doubling and even tripling periods in the last year or so. My normal habit of the 23 day cycle--in which I knew when I ovulated and had just a few days of light flow with a few hours of pale cramping for which I took painkillers for convenience not unbearability--had been completely upended. Last summer I had a 4-6 week period in which I did not get a period at all, but was blessed with regular steaming hot flashes that had me dressing in snap button shirts over my tank top so I could have the pleasure of yanking and popping my shirt open instantaneously (if loudly and violently) to cool off. I hiked in Denali National Park under these circumstances, and would have scared bears off with my constant unsnapping and resnapping. But I once more settled into regularity of both bleeding and temperature and started on my Summer season at Pole. I missed one period during the season. Then started my winter and all hormonal hell broke loose. My period now ghosts through my panties or hemorrhages for weeks on end. My nights, though not flushed and sweaty, are disrupted by the flux of my body's hot/cold ratio. I toss and turn, too hot for covers, then too cold for skin against air, then back to too warm. I have not had hot flashes of the sort that necessitate the changing of pajamas or sheets, but I am regularly removing and replacing covers throughout the nights. But on Monday as I dressed for the outdoors, I could feel my temperature rising. I dismissed it as the normal feeling of warmth that comes with wearing as many layers of warm clothing as I had on whilst still inside. But even as I descended into the darkness down the snowy stairs at DZ (Destination Zulu) and headed out to check on my Waste Line (the line of triwalls close to the station where station waste is put) I could feel myself building up a sweat. Perhaps the slow onset had much to do with my body's shock at the sudden influx of cold, but it pulled its hormonal charge together and fended off any feeling of cold as I opened each bin, climbing inside a few to tramp down the contents and make space for a few more bags. I was soon headed to the Waste Yard to build new triwalls, stepping heavily and slowly through the fog, aiming in the general direction of one of the small lights outside the BIF (Balloon Inflation Facility, where the meteorologists launch their daily weather balloon). The moon was still evident in the sky, but only as a fuzzy fingernail of light low on the horizon over my waste berms to the left, not bright enough to provide anything but direction, certainly shedding no light on the plateau. I squinted and stumbled in the darkness, but sure of my general direction, until I came upon my Waste Yard, vague darker shapes on the snow. By the time I arrived I was shedding ECW gear like I had just walked into a 200 degree sauna fully-clothed, drinking hot chocolate. This, I knew now, was not sweat from effort, but the ridiculous heat of a hot flash. I figured any satellite passing overhead would register me as some kind of moving thermal event and would report me to a committee of military and scientific experts to be investigated. I had to be on some kind of radar. It's not that I was impervious to the cold, no, I still felt it. In fact, I felt it on a deeper level than on previous trips outside. I was wet through my many layers of long underwear, and my body--as seemingly steaming hot, as much heat as the cold polar air reacted against, blanketing me with rising ice crystals of a personal frozen fogbank--was still vulnerable and distantly chilled feeling. The contradiction in temperatures, and what I was sensing within my body, was fascinating. I was probably hypothermic, yet my mind read my body, and the cold air reacted against the heat I was putting off, without charging my core temperature up high enough not to feel the cold creep inside. Soon enough, through the efforts of building several triwalls, large and small, I could feel the flash fading. Soon I was standing, near naked against the chill air and wind, without the internal heat raging and keeping me in the illusion of warmth. And I was wet, through and through. I quickly donned my hats and gloves and parka and headed over to the closest warm building near my Waste Yard, the Rodwell. I did not head for the well-lit comforts of the station, or the closer BIF, or my Haz Palace, but raced as fast as my boots and weight could be moved to the VERY closest warm building to me. My temperature had dropped precipitously and I was wet outdoors at temperatures you cannot even imagine until you have experienced them. I stormed into the Rodwell, our source of water the Rodriguez Well, and threw my jacket off again, and hugged the warm boiler like a long-lost lover until I took the chill off and felt somewhat more equilibrium. In about 15 minutes my magical long underwear had wicked away enough of the moisture against my body, and the dry Antarctic air had removed the rest of the moisture, or at least enough to lend me the illusion of dryness and warmth. I dressed again, and returned to my Waste Yard to finish building my triwalls. I still felt the chill up my legs, on the backs of my thighs, and could follow the folds of my damp clothes as I bent and pulled and strapped and cracked the triwalls into shape. But the sweat of effort, and the heat of hard work were sufficient to keep me going until lunch. I did disrobe to my skin after my retreat to the station for lunch. I spent my lunch break with all my layers of long underwear in the dryer drying. I had to head back outside after lunch and even a mild feeling of damp was going to be just too much at this point. My body temperature had probably fluctuated more ridiculously than bearable and I knew I would be vulnerable to the slightest chill, so a start with warm dry clothes against my skin would be vital. In the battle of my hormones vs cold polar air, I'd say, though it wasn't a complete smackdown win on the part of hormones, they still held their ground against the heavy hand of the Polar Plateau in winter. Next time the battle ensues, I'll be staying inside for it. I don't need to be deep in the dark of my furthest berm shoveling a space out when I get hit by another one of those personal thunderstorms, and at the first hint of internal rain I'll be headed back to the station. The window between my overheated self giving the steamy finger to the extreme cold and my wet self vulnerable and too cold to walk back to safety was a small one. And my epitaph will not read "Death By Menopause at the South Pole".

Posted by coldwish | Comments (5) Tags: south pole waste winter 2009

My Secret Landscape

2009-05-02T17:14:06+00:00

Some days the silliness is restricted to that which is in my own head, the thoughts I have as I struggle with yet another not quite impossible but certainly effortful task. I like the days spent outdoors doing these things: the hunt through the berms for the right barrel, or to find out if the triwalls I have for winter supplies have been stapled or just glued on the joins. It may seem insurmountable--the cold, the dark, the heavy gear, the climbing and lumping along at the merest physical task--but it is just something that needs doing, and I go do it. I prefer the physical effort to the database work at a desk in an artificially lit office with cardboard over the window. Days in the office, are days I feel more fatigued and depressed. I will grab at any excuse to go outside and play (errr....work). As much as the after effects of a full day, or even a half day, outdoors in the cold are dehydration and physical exhaustion, my mental response to it is one of high self-esteem. I am buzzing with energy and happiness. I feel more like me than the days I am trapped inside. Yet, conversely, I also dread the outdoors. Not the BEING outdoors, but the effort of getting dressed and getting prepared for the outdoors. There are days when I am just so tired to start with that the idea of gearing up in my 25-30lbs of ECW gear is unbearable. But then I do it, and I am pleased to have done so. I can feel it in my bones, the pleasure, the injection of energy. Regardless of what I actually may achieve, and it is always less than I expect I will, going outdoors, once I get out the door, is a magnificent thing here. The other day was a long day outdoors, at temps averaging -80F, windhill about -95-100F (minimal really) and it was a joy. I clambered and climbed and gallumphed in the darkness over my snow-covered and softened supply berm looking at my collection of triwalls, investigating something for one of my bosses in Denver. Many people here, when I mentioned my task for the day, groaned on my behalf, bemoaning the inability of those office bound folks to understand the darkness and the cold and the effort in such a simple request. Which is a crock of shit, really, the Denver folks I work for know the ridiculous nature of this place, and the effort involved in everything here. There are some things I have been asked to do, which truly are difficult, but not because of the cold and the dark, so much as the accumulated weight of several winters' worth of hard packed snow. Inventory under that stuff is just not on the cards for me, that's going to have to be a summer thing with a whole crew of people involved. But if they insisted, I'd try my best. I see these things as a challenge, and when I mention what I have to do there is a half-bragging quality to it, not one of complaining. Few people here see the work I do, as I do it almost entirely alone and independent, be it paperwork, research, or the multitude of tasks that take me outside to actually organize and command the world of physical waste. So when I mention this, some of it is to alert people to the fact that yes, though they don't see it, I do actually work; and to let people know that if they don't see me ever again, they might want to look on this particular berm for my stiff and frozen body. And they'd better leave my body there for the winter, and plant a Canadian flag there in memorium, or so they can find me under the drifting snows come summer. So I started my morning the other day on the supply berm. At first I walked around it trying to identify, under the coating of snow, the pallets of flat triwalls, frequently reaching up to rub the inch or so of snow from the vertical surfaces to see if I were so lucky as to locate a label. Pretty soon I was hauling myself up the side of the berm into the stacks of triwalls and drums and pallets stored there. It is somewhat like being in a deserted overgrown cityscape, vertical towers all snow-fluffy and harmless and seemingly unidentifiable but for vaguely familiar shapes, a small road between them running down the length of the berm, drifted in with snow frequently a metre high or more. I was hidden there, except for the occasional glimpse of my headlamp as I turned it on to see details on the towers. Even with no moon, and only stars to light my way, the snow was still lit up and the world was still navigable without the invasion of artificial light. I certainly stumbled and ended up on my ass or my knees in the snow as I perused this secret hideaway path, depth perception at this low light is not easy. But with a clear sky and not wreathed in the smoke cloud that exists downwind of the power plant, I could distinguish snow from not-snow, as everything not-snow is darker. When I came upon a stack of the right kind of triwalls I clumsily pulled myself up on top, one mitten wrapped around the strapping and the other flailing for a grip on the flat snowy surface as I tried to hop up and haul myself sideways and one-legged and rolling over onto my back, to the surface. A surface covered in more than a foot of snow more often than not. I'd clear the snow off with my hands and forearms in great sweeps, to see if I could find the information I needed beneath the snow. Frequently I'd stop and roll onto my back and just gaze up through the fur ruff of my Big Red parka, blinking a rapid, icy-eyelashed, clinking tango, into the night sky. Once the berm had been explored and the information requested found, I traipsed over to my Waste Yard, where I keep the minimal things necessary to band and strap and build triwalls. Well, we'd had a bit of a wind (about 30knots) in the days previous and the stack of flat small triwalls (T32s), though strapped down with a few small wooden pallets on it for weight had...ermmm....gone feral. Yup, where once I had a stack of T32s shoulder high the wind had picked them up and scattered them downwind of my Waste Yard like so many cards. There had been a veritable stampede of wild triwalls and my once shoulder high stack was now about mid-calf. I stood there in the dark for a moment, slightly disoriented by my new landscape, thinking, "Gosh, maybe I'd better be more concerned about supplies of T32s for the winter than I had thought." My winter mind is slow to catch on to things. It wasn't until I wandered a bit past the short pile that I found the slithery flat pancakes of triwalls skewed right off into the darker dark. I could vaguely make out the patches of darker areas, looking like holes in the lighter snow. I trudged further out and continued to find more and more scattered randomly around the snow. Thus started the remainder of my day. It was by no means with a sinking heart, or a muttered string of curses in multiple languages that I discovered what had happened. It was just another thing to do outside. I picked up each single triwall from the snow, my arms spread wide, one mitten wedged between the flaps for grip. I backed my way, dragging them one by one, back to the stack of triwalls. Frequently landing on my kiester on the stack as I backed into it, triwall on top of me, trying to remove the mitten from its narrow slit between flaps without losing either fingers or the mitten itself and my hand slipping out to leave the mitten behind. Sometimes I backed over other triwalls, slick with a surface coating of snow, and staggered and fell on my ass or to my knees. Sometimes I landed on other things in the yard. About 30 triwalls had run off from their future of domestic and industrial servitude, into the wild black yonder, and I had to herd them back up, one by one. It was a hard task that took several hours before lunch, and then another hour or more after lunch. An unnecessary task, if I had strapped the pack down tighter. But no grumbling, just the work, and the joy, and the laughter at each stumble, and the occasional glorious muffled tumble backwards to look up at the sky with its stars and its auroras. I recall my childhood in Nova Scotia, far enough north that it was mostly dark by the time I reached home after school in the winter. Any outdoor play time was usually after dinner in the dark. My memories of playing in the snow as a child, or playing pond hockey with the neighbouring kids, are all at night, under a clear black starlit sky. Every time I go outside here, I take these moments to feel that playfulness again, that sense of a softened secret landscape begging to be explored. I am dressed warmly, I have tasks to accomplish, but I still stop to stare up at the endless darkness, the sparkles, the occasional dancing streaking aurora, and I feel infinitely young again, every time, comforted by this continuum of winter-lit starclad memories. It is my home, these dark wintery nights, no matter how hard the labour or ridiculous the tasks and the conditions I do them in. The hard work seems small enough in the vastness of this place and my happiness when outside in it.

Posted by coldwish | Comments (3) Tags: south pole waste winter 2009