Visions and Revisions

Blue Marble

2012-01-27T08:11:00.000+13:00

A 'Blue Marble' image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA's most recently launched Earth-observing satellite - Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth's surface taken on January 4, 2012. Suomi NPP is...the first of a new generation of satellites that will observe many facets of our changing Earth."

The Suomi what?

NASA launched the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project, or NPP, on Oct. 28, 2011, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. NPP was renamed Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership, or Suomi NPP.

A polar-orbiting satellite? But that means it's checking in right here!!!

Censored

2012-01-24T03:17:00.005+13:00

You won't believe this. Or maybe you will! For a span of about four hours, this blog was blocked by the United States Antarctic Program in accordance with the NSF blah blah blah agreement. Not like I got a message in my inbox about it, either. I tried to bring up my homepage and the screen said: no. This site has been blocked. Just like that! In a strange game of blind-man's bluff, I could add or edit posts through the dashboard, which is password-protected, but I couldn't view or even preview any of my own pages. Great heavens. I've been censored.

I can't decide if this is hilarious or horrifying. Helios seems to think it was inevitable. It isn't as though they were violating my freedom of speech, because I could still say whatever I please, just that nobody operating out of the Antarctic network would be able to read it.

It's a strange feeling. A lot of torrents sites are blocked, and Skype severely frowned upon, ostensibly to prevent us from jamming up the bandwidth with illegal music and video downloads, preventing the scientists from doing their work. And of course porn, gambling, and whatever other "mature content" trips the wires of the filtering system. We were warned to be mindful of what we put in our blogs, too. I'm not surprised by the tap on all of our internet activities, but in a detached, speculative way, I can't help but wonder whether there's a machine out there registering particular words and phrases, or whether a real human being has the unenviable job of reading through our blogs (and there are a lot of them) and individually earmarking them for objectionable content.

Hi, censor! Enjoy this penguin comic. I had to get it sent by a third party, because The Perry Bible Fellowship is blocked, too.

What They Like Best

2012-01-17T01:33:00.040+13:00

Mid-rats bakers mostly make Breakfast. We make some other things, Rachel and I, sure; but our principal concern, the driving force behind all of our activities, is Breakfast. It's quite a task. We take it in turns. At the beginning of our shift, 9pm, we greet each other amiably, wash hands, don aprons and ask: who is making Breakfast? The process consists mainly of emptying boxes. Boxes of frozen pastries that arrive to us after a minimum of two years in transit and/or storage. The rest is smoke and mirrors: thawing them or baking them, gussying them up with cinnamon sugar, with chocolate, with drizzles of powdered-sugar icing. For the sake of our pride and our sanity, we balance these abominable pastries with box-mix muffins and coffeecakes, homemade scones and quick breads--but the truth is that around here people like shitty pastry. They like the Sara Lee frozen cheese danish best.

That's the routine, six days a week. And then on Sunday, by our powers combined, we make Brunch, which is a different animal altogether. In a more perfect world, the head baker would put together a menu, and the minions would busy themselves throughout the week with preparing the various elements of Brunch, stashing them in the freezer until the big day. We don't live in a perfect world. As it happens, our head baker got the sack not too long ago; the lead baker standing in for him is…struggling.

Not much has changed for the mid-rats bakers, to be honest: we defaulted to semi-autonomy months ago, when we transitioned to the night shift, and we keep making Breakfast, because that's what mid-rats bakers do. But the question of Brunch begins to wear on our patience. We're tired of waiting for someone to behave like a manager and take charge. Explaining the widespread preference for down-home desserts and pastries to a French-trained-SoCal-organic-ethicalvegetarian-yoga-yuppie lead baker has proven…a challenge. He isn't unpleasant or mean, and he isn't really stupid, but he's isn't helpful, either, and he doesn't get it. Gibassier and Küchen are delicious but we serve them for days, trying to get rid of them. This community does not like scones. They do not appreciate the labor involved in scratch croissants. They don't know how to pronounce "pithiviers," nor do they demonstrate any interest in eating it. They like white-trash food. There, I said it. Trailer park fare. Wonder bread and Cheez Whiz. Tater tots and chili mac. Rice Krispy Treats and Hostess cupcakes. The trashier the better. When it doubt, cover it in chocolate syrup and Non Dairy Whipped Topping. And sprinkles.

Initially I found this hugely disheartening, then after a while I began to see a certain utility to it. As a baker, I spend a lot of time standing in the shadow of French, German, and Austrian traditions, but as a home-school baker, at the end of the day I like people to eat what I'm making. So oscillating between Grassroots Solidarity and Utter Disgust, Rachel and I try to meet the plebs halfway. Sometimes I want to die of shame. Other times I get a lot of vicarious pleasure from making things As Awful As Possible. And it requires some creative thinking: when you're out of cream until the next freshies delivery, melt canned hot fudge ice cream topping with shortening and powdered milk to make a chocolate glaze. Hey, presto! Who knew? And they make people so happy, those junky, simple foods. Go with it.

What is that old saw I'm thinking of? "Lead, follow, or get out of the way."

Ladies and gentlemen, taking matters into our own hands, the mid-rats bakers staged a Trailer Park Brunch. Oh yes we did.

Rachel volunteered to tackle doughnuts. Doughnuts require a field trip to The Hot Side, because that's where the fryer lives. The fryer scares me a little. It's a bathtub of boiling oil. But it certainly has its uses. During previous seasons, Rachel attests, they made doughnuts for Brunch nearly every week. So she's got plenty of experience. She's a professional. She knew exactly what she was angling for. Not sufganiot or apple fritters, either, oh no: glazed chocolate cake doughnuts and Homer Simpson-style yeast doughnuts with pink frosting and yes---you begin to see where this is going---sprinkles.

(I think I'd have made Donettes, myself, but it was her project.)

Eric, the bread baker who has only recently become an official mid-rat, wanted to do pigs in a blanket, but we couldn't unearth any Li'l Smokies from the bowels of the big freezer. And his strength lies in yeasted doughs, not imitation Pillsbury biscuits, so between mountains of sandwich bread, he made Bagel Bites and miniature Bagel Dogs instead. They were exactly as awful as they should have been. With mustard. And ~~sprinkles~~ sesame seeds.

Tyler (the mid-rats sous chef and Rachel's boyfriend) wanted badly to contribute somehow, so for the mid-rats dinner (served around 5am) he made Hamburger Helper. (No sprinkles.) He kept stirring it around proudly. "Look!" he said. "It looks so nice! Doesn't it look nice? I even cut up the noodles a little bit, see?"

My roommate, Kim, suggested Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits. Thank god for the internet, because I can't remember ever having been to Red Lobster in my life. Essentially it's a Bisquick-based drop biscuit loaded with cheese and garlic powder. Hilariously, considering all the prefab shit kicking around the kitchen, we don't have any Bisquick on station. None at all. And the purveyors of copycat recipes adamantly insist that Cheddar Bay Biscuits start with Bisquick, so I had to look up another recipe and make Bisquick from scratch: flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, and shortening. Did you catch that? I HAD TO MAKE BISQUICK. Another of those benchmark moments in baking, like the day I made a bread dough that weighed more than I did. The rest was easy.

Almost immediately after the plan for Trailer Park Brunch was hatched, I decided to make Pop Tarts. The only thing trashier than a Pop Tart is a Twinkie. (I'll get to it eventually, I'm sure.) I researched several recipes for scratch Pop Tarts and found all of them wanting. Clever home bakers trying to make the toaster's favorite cardboard treat a healthy breakfast item. Whole wheat flour? Organic homemade preserves? Savory pesto and olive fillings? No, no, no. I'm sure it's delicious, but no. This is not the venue for those sorts of hippie innovations. And none of them included frosting. Where is the frosting? A Pop Tart must have frosting!

In the end, I most closely followed Smitten Kitchen's version, quantity blown into the stratosphere. It's so entertaining, these days, to read a recipe that yields nine. Nine tarts! How cute! Nine! Between Eric and I, we made more than two hundred and fifty. And by god they had frosting. And sprinkles.

They weren't perfect. Not by a long shot. Too many oozing tarts; too much dough to filling; and a good flaky pastry dough (ahem) puffs like there's no tomorrow, which was kind of a problem. I would approach them very differently if I attempted to make Pop Tarts again, roll them a lot thinner, vent them more carefully. I expect my cohorts would say the same of their respective projects. But---am I allowed to say this publicly?---all of that trashy food was awfully tasty. I got a positive comment card on those idiot Pop Tarts. We never get positive comment cards. I wonder how many poor fools tried to put them in the toaster. I wonder how many of the 250 were smuggled away in Tupperware for later this week. They love that shit.

And finally we were having fun at work.

Why the hell don't we do this more often?

More Penguins

2012-01-14T00:50:00.003+13:00

I know. This video is far too long. I so overworked the last one that it's also very loosely edited; I didn't bother to sync the clips to the music, I just took out the pauses between marches, and left the rest as it stood. But the Adélies tell their own story just fine. I could watch these foolish little black and white birds for hours.

You see how they're trucking along at such a respectable pace towards the end? I was rooting for them! Go, go, go!I felt absolutely certain that they'd dive into the sea at the end of the peninsula. They'd have to! But no, their problem solving skills evidently do not encompass plowing dauntlessly ahead; they stopped, and one by one just keeled over and went to sleep. I waited over an hour for them to finish their power nap and resume the march, but I was dressed for walking, not sitting on the ridge, and finally beat a retreat to 155 when my teeth started chattering.

Boondoggle: Room with a View

2012-01-12T11:14:00.001+13:00

From the third month of residence onward, sleep is currency at McMurdo. (Nontransferable.) We hoard sleep. We splurge on sleep. That one day off we receive each week turns into a chance for a twelve- to sixteen-hour sleeping marathon. We need that sleep. The strain of living among strangers takes as much of a toll as the strain of working six days out of seven; 24-hour daylight affects some people more than others; over time it adds up. It's not a question of muscles, but of mitochondria; in Antarctica one's body expends so much energy just trying to be normal---trying to get enough water, enough nutrients, hell, trying to get enough oxygen*---that we're perpetually tired on a cellular level.

*Shelby researched this one diligently. She claims that the pervasive bouts of nightmares we've experienced collectively are not induced by overconsumption of "food grade" glycerine in Frosty Boy, but by the human brain registering a shortage of oxygen and trying to wake up its host. Creepy and fascinating.

Mid-rats feel it most acutely, I think, because such an array of interesting activities and discourteous interruptions (door-slammers, I am talking to YOU) threaten our precious allotment of slumber, and we have to hold the balance somehow. We don't want to miss out, but we can't rebound easily from a shortage of sleep, either, and the imperious demands of the body appear to increase exponentially as the season progresses. As with any currency, however, there are times when we cast the budget to the four winds and willingly trade sleep for something of greater value.

Like a boondoggle!

boondoggle:
-a project that is considered to waste time and money, yet is often continued due to extraneous policy motivations.
-work of little or no value done merely to keep or look busy.
-a project funded by the federal government out of political favoritism that is of no real value to the community or the nation."

At McMurdo, a boondoggle is a field trip sanctioned by the program. Heads of department bestow boondoggles like marks of royal approbation. Technically, they're working morale trips, not holidays---you're not just standing idly by while a tour guide points out the Interesting Features of an historic artifact---but they're treasured as a chance to do something fun and different, often the only chance to get more than three miles off-station during the whole course of the season.

Some years the heads distribute few to no boondoggles--maybe they're feeling stingy, maybe the weather is bad, maybe it's just too much trouble. This is not one of those years. It's pretty exciting.

Out of concern for ill-feeling among the ranks, those of us granted a boondoggle, no matter how dull, are advised not to talk about it too much. But we do anyway, to share the excitement. One of the food-delivery guys, Chris, joined a party digging up a fuel cache, which sounds dreary until you consider that he traveled by helicopter into the Vast Nothingness we all dream about, tracked a snow-buried cache by GPS like an ice pirate on a grand treasure hunt, and got to set foot on the Antarctic continent itself, not just this island outpost. During a work day. Jersey Girl Heather and Panda are headed to Pole for ten days (the Pole, South Pole). Rachel joined the Santa Flight, a Christmastime helicopter mission delivering cookies and fresh bread to all of the field camps in range.

My boondoggle is going to look boring by comparison, but don't be fooled. I've developed a strange fondness for our resident volcano. I was ridiculously excited when a notice arrived by email the week before Christmas: pack your ECW gear, baker, you're going snowmobiling up the side of the primeval god of darkness!

Of course, after one false start the trip was postponed for a week on account of bad weather. This is just how we roll in Antarctica. It was disappointing, but rationally I much preferred to visit a Room with a View than a Room in a Cloud Bank.

The following Thursday greeted us sunny and slightly breezy down in the McMurdo "bowl," great conditions for a glacial traverse. Sweltering in full gear and bunny boots, ten galley staff met at the Science Support Center at 9AM for a brief introduction and helmet-fittings, then piled into a Piston Bully and rode to the edge of Scott Base, where ranks of snowmobiles awaited in crouched readiness.

Logan, one of the day-bakers, and I partnered up instinctively: people who are not speed demons can smell people who are speed demons, and we shun them. Logan makes beautiful pastries but hadn't ridden a snowmobile in his life; the last time I rode a snowmobile was on the Snaefellsjökull when I was 12, and Mom broke her arm to pieces. Fidgeting with the straps of his helmet, Logan eyed the machine. "You drive first," he said baldly. "I'm scared."

I'm a little worried that I won't remember how to drive a car on a road with other cars when I leave the Ice, but I felt reasonably confident about handling a snowmobile. Two gears, no pedals, no traffic. All sorts of dummies can drive this sucker. How hard can it be? "Fine with me. By the time we head back, I'll probably be falling asleep and you'll have to tie me to the horse!"

On your marks! Go!

The plan was to drive to the highest point and our goal--the Room with a View--and do the flagging on the way back down. Heading out, it was very clear that the last batch of flaggers had difficulties grasping the concept of a straight line, never mind "Red Right Return," because the flags stood all higgledy-piggledy, like a long, uneven string of migrating storks. Part of our day's task would involve herding the errant flags back into single file.

We stopped at several points along the ascent to take photographs, rummage through our sack-lunches for snacks, and tell stories, idling the morning away. On such a glorious day, neither the boondogglers nor our guides, Brian and Tony, were in any hurry. Is everyone warm enough? Anybody need to switch drivers? Hope ya'll put on plenty of sunscreen or you'll be sorry later! Tony kept asking if anyone needed to stop for a pee, as if hoping for another excuse to tarry. Brian cast frequent glances towards Erebus and the bank of clouds threatening to enclose the mountain, obviously hoping we wouldn't get socked in at the top, that it would just drift over if we gave it enough time.

The balance of personalities and the pervasive sense of simultaneous laid-back awareness reminded me very much of Grey Fund trips with Reed.

Arriving at our destination, Erebus reared magisterially from the earth like some stern, primordial god awaiting the adoration of his most recent throng of supplicants.

And the view to the south was...well. Somewhat less idyllic.

So we had lunch.

Flew the colors.

Flew the other colors.

And after an hour or so, sure enough, the clouds drew back like a grey curtain to reveal the blue stripes of open water encroaching on Ross Island. The "view" part of "Room with a View."

We also got a look at the Erebus glacier "tongue," where the freshwater glacier creeps across the sea ice.

Nobody really felt like doing any work--boo, flagging! do we have to?--but eventually we'd had enough lounging; the mooners put their clothes back on, and we collected our sandwich wrappings and empty plastic tea mugs. Brian unpacked the flags from the sled hitched to his snowmobile, and advised us to put on our standard-issue leather gloves before handling the bamboo poles. I discovered that some thoughtful previous owner had lodged gum into two fingers of one glove--won't be wearing those again anytime soon. We divvied up the piles of flags in a hilarious game of pickup sticks, narrowly avoiding concussing our comrades. Somehow flags are very exciting. Maybe because they're red. Maybe because they flap.

By hook or by crook we loaded flags into both sides of our mechanical steeds, like quivers of arrows or flashy red tail feathers. They were secured principally by the legs of the riders. For the record, this is not the most comfortable way to ride a snowmobile.

It was well past one in the afternoon and I was running out of the adrenaline necessary to buck the steering wheel against the hard-packed ridges in the trail, so Logan nervously took up position as the driver of our little outfit, while I, as the rider, readied myself for flag-duty.

Surprisingly, flagging was a lot of fun! Brian drove in the lead, using the track of his sled to mark the farthest right-hand edge of the trail: the flag-line. For the first few miles he pointed to misplaced flags and the team directly behind him would pull up to the wayward pole, wrench it from the ground, and move it in line with its fellows before getting back on the mobile and taking up position as the last car in the caravan.

Reaching the end of the already-flagged territory, we began to pull poles from our own stash to mark the way. By now we'd gotten a sense of the correct spacing and figured out how to work in tandem (mostly). Envision a giant game of leapfrog--on snowmobiles. The rest of the crew mastered an enviable one-handed technique, rider pulling a flag from under one knee while the driver pulled up to the edge of the trail, exactly at the spot for the flag to go in the ground, and the flag was in place while vehicle was still in motion. Logan and I never quite accomplished this, largely because I didn't have enough leverage to heave a ten-foot bamboo pole into the fucking snow with one hand. We had to come to a full halt and I had to get out every time, and chop through the crusty top layer of ice with both hands before the flag was adequately "staked." And sometimes I stood there howling in anger, mashing the pole at the frozen ground, unable to make any headway at all.

"Do you want a hand?" Logan would call sympathetically, after watching me struggle.

"...yes."

You could say we provided the comic relief.

Such a beautiful day. I couldn't unwind enough to sleep until six o'clock that evening, and reported to work again at nine, so it turned into a veeery long "day" for a mid-rat. But it was one of those days when the sun threatens to blind unprotected eyes, the sky seems unusually high and brittle, the snow and ice go on forever, and you look around and marvel to yourself: holy cats. I'm in Antarctica!

Scorpio: 2012

2012-01-09T06:47:00.001+13:00

Changes to your personality and needs this year are subtle and yet significant, Scorpio. For one, you're more willing to learn from others and to accept support offered. For another, your tastes in romance, recreation, and the arts are slowly but surely refining and blossoming.

Relationships continue to figure strongly in your life this year. You are finding more joy in others, and they are more responsive to your needs. Partnership opportunities increase, particularly until June, in direct proportion to your generosity of spirit. Romance and casual relationships are unusual and exciting. The last quarter of the year brings less focus on pleasure and socializing.

Increased personal responsibilities are likely with Saturn's entry into your sign, where it will transit until 2015. It's a time for keeping a lower profile and working on solid, long-term goals. Getting your life into order is the focus now. You'll be tending to those things you've left unfinished or neglected - matters that suddenly become pressing at this time. It would be wise to prepare for this cycle that begins in October by carefully considering practical responsibilities that you've let slide and tending to them, slowly but surely, so that you are not overwhelmed.

In 2012, there is likely to be increased attention to alternative health methods and lifestyles. Keeping daily life running smoothly (busy but not hectic is the goal) can be a challenge. While you're likely to find that financial support is easier to come by than usual this year, you will need to carefully watch your spending and borrowing habits. This comes more naturally from October forward. While the last quarter of 2012 can bring some sobering realities into your life, it's also a period conducive to turning dreams into reality, particularly creative ones. Your personality toughens up, but your powers of persuasion run high."

That's from Café Astrology, and I so little liked the sound of it that I went looking for something less grim. But the other one's even worse:

Scorpio, 2012 is your year of reckoning! You worked yourself to the bone in 2011, and now you've hit a major impasse. You've got until October to continue experimenting with what you want out of life; after that, big decisions must be made. Saturn is about to take up residence in your constellation for the first time in nearly 30 years. This planet rules karma, time and integrity, so each of these will be key themes throughout the year. Your values will be tested during the last quarter of the year, so get all your ducks in a row by then to avoid the stress of Saturn's inquisition. The good news is that a weight is about to be lifted from your consciousness, and all the background melancholy you may have felt over the past few years should lighten up.

A major eclipse pattern takes hold of your stars in autumn 2012. November's total solar eclipse in Scorpio is sure to rock the very foundation of your life, so get ready for some major shifts in your relationships. Your life will definitely not be the same by the time 2013 rolls around. You're a butterfly and a phoenix - expect to shed some major skin this year.

This could also be one of the most socially driven years you've ever seen. With Mars activating your house of friendship and goals in the sign of Virgo, expect a majority of your energy to be engaged with a barrage of social situations. It's all for a good cause, however, and will translate into your bigger life goals; in fact, a good portion of the parties you attend will have some sort of work component behind them. And with glamorous Neptune moving back into your pleasure sector in February, life will suddenly become very art-house cinema for you."

I don't want to make big decisions! I don't want to shed any more goddam skin! You think you're going to turn me into an adult, 2012? CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.

Night Train

2012-01-02T22:50:00.000+13:00

We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place; we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there. We go to ourselves, travel to ourselves when the monotonous beat of the wheels brings us to a place where we have covered a stretch of our life, no matter how brief it may have been…

"It is an error, a nonsensical act of violence, when we concentrate on the here and now with the conviction of thus grasping the essential. What matters is to move surely and calmly, with the appropriate humor and the appropriate melancholy in the temporally and spatially expanded internal landscape that we are. Why do we feel sorry for people who can't travel? Because, unable to expand externally, they are not able to expand internally either; they can't multiply and so they are deprived of the possibility of undertaking expansive excursion in themselves and discovering who and what else they could have become."

-Night Train to Lisbon

There were seven art majors the year I graduated from Reed; a very disparate group of talents and interests. I haven't contacted or run into any of them since leaving school. Shortly after interviewing for this job, I discovered through Facebook that one of them, Tessa, was also headed to the McMurdo galley, as a cook. Zounds. Two Studio Art Reedies '07 in Antarctica. You could say it's a small world; you could make some kind of observation about the parallels between the kinds of people who attend Reed and the kinds of people who want to go to Antarctica. But this isn't the first time I've experienced a recrossing of paths, so to me it feels less like a remarkable coincidence than a karmic slap in the face: Pay attention. This is important.

I admire Tessa enormously. Always have. She's lovely and clever and socially adept, doesn't seem to have to try at any of those things, bold and strong and independent, and a wonderful artist. At Reed she played rugby, coordinated Renn Fayre our junior year (a huge undertaking), and cultivated a large, lively circle of friends. Even in Reed's tiny art program I think we only managed to overlap classes once, but even if you didn't know Tessa, you knew of Tessa. I visited her studio occasionally, arrested by her beautiful work, and her murals pervaded the school. Her style is so different than mine ever was: organic and imaginative. She draws. And paints. And draws some more. To this day I envy how essential drawing is for her. It's just something she does, compulsively, instinctively, like breathing. She's evidently made a living off of her work for the last few years, and I'm the last person to assume it's been an easy road, but damn. She's making a living from her art! When she arrived during the second week of main body, she asked what I'd been working on since graduation, and I won't soon forget my embarrassment or the look on her face when I replied: nothing. I've done nothing.

As the offspring of two first-generation immigrants (her mother is Chinese and her father English; they met in Southern California and decided to stay), she claims to have inherited their wanderlust. Last summer Tessa broke up with her gentleman friend of some duration and bicycled, solo, across the country, from Seattle to California, the breadth of Texas and a post-hurricane South, then all the way north again to Peaks Island, Maine (of all places), where she crashed her bike and was forced by the damages to stop. On her return she held a solo show in Seattle called "Oh, That Sweet Unrest," a title borrowed from The Wind in the Willows. In her short time here, she's already put together a an Antarctic art project called "Under the Bed Gallery," drawing from talents both on and off the Ice. She's one of those people that make me want to stomp my foot and say, "Stop being so awesome! I can't keep up!" We hold so many tastes and interests in common, I see such strange parallels between our two lives, and the most peculiar thing is that we don't seem to have anything to say to each other. It was true in school, and for better or worse it seems still to be true.

I don't cultivate any convictions about gods or destinies, but for some time now I've wondered about Tessa's reappearance, the recrossing of our paths, and what on earth I'm meant to understand by it. Reading her blog, and eavesdropping on the whiteboard exchanges of Inspiring Quotations between she and Charissa, I've pondered.

Here it is, I think: she's going back. She's going home.

It's clear that it surprises her, too. She spent the better part of the year grappling with "that sweet unrest," and didn't expect to want to go home, but there it is. She has every reason to return to Seattle: a vibrant community of artists with similar interests, a "pretty amazing guy…that I think I'm going to spend the rest of my life with," a deep affection for the Pacific Northwest, and a strange, new longing for "a sense of place." And like just about everything else about Tessa, I admire and envy this about her. I'd love to be able to go home.

But I myself have no wish to go back. Anywhere.

I feel like I've been split in 2011. Divided. And it hurt. Something broke off and stayed behind, while I kept rolling along the only way I know how. Given the chance I wouldn't trade any of my decisions, neither the ones I made in good earnest consciousness nor the ones that seemed to be made for me, but it hurt to be split that way, decisively, right down to the quick, because it means that something---an alternate, viable form of myself---is gone.

Scorpions have to molt in order to grow, I suppose.

Charissa's Night Train to Lisbon quote, addressed to Tessa, cast the matter into sharp relief: this last year, more than any other I remember, I've carried around a haunting awareness of what else and who else I might have become.

Si's flying down to meet me in New Zealand in February. After a month of traveling with him, I'll head north again. We've reached the point in the season when we start asking each other what comes next, where're you headed? Are you coming back? Are you going home? Quite a few people have asked what I intend to do after my stint on the Ice, and I genuinely have no idea. I don't intend to come back; I don't intend to go back, either. Fairbanks isn't home. There is no home. I'm trying not to push too hard, since trying to force a plan only makes me worry. I never know what I'm doing next until suddenly I'm on my way.

I have no desire to go back, to tarry, to stop. I have no wish to recollect the pieces of myself that I left behind, to be haunted by the ghosts of possibilities that never manifested. I just have to keep going. And the terrifying truth, the one that's eaten me up this year, might be that this really is the story of my life.

haunt |hônt, hänt|
ORIGIN Middle English (in the sense ‘frequent (a place)’): from Old French hanter, of Germanic origin; distantly related to home."

It might be that I'm never going home.

Penguins

2011-12-28T00:49:00.003+13:00

My roommate gave me the tip-off at breakfast time, just as I started drawing the Tuesday whiteboard. Thirty Adélie penguins had been sleeping on the ice near Hut Point between one and two in the morning. Scrawling the day's information across the board in three minutes flat, I pitched the markers back into their designated closet and belted out the door towards Hut Point with my camera, prepared to spend hours hunkered in the shadow of Vince's Cross if need be.

There were no penguins when I arrived. A large cluster of seals lolled some ways out, near the long crack emanating from the point, same as always. The ice along the shore crackled and muttered under the influence of the glaring sun. I waited, gratuitously harassing some skuas that roost on the Ridge. I waited. And waited. No penguins.

Just as I was prepared to call it a night and head back to 155, I caught a glimmer of something white moving out on the Ice. We've all grown conditioned to pay attention to tiny specks of motion. Nothing moves around here but the air, because by and large there's nothing else to move. Walking through any city square in the world, most people quietly erase the pigeons in their mind's eye; when a skua flies overhead at McMurdo, everyone sees it. But I think I can say in fairness that I should not have registered a cluster of white dots on the horizon. They were way the hell out there. Chalk it up to a stroke of good luck and a mark of how badly I wanted to see penguins that I saw anything at all.

There they were.

They were far too far away for me to judge the direction they were headed, or how fast they were moving, but the fact that the white-sides of the birds faced me and kept shifting suggested that they were coming my way. Gradually they drew closer, and you had better believe my camera was rolling the whole time. Six Adélies! They move surprisingly quickly for such supposedly ungainly birds: alternately waddling upright, wings outstretched, and sliding across the ice on their bellies, using their feet as propellors. I can't decide which is cuter. I hardly need add that they're idiotically adorable. Strong men are reduced to blithering puddles of delight when penguins cross their paths. After twenty minutes or so, they were as close as they were going to get, and I was completely flipping my lid.

Penguins!

One of the group veered off by himself, and instead of traversing towards the crack in the sea ice he headed closer to Hut Point. Clearly the simple member of the family. The rest of them disappeared from sight and earshot. After a while he seemed to realize that he was alone, and stopped, looking around and honking in apparent confusion. (A penguin noise is called a bray, by the way.) After a pause he recommenced his hurried, canting gait towards lord-knows-what, then stopped again. This pattern went on for several minutes, the poor sod obviously trying to collect his bearings, while I silently urged him closer to the peninsula where I stood.

Eventually he toddled off in the same direction as his comrades.

While the stately Emperors obviously rank as the most photogenic and iconic of the penguins that visit Ross Island, many returning McMurdoans profess to prefer the Adélie because it is so much more animated. Even that old so-and-so R. F. Scott had something to say about them, though characteristically he doesn't sound very complimentary, the sourpuss:

The great trouble with [the dog teams] has been due to the fatuous conduct of the penguins. Groups of these have been constantly leaping on to our [ice] floe. From the moment of landing on their feet their whole attitude expressed devouring curiosity and a pig-headed disgregard for their own safety. They waddle forward, poking their heads to and fro in their usually absurd way, in spite of a string of howling dogs straining to get at them. “Hulloa!” they seem to say, “here’s a game – what do all you ridiculous things want?” And they come a few steps nearer. The dogs make a rush as far as their harness or leashes allow. The penguins are not daunted in the least, but their ruffs go up and they squawk with semblance of anger.”

Penguin sightings abound, though the folk who drive regularly to the runway are privileged with interactions at much closer range. With the arrival of the vessel at the end of January, the number of penguins around town supposedly increases a hundredfold. Hopefully I will see many, many more, though I may have to be physically restrained from petting them. They're so damn cute. But ladies and gentleman, here is the salient point: I have seen penguins! In Antarctica!

I CAN LEAVE NOW!

Beautiful Day

2011-12-27T02:39:00.000+13:00

Special Cabin Biscuits

2011-12-18T06:58:00.000+13:00

I'm sure everybody remembers Discovery Hut.

The Recreation Office conveyed a request to the bakery for sixteen gingerbread house kits, for the purpose of propagating holiday spirit among the community. Exercising admirable self-restraint--in my opinion--I gave Rachel and Aaron a full ten seconds--maybe--to register their disinclination for the project. And then the discussion was over. "ME ME ME ME ME! I'll do it!"

There was never any chance that I was going to draw up a plan for sixteen traditional Swiss-Alpine cottages; we're in Antarctica! Discovery Hut mandated its inclusion in the festivities. Of course I built one for myself as well (that was kind of the point), complete with windows, weathering, and a mummified dead seal on the front porch. It was marvelous fun. I can't think of a better way I could have spent my Christmas "holiday."

Two days after completion, to my great consternation, the Hut began quietly to crack along the seams; a collision between a dish cart and the proofer on which I'd left the Hut for "safekeeping" led to ruin. It shouldn't have. This is the second time in as many years that my architectural adhesive has failed me.

Next year.

Deck the Halls

2011-12-13T03:35:00.004+13:00

It started with a bouquet of fake holly from SKUA, squashed into a decorative bottle and adorned with a torn-plaid-flannel-sheet ribbon (also from SKUA). It's spectacularly ugly. I put it next to the phone.

Then I found some chintzy garland and bells on another trip to SKUA central, and hung them from the ceiling (I love removable ceiling tiles!) with more flannel, to the increasing amusement of my roommates. "How festive."

Started cutting out snowflakes from unwanted sheets of A1 paper just as Kim got a box of decorations from her sister. It was full of fun, horrible, made-in-China things: a magnetic reindeer, plastic snowflakes, a paper candy-cane garland, and some mysterious foam stickers. "What the hell am I going to do with a bunch of foam Christmas stickers?" Already I had adorned my little corner with paper chains and ornaments I'd found in SKUA, as well as some from Mom, and clearly they needed a more appropriate venue for display. Something more publicly accessible. Something to incorporate foam stickers. I ran downstairs to the craft room and returned to 246 with a big sheet of green paper. Kim, Kat and Kristina sat on their beds and watched as I moved chairs and smoothed the paper out on the floor.

"You're going to cut that freehand?"

"Uh...how would you do it?"

I pared a crooked coniferous tree out of that paper lickety-split and marched it outside, feeling by now like the Pied Piper with all three of them following. Apply some tape and suddenly we had a Christmas tree.

"It's a dry-cabin-style Christmas tree!"

The thing that I find arresting is how quickly the whole hallway chimed in to produce the rest of the decorations. All three roommates converged enthusiastically to cover the silly thing with a string of "lights" and the ornament stickers from Kim's box of goodies. Panda Bill brought us a tree-topper, quietly insinuating the star one afternoon when nobody was looking. Jason from across the hall flagged me down on my way to work one evening and shyly presented me with a bagful of stale popcorn from his work center. People have changed the route they walk to their rooms in order to pass our ridiculous Christmas tree. It's been marvelous.

It doesn't look or feel in the slightest like Christmas around here. It's warmer than it has been all season, the entire station is up to its ankles in mud, and everyone is so tired. But the "holiday spirit" manifests itself in curious ways.

Update: By the evening 12/23, our door had become very liberally laden with socks:

Crash Site

2011-12-06T08:38:00.001+13:00

Remember my first field trip to Pegasus?

Pegasus airfield has been on holiday. This year's sea ice runway leapt into operation at the beginning of October, meaning that all of our deliveries of fruit, mail, equipment, and scientists have landed less than two miles from town. But the ice runway closed this last weekend, and all flight operations have moved back to Pegasus. The ice begins to thin, and open water grows ever closer. (Relatedly, the Ob Tube was extracted the 14th of November.) I can't help but think wryly of all that work--all those machines chugging and beeping around the clock, grooming the ice in preparation--in order to have planes land at the doorstep for a mere handful of weeks. Evidently the proximity of the ice runway for even that narrow window of time saves McMurdo millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel. Incredible. Sometimes I think that this whole program deserves a prize for inefficiency.

But in addition to saving the NSF a few bucks, moving air operations to the ice runway for a little while also affords us townies an opportunity to visit Pegasus for recreational purposes: most notably, to examine the wreckage of the crash that gives the airfield its name.

Pegasus Field…is named after Pegasus, a C-121 Lockheed Constellation, still visible there in the snow after crashing in bad weather on October 8, 1970. No one on board was injured."

That is the sum total of information I managed to unearth about this catastrophe. I'm really rather disappointed. I heard better stories during light vehicle training about fools getting disoriented during a whiteout and driving halfway to Black Island (it's a long way, the wrong way). Our tour guide, Pedro--although an estimable guide in other ways, e.g. waking up on a Sunday to lead a midrats tour at the "unreasonable" hour of 9am, operating a radio with great panache to inform the firehouse that 18 souls on board Delta Dawn were departing the McMurdo compound--either didn't know anything more or felt disinclined to share with the rest of the class.

Arriving at the airfield after an hour-long, juddering ride in the Delta, we clambered from the iron box to discover that the wind out on the ice shelf was kicking it something fierce. Station policy mandates that everyone leaving town---for any purpose---bears with him a full complement of Extreme Cold Weather gear, including Big Red and bunny boots, and most of us have gotten pretty good at dressing for the weather around here, regardless, so nobody complained of the cold. (Also, any temperature above zero no longer feels cold.) Still, the wind threw a lot of snow into our faces and camera lenses, taking one hell of an edge off of the collective intrepid spirit, especially without any dire accounts of pilots' fevered last-minute decisions to hold our interest.

Plane half-buried in the white waste, hooray.

After taking a few photos of the tail and scratching a some initials into the paint, we were done. I'm pretty sure we spent, oh, seven minutes walking up and down the wreck. Tops.

But the trip was saved! Because trudging our way back to the Delta we found…ice! Yes! I know! In Antarctica!

Being very big (as well as very red), Big Red, as any McMurdoan can attest, often functions as a SAIL. (They don't tell you about your coat's multifarious wiles during Orientation. It also sheds tiny feathers into all your clothes. And eats tubes of chapstick.) Usually you really wish it wouldn't, such as when you're stumbling slowly up a scree-covered hill, straight into the wind, seeming to make no progress whatsoever. Or while traversing a veeery steep and icy slope, when you've forgotten to bring Yak Traks and each fresh gust threatens to break the tenuous grip of friction and send you careening down the side of the mountain onto the sea ice.

But in this case, the wind-catching prowess of our oversized coats, combined with the flat, slippery plane of ice we happened upon, turned into a glorious game of slip-n-slide. Get a running start and--let the wind do the rest.

The Crud

2011-11-22T04:00:00.002+13:00

November 20th marks three months in Antarctica. None of us know our departure dates, but given that the station "shuts down" for winter by deploying the last flight to Christchurch on February 24th, I'm roughly halfway through my stint on the Ice.

Last Monday, Jason and I hiked the Castle Rock loop in belated celebration of our birthday, which we happen to share. By the time we arrived back on station I felt a bit lightheaded, like the planes of reality were beginning to slip, but attributed it to the combined effects of the hike, dehydration (we are all dehydrated, all the time---there is no way to keep up), the sun (the Antarctic summer sun is brutal, no joke), and the [relative] lateness of the hour. Possibly also to the fact that my hiking buddy had talked steadily for three and a half hours without taking a breath.

The following "day" (the arbitrariness of human demarcations between one day and the next shows up very clearly on mid-rats, in Antarctica), my day off, I dragged around the ship doing householdy things like laundry and couldn't seem to rally. Three months of overfeeding and confinement notwithstanding, a ten-mile hike shouldn't knock me on my ass like that. For a couple of days I kept thinking I could plow through, it's just a cough, just feeling a bit low, I'll just keep dosing myself with oranges and 14 hours of sleep between shifts…behold, yet another victim of the McMurdo Crud.

Contracting the Crud is practically a rite of passage. Everyone has been sick. There might be a few newly-arrived Beakers (scientists) escaping the clutches of this thing, but those of us who live and work here went down in rapid and deliberate succession. The timing is remarkable. Congratulations, folks, we're halfway through the season! Pass the Day-Quil! Stop and listen in the computer kiosk or the galley, and your ears will hearken to a glorious chorus of hacks and barks that Jenny glibly refers to as "kennel cough." (Though I wonder if we more greatly resemble a pound or a CAFO?)

Between coughs, I said to my roommate, Kim, who has been mapping the path of illness along with me, "I feel like I haven't been outside in a week."

"It's Monday. You haven't been outside in a week."

The Crud isn't necessarily debilitating--I staunchly continued to show up in the bakeshop for several days. Why are we all so resistant to following our mothers' advice? "Get plenty of rest and fluids." Instead I went to work and drank copious amounts of coffee. It isn't that the bakery will fall behind---the bakery is behind, and nothing my lowly prep-baker efforts can achieve will change that---but lying in bed is boring. The party line is to quarantine sick people to their rooms. You have to call down to the galley for food. (Supposedly. As a mid-rat, I have not tested this rule, because none of the DAs I know have time to run up a piece of toast and a cup of tea at my whim. Nor do I want them to do so.) No computer kiosk, no library, no coffeehouse, no bars, no gym, no craft room, no eating in the galley, no visiting other departments, no extracurricular shifts as a barista or in gear issue, nothing at all. Sounds a lot like being grounded, doesn't it?*

Solution: keep working! There's no point in staying "home" for the sake of containing the Crud. This is home, and everyone has it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not sneezing gratuitously into the cookie dough or anything, but the prevailing attitude about germs around here is superstitious at best. Anoint thyself with sanitizer before entering the food-service area. Viruses are living organisms, not a kind of especially sticky paint that you can eradicate with vigorous hand washing. This bug is going to mutate and come back around in a couple of weeks anyway! Frankly it feels less like a cold we're passing around than a collective exhaustion of our immune systems.

At any rate, I got there eventually, low enough that I'd rather lay in bed in a windowless dorm room, semi-comatose, than shoulder a ten-hour shift downstairs. It's a strange thing for me. I happily took every opportunity to stay home sick from school, but I did not ever call in sick to the star-box, the chocolate shop, or the café. I got sick on my days off or not at all. But what did we say when we got here? It's just a job. That's right. This once, it is just a job, a means to an end. The last several weeks have served only to underscore that fact, whoa nelly. Furthermore, the Crud takes many forms, and the particular version laying siege to my person makes me very light-headed. I couldn't walk a straight line down the hall to the bathroom; I'm pretty sure I have no business operating heavy equipment. And you had better believe that Hobart mixer is heavy equipment.

The parting irony is that, as a night worker, I had to go to Medical after the fact---during business hours---so that they could confirm my diagnosis and inform my supervisors that wasn't just playing hooky. I can't remember the last time I was scrutinized by a doctor for something as piddling as a cold. And after I'd described my symptoms, what did the doctor tell me? "Get plenty of rest and fluids."

*As evidenced by the publication of this post, mid-rats claim certain unobtrusive dispensations. A very small trade-off for missing the Crary lab tour every Sunday afternoon.

Rice Krispy Treats: Follow Up

2011-11-18T08:12:00.001+13:00

For reasons that will not be discussed here, your bakeshop is out of sugar (both white and brown), eggs, pastry flour, all-purpose flour, bread flour, vanilla, nuts, and chocolate. Now what?

Rice Krispy Treats, of course.

10 1/2 lbs. butter
62 lbs. marshmallows
3/4 c. salt
10 vanilla beans, scraped (well, look, we don't have any extract)
25 lbs. ricies

SIXTY-TWO POUNDS OF MARSHMALLOWS!

Proceed.

Photo credit to Cat Duran.

Antarctic Science

2011-11-17T03:17:00.000+13:00

I'm having difficulties keeping up. Science descends on this station with great energy, and my tardy, baker-brained accounts, if and when I get them written at all, don't do justice to the fantastic happenings all around me. Not that I intend to abandon my efforts to parse the Science into [ahem] terms more intelligible to simple minds, but here I have collected some links to serve as a study guide.

Werner Herzog deserves credit for capturing better than I am able (from my limited vantage) the efforts of the scientists who return to the Ice season after season. His clips showcasing the muddy McMurdo mining town and its peculiar inhabitants are, I can attest, accurate! But the footage from the field camps--dives beneath the sea ice, microscope images of pseudopods, scientists who are here right now!--come together in a way that I find much more exciting.

Ice Diving. Henry Kaiser. Kaiser's footage features strongly in Herzog's film, and I've already posted the short clip I took of Kaiser's lecture last week, and you should definitely watch this too, but follow the link to see some more of his incredible adventures, often set to his own music, and more importantly, TAKEN THIS YEAR. As far as I can tell, this guy has the one of the most awe-inspiring jobs ever.

Foraminifera. Sam Bowser, et al. "Foraminifera are single-celled organisms (called protists). Their distinguishing features are net-like pseudopods called reticulopodia, and (usually) some sort of organic or shell-like outer protective layer, called a test. They are a very ancient group of organisms, at least 550 million years old."

The foramnifera both living and fossilized in the Antarctic sea-floor evidently hold great significance in understanding the evolutionary process, but they're also just stunningly beautiful. German biologist Ernst Haeckel produced some incredible drawings of foraminifera in his turn of the century book Kunstformen der Natur. Bowser distributed blue- and red-lensed spectacles to the audience before screening several images of the foramniferan's psedopods that leapt into three dimensions.

Dry Valleys. "The 15,000km2 Antarctic Specially Managed Area (ASMA) contains cold desert soils millions of years old, special geological features, and unusual communities of plants and microorganisms. Its landscape includes glaciers, mountain ranges, ice-covered lakes, ephemeral streams, arid patterned soils and permafrost, sand dunes, and watershed systems. It is a region where life exists at the very extreme of environmental limits."

I attended the "Dry Valleys Training" on one of my days off, and that's as close as I'll ever get to visiting (I am eaten up with envy of this guy), but it was enough to blow my mind. Antarctica's longest and largest river, the Onyx. Don Juan Pond, the saltiest body of water on earth, so salty it never freezes. Ventifacts, stones blown into bizarre shapes by the wind carrying sand and ice particles. Never mind that the Dry Valleys serve as the testing ground for many of NASA's planned space projects.

Frost Flowers. Jeff Bowman, et al. "As surface seawater freezes during the polar fall bacteria, archaea, and phytoplankton are trapped within it. I am investigating how these organisms are distributed vertically within the ice, with a particular emphasis on which organisms are incorporated into microbially enriched structures known as frost flowers."

These folks came down at WinFly. I sat through this lecture many weeks ago and freely admit that although I continued to understand the words, nearly all of the information was over my head within ten minutes. His blog I find vastly more accessible. And I appreciate Bowman's very sane perspective on science in the Antarctic, since it ties in so neatly with my visit to Discovery Hut.

Marine Worms. Michael League, et al. "Polychaetes are segmented worms generally less than 10 centimeters (3.9 inches) long, but can vary greatly. They are marine worms that live throughout the world’s oceans and can survive in very harsh conditions including the deepest depths of the ocean. Once the worms have been collected, the research team will run temperature and nutrition experiments on them in the laboratory. These experiments will help researchers understand how the worms are able to adapt to these very cold waters, and how they will survive as ocean temperatures increase."

Penguin Ranch. Paul Ponganis, et al. "Emperor penguins are champion divers, the best among all birds. They can dive deeper than 1800 feet and can stay underwater on a single breath of air for as long as 22 minutes. We are interested in how emperor penguins dive so deep (diving physiology), and what they do during the dive (diving behavior).

"The study of emperor penguin physiology is important because it explains how a bird has evolved and adapted to swim underwater. The most important adaptations for diving are 1) an increase in the ability to store oxygen in the body, 2) the ability to tolerate low levels of oxygen in the body, and 3) the ability to tolerate the effects of pressure. These adaptations are also potentially relevant to our understanding of human physiology and medicine. For example, penguins routinely reach low levels of oxygen during diving that would cause us to pass out.

"Paul Ponganis is an Antarctic veteran who has studied emperor penguins in the field for more than 20 years. He is both a medical doctor (anesthesiologist) and marine biologist and has combined these fields to pursue a lifelong fascination: oxygen regulation in mammals and birds. Ponganis believes that by studying emperor penguin physiology, he can help doctors better understand hypoxia in human patients."

I have provided extra scientific words in this case because, quite honestly, the enormous audience that attended this lecture tuned out with a collective "Awwwwwww!" almost the instant the footage started rolling. And no wonder. This team recorded quite a bit of what we saw in March of the Penguins.

Discovery Hut

2011-11-16T00:55:00.004+13:00

Discovery Hut lies at the end of the eponymous Hut Point Peninsula, facing Mt Discovery, and features prominently in the mental geography of McMurdoans---particularly for loners who were here during win-fly. When there's only one place you can walk to by yourself, over the course of six weeks you walk there pretty often. Until very recently, however, the Hut itself was padlocked, a notice on the door admonishing visitors to enter at their own risk, that the structure is not stable. Discovery Hut falls under the jurisdiction of the New Zealand government (as does all of Ross Island, for that matter), and the department in charge of preserving historical artifacts tries to monitor foot traffic and the building's exposure to insidious forces of decay (condensation, bacteria, fire) by training a small force of supervisory Hut Guides and limiting visitors.

Warning on the door notwithstanding, since arriving to Antarctica we all wondered when we'd be allowed to go inside. Thanks to Charissa, one of the mid-rats DAs and now a fully-fledged Hut Guide, last week I and a handful of others got a tour of this hundred-year-old relic of the "Heroic Age."

Discovery Hut was constructed in a modular fashion in Sydney (like your bookshelf from IKEA) and shipped south with the British National Antarctic Expedition in 1901. Robert Falcon Scott, who plastered his name all over this side of the continent, assembled the Hut on the most fabulously exposed spit of land he could find in 1902 (along with another, no longer standing, called the Magnetic Hut), and named it for his vessel. The design was based on the roughly square, pyramidal shelters used by shepherds in the Austrialian Outback: constructed around a central post with relatively high ceilings, quite a few windows, and insulated with felt placed between the inner and outer plank walls. Even if you've never lived in a dry cabin in Interior Alaska, you can probably see where this is going.

The Discovery hut was a large strong building, but was so draughty and cold in comparison with the ship, which was moored one hundred yards away, that it was, during the first year, never used for living quarters. Its sole use was as a storehouse, and a large supply of rough stores, such as flour, cocoa, coffee, biscuit, and tinned meat, was left there in the event of its being used as a place of retreat should any disaster overtake the ship. During the second year occasional parties camped inside the hut, but no bunks or permanent sleeping quarters were ever erected."

Indeed, stepping from the blinding glare of a clear Antarctic day into the dim shelter of the Hut, I registered two things immediately: 1) it smells like a barn, 2) it's colder inside than out.

Some of my fellow visitors found the odor repugnant, but in Antarctica, any smell at all is such a novelty--excusing your roommate's tiresome perfume or the petroleum exhaust of the construction vehicles--that others of us found the combined redolence of slow-rotting animal, soot, and decaying wooden building a welcome change.

Ernest Shackleton, one of the members of the first expedition, took ill and was sent by Scott back to Australia to recover. Consumed by a passion to explore Antarctica, Shackleton evidently resented his dismissal for the rest of his life, and from it grew the rivalry between he and Scott to reach the South Pole. Shackleton returned to Ross Island with his own expedition in the Nimrod in 1907, and set up camp at Cape Royds. A scouting group traveling the 32 kilometers south to Hut Point found the front door of Discovery Hut blown open and blocked by a wall of snow. Accounts from a number of expeditions report that this was a recurring problem for arriving parties, because some bright bulb failed to take into account the prevailing weather patterns when he decided which way the door should face. Shackleton effected an entrance through a lee-facing window, and this remained the principal ingress and egress for the remainder of his occupation of Discovery Hut. I find this enormously funny. As if it doesn't already sound very much like a children's clubhouse:

The old hut has never been a cheerful place, even when we camped alongside it in the Discovery, and it looked doubly inhospitable now … One side was filled with cases of biscuit and tinned meat, and the snow that had found its way in was lying in great piles around the walls. There was no stove, for that had been taken away with the Discovery, and coal was scattered about the floor with other debris and rubbish. Besides the biscuit and the tinned beef and mutton there was some tea and coffee stored in the hut. We cleared a spot on which to sleep, and decided that we would use the cases of biscuit and meat to build another hut inside the main one, so that the quarters would be a little more cosy."

The Hut remained a staging depot for Shackleton's bid for the Pole, which reached within 97 miles of its goal before being forced to turn north. On the return journey, one of his crew, very ill with dysentery, was left with a companion at the edge of the Ross ice shelf while the rest of the group continued to Hut Point. There, in the middle of a blizzard, they attempted to attract rescuers from the Nimrod, which was anchored near the Erebus Glacier Tongue---by burning the neighboring Magnetic Hut. Ironically, this didn't work, and they had greater success by attaching a flag to Vince's Cross and lighting a "heliograph," a kind of carbide flare. The ship came down to them and they collected their fellows from the ice shelf, and all set sail northwards, supposedly jamming up the open hut window with pieces of timber, to the best of their ability, in the storm and darkness, before departing.

When Scott, in turn, reappeared on the scene in 1911, he didn't have very complimentary things to say about Shackleton's treatment of their clubhouse:

On my arrival at the hut to my chagrin we found it full of snow. Shackleton reported that the door had been forced by the wind, but he had made an entrance by the window and found shelter inside … They actually went away and left the window (which they had forced) open; as a result, nearly the whole of the interior of the hut is filled with hard ice snow, and now it is impossible to find shelter inside."

Well pooh pooh!

In the expeditions that followed, the Hut served as both a storage depot and a last-extremity shelter. Instances of the latter resulted in redesigning the stove to burn seal blubber, which unsurprisingly stained the interior of the Hut with a black, oily soot. Lots of recuperation from exposure and scurvy took place within those walls, and I found it sobering---an overheated Building 155, full of food, company, and medical resources, within ten minutes' walk---to think of such a dank, gloomy place as a haven of safety.

After Shackleton left the hut in 1917 it remained untouched until 1956, when a bunch of nosy Americans dug it out and found it in a remarkable state of preservation. Indeed, given the stories of making clothes from Emperor penguin skins and living exclusively on diets of seal meat, not to mention the kleptomania that plagues historical sites like this one, I'm surprised by the quantity and quality of artifacts left from the original 1902 expedition. The battered clothing, picks and shovels, and jerry-rigged stove could belong to any age or nation; it's the provisions that give Discovery Hut an archeological date, and a character. The hanging carcasses of mutton and seal blubber that refuse to decay, for one thing. The cans and boxes littering the floor, for another. I love old food containers, from the crates and crates of Special Cabin Biscuits, to the rusting tins of Edinburgh Oatmeal and Kippered Herrings.

I think my very favorite is the Fry's Cocoa--both for the typefaces and the notion that a lot of discouraged, malnourished, frostbitten explorers sat at the edge of the world drinking hot chocolate.

After some cocoa we fetched in the rest of the dogs from the Gap and another sledge from the hill ... An empty kerosine tin and some firebricks have been made into an excellent little stove, which has been connected to the old stove-pipe. The solider fare of our meals is either stewed or fried on this stove whilst the tea or cocoa is being prepared on a primus ... The temperature of the hut is low, of course, but in every other respect we are absolutely comfortable."

Ob Tube, revisited

2011-11-12T07:03:00.001+13:00

Listen.

Henry Kaiser, Live!

2011-11-09T17:34:00.034+13:00

Not much science on the menu lately. Rachel and I began our season as mid-rats with a 7pm to 5am work schedule, effectively impeding all opportunities to join the community's evening entertainment--most lectures and events begin at 7 or 8--for three weeks. Fortunately--or unfortunately--the bakeshop continues to have difficulty finding an even keel, so the management have decided to stagger our hours to "facilitate communication" with the dayshifts. I now work from 9pm to 7am, and my schedule switched just in time for me to attend a "science lecture" on ice diving.

This guy delivered his presentation in the Crary Lab library on the evening of my birthday. It would be more accurate to describe the event as a screening, or perhaps a concert. This is the man whose ice diving images caught Werner Herzog's attention and provoked the creation of Encounters at the End of the World. Kaiser films his Antarctic dives, edits the footage, and writes and records his own music. He played several clips and short films from previous seasons, all of which were amazing, then rolled out this footage, which he'd recorded that very morning, hastily "cut" prior to the lecture, and accompanied with an impromptu soundtrack on his guitar. Only through extraordinary good luck and Heather's fast-talking Jersey girl charm did I get a seat at this lecture--the room was packed. I'd like to take it as a sign. Hopefully it means 27 is going to be awesome.

Castle Rock

2011-11-01T06:52:00.002+13:00

Jean knows that transitioning to mid-rats is easier with a buddy; she told me that Jason talked her to 4am on her first night. She transitioned back to day shifts last week, the better to work at one of the field camps, but despite the impending switch she very generously offered to help me stay awake for my first night, during the witching hours when the rest of the station slept.

Monday evening Jean gave a travelogue on her six-month adventure from Senegal to Namibia. She drew quite a crowd to the galley with her lively, sometimes humorous, sometimes impassioned stories. She even danced! Afterwards she was running high on her performance, I'd spent all day napping in preparation for staying awake all night, and the weather was clear and windless, so we agreed on a night-hike to Castle Rock.

A little geographical orientation: McMurdo Station and Scott Base crouch at the end of Hut Point Peninsula, a narrow spit of land jutting south-south-west from Ross Island into the McMurdo Ice Shelf. The island isn't very big, but I find it difficult to hold the perimeter of it in my mind because of the sea-ice packed around us on all sides, blurring the distinction between land and not-land. One could walk a long way before finding open ocean.

To the northeast of McMurdo, then, looms Mt Erebus. The traverse between the station and the mountain, along the ridge of Hut Point Peninsula and into the heart of the island…isn't very nice. It's dangerous, all steep cliffs and ever-changing ice shelves riddled with fissures. For purposes of study, the preferred means of travel to and from the volcano is helicopter. Helicopters have their flaws, though, and what if the fuel runs out? As I understand it, every year Search and Rescue scouts and flags two emergency evacuation routes from Erebus back to McMurdo by land---actually, one of the traditionally more reliable routes travels westward over the pack ice, but had to be scrapped this year due to cracks---and hopes to heaven they won't need them, because it's terribly likely that any Search and Rescue team traveling overland will in turn require searching and rescuing.

So it's a little funny that one of the loveliest and longest hikes available to the folk on station is to Castle Rock, which sits about three and a half miles northeast of McMurdo along the above-mentioned treacherous Hut Point Peninsula. Castle Rock Loop traverses the Erebus ice shelf, and the Outdoor Safety Lecture delivered to all new arrivals at the beginning of the season spelled out in no uncertain terms the fact that people have died by deciding to leave the flagged hiking route and explore the fissure-ridden Vast White Emptiness.

Even taking all of this into consideration, however, it's as safe as any place in Antarctica, and probably a great deal safer than any hike I walked in Alaska (by dint of the obligatory precautions if nothing else). Nobody's allowed to go alone, for one thing, and hikers are required to check-out with the firehouse, provide an expected time of return, and carry a radio in case of emergencies. The entire trail is flagged. Three shelters--called apples, for obvious reasons--along the ten-mile loop offer refuge from unexpected bad weather and provide emergency supplies for nearly all contingencies. Apart from one steep segment around the 6-mile marker (which we had elected to tackle in a descending direction), it's pretty sodding flat. We could have slid down the steep part on galley trays if we'd thought to bring them. As for the cold, I think most people with an interest in hiking can attest to at least one indelibly memorable experience of underestimating the implacable cold on this continent, and I don't know about Jean, but--putting this as delicately as possible--I've already had mine, the end. We went confident and well-equipped.

It was a perfect night, incredibly beautiful in the way only Antarctica can be. At one point, just after we'd passed Castle Rock and probably around the farthest-from-town marker, Jean asked abruptly, "Can we stop a minute?"

Thinking she wanted to tie her boot or drink some water, I replied, "Of course," and came to a crunching halt.

She did likewise. Suddenly I understood, and pulled down my parka hood. We stood in absolute silence, breathing as lightly as possible and trying not to rustle our clothing.

After a minute I said, "Are your ears ringing?"

"Yeah. Must be all the damage."

"Yeah. Residue."

We fell silent once again. Even the wind held still. I have never experienced such absolute silence. It's pretty incredible. It's just so...silent. No life, no ocean, no whistling of air over terrain, nothing. I don't know that it exists anywhere else in the world. The inside of my head had never seemed so loud, as though for the first time I was hearing the rushing traverse of blood through my body.

We soaked it up until a little sneaking breeze ruined the quiet of my video capture and we started to feel chilled, then resumed our march. "I dunno why I felt I had to stop just then, but it seemed like the right thing."

The last sunset of the season had occurred the night before, so from our ever-moving vantage Jean and I watched that orange orb dip to the mountain-jagged horizon, slide sideways for a while, and then gradually renew its ascent. It felt pretty momentous and right to be out all night for the first full day without sunset.

Returning to the station, we both ate like we'd never seen food before, boasted of our walk to the rest of the galley mid-rats ("Did you do the out-and-back or the whole loop?" The whole loop!), and headed to bed feeling jubilant for taking such excellent advantage of good weather. Enormous props to Jean for walking with me. It was a perfect night for transition, I can't say that enough; maybe because it felt like a transition of some sort, and not just a change in my working hours.

We Can Do It!

2011-10-30T06:35:00.006+13:00

I can't begin to say how much I wanted to be Carmen Sandiego for Halloween. It seemed so appropriate, under the circumstances. Where in the world is Ame--, I mean, Carmen Sandiego? Oh, Antarctica. Of course. But costumes fell firmly under the heading of nonessential burdens when I was packing my suitcase in August, I couldn't get ahold of a red trench coat and a broad-brimmed hat in a timely fashion by shopping online, nor could I find the right garb in Skua.

Last year I went to great lengths to build my Sally costume from the ground up so that it would match perfectly the image in my mind. It turned out beautifully, but this year, as soon as I found out I'd be working the mid-rats shift clear through the Halloween party (which doesn't take place on Halloween anyway), I gave up on the notion of finding a costume. Figured it wasn't meant to be.

One evening this last week our newest roommate enquired about Gear Issue, a kind of lending closet for musical instruments, recreational equipment like skis and climbing shoes, and costumes. So I walked her downstairs to the end of Highway 1, and we rummaged disinterestedly through the hot dog suits and superhero capes, me still halfheartedly looking for a red trench coat. The blue-green jumpsuit found me instead, and the rest of Rosie the Riveter came easily.

My roommates and coworkers generously trick-or-treated through the bakeshop on their way to the Halloween party so that I could see and admire their getups. Best of all, I got to wear my costume to work. No reason why not, since I have to wash the jumpsuit before returning it to Gear Issue anyhow, and with my ironclad work shoes and an apron over the top, it coincides 100% with the food service dress code.

Happy Halloween!

Mid-Rats

2011-10-25T04:39:00.002+13:00

"Mid-Rats" is a term borrowed from the navy, shorthand for midnight rations. As I've mentioned before, certain departments at McMurdo run around the clock: the water-treatment plant, the firehouse, medical (on-call, at least), and the galley. There are probably others. We are the station's life-support system. Both the hours comprising the night shift and the crew of people working it are referred to as mid-rats. They operate at more or less twelve hours' remove from the majority of McMurdo's population, taking their main meal (you guessed it) at midnight.

Within the galley hierarchy, mid-rats appear to self-select. I'm sure there have been instances of reluctant mid-rats, but it seems like a manager can issue a call for volunteers to work the night shift, and someone or two will invariably step forward. Mid-rats seem ready to trade a modicum of social integration with the rest of the community for a more peaceful, autonomous work environment. Antarctica is full of oddballs, yes; but one could accurately say that the mid-rats are the oddballs among the oddballs.

Since the influx of staff, the bakeshop (and, indeed, the whole galley) has turned into a veritable monkey house. Bananas everywhere. The mayhem has less to do with crowding a lot of independent cooks into a small space, than with a high number of brand-new staff still trying to figure out how to divide the labor efficiently (along with all the boring trivialities, like which mixer paddle goes with which bowl, and where the bathroom is, and what time lunch has to be ready). Rachel and I have done our best to relay what we know about the operation of the bakery, but the new managers must make their own decisions, too. I'm confident that the menus and personalities will iron out, the show will come together, and the bakeshop will continue its lively productivity; but the opportunity to slip sideways into a different schedule and different work environment practically opened in front of me, so I took it. Does the walker choose the path or the path the walker? Predictably, I'm going to mid-rats.

I'm really looking forward to it, too. There's no point denying that I like a challenge--and working in a bakeshop with nine other bakers is certainly that---but I also want a little more room to breathe. Honestly, one of the things I've missed most since coming to Antarctica is baking. Just pottering around the kitchen, experimentally combining ingredients, seeing a project through from start to finish. Making things. I'll be sorry to relinquish the influence of my colleagues, since watching other people work and asking questions about it is pretty much how I got into this professional baking gig in the first place; but we're practically tripping over each other, and the noise and mess are driving me crazy. I think going to mid-rats will help.

Today is my day off, and tomorrow I'll be "transitioning," before starting my first night shift on Wednesday evening. Essentially they give us an extra day to reset our internal clocks. A sign on Highway 2* provides the following tips:

The Wayne Lindebaum Pain-Free Method of Shift-Transition

This method of transitioning to nights was described to me by a man who has done it many times, and after struggling through two transitions myself before, I found it to work like a charm. So I named it after him. --Holly Gingles

-After your last day-shift, stay up past midnight! This should not be difficult. Go enjoy yourself. Go to mid rats, and be leisurely about it.

-Go to bed after that, sometime around 1:30-2:30 am. Try to get at least 8 hours. Take a sleeping pill if necessary.

-After you wake up, STAY DOWN. This is key. Do not drink coffee. Have very little food or none at all. Read a book in bed, watch a movie on your computer (in bed), but try to be horizontal all day. You'll end up napping, which is good.

-Do not try to use this time to get things done or be productive. It would defeat the purpose. Again, stay down.

-Get up late for dinner. By this point you should feel very refreshed, and should be able to stay up all night this time.

Keep in mind that everyone has their own preference for transition. The ones that include copious amounts of alcohol or no sleep whatsoever might make for some good stories. The method described above may seem boring, but it is the most, well, pain-free.

That first bit---about staying up past midnight being so damn easy---well, it isn't for some of us. Hmph. I'm old! And I've been waking up at four! Working sixty hours a week isn't terribly demanding physically, but working in a kitchen with dozens of other people clattering around at your elbows requires an awful lot of attention. And no coffee for a whooooolllle daaaaayyyy. I foresee a headache. Otherwise, transitioning looks a lot like a trans-oceanic flight without the airplane. A kind of accelerated jet lag. Sit still for twelve hours, doze as much as you can, and then hit the ground running.

*In building 155, the hallway that begins at the main entrance and houses the principal computer kiosk, the recreation office, the housing office, laundry, the ATM, and the station store is colloquially known as Highway 1. The hallway at 90 degrees, where the craft room, barber shop, and radio sound booth reside is known as Highway 2. Bulletin boards laden with information line both corridors.

Weird Fishes

2011-10-17T18:32:00.002+13:00

They've installed an observation tube in the sea ice. That's right. A clear tube--underwater--big enough for one person at a time to sit on a box, under the ice, in the middle of the Antarctic ocean, like they've been immersed in a 28-degree aquarium. (That probably sounds cold, but consider that it's 30 degrees warmer than current surface temperatures before wind chill. Very cozy down there.) I watched fish, jellies, and the hordes of weird creatures that I couldn't name. Many of them are transparent. Some are shaped like angels, some like a double-helix. Starfish dotted the sea-floor. The underside of the ice itself is incredibly beautiful. Depending on conditions (and, I suppose, the tide), the undersea scenery changes quite a bit. I could hear the laser-beam calls of the seals even over the noise of the wind at the surface; I'd love to go back to record it on a calm day, and (with very, very good luck), maybe even catch a seal swimming by.

Though if I never see anything but those schools of tiny, clear fish, it's still pretty amazing.

All Ahead Full

2011-10-15T20:09:00.002+13:00

Perhaps it occurred to some of you that I haven't written about my job---my all-consuming, 10-hour-a-day, six-day-a-week occupation---or, indeed, about food at all, since my first jubilant affirmation that I had landed in the bakeshop.

Sadly, the truth is that work hasn't been very much fun. It's been frustrating. Disheartening. Watching the clock, waiting for my shift to end. A lot of win-fly involved stepping carefully, holding my tongue and my temper. Not a bad lesson for someone like me, but not a good way to spend six months of one's life, either, so hopefully that phase ended with the last flight's departure for Christchurch. Yesterday I actually felt like I'd put in a real day's work: start at five, half a dozen things go wrong in the first fifteen minutes, power through, coffee shakes by ten, hungry shakes by one, go to the gym to burn it all off, inhale a bar of chocolate like a vitamin supplement, down for the count by eight-thirty. Today, on the other hand, was a complete shitshow of confusion. I hate it. If I could quit, today I probably would. I can't, so we carry on.

The bakeshop puts out breakfast pastries (mostly boxed proof-and-bake products) and granola (made in vast batches, from scratch) for everyday breakfast consumption; one or two items for a lunch dessert; one or two items for a dinner dessert; some kind of cookie, brownie, biscuits, or leftover item for 10 o'clock and 3 o'clock breaks (and pizza Saturday afternoons); a dinner bread; and all of the bread. (The latter doesn't mean just keeping the breadbox full for morning toast, or the lunchtime deli line stocked with white and multigrain, either--if the cooks decide to have grilled cheese, Reubens, hamburgers, or garlic bread they request however many loaves [or rolls, or baguettes] from the bakeshop. Furthermore, the galley provides pack lunches to the field camps and departing flights, so they need sandwich bread, too.) Quantities vary in accordance with the population of McMurdo.

For win-fly I made a shitton of bread. Just to give you an idea what constitutes a shitton, since this is a foreign unit of measurement to many, the smallest batch of dough weighed in at 35 pounds, the largest (so far) at over 100. (It's a benchmark moment, I think, when the dough weighs more than the baker.) In part this is because the station eats a shitton of bread, but it also just shook out in the labor-delegation process that I've made the majority of the bread. Maybe word circulated from my interviewer to the head sous chef to Josie that I was particularly interested in making bread (which I am), or perhaps Josie just found it convenient to hand me a bread recipe at 5:01am to get me out of her hair. Some mornings it felt like a terrible hazard to scale a recipe into the dozens of pounds before my first eight ounces of Kenya AA had kindled cognitive function, but after a few near-misses I grew more confident about it. (And possibly stopped caring as much.)

White bread, seven-grain bread, pumpernickel, dinner rolls, pain de mie, raisin bread, olive bread, sourdough, pear and walnut bread, yeasted banana bread, steam buns, brioche, semolina, rye with flaxseed, roasted garlic and rosemary focaccia, potato and onion bread, tomato bread, ciabatta, braided challah, Norman apple cider bread, hamburger buns, naan, soft pretzels, pumpkin and sunflower seed baguettes, Irish soda bread, cinnamon rolls…never the same thing twice. Part of me feels dissatisfied about not going back to address and "fix" the shortcomings of a recipe, but tackling a new project every day undeniably keeps the learning curve angled steeply upwards. (Though I would never claim to learn along the smooth, gliding parabolic line implied by that phrase, learning curve--it's more of a leaps and bounds affair, full of false starts and pauses and sudden realizations.)

I found that I enjoyed making bread in an industrial-size kitchen, possibly because, of all the projects to choose from, bread demands the fewest compromises in terms of the quality of the ingredients and eventual product. (The silent bread ingredient requiring the most juggling, in fact, is time.) The bread flour, like all of our staples, arrives in the galley stockroom after a minimum of two years in cold storage, but flour's also got to be the most forgiving ingredient in our whole arsenal.

The chocolate around here, for instance, is garbage (I know I'm a snob). Many of the nuts are stale. All of the dairy starts dry. Eggs from the shell appear exclusively on the breakfast line for orders sunny-side up; pasteurized liquid eggs and cream cheese have to be reconstituted with heat or immersion blending or both, since freezing and thawing causes them to separate. The only flavor extracts are vanilla and almond. LIquor is limited and strictly monitored. Knocking out things like "chocolate cream pies"---prefab Oreo cookie crusts in flimsy aluminum tins, vast packages of jell-o just-add-powdered-milk-and-water pudding mix, topped with just-add-water Non Dairy Whipped Topping (the fuck? how in god's name did they coax hydrogenated soybean oil into this kind of behavior?)---just doesn't do it for me. Sure, it's a skill worth knowing, in case the zombie apocalypse strikes and I can no longer get my hands on fresh ingredients, but that isn't baking. (Come to think of it, why would I want to survive the zombie apocalypse in the absence of fresh ingredients?) The same goes for thaw-and-bake cherry turnovers, boxed cake mixes, boxed icing mixes, boxed muffin mixes, cans of pie filling, buckets of lemon curd and pastry cream that do not require refrigeration even after opening, and buckets of "Hon-E-Roll" caramel that tastes, to someone who turned the caramel-walnut roll into a persnickety work of art, like a Sam's Club abomination.

It isn't as though it comes as a surprise, exactly, in a cafeteria this size, out here on the rag-end of human habitation, but it rankles nonetheless. We have lots of brown sugar, butter, and salt---but evidently not enough to supply upwards of a thousand people with caramel-walnut rolls and every other damn thing---and pound for pound, buckets Hon-E-Roll caramel are a lot cheaper (and easier to transport) than the constituents. My interviewer lied to me, all her fine talk about working 95% from scratch. It may have been mistake to read Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle just as I stepped on the plane to Denver to commence this alternative Antarctican lifestyle. On the other hand, all of my previous experience in professional baking took place in establishments that prided themselves on a "from scratch" approach, so in some ways the fall from grace was inevitable. And as far as presentation is concerned, throwing a hotel-pan of brownies and a spatula out onto the dessert table leaves a lot to be desired. I admit that I miss the smaller scale and sense of craftsmanship involved in café baking.

(Pretty ironic, then, that the most ridiculously fun project during the entire six weeks of win-fly was a massive batch of rice crispy treats.)

I anticipate that my bread making days may be numbered or over, that the whole game is about to change now that we're [nearly] fully-staffed. I hope it gets better. There were always going to be some days--and weeks--that completely sucked. Tomorrow is another day.

It's only for six months, right?

Rice Krispy Treats: Industrial Version

2011-10-14T20:17:00.001+13:00

It was the scale of the thing.

Envision, if you will, a metal bathtub with very long legs, such that the floor of the tub sits about waist-high. The water from the tap only runs cold, but the sides and bottom of the tub contain heating elements, controlled by a knob like the one on your kitchen oven. Throw eight pounds of butter into the bathtub--actually it's called a tilt-skillet, owing to the nautical-looking crank-wheel that enables one to pour out the contents---and turn on the heat, very low. Just enough to melt the butter.

Now fill the bathtub with forty-eight pounds of marshmallows.

FORTY-EIGHT POUNDS OF MARSHMALLOWS.

Do you know what that looks like? I wish to heaven I'd brought my camera to work that day, because the mise en place for this otherwise straightforward-to-boring project occupied an entire work table. Do you know that the average grocery-store bag of jet-puffed marshmallows, whether minis or mongos or plain old campfire variety, weighs one pound? And this project wants forty-eight of them!

FORTY-EIGHT POUNDS OF MARSHMALLOWS.

It takes a little while for all those marshmallows to melt down---frankly, it takes a little while to get all of those fucking marshmallows out of the bags and into the bathtub---so to keep the ones on the bottom from burning, go fetch a canoe paddle and use it to stir the marshmallows around. Yes. Stir those forty-eight pounds of marshmallows until they transform into fifty-six pounds of pearlescent melted marshmallow soup. Marshmallow soup in a big metal bathtub, stirred with an oar as long as I am tall. Does it get any better than that? Add half a cup of salt and a coffee cupful of vanilla and go get a drink of water while you have the chance.

Add twenty pounds of rice crispies. That sounds pretty tame compared to the marshmallows, doesn't it? But marshmallows, fluffy as they may seem in comparison the biscuits we had last Thursday, are still a hell of a lot denser than crisped rice. Twenty pounds of crisped rice is a lot of crisped rice. That bathtub is getting really fucking full. And even poured into a bathtub, and mixed with a canoe paddle, seventy-six pounds of rice crispy treat mush isn't very easy to stir. Pretty sticky, see. It's more like rowing than stirring. Put your back into it! Heave! Heave!

To finish, load a speed rack with ten sheet trays, and start shoveling the crackling mess from the bathtub into the pans. Spray your hands with enough Vegelene to grease the inner workings of a steam punk automobile, and pat the treats into their new housing. To clean the impossibly sticky residue left in the tilt-skillet, hand around spoons to all of the cooks and DAs on-duty, and allow them to converge like so many starving locusts. Soap and hot water will take care of the rest. Pour the bathwater with its floating bits of cereal into a bucket, and dispose of it through a colander down the floor drain.

Serves hundreds.

Crary Lab

2011-10-10T17:42:00.001+13:00

Crary Lab casts a long shadow over the landscape of Why We Are Here. All other departments bow to the needs and wishes of the scientists, whether they like it or not. Trucks, snowmobiles, wireless internet, tents, dorm rooms, pack-lunches: they get the best that Antarctica can provide. Even Josie, who deeply dislikes taking dictation from other departments, didn't quibble with an order for so many dozen cookies to be delivered weekly to the Lab. Science is King around here. I haven't yet interacted with many of the scientists individually, but as far as I've been able to observe, they don't abuse their preeminence. Some of the ice-divers here for win-fly seemed a lot friendlier (and humbler) than some of the contractors. Perspective, perhaps. Back in the real world, academics spend a lot of time bowing and scraping for grants, and justifying furiously the importance of their work. No matter how esoteric their chosen field of study, they've got one hell of a captive audience here at McMurdo. I can't help but think that they might find all the adulatory attention a bit disorienting.

The Albert P. Crary Science and Engineering Center, therefore, as the focal point of the scientists' activities, warrants far greater reverence among McMurdoans than the Chapel. Built in 1991, it houses three broadly-designated field-oriented floors known as "phases": biological, geological, and atmospheric. Posters summarizing the discoveries and conclusions of past work line the hallways, giving the place the air of a high school with a serious emphasis on earth sciences. It is one of only two buildings at McMurdo with controlled internal humidity: to maintain it, heavy refrigerator-type doors, with magnetic seals lining their perimeters, precede the inner card-swipe admission doors. Even if one doesn't know their function, the sealed doors impart an air of great importance to both building and occupants, and perhaps also of prohibition to the uninitiated. Upon arrival, we galley slaves received stern admonition that we're not to go wandering and poking about the hallowed temple of Science.

Of course for six weeks I wanted very badly to do exactly that.

As reward for an exceptionally safe win-fly season---I'm not shitting you, folks, I couldn't make this stuff up---the voices of power ordained that galley staff may leave work two hours early (in rotation, not all at once). Josie asked if I would prefer to come in later last Sunday morning or leave earlier, and since Crary Lab tours commence at two o'clock, the question decided itself.

And I was the only person to show up! The congenial tour guide (heaven forgive me, I forgot her name) gave me a sticker picturing a penguin holding a beaker, and generously offered to let me dictate the terms of my visit: what was I most interested in? Everything, I said earnestly. I wanted to see every inch of the lab that she was willing or able to show me.

So she talked about plate tectonics, the route the Gondwana supercontinent had traveled from the equator to its present location, and the discovery of plant and animal fossils beneath the Antarctic ice. Who likes to come to Antarctica? Dinosaur hunters like to come to Antarctica! For good or ill, the prevalence of fossilized life forms gives credence to the theory that oil and mineral deposits also likely lie beneath the surface. Fortunately for Antarctica, its uncompromising climate and remote geography provide the best protection from the probing hand of man; loose-languaged international treaties aside, human technology hasn't yet reached a level at which the profit from selling fossil fuels would offset the cost of finding, drilling, and transporting them from under the pole.

She talked about collecting meteorites on the Ice, and indicated some specimens in a glass case. Under normal earthly circumstances, meteorites aren't very rare---they fall all the time, burn most of the way through the atmosphere, and land with a soft flump in your backyard, probably no bigger than a marble---but they're very difficult to find, owing to their tendency to blend in with all the other rocks and detritus of human living. Antarctica, however, is very---well---white. All over. Picking up rocks fallen from the sky is, almost literally, a picnic. A walk in the park. Couple of scientists load up some snowmobiles with pack-lunches and go riding around, collecting rocks off the ice, putting them in a big sack. They don't even have to be meteorite scientists, just collectors who can pick up the specimens and send them back to the pertinent authorities in the Real World. Is that not awesome? I love picking up rocks. I don't even keep them, most of the time, I just pick them up and carry them for a while. It's one of those inexplicable compulsions. Put me on a beach, any beach, and I pose a danger to myself and my pockets, picking up rocks. I want to go on a meteorite hunt!

She talked about Weddell seals, which I've watched snoring and rolling on the sea ice off of Hut Point for weeks, missing my cats, hungry for that benign non-human presence that animals so reassuringly provide. Weddells are the most southerly-dwelling seal in Antarctica, enjoying the sea-ice's protection from predators like whales. Very often, parties of flaggers and scouts take cues from the seals, because (ahem), they don't travel overland very well. To say the least. Wherever one finds a seal, a hole or crack in the ice necessarily can't be far. Let that serve as a warning to the newbies against wandering over the sea-ice off of Hut Point. (Seals tend to show up in the dive-huts, too. How considerate of these humans to construct and maintain a tidy hole in the ice, and furthermore put a nice, heated hut over the top!) My guide directed my attention to the skulls of some crab eater, fur, and Weddell seals, and bade me examine their teeth. Unlike the teeth of his open-water cousins, the teeth of the Weddells point outward--a special evolutionary mechanism for boring breathing holes up through the ice. Just imagine. They find a little crack and start tearing it open. As one might expect, after a number of years this kind of behavior tends to erode their incisors, so one can determine the age of a seal in part by assessing the wear on its teeth. She mentioned, also, that should an older seal's teeth deteriorate so badly that he cannot chew a hole in the ice, he will sometimes get stuck underwater and drown.

She talked about Mt Erebus, our world-famous resident volcano. Erebus is one of only two volcanoes of its kind--specifically what that kind is, I'm still not sure, but it's something to do with the readily-accessible boiling lake of lava. The other volcano resides in Africa, in such a politically-charged location that a scientist actually stands a much higher chance of dying by human violence on his way to the African volcano than by traveling here to the harshest, driest, coldest, most remote continent on Earth. You can imagine that this makes Erebus immensely attractive to volcanologists. Cameras attach to the rim of the crater, peering down into the bubbling abyss, measuring lord-knows-what. We watched some clips of "eruptions" that were taken by one of these cameras. Eruption isn't quite accurate---rising gases from the Earth's mantle can't exactly build up to an earth-shattering blow-out because the magma lake stands open---kind of the difference between a pressure-cooker and a boiling pot of water. But sometimes the larger bubbles of gases pop in a pretty spectacular fashion, hurling liquid magma and pieces of rock (called "bombs") out onto the flanks of the mountain. When this occurs, one is supposed to stand still and look uphill, toward the approaching blob of flaming minerals, the better to step out of the way if it happens to head in your direction. Surprisingly, none of these burps have ever taken out a camera. I asked if the noise up there is deafening, and she replied, looking surprised, that she didn't know.

Sometimes Erebus crystals lie hidden within the phonolithic bombs of stone. These are bits of "anorthoclase feldspar" which, having a much higher melting point than the surrounding minerals, toss around in the magma, collecting pieces of themselves and increasing in size like a volcanic pearl until they get belched out into the frozen air. The phonolite erodes relatively quickly under the influences of cold, wind, and particulate impact, leaving the Erebus crystals nakedly behind. Evidently they litter the face of the volcano, and, despite the environmental watchdog's warnings to take nothing but photos, disobliging scientists sometimes collect them and bring them back to town. We looked at a few in glass cases. The most perfectly-formed specimens look a bit like very crude arrowheads.

She showed me through the empty labs, including sliding-door refrigerated labs with digital temperature controls, before leading me downstairs to a vast room full of empty water tanks that looked like a combination of Sea World and a dog-washing establishment. A whiff of unmistakeable ocean-odor pervaded. (Nothing rotting or fishy, mind. It's a lab, not an aquarium. But in a land of no-smells, I'd welcome that ocean funk no matter its source or designation.) Here the biologists annually keep live specimens of sea creatures for study, and she strongly suggested that I return later in the season to witness the delicious hubbub of the lab at full capacity: from seal pups and penguin eggs right down the food chain to all manner of microscopic things I've never heard of.

One small tank with clear plexiglass sides, perhaps a meter square, stood towards the center. The touch tank! This was the thing I'd anticipated most, having been told of its existence by some of the returnees, but had not expected until main-body. A hum and a trickle attested to the constant circulation of sea water right from the McMurdo Sound, into the tank, and back again. All kinds of small life scuttled and sighed under the influence of the artificial current. The water was cooold, about 28 degrees Fahrenheit I think she said. I was astonished by the variety and saturation of color, having nursed a nonsensical half-formed notion that cold waters provoked translucence.

I touched everything, even after my fingers were too numb to register the contact. Starfish, sponges, snails, scallops, clams, codfish, anemones, urchins, a huge lively isopod that looked like a sea louse, crabs that looked like sea spiders…oh, all sorts of things. My guide observed that the specimens rotated back to the wild after a certain stint in the touch-tank, and that all of the ones collected for the purpose were carefully-chosen miniatures of the sea life divers encountered under the Ice. They grow 'em big in Antarctica, evidently. Sea stars larger than humans. Forests of sea-sponges ten feet deep.

Dang I love science. Sometimes I wonder if I missed my calling.

End of Win-Fly

2011-10-03T14:10:00.004+13:00

Win-fly draws to a close. According to the "penguin timer," I'm already through 23% of my projected stint in Antarctica. I think I've adapted to life as a galley slave at the bottom of the world. Mostly.

Last week the southern hemisphere "sprang forward." When I stumble downstairs in the mornings, around 4:55am, to collect my first libation of coffee and report for work, the sky has already lightened along the ridge of the mountains. And this from about five hours of daylight when we arrived August 20th. The sun returned surprisingly quickly, much faster than in Iceland or Alaska; following my baker's routine of heading to bed by nine, I no longer witness full dark. No more stars; no auroras. The mood of the light has changed, too: high and harsh at midday, glaring off of the snow, demanding sunglasses or goggles. It's still colder than hell, but light means life. "Make hay while the sun shines." More and more seals appear as the weeks progress, lounging near cracks and holes in the sea ice, and returning employees say that we can expect skuas to start sailing into town any time now.

The bustle at the ice pier and ice runway continues apace. There's a great sense of getting ready, of urgency; of course the conversations I overhear in the coffee house lounge often seem to include complaints about "running behind" by so many weeks. Weather permitting, the first flight of the summer season arrives tomorrow. (It was supposed to have arrived today, but we're in the middle of a storm.) The last of the winter-overs will begin to depart, and our numbers will swell to over 700 by the end of the week. Summer's coming to McMurdo, bringing The Science and all related support staff. By nature I'm resistant to the idea of having More People Around, but I think all of us (newbies especially) are ready for some fresh faces and voices, different classes in the evenings, a shakeup in the daily routine. I'm interested to meet the incoming bakers, but mostly looking forward to receiving a small mountain of mail and eating a green salad as big as my head.

Some Science: The NASA Satellite Dome

2011-09-27T20:07:00.020+13:00

Monday morning I joined a tour of the NASA Satellite Dome that had been arranged for interested galley slaves by one of the more enterprising dining attendants. (The same one who works the night shift alone, and recently shaved a checkerboard into her hair. Jean is pretty okay, in my estimation.) An ecru-colored geodesic dome squats benignly behind McMurdo, at the crest of a hill. Most of us, having no idea what it's actually called or what its function might be, refer to it as The Golf Ball on the Hill. It's just a feature of the landscape, like the wind turbines, only less interesting because it doesn't move. Even the discovery that the dome houses a huge satellite dish doesn't provoke much excitement; if you feel like nosing into someone else's occupation on your day off, there's more fun to be had at the waste center, throwing bottles. But plonk the magical phrase NASA in front of a building's designation, and you'll suddenly have legions of dining attendants banging down your door, wanting to know what you're up to.

So it happened that at eight in the morning---an unseemly hour for some of our more socially-oriented DAs---a gaggle of parka-ed figures met at building 189, the Golf Ball's companion structure in town, identifiable by the lesser domes arranged on the roof and the NASA sign at the door. The two soft-spoken, precise men who granted admission to our motley crew seemed flattered and a little overwhelmed by our presence. Rex and Ray---those are their real names---ushered us to the break room and politely requested that we remove our shoes and cold-weather gear. The ensuing shuffle and strewn mess of a lot of sleepy twenty-somethings disrobing, in contrast with the careful, orderly interior of the building, made me want to laugh. In sock-feet of varying states of cleanliness we followed our shepherds through the heavy door printed with official-looking notices about information security and authorized personnel. Rex and Ray could probably stage their own comedy act, a la the Odd Couple---one tall, quiet, silver-bearded and bespectacled; one short, chatty, and unblinking. In a room lined by glass cases full of screens, dials, knobs, and digital numbers, Ray called us to a halt.

With his bland, half-smiling face and cautiously animate hands, he explained a bit about what their job entailed. Effectively, the Golf Ball receives signals from satellites orbiting the earth in a polar pattern. (Most communication satellites---for pedestrian telephone and internet, for instance---orbit the earth in an equatorial fashion.) They travel anywhere from 100 to 400 miles above the Earth's surface, and at varying speeds. Some, with their sensors trained on the planet, monitor things like weather and atmosphere; others, facing away from earth, scan the stars and who knows what else. The Golf Ball receives information collected by the satellites and transmits it to building 189, where Rex and Ray examine it "to see if it makes sense." Then they convey the data to the consumers, so to speak: scientists and academics in labs and universities around the world whose petitions for funding put those satellites in the sky to begin with.

Theirs must be a tricky position to fill---for the most part, they're here as mechanics. They ensure that the dish is getting its scheduled doses of data. They don't handle the information themselves, or perform any studies as a function of their work, but they have to know enough about the data to be able to "read" it, to identify an aberrant piece of information as the potential result of mechanical malfunction. And then find the source, and fix it.

Until relatively recently, the alignment of the satellite dish and receipt of the incoming signal had to be accomplished "by hand." Dozens of engineers at desks figured the approaching satellite's schedule, interception point, and trajectory, then cranked out the necessary adjustments---literally the nuts and bolts---to get the dish into position. Nowadays the whole process can be handled by computers, of course---and under good conditions, probably remotely, by operators in more temperate climates. But Antarctica is not a location conducive to good conditions. God knows the internet goes down almost weekly. High winds, unthinkable cold, power outages, and the inevitable recalcitrance of inanimate objects ensure that Rex and Ray have jobs on the Ice, maintaining the dish. (Irrelevant aside: a dish best served cold?)

Following this introductory lecture, Ray consulted his watch and suggested that we put our boots back on and head up the hill to witness the satellite dish in action. Last week brought the coldest cold I've ever experienced, absolute temperatures hovering at -40F and the wind chill an incomprehensible -82F. Try and wrap your head around that one. I can't. Some of the desk jockeys took turns filming the pouring-boiling-water-into-steam trick; I heard that others tried blowing bubbles. These bouts of true Antarctic weather most often seem to coincide with dazzlingly clear skies (during win-fly, anyway; winter may be different). By Monday the wind had dropped a good deal, but it was still really fucking cold and the view from the Golf Ball on the Hill seemed to expand forever. Funny how these days seem to tug in two directions: huddled deeply into one's parka, drawn in by instinct to stay as warm as possible, simultaneously one feels drawn out by the presence of so much empty SPACE.

Ray opened a hatch on the side of the dome and led the way in, Rex standing at the door as the sweep for our sauntering crew. The dish inside pointed straight up. For the record, the Golf Ball isn't an insulated, comfortably-heated clubhouse for the satellite dish mechanics to hang out in. The siding between interconnecting beams isn't even rigid, as I'd expected. It's a kind of heavy, pliable material, like sailcloth covered in plastic. The dome serves to protect the dish from the wind and blowing snow (and possibly skuas), and that's really all that it does, which is to say it was colder than hell standing on a cement floor and waiting for a motionless satellite to start doing something. In obedience with Ray's directions we lined the edges of the room, since he wasn't entirely sure which way the satellite would swing when it commenced positioning. He tried to fill the slowly-ticking minutes by inviting questions from a group whose interest flagged exponentially as they got colder and nothing happened.

A klaxon sounded abruptly, interrupting Ray mid-discourse, and the satellite began to spin. It paused, then swung around in a bow to the floor. Then that was it. After another minute passed, the dish crept almost imperceptibly along an invisible axis, following the path of a satellite hundreds of miles away, receiving some kind of information about solar activity. We took our photos and drifted back outside to the vans waiting to return us to building 155.

In a way, the entire experience was pretty anticlimactic. And in another way, it drove home some of the notions I'd been forming about the program since I started the PQ process. Because that anticlimactic spin of the satellite dish--that's what we're all here for. Right there. That's the Science. The boring acquisition of information we will never see or hear about, never mind understand, during our entire time on the Ice. Rex and Ray make sure the dish is working. The galley slaves feed Rex and Ray. The water-treatment plant makes sure we have desalinated ocean to drink and wash our dishes. The Heavy Shop makes sure we have vans to travel up and down the hill. The Wasties make sure the paper napkins from our meals and used oil from our vans return to the already-spoiled world in the appropriate fashion. Guys like Marc and Nick keep the lights on at the airfield so we can arrive, receive supplies, and leave again. We all go to work, to meals, to the bar, to bed, almost completely removed from the Science that gives the station purpose. This enormous, complex, expensive, wasteful operation--McMurdo--runs on the head of steam produced by someone else's curiosity, which by extension is our curiosity. Us, collectively. The human race. Because we wanted to know more about the sun.

Pegasus

2011-09-26T15:45:00.005+13:00

Hearing my enthusiastic account of the trip to the pressure ridges last Sunday, Josie cannily gathered that I will leap immediately at any opportunity to get out of town. Her boyfriend, Neil, works for the Vehicle Maintenance Facility (VMF), also known as the Heavy Shop. Squads of these folk routinely drive out to the Pegasus runway, a 13-mile traverse around the rim of McMurdo Sound, on a "generator check," to make sure that everything's still running, and by regulation they must travel in pairs for safety. Would I like to accompany them some Sunday after my shift? YES, of course I would! One of the bored mechanics would get the afternoon off, and I would get out of building 155 for a few hours to see something new. Everybody wins. Maybe I would see a penguin!

Accordingly, last Sunday we wrapped up business in the bakeshop and Josie sent me sprinting upstairs to collect my parka. We met back in the galley and she waved me off to "one of the VMF guys," who turned out to be someone I knew: Marc, an electrician I'd met during Orientation. He used to be in the Air Force, was stationed at Incirlik for a long spell, has a son about my age, and here on the Ice his job is to keep the runway lights on (more or less). Last weekend Marc happened to be on the same pressure ridge tour as me, and when he overheard my loud declaration that I couldn't possibly leave the continent without seeing a penguin, he chuckled and promised to take me out to the runways--where they most often appear--whenever the Emperors started showing up. He's one of those genuinely nice guys who make a point to say hello and ask how I'm doing---in a non-creepy way---every time he sees me. (His favorite is rhubarb crisp.)

Marc led the way outside to an idling pickup truck laden with all sorts of contraptions and containers whose function I could not guess. Behind the wheel sat Nick, a mechanic from New York (this fact apparent from the minute he opened his mouth). Introductions and identifications followed. As it turned out, both men were needed to do some repairs out on the runway, so we were a party of three. I clambered into the center of the cab (ha ha, customary jokes about being "tiny") and we barreled along the road towards Scott Base and beyond at the truck's maximum velocity of 25 mph.

All of the win-fly arrivals and departures took place at Pegasus. You might call it our "permanent" runway. For all the grooming and winterization that it requires in order to function from year to year---like moving all of the equipment onto man-made berms of snow so the CATs and fuel tanks aren't buried beneath winter storms---and for as long as it takes to move cargo from the airfield to town, Pegasus sits on the solid white ice of the Ross Ice Shelf. Pretty stable. Nonetheless, because the runway surface itself is made of packed-down snow and ice, not blacktop, after a season of use Pegasus needs a rest. Not to mention a facelift. All of the little flyaway bits of rubber and metal must get cleaned up, because their presence catalyzes the melting process during the summer, leaving sunken pockmarks in the ice ten times the size of every piece of litter.

The seasonal sea-ice runway, on the other hand, is---wait for it---on the ice---I know, right?---and must be built anew every year. Don't ask me how they build it, since I'm not entirely sure, even as I watch the work unfold---pushing snow back and forth, delineating the perimeter with ubiquitous red flags, planing the surface. Supposedly removing the snow removes the insulation, which serves to thicken the ice. (Nick commented that the ice currently measures in at seven feet. Seven feet of ice. And it was a warm year, for Antarctica.) It's a great deal closer to McMurdo than Pegasus, practically out the front door---one can watch the mysterious construction process from anywhere on station, the beep beep beep of activity clearly audible. Proximity makes the ice runway much more convenient for the perpetual comings and goings of the summer season, and movement of cargo, but its usefulness is of course limited by the endurance of the material. After a certain point the sun will accomplish the inevitable, and the runway will start to deteriorate (and the same people who cleared all of the snow will be blowing it back onto the runway to insulate it against melting). Once the sea ice thins to six feet, it'll no longer safely support a landing C-17.

(There's also a runway at Williams Field that services aircraft equipped with skis, but it gets a lot less traffic.)

These were interesting things to learn, riding along and peering through the frosted windshield at Mt Discovery. Both men seemed to warm to having an interested audience, so I could ask whatever I wanted. I couldn't have lucked out with a more beautiful day to visit the airfield, either. For a few minutes I envied the folks on the pressure ridge tour, knowing how luminescent the ice-formations must be under such brilliant sun, but I reconsidered that the pressure ridges are impressive in all weathers--the view from Pegasus demands a perfectly clear sky. Snow-covered mountains at nearly every point of the compass; Black Island and White Island; the vast plane of sea-ice stretching into the sound. Nick and Marc pointed out the eerie, undulating data morgana on the horizon; illusions of cliffs and ridges on flat land, caused by the shifting temperatures between air and ice. The term supposedly comes from Italy, "literally ‘fairy Morgan,’ originally referring to a mirage seen in the Strait of Messina between Italy and Sicily and attributed to Morgan le Fay, whose legend and reputation were carried to Sicily by Norman settlers." It is indeed a strange, fey country, this one.

Once arrived at the airfield, Marc and Nick toured me around proudly, indicating the air-traffic control tower in its orange-and-white checks, the runway, the single-wide trailer that serves as a hospitality hut, the outhouse, and the stunning view of a steaming Mt Erebus and his lesser comrade, Mt Terror. Erebus, especially, presents such an imposing figure that it comes as a surprise. McMurdo appears to crouch right at the foot of that massive volcano, yet from our sea-level vantage, surrounded by hills and frozen ocean, we can't see the giant looming behind us at all. Marc and Nick went about their work on the generators while I wandered through the clusters of huts and fuel tanks, taking photos, returning to the single-wide every so often for a warmup and a hot drink.

No penguins, but there's still plenty of time.

Going Out, part two

2011-09-21T19:55:00.002+12:00

Sunday is a day of rest at McMurdo, unless your job happens to support life on station. Water-treatment plant employees, for instance, don't get Sundays off, and neither do galley slaves. Frustratingly, in this way we miss out on a lot of the recreational options scheduled to accommodate the rest of the community, like tours of the Crary science lab. This last Sunday, however, Josie cut me loose from the bakeshop quite a bit early. I drifted out of the galley at ten minutes to two, wondering what to do with myself for the afternoon, and caught sight of a group of people dressed for the weather collecting in the 155 entryway. (I realize that sounds silly--"dressed for the weather" in Antarctica, as if we aren't always--but there's a world of difference between putting on ALL the clothes and simply donning your hat and parka to scurry from one building to another.) By a stroke of luck, a few folk on their sign-up roster failed to show, and if I could be ready in five minutes I could go along. I bolted up the stairs to my room, changed costume as quick as I could, grabbed my camera and some hand warmers, then thundered back down to join

THE PRESSURE RIDGE TOUR.

A pressure ridge is an ice formation typically found on large frozen lakes or sea ice during the winter. In the most basic sense, a pressure ridge is a long crack in the ice that occurs because of repeated heating and cooling on the surface of the ~~lake~~ ocean.

In cases of extreme cold, ice will shrink in volume like any other solid, opening up cracks in the surface of ~~lakes~~ the ocean that are completely frozen over. The cracks quickly fill with water and freeze again, but when the temperature rises later, the ice expands and forces itself upward along the lines of the crack, in much the same fashion that plate tectonics creates mountain ranges, albeit on a much smaller scale." source

We nine eager tourists and two shepherds, Kelly and Ryan, rode in one of the jacked-up shuttle vans out to Scott Base, where Ryan checked in with the Kiwi dispatcher and collected a few stout, metal-tipped walking sticks. Leaving our chariot parked next to the green rabbit-warren, we set out on foot towards the beach, the Vast Nothingness.

Scott Base soon disappeared from view behind us. Apart from the red parkas and black trousers delineating eleven human forms, the entire landscape was occluded in hues of white. Depth perception evaporated, all color and shadow flattened by the particles in the air. I felt like I'd stepped through a portal to another planet--Hoth perhaps. Reading one of the many important-looking electronic attachments slung across her person, Kelly reported the wind at twenty knots, with a wind chill of -40F. We lumbered along slowly, with that deliberate, bear-like gait that bunny boots seem to evoke from all physiques. Such gnarly weather conditions meant poor visibility, and we were all wearing goggles against the cold and blowing snow (in addition to gaiters or balaclavas over our faces, and parka hoods zipped close), so the towers of buckled sea-ice seemed to loom very suddenly out of the whiteness.

In this strange state of sensory deprivation, so overstimulated by this continent's extreme forces of wind and cold that I'm unable to see, hear, smell, or feel more than a muffled impression of my surroundings, I finally clear enough psychic space to grasp that astonishing thought: I'm in Antarctica.

The ridges, like icebergs run aground (though they've never really left land), change constantly under the fluctuating influences of wind and ocean; the trail we pursued through these creaking, groaning monoliths had been flagged just days earlier by a few kind Kiwis. The frantically-flitting red flags suggested the most otherworldly mini-golf course anybody'd ever imagined. Cliffs and turrets of dry snow particles, packed and sculpted by the wind, brought leering dragons and gargoyles to mind--especially when, in pursuit of another picture, I stepped from howling a wind-tunnel into a cathedral-like quiet in the lee of a large ridge.

After the first twenty minutes of maelstrom, the wind abated significantly and the clear sky overhead--which had hovered promisingly above the horizon-level blowing snow all day--finally had a chance to work its magic. The ice started to glow with an incredible glacial blue, as though lit from within.

We glimpsed Erebus and Castle Rock through the haze; peered into blue-lined caves of wonder. Some views made me think of Dr Seuss and the fanciful, curled landscapes inhabited by Whos. Above all, as our little troop meandered slowly along--wriggling through narrow crevasses and scrambling up steep, hard-packed slopes, exclaiming at every ripple of ice and taking hundreds of photos--we agreed in muffled expostulations that we felt like we were astronauts, walking on the moon.

This is my idea of "going out."

Going Out, part one

2011-09-20T19:48:00.007+12:00

My fellow galley slaves frequently ask each other, and me, "Are you going out tonight?"

Going out? Seriously? Out WHERE, exactly? We're living on a research-station-cum-military-base at the end of the flipping inhabited world! They're hardly referring to the opera house; they're asking if I'm headed to the bar. Bars. We have three to choose from without stirring more than five minutes in any direction. Can you smell my disdain? Bars aren't really my scene, on or off the Ice. They're kind of boring. Too many people. One of my great failures as a well-adjusted human being, I'm sure. I went to Gallagher's a couple of weeks ago with one of my roommates, and it was entirely unremarkable except for the very disconcerting gender imbalance and concomitant, um, aggression. (McMurdo's population currently tallies in at 72% men to 28% women.)

So no, I don't "go out" much. For the most part, with my precious handful of leisure hours I desperately want to go outside--to look at the world, this crazy Antarctica place I'm living in. Some days this just isn't possible, and by strange chemistry cabin fever makes me crave solitude. (Would everybody just please GO AWAY?) But I'm trying not to disgrace my mother by taking up all of the "hermetic" habits that come so easily. Only some of them, like going to the gym six days a week, and reading during breaks instead of rehashing for the gazillionth time the story of who "went out" and made a complete ass of him/herself the night before. And writing. I tell people I spent the evening writing and I may as well say I spent it singing to the yogurt cultures living in the toes of my anti-microbial work shoes, the strange looks I get.

Last Tuesday evening I attended a workshop offered by a masseuse here on post that focused on preventing and rehabilitating repetitive-motion injuries in the hands, wrists, and arms. Useful information for us galley slaves, and for hobbit-people in general. (I'm sick of hearing myself referred to as "tiny," like being short is some kind of birth defect. The instructor, herself a smaller woman of Asian heritage, said matter-of-factly during a brief introduction that in her profession she had "learned to utilize leverage and cunning instead of brute force," and I loved her for it.) Some nights the scientists host lectures or travelogues in the galley. I go to yoga classes in the chapel, and putter around in the craft room (almost done fixing my uniform trousers). My favorite off-hours haunts are still the library and the coffeehouse lounge, with their treble-hooks of solitude, internet ports, and couches, but I'm trying, Mom.

Thursday night was "Boots Off" at Scott Base, the Kiwi Station three kilometers from here. Normally a weekly invitation allowing the Americans to spend money at someone else's bar and store, this was the first time during my short tenure that the event hadn't been cancelled due to inclement weather. I was pretty stoked to check out the cluster of green buildings I'd glimpsed on my walks. (Scott Base proper is off-limits to us except by invitation--and even on designated evenings, our visits are restricted to the bar and the store--but since the periphery of their station is the farthest I may venture by myself until the arrival of the main body summer season, you can imagine I've moseyed out there to have a look.)

After a solid month in the unprepossessing hodgepodge of barracks, Quonsets, and jerry-rigged shacks that amassed over the decades to comprise McMurdo, I found the Kiwi station refreshingly compact, well-designed, and efficient. Looks like somebody actually put some thought into it before slinging millions of dollars in labor and resources onto the frozen beach. The event is called "Boots Off" for a reason: boots and parkas remain in the Arctic (Antarctic?) entryway, hung on pegs and racks, and one pads in sock-feet through carpeted, picture-lined corridors. There's something very thrilling about walking around someone else's research station in sock-feet, like you're at a pajama party. Only thirteen Kiwis wintered over at Scott Base, so the place was quiet, which I found agreeable in contrast to the college-dorm atmosphere of building 155. Doors to the outside appear at regular intervals, but every part of the station may be accessed without exiting the building, like a rabbit warren (or a hobbit-hole).

I peeked in the bar--how often do you get to go to the bar in sock-feet?--where Kiwis and Americans roared energetically at a TV screen showing an ongoing World Cup rugby match. In the station store, Cadbury Milk and Whittaker's Peanut Slabs stood in place of Hershey's and Snickers bars; the water bottles, t-shirts, and refrigerator magnets said "Scott Base" instead of "McMurdo." Of particular note were the lightweight Kiwi gloves, for sale only at Scott Base, which I'd heard about by my second week. "When you go to Scott Base, be sure to get some possum gloves!" They're woven from a blend of polypropylene and possum fur, and I can already attest that they're much warmer than the all-polypro black liners issued with our Extreme Cold Weather gear. The possum occupation of that island nation presents an interesting case. They evidently overstepped their welcome and infiltrated New Zealand ecosystems some while back, demolishing plant life; as an [intentionally introduced] invasive species, their persecution and subsequent transformation into gloves doesn't provoke many tears among animal-rights activists. (Anybody want some? If I send them before Halloween they might reach you by Christmas!)

After finishing my shopping, I asked the Kiwi gentleman manning the station store where I might find The Stamps. He chuckled and amiably gave directions. Fellow McMurdoans had advised me to bring my passport on Boots Off night to acquire a stamp from Scott Base--not "official," of course, but a nifty bit of memorabilia for an evening "out."

To be continued...

SKUA

2011-09-12T12:24:00.002+12:00

skua ˈskyo͞oə|
noun
a large brownish predatory seabird related to the gulls, pursuing other birds to make them disgorge fish they have caught.
ORIGIN late 17th cent.: modern Latin, from Faroese skúvur, from Old Norse skufr (apparently imitative).

The Dispossessed may be my favorite of Le Guin's many amazing novels. (Maybe. The Left Hand of Darkness is up there, too. The Earthsea cycle are still in quarantine, temporarily I hope.) I wouldn't describe it as a utopian/dystopian work of science fiction so much as a creative anthropological study; she posits an anarchic society, and in order to explore what that means on the individual as well as the cosmic scale, develops a story around her protagonist, Shevek. It's a good story, too---well-written---but impact of the novel, for me, lies in the thought exercise behind it.

Pertinent to this discussion, the inhabitants of the anarchist planet own nothing, and over generations their language eradicated the possessive pronoun. There is no yours, there is no mine, even genealogically; one speaks of vaguely of one's relationship to another in terms of the child, the mother, the partner (husband and wife, as gender-specific possessive terms, no longer exist). There is no currency, no exchange of personal goods and services, no grocery stores or restaurants. People eat cafeteria-style---everywhere, mind, and when a drought-induced famine wracks their desert planet, everyone gets thinner, but nobody starves---and live in dormitories---furniture, blankets, tools, and clothing are held in common. This isn't a flawless society, by any means, and among other matters Le Guin spends a good deal of time examining whether a complete lack of ownership necessarily entails a comprehensive cultural poverty. However, some aspects of anarchist life struck a chord with my transient self, namely that when people move from one settlement to another, they take nothing with them, because they don't form attachments to material goods, and all of the essential, life-sustaining stuff is freely available at their destination.

Ironically, given military taint of the chain-of-command work structure, and the high incidence of self-important middle-managers vomiting endless incomprehensible streams of acronyms, McMurdo may be the closest I ever come to living in an anarchist society. Food is free, for instance. There are some interesting trip-wires, like fresh fruit---a sign sits next to the bowl of apples and oranges bearing the admonition, "Nobody likes a Hog"---and liquor, which is one of the only ways to spend a paycheck around here. Water, heat, and electricity are free. Transportation is free---walk or take a shuttle. Beds, pillows, linens, furniture, and TVs are free: one simply has to check them out from Housing. The craft room, computer kiosk, gyms and library are free. Admission to lectures, movies, and special trips are free, if limited by capacity to first-come-first-serve. Medical attention is free (until it gets serious). And all of our clothes are free: work uniforms and Extreme Cold Weather gear were provided by the program, of course, and for the six to eight hours a week when you aren't wearing one or the other of those specific sets of gear, we've got SKUA.

Skuas are scavengers--wikipedia calls them "kleptoparasites"--the opportunistic, thieving vultures of the Antarctic ecosystem, providing a very valuable garbage-disposal function in a place where nothing decomposes. And SKUA, named for this verminous bird, is a recycling program for scroungers, of which I am one, I'm afraid, by birth and upbringing. (It's a Lohrenz gene.) The Environmental Health & Safety crew maintain at least twelve ruthlessly-sorted orders of garbage: glass, plastics, metals, paper products, food waste, bio waste, chemical waste, aerosols, batteries, it all goes in special compartments for recycling and eventual return to the States. Alongside these bins, in every hallway on every floor of every dorm, is a SKUA bin.

Turning over the entire human population of this base every six months produces a lot of surplus goods. All of those goods had to be hand-carried to the Ice by somebody, which is an interesting thought when you find half a dozen brightly-colored discarded plastic leis in a SKUA bin. Who decided to bring leis to Antarctica? Not to mention the cost and expenditure of fuel to get them here--and then get them out again as rubbish. In the States, that sort of unwanted crap would find its way to the garbage bin. We're so used to "taking out the trash"---either to a street corner or a collection site---and giving no further thought to the matter. Garbage assumes a much greater presence on the Ice. Nothing degrades. Nothing goes away. There are no dump sites. Waste must somehow undergo processing on this station and either return to the environment (as in the case of treated greywater), or return to the United States for recycling, incineration or landfill. (One well-meaning young lady asked solemnly why McMurdo doesn't compost food waste.) How much more efficient to reuse and pass along our little nonessential oddments, than to throw them away.

So we SKUA. All those bits and pieces go up for grabs.

It's fantastic. It's better than street-scrounging in Boston, because it happens all the time, not just twice a year during the students' citywide game of musical chairs. It's even better than the transfer stations in Fairbanks, because you don't have to heave aside planks of plywood or wade through the real, rotting garbage to get to the good stuff. In addition to the localized receptacles in the dormitories, SKUA central occupies its own tiny building, The SKUA Shack, which looks and smells like a thrift store.

I check the hallway bins instinctively, every time I walk by, and drift up to SKUA central every few days, because you really never know what you're going to find. It's a game! Clothes, books, shoes, toys, alarm clocks, coffee mugs, Halloween costumes, art supplies, lamps, posters, towels, cosmetics, electronics, even packages of food. I've picked up a couple of shirts, and scored a whole jar of Nutella during my first week. Some of the stuff I encounter is flat-out junk, some of it laughably bizarre, some of it surprisingly useful. SKUA is a great way to upgrade the standard-issue stuff, too; so if you want a lighter blanket than the one Housing gave you, or a better-fitting pair of hiking boots, all you have to do is keep your eyes open.

Versatile like a good scavenger, SKUA takes the form of a proper noun when referring to the scrounging institution (The SKUA Shack, the SKUA bins), and can also replace "stuff" or "shit" as a common noun ("Somebody needs to pick up all the SKUA at the end of the hall and put it back in the container.") It is both singular and plural. It functions as a verb, too. One of the Human Resources administrators, Jenny, also enjoys scrounging, but we don't use the word "scrounging" in conversation. We say, "Oh, I SKUAed this great book last week, you should really read it when I'm done!" Or, "I really need an extension cord for my computer, if you talk to the janitor ask her if she can SKUA one for me." The janitors, as the emptiers of the garbage and recycling bins, often get first dibs on the best SKUA.

Mom and I patronize Value Village regularly, as a kind of ritual, and SKUA is a similar phenomenon: the best part is that, having acquired these goods for free, one feels no compunction about returning them to the SKUA Shack if they prove less awesome than you initially believed, or before leaving the Ice. My battered, duct-taped green suitcase finally suffered enough intercontinental beatings that the plastic frame shattered between Los Angeles and Auckland. It isn't going back with me. Everything I carry out in February will have to travel by post or fit in my rucksack. I didn't bring much in the first place, but I find a lightweight, non-committal comfort in the fact that even after six months of compulsive scrounging I won't travel encumbered. Most or all of my delightful SKUA finds will eventually make their way back into the wild.

Kiwi Coffee

2011-09-10T15:54:00.000+12:00

Despite standing in several long lines to pass through the immigration, customs, and BioSecurity departments, I hadn't occupied New Zealand soil for more than an hour before encountering a Kiwi coffee cart. Retro Espresso operates out of a ridiculously cute, chrome 1964 vintage caravan parked on the sidewalk directly outside the Auckland airport's international terminal. Seeing that shining, silver hulk with its fold-out awning, I decided that 1) Sarah ought to have one just like it, and 2) I wanted coffee, right now.

Perusing the menu as the proprietor steamed milk and pulled shots for the sleepy-eyed airport employees in the queue, I encountered two unfamiliar drinks. Their unrecognizability would have demanded my attention anyway, but their names particularly tickled my fancy: the Flat White and the Long Black. Auspicious names to someone bound for Antarctica.

"Excuse me, sir?"

"Yes?" grinned the man behind the espresso bar, registering my American accent.

"Would you mind telling me, what is a flat white?"

"Oh, the flat white's probably the national drink! Just espresso with steamed milk."

"I see, yes. How is that different from a latte?" Lattes and cappuccinos both appeared on the menu. He launched into an explanation of shots and quantities of foam that I only half-heard over the sound of the steam wand, and thus began my education in Kiwi coffee. "Okay, I'll have one of those."

I'd compare the flavor of a flat white to that of a Spanish café con leche, milky but with a stronger coffee presence than your average American latte; but the flat white involves milk heated on the steam wand, instead of scalded in a pot, so it has a nice foamy head. I afterwards turned to the omniscience of Wikipedia to detail the finer points of the beverage, and found that I wasn't too far off the mark:

According to one report, 'flat white' is simply another name for a latte, and the two beverages are identical. 'The only difference between the two drinks is the vessel in which they're presented. A flat white is served in a ceramic cup, usually of the same volume (200 millilitres) as a latte glass. However, some cafes will top a latte with extra froth, while others may pour a flat white slightly shorter.'

However, in New Zealand flat whites typically have two shots of coffee, whereas lattes contain just one. Another difference found in New Zealand is the amount of foam on the top of the coffee; a flat white should have 5mm of foam, a latte should have 10mm and a cappuccino should have 15mm. A flat white uses microfoam rather than the dry foam of a cappuccino." source

While the proprietor was pulling the shots for my drink he asked the woman next to me what she wanted, and she ordered a long black. He nodded and extracted another paper cup from the stack, while I sidled up to my fellow customer and enquired for another explanation. She chuckled and said that a long black is "just a strong black coffee."

"Like drip coffee, or is it made with espresso?"

"Oh, well, it's…" she here turned to the barista for his input.

"Espresso with a bit of hot water," he chimed in.

"Like an Americano?" I asked.

"Americano?"

"Yes, two shots of espresso with hot water."

He laughed. "Is that what you call it? Well yes, it's the same, then, just a different name."

Come to find out this was not exactly true, and I'm sufficiently intrigued by the supposed difference that when I get back to the world, I intend to do a taste test between an Americano and a long black:

A long black is made by pulling a double-shot of espresso or ristretto over hot water (usually the water is also heated by the espresso machine). A long black is similar to an Americano, which is made by adding hot water to the espresso shot; but a long black retains the crema and is less voluminous, therefore more strongly flavored.

The order in which a long black is made (water first, espresso second) is important -- reversing the steps will destroy the crema from the espresso shot and make an Americano." source

Weddell Seals

2011-09-07T16:28:00.022+12:00

This after-dinner walk at Colder-Than-Hell Celsius abruptly resolved into a National Geographic special. Seals! I can't believe they come so close to the station, and at this time of year, when open water is miles away! I had just raised my camera to photograph the first blubber slug, lolling on the frozen beach, when his comrade poked his nose out of a hole in the ice. It was amazing to watch him haul out, and even more amazing to listen to, because in addition to the huffing and puffing (which was not me, by the way, I was too busy trying to hold my shit together for anything as mundane as breathing), I could hear some of their weird, otherworldly calls. Listen carefully!

Antarctic Breezes

2011-09-04T20:51:00.000+12:00

Sartorial Vexation

2011-09-01T17:21:00.002+12:00

I hate my uniform.

I'm happy to make reasonable concessions to health and safety in food service, because reasonable concessions allow for the freedom of movement necessary to do my job: closed-toe shoes, short fingernails, hair tied back, hands washed, an apron. At the coffee shop I enjoyed the liberty of wearing whatever I damn well pleased. Everyone enjoyed the liberty of wearing whatever they damn well pleased. The occasional barista showed up for work in flip-flops, but their lack of good sense wasn't any of my business, and I myself wore tank tops almost year-round. I'd rather suffer a few burns than perpetually swelter.

Apparently I've gotten spoiled. Over my tank tops I now don a double-breasted, long-sleeved white chef coat with a high Mandarin collar, ballooning black chef trousers, a bandanna, and a voluminous apron. Oh yes, and specially-purchased, water-resistant, non-slip, non-marking, non-athletic, flame-retardant, acid-proof, anti-microbial work shoes. It's like wearing a suit of armor, which I suppose is the point. And it's awful. With 15 ovens belching dragon's-breath into a poorly ventilated bakeshop, it's too fucking hot to be wearing that many clothes. Baking on a large scale requires a lot of physical engagement--in the right frame of mind, it's almost a dance--and in company-mandated attire feel like I can hardly even move.

I didn't bring the right socks. Packing for a trip to Antarctica, I stupidly anticipated cold weather and threw a lot of SmartWool into my suitcase. I happen to own a stunning array of SmartWool socks, in all weights and colors. But the whole of building 155 runs about 70 degrees, and the kitchen significantly warmer. Even the lightest SmartWool socks are too hot, so I've been rotating through my three pairs of cotton gym socks. This is probably a gross violation of the health code, rewearing my socks, but nobody is the wiser.

The elastic waistbands on four of my six pairs of "extra small" trousers are so cripplingly tight that they threaten to pinch me in half--I'm not sure who has an eighteen inch waist these days, but I certainly don't. Was I supposed to have received a corset with my Extreme Cold Weather gear? I can't wear those pants! They ought to be on display in the Rothenburg Kriminal Museum as an instrument of torture. Let the record show my gratitude for learning the rudiments of sewing, so that I may rescue myself from my own garb. I've now spent several evening hours carefully decimating my uniform with a pocketknife, excising the waistbands, and intend to finish the alterations at the sewing machine whenever the craft room next opens.

The long sleeves on my jackets trail in every dough, batter, and pile of dry goods. By late afternoon I could probably shape and proof the sleeves, and produce a loaf of bread. I roll them up, of course, which frees my hands, but leaves an inflexible knot of rolled canvas chocked just below the elbow--neither comfortable nor convenient. The boxy coats, perhaps designed for a male figure, are cut straight-up-and-down. Depending on one's proportions, they bunch uncomfortably at the waist, or cling strangely around whatever areas of one's anatomy stick out most.

And they're white. I'm wearing a white coat in a kitchen where I handle food. Black pants in a kitchen where I'm pitching flour. Whose idea was this anyway? Invariably my uniforms retire to the laundry bag after a single 10-hour shift because our clothes have to be "clean" at the start of each day, and I can't hide even the tiniest splatter. Why can't we have colored coats, checkerboard trousers? All of our orientation literature emphasized the importance of conserving resources whenever possible: garbage, electricity, water. Maybe the galley staff wouldn't use so much flipping water if our uniforms better resisted soiling, and we didn't have to do laundry so often! Somebody oughta write a letter.

First Impressions

2011-08-30T20:40:00.001+12:00

News of the week: the Russians signed a contract with the National Science Foundation for the use of their icebreaker, Vlad.

I don't intend to make a habit of posting only on my days off. Really. In fact, over the last week I've logged several thousand words of commentary on various aspects of this new life. But there is no wireless access on McMurdo, except at Crary Lab for the scientists, a contingency I did not foresee when I ordered my wireless-only Traveling Parnassus. A series of fortuitous conversations resulted in the happy appearance of a USB-Ethernet adaptor with the last win-fly personnel, so things are looking up. In the interim I used the public computers, and in the lapses between typing up my impressions on my laptop, loading them on to my flash drive, and logging into my account in the computer kiosk, a lot of what I wrote about the first week suffered my editorial displeasure.

Oddly, I didn't have anything nice to say. After collecting rants for several days I realized that things weren't really that terrible, but nearly all of my observations about Life In Antarctica had to filter through a thick screen of physical discomfort, the predictable result of any first week in any new place. By Friday everything hurt, from my cracked and bleeding hands, to my veggie-starved stomach, to my pinky toes. Knowing it was coming didn't ease the transition for the animal. Different food, different water for drinking and washing, different climate, clothing, shoes, sleep patterns, work patterns, and exercise routines, not to mention hundreds of new people, took their collective toll.

I didn't assault any innocent bystanders. I'd like to think of that as progress. Friday afternoon I finally trundled out to Hut Point (the only place we are permitted to walk by ourselves), and by the time I got back to building 155 I felt like a punctured balloon. Pyyyyyeeeeeeeewwwww. As if the whole of August---the move, the weeks of insomnia, the trip south---had suddenly caught up to me. I collapsed before seven-thirty, book still in hand. Saturday morning I dragged into work, forgot the salt in the roasted garlic bread, dropped things, spilled things, and screwed up a vast batch of brioche dough---how exactly, I still do not know, since we made the damn stuff every two days for cinnamon rolls at the coffee shop---and by the end of my shift I left the galley wanting to beat my head against the sea ice.

It'll get better.

Here's a funny: as a disposable "prep cook" on paper, I almost got parked in the sandwich line, asking people if they want white or wheat. Ha ha ha! That would have been one hell of a disaster.

I couldn't be more grateful to have wound up in the bakeshop, even after bearing horrified witness to the boxes of frozen danish and instant cake mixes, the buckets of fake caramel and non-dairy whipped topping. The kitchen gods were looking out for me. Despite the brioche debacle (which Josie saved by brute force and a dough hook set on high, airily acknowledging that she, too, had screwed it up the first time around), I can't have disgraced myself completely, because she asked if I was interested in being a lead baker---she said she'd recommend me, she thinks I'd be good. Ha. I have no flipping idea what I'm doing. Everything's so much bigger than what I'm used to, the whole approach changes--like working on an assembly line, one rarely gets to see a project through from start to finish. I made a nice batch of scones, which restored a modicum of my self-esteem, but I'm somewhat disturbed by Josie's delight with my neat-handedness, since it suggests that the expectations for new bakers must be abysmally low.

Well, I declined Josie's kind offer. Somehow I suspect that I'll be doing the same job, regardless of what they call me or how much they choose to pay me, but for probably the first time in my life, I don't want to have to be the one responsible for staying late to finish, for solving the problems, for figuring out what's for dessert when there's no butter left on station. It's not worth the extra twenty or however many dollars a week. This is a six-month shindig for fun and adventure, and while I'll extract everything I can from the experience, I don't feel like investing myself here only to get burned by the bureaucratic bullshit endemic to all government jobs. It's just a job. Let's see if I can keep it that way.

Arrival

2011-08-22T14:05:00.001+12:00

To my astonishment, I have the day off. It's very nice to get a couple of hours to sit quietly in my dorm room, alone, processing the last week's barrage of information, and to spend some time at the gym, consciousness reduced to iPod and moving muscles. I'm tired of talking to people so much. My brain will function better when its housing feels comfortable. We've been advised to take it easy our first couple of days on the Ice, to let our bodies adapt. Drink lots of water, eat at regular times, don't do too much drinking. For reasons I don't fully understand, since we're nearly at sea-level---maybe something to do with the electromagnetic field? the dry atmosphere?---people sometimes react to the transition to the Ice much as they would to a sudden increase in altitude. We've also clocked a hell of a lot of hours in airplanes over the last week, met a lot of new people, and of course this whole going-to-Antarctica adventure has delivered a steady series of blows to the body's routines. It's freaking out a little, poor thing.

The best news of the day: hey, everyone, I'M IN ANTARCTICA!

I would have been pretty happy to delay a few days in New Zealand, I admit. With its engaging hodgepodge of European lifestyle, Asian culture, and Cascadian landscape, that country is going to break my heart. Shame that they won't take imported cats. My anticipated tour of Aotearoa has already lengthened by several weeks in my mind. But all of the program's plans executed smoothly, bringing us into Christchurch on the afternoon of 18th, shuttling us to the Extreme Cold Weather gear-fitting on the 19th, and bearing us southward to the Ice starting very, very early on the 20th.

I enjoyed the gear-fitting enormously. We divided, men and women, into two dressing rooms, to find two large orange duffel bags, tagged and filled with uniforms and warm clothing, awaiting each of us. Everyone who had traveled to the Ice in years prior emphasized the importance of trying on everything, every pair of pants and every coat, testing the zippers ten times before allowing the garment to pass muster. It was like an elaborate game of dress-up. Lots of rustling, shuffling, jumping around, wrestling with the recalcitrance of inanimate objects, admiring ourselves in the mirrors, switching one garment for another. I spent a lot of time staggering back and forth to the issue-window, which hid behind a curtain like a puppet stage, trailing socks or holding up my pants with one hand to beg, "I'm sorry, but does this come any smaller?" Except for the hats, of course.

Next morning we met the shuttles outside the hotel office at 3:15AM, and were herded like so many sheep through the morning tasks of dressing, assembling "boomerang bags" in case the weather at McMurdo deteriorated and we were forced to turn around (the checked luggage gets loaded on palettes and wrapped in plastic, so in the event of a boomerang, you don't get your bags back, and you want a toothbrush and a pair of clean underpants on hand), breakfast, and weighing in. I want an extra karmic credit for packing only 60 pounds of luggage, and for weighing approximately a third as much as some of the larger contractors. The military personnel operating the plane played another safety film, handed us brown-bag lunches and earplugs, and permitted us to board.

Any Ice flight that lands is considered a good Ice flight. There was one nervous moment when we "assumed a holding pattern" above McMurdo while the pilots took care of some "maintenance," but we had a good Ice flight. Disembarking from the C-17 into the vast, flat, bitter-cold whiteness was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. Apart from one triumphant cackle, though, I wasn't allowed any time to glory the fact of my arrival, but found myself ushered into a large iron box on wheels with 14 other souls. Not at all the cozy Terra-Bus you all see on the Herzog films; we bumped along in this heater-less, frosted-over Delta (I think?) for over an hour to get from the Pegasus runway to "town," more than long enough for me to feel exceptionally grateful for the goose down in my enormous red parka, and to wish there were a few feathers lining the toes of my boots. Another round of lectures, room key issue, linens issue, baggage collection, dinner, and they finally allowed us to collapse in an overwhelmed heap on our dorm-room floors.

Second-best news of the day: yes, I am assigned to the bakeshop, and thank the listening gods. (Maybe that's my karmic point.) The baker from the winter crew, who will be staying for Win-Fly (now through the first week of October) had thought, in fact, that she would be working all by her onesie, baking for several hundred more people, and as such was delighted to learn that the diminutive new prep-cook expressed a strong preference for baking. Even more welcome to her was the information that I'd had a little experience making baked goods in a professional setting (if not for anything near the crowds of people this kitchen is designed to handle). Her name is Josie. I have a looooot to learn between now and the arrival of the main-body crew, but I learn fast and she laughs easily, and we are so mutually happy with yesterday's surprises that I think we will do just fine.

The galley is…huge. Yes, yes, we're cooking for 1200 people, potentially, and yes there are up to 65 kitchen staff, so I'm sure it feels crowded at times. It's still the largest kitchen I've ever set foot in, and moreover the most industrial. The mixing bowls for bread dough are shining silver cauldrons, and could swallow me whole---one has a special wheeled cart for moving it around. There's no dough-mixer like the one at the coffee shop; instead a couple of hulking Hobarts, the grandaddies of the ones I'm used to handling, loom along one wall, fitted with dough-hooks. Mixers such as we used for muffin batter are the small machines in the McMurdo galley. I'm deeply grateful to find myself in the bakeshop, where at least I'm familiar with the idea of bread, the rituals of cookies. I genuinely wouldn't know where to look in the main kitchen. I don't know how to cook entirely from dry, canned, and frozen goods. I don't know how to use a griddle the size of a table to my advantage. I have no experience as a line-cook. I don't know where the shortcuts lie for feeding 1200 people in a hurry, never mind how to use those shortcuts efficiently. After a couple of weeks of abject misery and lots of questions, I could probably figure it out, but to be perfectly frank, that isn't a style of cooking that I'm interested in learning. I'm a baker.

It's pretty cold: right around -30F, fluctuating slightly with the wind chill. And terribly dry, of course; a week of professional handwashing and my skin's going to start splitting along the seams, just as it does in Alaska. Daylight lasts about five hours. I feel like I've been dropped head-first into a Fairbanks February. I live, work, and eat all in the same building, number 155, which also houses ATMs, the store, the recreation office, and the craft room: the hub of activity for the whole base. My roommates so far consist solely of a woman named Kim, the only "older" Dining Attendant on the staff, which is to say she's probably in her late forties. We must both have self-described as "quiet" and "tidy." I think we're going to cohabitate just fine; it remains to be seen who else will fill the two empty bunks. While I'm sure cabin fever will sink in later, scurrying through the cold back and forth to Gerbil Gym I found myself at peace with the arrangements. It's early yet. Tomorrow I start baking again.

Holy shit, I'm in Antarctica!

Orientation

2011-08-17T15:14:00.001+12:00

My spiffy built-in dictionary defines orientation as “the determination of the relative position of something or someone (esp. oneself).” A kind of alignment, taking direction, getting one’s bearings. My art history classes might have had the etymology wrong, but they gave me to believe that the term traced its origins to days when Europeans were in the habit of arranging the naves of cathedrals to point east because Christ had come from Jerusalem and that was supposedly the direction from which he would reappear. As it happens, the sun also rises (oriri: to rise) from the east--it couldn’t have been too much of a stretch to suggest that daylight and salvation would emerge from a similar quarter. Possibly that the term in its modern apparel was coined later than the 12th century, perhaps in the 19th as the British Empire “oriented” itself towards its conquests in India and the surrounding areas, and Orient became a more common description for the lands to the east.

Regardless of its precise origins, the term implies relativity. Finding one’s place in relation to something else---city center, the Gap of Rohan, magnetic north, the grocery store, a collective goal. Digging for some redeeming qualities in the tedium of the last few days, I find it useful to keep this form of orientation in mind, because Orientation has thus far proven incredibly dull. I intensely dislike sitting still for more than an hour, and after dismissal each day I've rushed to the gym at the hotel to burn off some of the excess energy. We're all so excited to go to Antarctica (!!!) and have some adventures, and here we are, slammed with a series of dry, papery lectures that have nothing to do with penguins. Job expectations, food safety, occupational safety, information technology safety, Antarctic safety, safety safety safety! So much corporate nannying that I wonder how many of the recorded accidents at McMurdo occur in reaction to the anxiously hovering omnipresence of OSHA---and how many others are just the result of stupidity. You can’t always cheat natural selection. Most of the information imparted to the attendees has, I'm sure, already marched right out the proverbial other ear.

The real value of Orientation sessions, in my opinion, stems from the rapid-fire chemical exchange going on in the room. Maybe I’ve grown cynical about it because I’ve moved so often, or because I’ve gone through these dances so many times in my short life--the start of every summer camp, new class, new job. An anthropologist must have a field day with this kind of thing. People aren’t listening to the Power Point presentations so much as determining their relative position within the pack---that’s orientation, and it makes one hell of a greater impact on the behavior of the crew than any amount of safety lecturing. Which are the dominant personalities, which the passive. Who is the clown. Who is content to keep his mouth shut and allow the room think him a fool, and who prefers to open it and remove all doubt. Sniffing each other over for sexual orientation, availability, and interest. Eying one another's markings for clues: t-shirt slogans, jewelry, Nalgene stickers, tattoos, book titles. The little cliques from years prior reform and enact specific dances all of their own, coalescing and dissolving again within minutes. Sometimes I wish we all had antennae, like ants.

Life on the Ice

2011-08-11T06:02:00.006+12:00

Since it was with the Americans I'd be traveling, at least down to McMurdo and the South Pole, it was their bureaucratic red tape I had to untangle. And as I cast my eyes over the mound of triplicate forms, approvals, and medical questionnaires required to visit one of their bases, I felt more like I was falling into some vast corporate-military machinery than planning a journey to what is purportedly the world's last great wilderness. [...]

"It was hard to blame them, though. The Americans had just spent millions of dollars rescuing the base doctor at the South Pole in the middle of winter after she discovered she had breast cancer. They were in no mood for fooling around. And so I was poked and prodded, weighed and measured, my family history charted, and my medical background recorded in minute detail. My knees were tapped with a rubber mallet and I answered queries about depression, mental illness, asthma, and whether I was taking vitamins. I squinted at the small type on eye charts and had my heartbeat monitored on a 12-line ECG. There were urine tests, stool tests, a TB test, and a bewildering array of blood tests...

"Nor was my tut-tutting dentist overlooked. I spent two engaging mornings leaving nail-marks in the arms of his chair, and another in the hospital's radiology ward having an elaborate set of mouth and jaw x-rays done.

"When I'd finished, I dazedly parceled the forms, reports, charts, and x-ray films into a large manila enveloped, signed an additional form promising not to sue anybody no matter what, and still another swearing that I had no criminal convictions, and posted the lot to Raytheon's office in Denver.

"Over the course of weeks of form-filling, emails, phone calls, and conferences, I became fluent in the telegraphic speech of the USAP. There was PQ, of course, for physically qualified, and NPQ, for not physically qualified. Scientists were PIs (principal investigators). Naturally everyone, PIs included, had to be PQ-ed before leaving CONUS (the Continental United States) for "Cheech" (Christchurch), the jumping-off point for MacTown (McMurdo Station, the main U.S. Antarctic base). At Cheech we were to report to the CDC (clothing distribution center) to receive our issue of ECW (extreme cold weather) gear."

Life on the Ice: No One Goes to Antarctica Alone, Roff Smith

Yes, the delight of recognition. Fortunately I feel that I have a solid grounding in acronyms thanks to a lifetime of DoDDS and listening to my mother at the dinner-table. I read the chapter entitled "Ground Hog Day" with fascinated horror, then promptly betook myself to the Literacy Council to buy more books against the impending voyage.

To anybody interested in reading a well-written, modern experience of Antarctica, or just a Bill-Bryson-esque account of some of the things I'm about to encounter (and a lot of things I won't have the opportunity to see or do, sadly), I strongly recommend this book.

Preserves

2011-08-08T11:34:00.014+12:00

All of the pre-deployment packing lists and general information strongly advise spending as much time outside as possible before heading to the Ice. Fairbanks dished out an awfully rainy, chilly summer this year, but I've tried to soak up every bit of warmth and sunlight and physical freedom that the Interior had to offer. I mean, that was part of the point of quitting my job when I did, right? Not to be cooped up in a stuffy kitchen all season?

July means berry-picking. Berry-picking appeals to something very deeply rooted in my genetic makeup, the latent hunter-gatherer that finds modern food-procurement unutterably boring. No exertion. No inconvenience. No chase. Surveying the tussocks around Willow Creek, bucket in hand, I felt overwhelmed by the mad urge to pick every blueberry in the field. Eventually the hunter-gatherer gets tired and one goes home, of course--covered in scratches and mosquito bites and crowing wild-eyed over the successful slaughter of gallons of berries--to run aground on the sober question of what to do with the damn things now she's collected them.

I went back to my stuffy kitchen--predictably--and made jam. Lots of jam! I can't seem to help myself--there's something enormously, irrationally satisfying about making jam. A mess of Potential Food covered in the debris of its wild origins transforms into a multicolored row of bright, clean jars on a shelf. Last year I tried making jam, only to discover mid-process that the recipe on the jelling agent called for more sugar by volume than berries. Like hell I will, I thought disgustedly. Jam should taste like fruit, not Jolly Ranchers. Tampering with the ratios I wound up with ten half-pint jars of delicious, tangy, burgundy-colored raspberry.....sauce. Lesson learned, this year I used a low-sugar jelling agent and turned out two batches of wild blueberry (one with allspice, one with ginger), one batch of wild highbush cranberry orange marmalade, and one batch of Homestead raspberry. It's very difficult to stop.

Amid my berry-picking expeditions, I think I can pinpoint the very day that summer ended: July 23. No, really. At first I thought I was imagining things. But the season shifted. It wasn't the temperature of the air, or a smell produced by a particular plant, or the angle of the light, but it was all of those things, and something else. Suddenly, it was autumn. It's indisputably autumn now--I can see my breath in the morning, yellowing leaves creep into the trees daily, the rain takes on a different character. A migratory bird might be able to articulate it more clearly, because they know in their bones, in their flapping wings, that it's time to go.

I can feel it as well. It's sad. It hurts. I can't even explain why. Logistically, this move required very little effort--between my employer and my parents, all professional and personal matters have been deftly handled--and emotionally, I am absolutely ready to leave. I want out. I'm not ready for another winter in the North, I don't have it in me right now. Last winter tapped me flat. And I'm sick of Fairbanks. Everything I wrote about the town when I got here in the fall of 2009 still holds true. So many things that made it worthwhile went sour, and the aspects of Alaskan life that captured my heart are not enough to compensate. The job I loved is long over; the man I loved is long gone; the friends I loved are going their ways, building cabins or having babies, or will go with me so that I needn't miss them. I miss my cabin, acutely--the first dwelling entirely my own--but rationally I know how poorly insulated the place is, know that even if I chose to remain in Fairbanks I wouldn't want to stay there. It's time to go. I know this with absolute certainty. I'm ready for a new adventure, ready to go back to work. And I'm going to Antarctica, of all places. !!!

It's time to go.

It's just...sad. I wish I could take the mess of the last two years, cook it with some sweetener and pectin, and seal it up neatly in jars to adorn the pantry shelf. Make it pretty and put it away.

The Journey

2011-08-04T11:02:00.000+12:00

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.

It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

-Mary Oliver

The Hermitage

2011-07-31T19:41:00.002+12:00

Salvage

2011-07-21T13:40:00.003+12:00

This week I find myself shuttling back and forth between the Homestead and the Hermitage, housesitting for Mom and Dad while they catch halibut and codfish on the Kenai. A lot of we dry-cabin dwellers take housesitting gigs as a kind of reprieve, especially during the winter, when the well-to-do residents of the Interior fly for weeks at a time to more temperate climates. Gives us a chance to luxuriate in the magic of running water--hot showers and indoor toilets--while thumbing our noses at the mercury withdrawn to -30F. Summer housesitting is less satisfying in that respect, but more fun, I think. I feel like I'm running a small ranch. Haymaking, crop-watering, cat-herding.

Raiding the kitchen is my favorite part, and during the summer the kitchen extends to include the garden. This time I found an arsenal of vegetables in the refrigerator, in varying states of decay: cucumbers, carrots, two kinds of cabbage, half an onion, some radishes, jicama, a few tomatoes. Tiny green shoots poked from a head of garlic in the windowsill. Outside, the green beans threatened to drag their parent plants into the mud, they had grown so large and heavy, and the dill looked ready to bolt. Throwing food in the garbage, especially vegetables, makes me crazy. Not only does it seem a terrible waste of deliciousness, but one doesn't forget poverty in a hurry--I remember very clearly the "food allowance" I issued myself for many years, more or less rationing fruit and greens. The epitome of financial solvency, for me, is marching through the grocery store and putting whatever I want in the basket, without carefully adding the total in my head. Mold had already eaten through one of the cabbages, and the radishes and jicama were slimy beyond saving, but the rest of the produce I examined grimly, scrubbing and trimming in determination.

Then I put it all together and made pickles!

Science! It's an experiment in lacto-fermentation. The one on the right is for me. See if you can guess why.

I got the idea from Wild Roots Homestead, a local blog I follow with great interest, itself a salvaged item in a way. As their annual winter house- and farm-sitter, he was full of tales about milking goats at sub-zero temperatures, and noticing my fascination directed me thither. I learned a lot by quietly shadowing the author through her everyday life, watching her butcher pigs and turkeys, and make things like cheese, kombucha, soap, and pickles.

In addition to the vegetables, a quantity of shriveling blueberries greeted me from the crisper drawer. Introduce them to a few stalks of rhubarb-gone-wild from the backyard and behold! A bluebarb allspice pie.

A bunch of rapidly-deteriorating cilantro transformed into pesto for bruschetta or grill pizza, or perhaps to slather on some Kenai-caught fish.

For whatever reason, this salvaging exercise brought home what a flipping food hippie I've become here in the northland, pottering around in my dry cabin in the woods.

I make bread with live starter.

I grow and eat sprouts.

I buy honey and vegetables from the farmer's market, eggs from Home Grown.

Most of the time I don't eat meat. I like meat--if Mom roasts a chicken I'll not only eat it, I'll sit and pick at the carcass with my fingers--I just don't seem to seek it. Soda and cow's milk long ago gave way to kombucha and soymilk. Hippie habits seem to have leaked into other parts of my life, too. I usually dye my hair with henna. The front of my car is held together with duct tape. Most of my clothes came from Value Village or the dump. I've got a successful cold frame and a compost barrel in my swamp, the materials for which also came from the dump. My toilet doesn't flush and my sink doesn't have a tap. I haul water in recycled gallon milk jugs from the free water station in Fox. For fun I go hiking or to the library, or spend the day endeavoring to salvage the contents of my parents' refrigerator.

I don't smoke pot. I still shave my armpits and brush my teeth with fluoride toothpaste, and my "carbon footprint" irretrievably spans the earth, the price of uncounted flights across oceans. This isn't supposed to sound like a deluded, self-congratulatory post about how well I abide by the current blathering Green Morality, because I don't. I moved here and finally had to learn to drive, for one thing--and not even a VW bus, to my sorrow, so I'm not a real hippie--I'm still very much a ravenous first-world consumer of resources, natural and otherwise.

This is about habits, I suppose, and the evolution of normal. None of the above really bears remarking on--and that's the point I'm trying to make--except for the fact that, in my recent retrospective mindset, sorting through the flotsam of the last two years, I find it strange and enormously funny that Reed didn't make me a hippie: Fairbanks did.

Trouble Affogato

2011-07-18T14:45:00.000+12:00

Last September my loathsome former employer returned from San Francisco with a large loaf of stale bread and a book, both the product of Tartine, a café and bakery that has recently garnered much laudatory attention in the food world. He likes to show off his superior knowledge, so he reheated the loaf in the wood oven and insistently passed slices around the staff, and shunted the book in my general direction for approval. The bread was edible but, as I said, stale, having suffered several days of negligent stewardship on its voyage--but as much as I'd like to discredit the old man, the cookbook captivated me.

I borrowed it, read it, reread it, made notes in my sketchbook, copied pictures. I made bread. And I made more bread. I've long been fond of baking slow-method artisanal bread in a dutch oven, especially here, where no bakeries offer anything like the crusty, full-flavored bread that so spoiled me in Europe. Tartine pitched me headfirst into a DIY apprenticeship that changed completely the way I think about flour, water, and leavening. It probably didn't hurt that at this time I was badly in need of something to learn, something to obsess over that could distract me from a runaway cat, a failing love affair, and the onset of winter. But one way or another, through slow trial and error I learned loads. Observing that it had manifested into more than a passing fancy, Mom bought me a copy of the book shortly after Christmas. I found that they'd also published a pastry cookbook. Someday I will get back to San Francisco and offer Tartine my soul in exchange for a real apprenticeship. If Antarctica falls through, maybe I'll do it sooner than I thought. Meantime I'm still experimenting, still learning.

This isn't really bread--it's ice cream. But the idea came from Tartine and I've been meaning to attempt it for a long time, since it includes some of my very favorite tastes in glorious tandem: coconut, cinnamon, caramel, coffee; sweet and salt; creamy and crunchy. It's rather involved, but after a frustrating week, culminating in hearing about the icebreaker, I was in the mood to immerse myself in a big science project.

Italian affogato, meaning 'drowned,' refers to a scoop of gelato or ice cream with espresso poured over the top. This version of affogato [...] is inspired by 'the house' at Trouble Coffee: hot coffee, thick-cut cinnamon toast, and a young coconut served with a straw and a spoon--an inspired combination."

coconut ice cream
I should note that this is not the original recipe. The results of the previous experiment provoked me to attempt a thicker custard, and my introduction of coconut cream pie to the menu at the coffee shop last summer provided the background for the ad hoc alterations.
1 c. unsweetened shredded coconut, toasted
2 c. heavy cream
1 can (1 2/3 c.) coconut milk
9 egg yolks
1 c. sugar, divided
1/2 t. salt
3 T. butter
1 T. rum
2 t. vanilla

cinnamon browned butter bread crumbs
I used Tartine-style bread because I more or less always have it around--and after my week of starvation it was not only around but conveniently stale--but I'm sure any hearty bread would do.
2 thick slices day-old Basic Country Bread
3 T unsalted butter
1/2 c. sugar
1 t. ground cinnamon (or more)
1/2 t. salt

1 coconut
Tartine specifies a young, fresh coconut. No, I couldn't get one either, I'm just passing the word along.

1/2 c. dulce de leche -or- 1 can (14 oz.) sweetened condensed milk
The original recipe calls for cajeta, which is a goat's milk caramel, "sold at Mexican markets." Well, I'll just pop out to the shop and get some. A pox on those overprivileged southern Californians. Fortunately I'd also been meaning to attempt homemade dulce de leche for awhile now, and it's more or less the same thing.

fresh espresso shots
I have a stovetop espresso pot. Actually, I have the equipment for three different methods of coffee brewing. As far as substitutions go, this is one instance where I don't know what to tell you.

If, like me, you find yourself attracted by scenarios in which something might explode, you should make the dulce de leche yourself, rather than buying it in a jar. Peel the label off of the can of sweetened condensed milk and place it in a saucepan. Fill the pan with water to within 1/2 an inch of the top of the can. Bring the water to a gentle simmer--the can will rattle slightly as the water boils, but won't threaten to tip over with the violence of its surrounding element. Continue for three hours (less for a more drizzly caramel, more for a thicker, spoonable caramel), refilling the water vigilantly as it evaporates. Turn the burner off and allow the various elements to cool before handling. Store in a container in the fridge until ready to use.

Now, I was working in my parents' kitchen, and Dad looked askance at the notion of boiling a sealed can, so I obligingly put punctures in mine for safety's sake, and wound up adding an hour to the cooking time. You don't have to do that. It's cleaner and quicker to leave the can sealed, like a wee pressure-cooker. And it does work, it's the way poor folk have made dulce de leche since cans were invented. But DO NOT walk off and allow it to boil dry, because that's when the shit hits the fan. Literally.

To make the bread crumbs, preheat the oven to 350 F. Line a baking sheet with parchment. Cut the crusts from the bread and tear the slices into small pieces. Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat and cook until it begins to brown. Remove the pan from the heat, add the bread and sugar, and stir to combine. Add the cinnamon and salt and toss until the breadcrumbs are evenly coated. Transfer the bread mixture to the prepared sheet and bake, stirring occasionally, until the sugar and butter coating caramelizes, 20-30 minutes. You know it's ready when the smoke alarm goes off. Remove from the oven and let cool completely. Transfer to a small container and store in the freezer.

To make the ice cream, heat the cream and coconut milk in a saucepan over medium heat until hot but not boiling. Remove from heat and stir in the toasted coconut. Allow to steep for 45 minutes, then strain. Discard the coconut solids, and return the cream mixture to the saucepan. Add 1/2 cup sugar, and bring to a simmer (again, do not boil). In a bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar. When the cream mixture is hot, move the pan off of the heat, and gradually temper at least a cup of the hot cream into the yolks, whisking constantly. Slowly pour the mixture back into the pan, again whisking constantly, and return it to the heat.

Cook the custard, stirring steadily, until it is thickened and about 180 F. Don't let it boil, or it will curdle and there's no saving it. Remove from the stove and add the butter, stirring until incorporated. Strain the mixture into a clean bowl. Stir in the rum, vanilla, and salt. Place a sheet of plastic wrap or a clean plastic bag right onto the surface of the custard and refrigerate.

Poke holes through two of the coconut's eyes with a clean nail or screwdriver and a hammer, wailing dramatically, and drain the liquid, either saving it to drink later (perfect after a long hike or uphill bike ride) or pouring it down the sink. Crack open the fruit with a few sharp knocks of a hammer, or if your dad happens to be hovering in the vicinity, have him perform this task.

Tartine now counsels that we should, "using a spoon, scrape the soft coconut flesh from the shell." Well that's a precious suggestion, but if your coconut traveled as far as mine did, you'll notice that you can't scrape the flesh with a spoon as if it were an avocado, so you may employ whatever tactics necessary to remove the recalcitrant white fruit from the husk, and chop it into pieces. I myself repurposed a serrated grapefruit spoon, which not only scraped out the coconut, but shaved it into agreeably tiny, edible bits. (I don't advise substituting store-bought shredded coconut, either sweetened or not, because it has been dried and the texture isn't very pleasant in ice cream. You could skip it altogether, if you wish, since the custard obviously does not lack coconut flavor.) However you approach the task, stir the resulting coconut into the cooling custard and return the mixture to the fridge. Chill overnight.

Process the chilled coconut custard in an ice-cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions. Dollop a few spoonfuls of dulce de leche into the bottom of your chosen storage container, then scoop ice cream over the top. Add a few more blobs or drizzles of caramel, then more ice cream, and continue to alternate. Using a chopstick or a skewer, swirl the ice cream and caramel together with a few swooping motions. Cover and freeze, or immediately fold in the cinnamon bread crumbs and portion into bowls or cups, pouring shots of espresso over the top.

O help. I am drowned.

The Shipping News

2011-07-16T13:23:00.004+12:00

Yesterday morning I received the email from Medical at the Raytheon Polar Services saying I am Physically Qualified and cleared for ticketing.

This afternoon I received this news (and I apologize for all the acronyms, as a child of army schools I do my best to avoid them):

Dear Raytheon Polar Services Employee,

I’m writing to provide an update about the operational status of this coming season. The Swedish icebreaker Oden is not available to the USAP for the 2011-2012 season. Despite NSF’s best efforts, they have not been able to secure another icebreaker to date. However, NSF is continuing efforts to line up a replacement icebreaker. Based on this knowledge, we have begun developing contingency plans to accommodate the potential impacts to the USAP, while keeping open the option of a successful McMurdo resupply and a science support season. If an icebreaker is not available to clear a channel in the sea ice, fuel and cargo resupply ships may not be able to reach McMurdo Station. We could possibly airlift enough cargo to maintain most operations, but fuel is another story.

Fuel is critical for the McMurdo and South Pole station power and water plants, flight operations, field camps, and even support of other national programs. We will need to plan in order to reserve enough fuel to last until late January 2013, which could be the earliest that we could re-supply fuel, if there is not an icebreaker this season. As fuel conservation is the highest priority, all of our planning must revolve around that objective.

I want to specifically address staffing levels, because this could affect offers made to contract employees. We have been reviewing each and every full-time and contract deployment. If a minimal operation scenario were implemented, only staff essential to the baseline priorities would deploy, and possibly for an altered period of time.

We have not been tasked by NSF to reduce our scope of operations at this time and are keeping open the option of a successful McMurdo Station resupply and science research season. We are proceeding with WinFly as planned and employees should continue with the PQ process. At the same time we must continue to develop contingency plans for the potential outcomes of NSF's negotiations for icebreaker support. NSF will continue to keep us advised of their progress, and by mid-August we expect a decision as to our Mainbody tasking and contract scope.

This situation is very challenging and we need to remain flexible. There could be a last-minute breakthrough in icebreaker accessibility. I will continue to be forthright and provide routine updates. Please keep in touch with each other and your hiring managers.

As a member of the intended winter fly-in crew, I assume this means that until I hear otherwise, I'm headed to the Ice in mid-August as planned. But as a low-ranking addition to the baking staff, I'm pretty sure this also means that I will be among the first returned to the world if/when the company starts to thin the number of bodies occupying McMurdo during the upcoming season. Unless the National Science Foundation picks up an icebreaker in a hurry, I'm guessing I'll have a month in Antarctica at most.

I'm not in the best mood.

Reminiscence

2011-07-16T05:01:00.004+12:00

"I dunno what it is, I just feel really angry this week. I've tried exercising and it hasn't helped, I keep wanting to yell at everybody."

"Is this why we're still friends? Because I have no qualms about yelling back at you?"

"Oh man! Remember when we'd yell at each other and Dan would kind of cower under the table?"

"Mm. Yeah. We'd stand on opposite sides of the living room, bellowing, both absolutely certain that we were right and the other person was being insufferably pig-headed."

"Those were such good times!"

A Difficult Matter

2011-07-14T15:57:00.012+12:00

My cat's name does not suit him. When I rescued him from the shelter last December, he bore the abominable appellation of Boyboy. Naturally, that had to go. I named him more or less at random, Rasmus, a Scandinavian variant on Erasmus. Erasmus was a Humanist scholar who wrote In Praise of Folly, which I read at Reed and had been revisiting and quoting to myself around the same time I acquired the cat. I love Rasmus the way it sounds from a German or Nordic-language speaker, but without that gutteral softening of the letters, it evolved into the much less musical RAZ-muss. It's my own fault. I just got too ambitious about picking a name in a tongue not my own. Nobody remembers it or says it right. He doesn't recognize it at his name, doesn't turn when he's called. This may have something to do with the fact that I myself don't call him by his name very often--when he jumps up to be petted I'll say, "hey, old man," or "hey, buddy"--a sure sign that it doesn't fit.

Some cats seem to tell you their names. Scout is the Scout, except when she's in trouble, and then she's Jean Louise, but she's always the very incarnation of her clever, foul-mouthed, too-big-for-her-britches namesake. Matisse, Morgan, Carl, Chester, Dinah, Jack, Digit--all suit their names admirably. Little Grey was tricky, the timid blue-grey runt of the litter, neither one thing nor another, until Kim realized (very recently) that her name was Wendy--which it absolutely is. The moment of discovery comes like a lightning bolt of obvious, why didn't we think of that before? Four years along, it may be too late to change Little Grey's name. One of Lucy's pets, who suffered from some gender confusion in the first couple of weeks, has been similarly branded as The Orange Cat. But my cat does not have any medical records or other confusing paperwork to dispute a rechristening. There are few enough of us who refer to him at all. He's more than ten years old, so he's going to resist anything that I call him for a long time anyway; and it niggles at the back of my mind that his name is wrong. I'm about to leave him for six months, and I'd planned to get new ID tags for both cats before leaving, bearing updated recovery numbers should they decide to wander while I'm gone. This is as good a time as any.

Help me out, folks. Let's brainstorm. He's 15 lbs. of hair and purr and affection, an easy-going, barrel-shaped, very-well-fed feline on an already large skeleton. He's my cuddly cat, the simple cat, a wonderful foil for the calculating little white demon that it is so impossible to lay hands on. (She steals twenty-dollar bills from housemates. He deposits voles at the foot of my bed.) I suspect he may have lived in a smoker's household before he landed in the shelter, and from time to time he has a rasping old-man cough as a result. He most often smells like kibbles, except when he smells like fireweed. (Scout smells like gasoline and spruce pitch.) He prefers the dark, having poor eyesight or some other complaint that makes him squint. He likes to sleep and watch the world go by from just inside the screen door. He is the only cat in the present cavalcade that will suffer graciously to be handled by strangers, but he's terribly difficult to get a picture of.

What's his name?

How to Disappear Completely

2011-07-13T17:00:00.005+12:00

Sometimes I wonder if it should bother me, how easy this is.

Lemon Ice Cream with Raspberry Coulis

2011-07-10T16:10:00.015+12:00

I think I may have made the best lemon ice cream ever. Holy cats.

A lot of food bloggers across the interweb held a pie party last week, which mystifies me. I love pie. But it's summer, people. I acknowledge that all of our favorite pie-fruits are finally coming into season, and who can resist encasing some falling-apart-with-ripeness peaches in a flaky tart crust? But who in her right mind fancies bringing the oven blazing to life on a hot midsummer's day for the sake of a pie when she can make ice cream instead? (Especially if she can't presently eat pie. Ahem.)

The last round of layer cakes that I assembled at the café were an abomination, a sorry marriage of carelessness and bad luck. I scaled up the recipe for lemon cake from America's Test Kitchen, which usually steers me right, but they called for the use of cake flour, rather than all-purpose, to achieve a more tender crumb. Ashley warned me that cake recipes multiplied by twelve need the extra gluten found in all-purpose, and tenderness be damned--hedging indecisively, I split the difference, and used half and half. The batter was beautiful, but the cakes fell. Not irretrievably--I plowed on ruthlessly, fie if I was going to do it over again--but I wasn't happy with the result and it was certainly not my finest hour as a baker. And then in the process of layering the tortes with lemon curd, I discovered that I had left parchment liners in between several of the layers, so I had to go back and take a few already-frozen, assembled cakes apart, peeling away gummy strips of paper and furiously cursing my lack of attention. I'd have given the earth to throw the whole mess in the dumpster, clock out, and walk away. To say that I was experiencing short-timer's disease at that point would have been a gross understatement.

In the process of screwing up the cakes, however, I discovered what a sublimely smooth, tangy lemon curd recipe ATK had provided for the filling. Sarah and I slurped down several spoonfuls each--Sarah loves citrus, and a good cook tests her work!--and I froze the last cup or so of scrap-curd in the name of Science, with a vague idea of incorporating it into the cream filling for fruit tarts, as we'd done at the chocolate shop. Well the curd never made it that far--because I ate it. With a spoon. Frozen. And it was amazing.

This was all back in May, but I'd been nursing the idea of turning that lemon curd into an ice cream ever since. In my experience, commercial lemon ice creams (and even sorbets) don't have enough kick, none of that tangy, refreshing life that makes your scalp prickle. And if homemade ice cream has a fault, it's the über-firm texture it acquires after freezing thoroughly. Without seaweed extracts to maintain its suppleness, the custard--which is fatty with cream, but still mostly water--just gets too hard. I actually prefer firmer ice cream (soft-serve is gross), but one should still be able to scoop it, rather than shaving it out of the dish in flakes, or waiting for it to melt.

The lemon curd held enormous promise as a frozen treat. I figured the "frozen solid" smoothness must have to do with all of the eggs. What if I made a batch of lemon curd, cooled it completely, whisked in some heavy cream (it is ice cream, after all), and put the whole shebang through the ice-cream freezer? Worst case scenario: the unharnessed acid from the lemon would react with the cream, and it would curdle into a fantastic mess. I've overcooked enough custards to know what it would look like. But surely after the juice had been tempered with so many eggs...and emulsified with the butter...and surely as long as all of the ingredients were very well cooled...

Well--it worked. Better than I could have imagined.

__________________________________________________

for the ice cream

1 c. fresh lemon juice
zest of 2 lemons
1 1/2 c. granulated sugar
1/8 t. salt
6 egg yolks
4 eggs
8 T. butter, cut in cubes and frozen
1 c. heavy whipping cream

for the coulis, either swirled in or spooned on top--entirely optional, but so pretty

8 oz frozen raspberries
3 T. granulated sugar
1 t. lemon juice
2 t. cornstarch
1 T. kirsch (optional)

Combine lemon juice, zest, sugar, and salt in a non-reactive saucepan. Cook over medium heat until sugar is completely dissolved and the mixture is hot, but not boiling. While it is heating, whisk together the eggs and yolks in a separate bowl. When the juice mixture is ready, move the pan off the heat, and temper a just little at a time into the eggs, whisking constantly, until the egg mixture is warmed. Pour the tempered eggs back into the saucepan, and return it to the heat. Cook over medium-low heat until thick and custardy, or about 170 F, whisking constantly. Don't walk away! Don't overcook! If the mixture boils it will curdle and there is no saving it.

Remove pan from heat, and whisk in the frozen cubes of butter, a few at a time, until completely melted and incorporated. Strain into a clean bowl--don't skip this step if you can help it. Straining soups is silly, but straining ice cream custard fishes out all of those inevitable bits of scrambled egg white. Place saran-wrap or a clean, slit plastic bag (I hate buying plastic, I reuse plastic bags whenever I can) right onto the surface of the custard (this will prevent a skin from forming), and refrigerate until completely chilled, or overnight.

Now make the coulis--it's a little unconventional, since I wanted to swirl it into the ice cream, so I've added cornstarch to make it more of a sauce that will remain pliable once frozen. Place everything but the kirsch into a clean saucepan over medium heat. It's important to stir the cornstarch into the berries while they're still cold, instead of after they've started cooking down, or you'll wind up with little lumps of cornstarch. Cook this mixture until it bubbles, thickens slightly, and turns translucent. Run through a food-processor or mini-chopper for 30 seconds. Strain the sauce through a fine-mesh sieve to work out most of the seeds, stir in the kirsch, and refrigerate in a sealed container until ready for use.

Whisk the heavy cream into the chilled lemon curd, pour mixture into ice cream freezer, and follow the manufacturer's instructions.

If you fancy swirling the coulis into the ice cream, put a few spoonfuls of the chilled raspberry sauce into the bottom of your intended storage container, and then scoop some ice cream over the top. Drizzle more raspberry on top of this, and follow with more ice cream. Continue layering until both are used up, then take a chopstick or a skewer and swirl the whole thing from bottom to top with a few looping motions--not too energetically, you aren't trying to blend them (although you could make a bright pink ice cream that way if you wished), just until it looks prettily marbled. Close up your storage container and allow the ice cream to finish freezing for a couple of hours.

Makes 1 quart.

Afterthought, because I can't leave any recipe alone: one of my favorite drinks when I'm sick is a potent Ginger-Lemon-Honey infusion--I bet that flavor combination would translate into an ice cream like this with marvelous results. Or grapefruit. Or blood orange. Or...

Lost Wisdom

2011-07-10T13:47:00.007+12:00

It seems fitting, in a way, that in exchange for my voyage to Antarctica, the Physical Qualification process demanded the removal of my two remaining wisdom teeth. Who but a fool wants to go to that frozen wasteland in the first place?

PQ turned into much more of an ordeal than I expected. The bomb of paperwork dropped on my head Solstice day, and ate up the better part of two and a half weeks with appointments, follow-ups, call-backs, referrals. Most of it seemed so unnecessary, not to mention costly--I'm young and healthy, and I know it. But McMurdo qualifies as a "medical wilderness," and the US Antarctic Program demands that all travelers south, without exception, run the PQ gauntlet: from scientists tagging penguins, to artists and writers on grants, to fork-lift drivers and janitors, and, of course, the kitchen staff. The official language refers to our time in Antarctica as "deployment," just as if we were soldiers headed to Afghanistan, and I can definitely see the parallels. Rule number one: there's no point in arguing. You get it done or you don't go.

So I've had a full physical, a drug screening (anybody know if Novacaine shows up in a pee-test? Because if it does I'm fucked), blood-work (god knows what they were looking for, but they took four phials of my red life to examine), urinalysis, a tetanus shot, a flu shot (I've never had a flu shot before in my life, dirty hippie that I am), a tuberculosis test, an EKG (in which the monitor complained that my heart pumped too slowly), a pap test (the third in less than a year, for a woman whose principal intimate congress is with her bicycle), a guaiac test (ew), a dental exam, scores of tooth x-rays (I never feel more a denizen of the first world than while sitting in a dentist's chair), a filling replacement, and the crowning glory of it all--a trip to the oral surgeon to have my last wolf teeth hacked out of my head.

Already I am a week behind on their preferred schedule for win-fly employees--tests had to process, mail had to move across the continent, the doctor's office tried sending letters stating test results instead of actual heart tracings and cell samples, the wisdom teeth of course, and that dratted federal holiday really threw a monkey wrench in the works--and dammit, they only just hired me!--but gods willing I'm done now. I want that email saying I'm PQ. I want the reimbursement check for all those exams. I want to hear that they're sending tickets. I'm ready to pack and go!

Except at the moment my face is embarrassingly and painfully swollen, I've got two ratty-looking holes toward the back of my jaw, a cut on my lip where the surgeon nicked me with the tools, and possibly two impressive bruises blooming on my cheeks. In fairness, all of the dental staff have proven friendly, helpful, and efficient, but I have to say, last time I had wisdom teeth out was a picnic by comparison. Last time, I went back to work the following morning. I couldn't do that now--even going for a walk left me feeling light-headed and acutely aware of having consumed nothing but V8 and pureed fruit with yogurt for three days. No fuel in the tank makes a tired girl. Sedentary days make me crazy. I've tried to get my computer backed-up and tidied, looking seriously at buying a MacBook Air as soon as Lion goes public. I harass the cats and put things in boxes. I read. I water the burgeoning vegetables in awe. But I hate feeling like an invalid. After more than a week of heavy rain, the weather in Fairbanks finally turned beautiful and summery, and I would love nothing more than to put on my boots and head for the hills, enjoy these last weeks of warmth and idleness before I hop back into the gulag. But I can hardly open my mouth wide enough to navigate a spoon or speak coherently; I bloody well can't hike 15-20 miles when I can't eat anything.

So at this stage in the game, I'm grumpy and feeling sorry for myself. The op-sites don't bother me much, but my face and jaw hurt too much for chewing. I'm experimenting with putting steamed chard and salmon though the mini-chopper (separately, I should perhaps add), to render them more edible, and laughing humorlessly at the fact that Kim and I just a few days ago had this conversation about home-made baby food. I don't really like soft food, either--I don't drink smoothies as a rule, I add fruit and nuts to my oatmeal, my favorite ice creams have chunky bits in them, mashed potatoes are a Thanksgiving side dish, not a regular feature. Antibiotics are frying my stomach. Pain meds make me dopey. Anti-swelling meds don't appear to have any effect at all. I'm avoiding going out--to the bank, the grocery store, the Farmer's Market--because I feel puffy and conspicuous. Everything is terrible.

But yes, I know, I'm being absurd, and this too shall pass. I've ordered my work shoes, and discovered that I receive six complete sets of kitchen uniforms upon my arrival in New Zealand. USAP also provides all of the cold weather gear: parkas, boots, and so forth. Apart from towels and toiletries, socks, pajamas, technology, and a few clothes for my one day off each week, looks like I'm not going to have to pack jack diggity. And the baggage allowance is 140 lbs.

That's a lot of coffee beans.

In Which I Damage My Car

2011-07-04T03:59:00.011+12:00

Wednesday night I collected Kim and Hershel from the airport and delivered them to the Homestead, spending a couple of hours chatting and helping to keep them awake against the three-hour time difference. They headed to bed shortly before midnight, and I prepared to drive home.

My dad is in the process of relandscaping the backyard, and has the piles of dirt delivered on a blue tarp to one side of the driveway--in my "parking spot." The most recent pile of dirt was all but gone, the tarp folded backwards to prevent the remnants from turning into mud, so I'd pulled into my customary place earlier that evening, the front end of the car just overlapping the edge of the folded-back edge of the tarp.

Backing slowly out of the drive, I heard the customary crunch of tires on gravel, and then another, different crunching sound--and before I had time to register what the noise was or even that it was emanating from my chariot, the twisting right side of the bumper appeared in my line of sight. In alarm, I shut down the engine and scurried around front.

The contorted bumper lay drooping to the ground. It had caught on a tool or a rock tucked under the tarp to stay dry, and to my complete astonishment, torn clean off the car.

I blinked at it stupidly for a few seconds, in utter disbelief, not sure if I was going to laugh or cry. My car! Fagin! Wrecked! By a blue tarp! Examined closely, the front end appeared to have been held on by two plastic screws and the happy alignment of parts. The bumper itself was made entirely of plastic, with some foam fitted underneath--and I was certainly getting an intimate look at it now. Not exactly what one would call a quality piece of automotive construction.

As much as car-snobs like to denigrate the Kia, though, my poky little Korean car has ever proven itself a sturdy little beast. It drove all the way to McCarthy and back over horrible roads that it had not been built to handle. When the family decide to take road trips--to Homer, to Valdez, to Anchorage--we take Fagin. Apart from replacing headlight bulbs and windshield wipers, filling the tires, and so on, it has required very little maintenance, just keeps pootling at upwards of 30 miles per gallon. Dad doesn't even have to change the oil, the engine runs so cleanly. I'm fond of it in the way that one grows attached to reliable tools, or comfortable shoes, ones worn by use to fit. And here I'd wantonly broken the front half off in a matter of seconds, not even in a nice dramatic crash with a mad moose, but backing away from a tarp--and in my parents' driveway! WELL DONE, LOHRENZ.

I couldn't drive it home. I couldn't even figure out how the pieces went back together, some of them were so contorted. I marched back inside to find my mother just finished brushing her teeth.

"Can I borrow the Mini?"

"Of course, why, what's wrong?" (Bless her for phrasing her response in that order.)

"I broke my car."

"What?"

I led the way as she followed me outside, where we came to a halt just outside the gate. Mom gazed at my car with a fixed expression for a beat and a half---and burst out laughing. Uproariously. This continued for some little time. I thought she was going to do herself an injury. "What did you do?" she kept asking, wheezing and wiping her eyes. A few minutes later Kim came trailing down from the apartment over the garage to find out what all the cackling was about, and she too started to laugh at my woeful predicament. Sniff. My poor car.

Mom, still giggling, went back inside to raise the house mechanic. Dad wanted to take my car to an autobody shop to have it repaired properly, but Mom and I both demurred, preferring to employ the standard Alaskan remedy for all major and minor technical failures--which seems to be working just fine. I think Fagin looks she was in a bar fight and wound up with butterfly stitches on her forehead.

Insomnia

2011-06-27T19:33:00.004+12:00

I've been awake past midnight every day for a week now.

I'm not a night-owl. At all. I pulled a handful of all-nighters in high school--enough to discover how cripplingly unproductive it left me the second day, carrying around a throbbing headache the size of a young elephant. If I had to short-sleep myself for the sake of finishing a project or a paper, I was better off going to bed in a timely fashion and rolling out exceptionally early the next morning. Sometimes I think this must be a genetic failing, like my hobbit-like stature and my ugly hands, because Dad and Grandpa both fall under the "up with the sun" classification. I like waking up early. It's really rather unfortunate. The popular image of students, artists, musicians, thespians, writers, and other Creative/Interesting People includes (in addition to madness, poverty, and poor hygiene) burning a lot of midnight oil. Baker or not, only squares nod off by nine. I am emphatically square.

But here in the north, where continuous daylight persists for four months or something on that order, I find myself contentedly pottering around the Hermitage at all hours without chemical aid. Nobody could be more surprised than I to glance up from my little craft projects and see 1:30am--a pleasant removal from lying in bed and agonizing over every passing minute as my brain flatly refuses to shut down. There's no impetus to sleep; unemployment robs my days of structure and physical engagement, so unless I've gone on a long hike or cycled down the hill and back again, I'm not tired. It's bizarre, but it's also kind of liberating. I read more, and without dozing off in my rocking chair like an old woman. I bake bread, roll croissants. I paper the outhouse with the pages of an eviscerated encyclopedia. I sift through the metric fuck ton of paperwork required for my trip south. I listen to music, and watch the clouds billow or thunder or crawl across the sky. I wander the hills, or decide on a lark to take my empty gallons to the watering station around midnight. Why not?

And I'll have another six months of light to look forward to in Antarctica!

The Seventh Continent

2011-06-25T17:07:00.016+12:00

On my last day in Miss McCready's fifth-grade class, just before the family PCSed to Keflavík, that venerable woman let me pick a book to take with me, a farewell gift. From among the stack of sharp-cornered, brightly-colored new books she offered, I selected Troubling a Star, by Madeleine L'Engle. I had read A Wrinkle in Time and loved it, and recognized the name of the author, but I was also taken by the illustration on the cover, a girl huddled in a parka on an iceberg in the middle of the sea.

So began my acquaintance with Vicky Austin--I eventually read the rest of the series, backwards of course--and Antarctica made its first appearance on my mental map of the world. It was a place that people could visit, not just the seventh name entered on the list of continents for a geography test! Icebergs, penguins, whales, yes, they captured my attention, but even then, Antarctica's lure had less to do with what was there than with what was not there. A barren wasteland of ice, the highest, driest, least hospitable place on earth. The siren song of the utterly alien. And at eleven years old, I had already covered more ground than most people manage in a lifetime. With all of the sublime confidence of an eleven-year-old who reads too much, I decided that I too would visit all seven continents, as some of the travelers in Troubling a Star were doing, and gave myself what I considered an unnecessarily generous allotment of time in which to do it: before I turned 30.

Grade school teachers of the world, pay attention. You exercise more influence than you realize.

Although I managed some fairly respectable travel across Europe and the United States, I've been stuck at three continents for fifteen years now. My eleven-year-old self would be disgusted. Getting a job in Antarctica, I hope, will mollify her scorn. I've been putting money away forever, it seems, with the vague notion that I was/am going to need it later, that "Antarctica won't come cheap." I had a half-formed idea, owing a great deal to Vicky Austin's example in fact, of someday buying an empty bunk on a research vessel and spending a couple of weeks, at most, staying out of some scientists' way as they count plankton or whatever, cruising the perimeter of that frozen world. During the run-up to Kim's wedding, my standard joke was that in the unlikely event of my marriage I would never, ever host such ridiculous event myself; I'd elope to Antarctica instead.

To spend six months working on Ross Island, to live there, in a place where nobody is allowed to live--after two seasons of continuous employment, a calendar year, everyone is required to leave the Ice for a spell--utterly surpasses any of my expectations. I've watched Herzog's documentary, I've seen the footage of McMurdo, and it's hardly the unspoiled, white-washed landscape one has in mind when one thinks of Antarctica. No rose-tinted glasses here. It's a hole. Eleven hundred people live there, and as I observed in McCarthy, when a group that large finds itself that far over the edge of civilization, in a climate that pays no homage to human life, the "leave-no-trace" attitude evaporates completely. I'm certain that during the six months there will come a low point when I miss my cats, my cabin, my autonomy, and hate everything and everyone impartially--the food, the smells, the confinement, the demands of the job, dorm living, McMurdo, myself. I want to see the Adéle penguin colony. I want to visit the seal camp and lay with one ear on the ice, listening to the seals perform their Pink Floyd soundshow. I want to peer through a lens at the myriad forms of microscopic life teeming in the polar sea. I want to walk out into a landscape so awesomely silent I can hear my heart beat. And I probably won't--Antarctica is dangerous. The powers that be installed the gym and the bars and the library at McMurdo with the idea of keeping the inmates quietly at home, safe. I doubt anyone looks kindly on the defection of even a mere baker, because it compromises the ability of the Antarctic program at large to come and go as it pleases. I will do my very utmost to seize every opportunity that comes my way, but there is going to come a point when I feel trapped.

So I'm trying to retain a good, clear impression of this excitement, this sense of dreams-come-true. Because in the most literal sense, regardless of what comes after, this is a dream come true.

Off the Map

2011-06-17T18:59:00.006+12:00

I'm going to Antarctica.

I wasn't lying when I said it was a long shot. Because it was. But I kept getting a little closer, and a little closer: first they wanted me to fill out a questionnaire, then participate in a phone interview, then submit a list of references. Each time I held my breath and reminded myself that it was a long shot. This morning, after a maddening bout of phone-tag, I spoke with the executive chef and found that my name was listed among the alternates, pending funding for a prep-baker masquerading as a prep-cook. Still wasn't going to get my hopes up. But within an hour of that conversation Chef called me back to say: we found a way. The letter of employment offer is being drawn up as we speak. Win-fly begins August 13. I have a lot of paperwork to get through, a drug test to pass ("This woman drinks a lot of coffee..."), complete pre-deployment physical and dental exams to clear, a whole cabin to pack away, a lot of summer nonsense to enjoy, and a plane to board...but I'm going. They offered me the job, and sent me the contract. It wants only my signature.

I'm going to Antarctica!

At a point when I have not joyfully tossed off a half-bottle of homemade mojito mix, I will have a lot more to say about everything, but let this suffice for the present: I have a map of the world on my wall. I've had it since I was eleven or so. At every geographical point that I spent a night or more, I drew a dot in black Sharpie. Three northerly continents suffer from a respectable pox. But the cartographers illustrated only the portion of the Antarctic content directly south of Chile, spanning east to the Shackleton Ice Shelf, south of India. After that, the line dips below the frame. Neither Ross Island nor McMurdo Station appear.

Terra incognita.

I could not possibly be more excited.

World on Fire

2011-06-08T17:27:00.017+12:00

Interior Alaska is the area north of the Alaska Range and south of the Brooks Range, from the Canadian border on the east to as far west as trees are found in western Alaska. It encompasses over 108 million acres. In this boreal forest region, the primary natural disturbance is wildfire. Land in interior Alaska is classified into one of four fire management categories, with the vast majority of the area designated “limited suppression” (Alaska Wildland Fire Coordination Group 1998). Fires in these areas are monitored but not suppressed unless they threaten to spread to lands where fire protection is desired. Thus, in the majority of the land area of interior Alaska, wildfires are not suppressed.

An average of 708,700 acres burned each year in interior Alaska between 1961 and 2000, and in major fire years, over 2 million acres burned (Kasischke and others, in press).

-Harvesting Morels After Wildfire in Alaska, T.L. Wurtz

Wildfires dominate the Interior landscape like earthquakes in California, tornadoes in the Midwest, or hurricanes in Florida. They're normal--and frequent. I check this map every time I plan a hike. Today's 16-mile hike along the Wickersham Summit Trail brought me a little closer to the action than I prefer.

Looking back, maybe a mile from the trailhead. The Tatalina fire, I think. This fire has been burning for a while now, and at a comfortable distance.

Lovely day for a hike!

May 21, 2011. A very small burn that I was surprised to discover last time I was out here.

June 7, 2011. Behold the tenacious regenerative power of the earth.

The Summit Shelter surely ranks as one of the cutest cabins I've ever set eyes on; and unlike most other free-use shelters, the door closes, the tools are in place, and the water catchment is clean and full.

More plumes of smoke off to the northeast, visible from the shelter: Sourdough? Harrington? Fires everywhere!

Sitting on a pile of shale in front of the shelter, eating my lunch, it occurs to me that that wasn't there before. I start the eight-mile trek back to the car.

At this point I was hoping really hard that my car had not been incinerated, and mentally preparing a Plan of Emergency.

I cleared the final crest and beheld the beast. Holy mother of god.

As I got closer and the smoke from the initial "flare up" dissipated, it was easier to see the source of all the commotion.

The camera did not do justice to those flames. They were alive, leaping and consuming everything in their path.

The smoke completely obliterated the sun, and in the eerie stillness that pervaded even the alpine mountain-top, the mosquitoes mounted a ferocious attack. Needless to say, I booked it through the last couple of miles, threw my gear in the car, and got the hell out of there. The trailhead is at milepost 28 off the Eliot Highway; as I pulled out, I saw a couple of emergency vehicles that had already collected at the gravel clearing across from the trailhead parking lot. They were still a long way from the fire, but it was as far as the highway would take them. I'm in the process of mining the internet, trying to extract a map of the area, preferably including updated information on the fire, since I'm not sure whether this was a new burn or a flare up from one of the existing "mothers."

Update: a burnout. Aha. Well silly me, I should have examined the paper before heading for the hills.

As I write this the smoke has drifted as far as my cabin in the hills north of town, dimming the perpetual daylight and giving the impression of an overcast evening. The cats don't like the smoke any more than I do; it makes them cough.

Where the Wild Things Are

2011-06-08T04:03:00.004+12:00

Oh how can I say this: People need wild places. Whether or not we think we do, we do. We need to be able to taste grace and know once again that we desire it. We need to experience a landscape that is timeless, whose agenda moves at the pace of speciation and glaciers. To be surrounded by a singing, mating, howling commotion of other species, all of which love their lives as much as we do ours and none of which could possibly care less about our economic status or our running day calendar. Wildness puts us in our place. It reminds us that our plans are small and somewhat absurd... Looking out on a clean plank of planet earth we can get shaken right down to the bone by the bronze-eyed possibility of lives that are not our own.

-Barbara Kingsolver, Small Wonder

Blueberry Scones

2011-06-03T06:11:00.010+12:00

It's a grey, drizzly morning at the Hermitage, the first in a long time: ideal for baking breakfast, instead of cooking eggs on the stove. There's a sackful of hand-picked Alaskan blueberries in the freezer, just clamoring to be included in something, so I made scones. Scones and I go way back. Dredging the murkier reaches of memory, I recall that somebody presented me with a Bialosky Bear cookbook when I was seven or eight years old, when we lived in California, and, inspired, I took a break from playing in the sand-pits across the street from our house to spend some time pottering around the kitchen making cinnamon-raisin scones and chili. Scones seemed special, perhaps: Mom made muffins for breakfast regularly, but scones were tea-party fare.

I don't monkey with scones too much. Without question I turned out hundreds of weird or mediocre muffins at the store, because that was my preferred crucible for testing whatever notion happened to preoccupy my thoughts on a given morning: basil pesto and parmesan muffins, honey sesame muffins, pumpkin cream cheese muffins, morning glory muffins. You make two kinds of muffins five mornings a week, sooner or later blueberry just doesn't cut it. Unless it's blueberry, cornmeal and thyme.

But scones are an exercise in simplicity, and apart from refining my method, I was largely content to leave them alone. They require a mere handful of standard-issue kitchen ingredients and a few simple tools, and they fall under the limited heading of pastries that thrive on neglect. They're rustic. The authors of Bialosky's cookbook obviously expected that scones could be trusted to children and idiots. Experience has taught me that this isn't quite true. Very few of my trainees grasped the light-handed approach I endeavored to show them. On a number of occasions coffee shop customers flagged me down on my way to inspect the salad case and heaped compliments on the day's scones. (How they put it together that I had made them, instead of one of the other bakers, is anybody's guess.) One woman seriously suggested I hold a scone workshop for interested patrons. While flattering, I find the praise frankly bewildering. Scones are alright, some are better than others, but they aren't interesting. Next time I make croissants, I hope to god everyone who eats one goes into transports of butter-induced ecstasy, because croissants are a tricky little beast. Scones are easy.

Here I'm going to try to prove it.

Blueberry Scones
adapted from America's Test Kitchen

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon lemon zest (optional)
5 tablespoons butter, frozen
1 teaspoon vanilla (optional)
1 cup cold buttermilk
blueberries

Preheat the oven to 425 F.

Combine the dry ingredients and lemon zest in a large bowl. Let it be noted that the lemon zest, while optional, is strongly recommended. It doesn't impart a flavor of its own so much as brighten the flavor of the fruit. If you're working in a particularly warm room, or on a particularly warm day, put this bowlful of stuff into the freezer to chill for ten or fifteen minutes.

Grate the frozen butter on the large holes of a cheese-grater. A lot of recipes will tell you to cube the butter and then work it into the dry ingredients with a pastry cutter, or two knives, or your hands, until it resembles "coarse meal" or some such. I have a hell of a time conveying to people what that means. Grating the butter takes out all the guesswork, an ATK stroke of genius.

The idea is that you want to have tiny pockets of butter in your scone dough, and the colder the better to prevent them from melting into the flour prematurely; when the dough is cooked, those pockets of butter melt and impart an delectable lightness to the pastry around them. So grate your frozen butter, and toss it into the dry ingredients until it is evenly coated. Again, if it's high summer, allow this to chill before proceeding.

If you're using vanilla--not strictly necessary but, like the zest, rounds out the flavor--measure it into whatever you plan to use to measure the buttermilk, then pour the buttermilk over the top, so that you wind up with a total of one cup of liquid. No, a teaspoon one way or another isn't going to break the bank, but I don't ever actually measure the vanilla, I just jigger it in, so this approach provides a safeguard. Lately I've been using homemade vanilla: the rusks of several vanilla beans soaked in a bottle of vodka for a couple months.

Stir the wet ingredients into the dry just until combined, until the mass in the bowl coheres and visibly segues from "ingredients" to "dough." Then stop mixing. If this project involved the use of nuts or dried fruit--cranberries, currants, raisins, cherries, chopped dates, or whatever else you can think of--you would add the fruit now, just stirring it into the dough. That's the easy way. But here I am going to show you how to use frozen fruit, which takes a little more care but isn't difficult. The salient point is that crushing a lot of frozen blueberries into scone dough, and then rolling it out, will result in an unspeakable purple mess, and there's a way around it.

Sprinkle flour over a clean work surface and turn out the dough. Flour your hands a bit and pat the dough together. Using a rolling pin, gently roll out the dough, sprinkling the top with flour if necessary to keep the pin from sticking. When the dough is perhaps half to three-quarters of an inch thick, fold it over on itself in thirds as you would a business letter. A pastry cutter or an egg spatula can prove useful if the dough tends to stick to the work surface. Gently roll it out again.

Why did you do this? You are flattening and layering the pockets of butter that I mentioned earlier. This is very similar to making what bakers call a laminate dough, a layered dough, perhaps more familiar in the form of puff pastry and danish and croissants. Read: flaky and delicious. By giving your dough a "turn," you are also working the gluten (the protein) in the flour very gently. Overwork the dough and you wind up with tough scones. But a little kneading or, still better, a roll-and-turn, will give the leavening (the baking powder) a little structure to rise into, thereby producing taller, lighter scones. Again, this isn't complicated, I'm just trying to explain why this method works.

Fetch your blueberries and scatter them evenly over the surface of the dough, clear to the edges. I don't know how many it will take--it depends on how large the berries are, and how many berries you want. I'm using tiny Alaskan wild blueberries, and I'm using a lot of them because I have a lot of them to use. When they are arranged to your satisfaction, press them gently but firmly into the dough. Now your hands are purple so go wash.

With your clean hands start rolling up the dough at one end, tucking in any blueberries that roll astray. Try not to press the berries through the dough: you're going to trap them in there.

Now you have a scone-log. I neglected to take a picture of mine because my hands were dirty and I was getting tired of pausing to wash them every fifteen seconds. Tidy and square the ends of the scone-log, again tucking in any escaping berries. More than likely the log isn't perfectly even and bulges somewhat towards the midsection, too, so even it out by patting it with your hands or rolling it gently with the pin. Using a knife or a pastry cutter, cut your log into individual triangular scones. Think of a zig-zag pattern. This recipe makes six healthy-sized breakfast scones, or up to a dozen dainty mini-scones if you're having a tea party.

Arrange the scones at least two inches apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Brush the tops with a little extra buttermilk, and sprinkle them with granulated or turbinado sugar. Bake for ten minutes, then rotate the pan and turn the oven down to 350F. Continue baking the scones until golden brown, fragrant, and a toothpick inserted in a convenient crack comes out clean. I find that a pastry is nearly finished baking when people start drifting into the kitchen, sniffing interestedly. Transfer the scones to a cooling rack or even a plate: get them off the hot pan. Try to resist eating them right out of the oven. Allowing the scones to cool for ten minutes improves their texture. However, the element sconium has a half-life of forty five minutes, so eat them promptly. It really shouldn't be a problem.

Hands Clean

2011-06-02T05:47:00.007+12:00

So that's it. My employment at Fairbanks' favorite coffee house is over.

I'm...not glad, really, but grimly satisfied...that I stuck it out for the extra difficult months. (Not least because it gave me a chance to befriend that crazy Ashley.) Gives the decision to vacate the premises more of an appearance of a decision, rather than a knee-jerk reaction. I already feel like I'm cashing in my chips, that I'm running away, because I left without any particular notion of where I am headed, simply with the pathetic certainty that I have to get away from what's-his-face, I can't continue to watch him slide back into his life as if nothing happened, as if I am a shameful thing to be erased. It just hurts too much. Last weeks are always difficult, always a test of self-control. Unquestionably a result of "starting over" too many times, I seem to derive an unfortunate delight from watching bridges go up in smoke. My goal for the last five days of work was: Thou Shalt Not Make a Scene. Well, I managed to fulfill that resolve, but coincidence and my own Grade-A idiocy certainly contrived to produce an emotionally trying week.

My radio alarm clock gets poor reception; I switched it on before going to bed to make sure it was still tuned to the local station, instead of a haze of static. And lo, his girlfriend was on the air--I'd nearly forgotten that she hosts a radio show once a week--playing Florence + the Machine's "I'm Not Calling You a Liar." Have I mentioned that the irony levels in the atmosphere have been unusually high lately. It was one of those stomach-clenching moments when you're not sure if you're going to throw the radio and everything else that comes to hand, or throw up. Or bawl like a dummy into your pillow. That was a bad night. I think I got three hours of really lousy sleep, and I heard Florence in my head for days afterward.

Radiohead released a new album this year--if you didn't know this, have you been living in a hole in the ground?--and they described it as the first "newspaper album." Nobody was entirely sure what that was going to mean, but the fans were intrigued. Radiohead doesn't do iTunes, see; they prefer to be creative in the dissemination of their work. So they released the mp3 version a couple of months ago, and it was available for sale on the King of Limbs website, but one could also purchase the hard-copy collector's version of the "newspaper album," including vinyl, lots of reading matter, and nobody-really-knew-whatall, which would be released at a later date.

Needless to say, I am a permanent adherent to the digital music scene on account of having fewer things to put in a box when the time comes, but of course what's-his-face, a devoted Radiohead fan and a collector of pretty things, bought the newspaper album. It showed up in the mail Monday morning, apparently, and despite our not having exchanged more than ten words over the last month, he brought it up, actually initiated a conversation, and then brought it in to show me, before he had even examined it thoroughly himself. It's beautiful, I have to acknowledge, even in my barely-attentive state I could see that; the first time I've observed a fusion between music and book-arts that complements the strengths of both media. But I stood there clutching the newsprint, heart hammering, wanting to throw the whole lovely collection in his face and scream, "You UNFRIENDED me, you dick, why are you showing this to me?!" I didn't. I very nearly did, but one of those little-exercised binding forces in one's personality unfurled itself from the place it slept, and I held my tongue. I read through the paper and examined the drawings for a few minutes, then folded it up neatly and handed it back, and immediately started scrubbing quiche pans. Ashley and I have observed that the dish-pit is a safety zone, that baked goods mysteriously do not turn out well when one is harrowed up in the mind.

Here's comes the dumb part: I discovered by chance that his girlfriend has a blog. So of course I went looking for it. And oh god yes, it was one of those times when the whole cacophony of voices in my head, some that sound like Kim, some that sound like Si, some that sound like Scout, for heaven's sake (mysteriously, none that sound like Paul--he is too much like me, I think he would go looking, too), welled together in a grand chorus trying to dissuade me. "DON'T DO IT, what are you doing?, THIS IS A TERRIBLE IDEA." And I did it anyway. It wasn't hard. The internet has made this kind of thing entirely too easy. She blocked me on the book of faces quite a while ago (I was merely unfriended after he told her about our supposed one-night-stand), I can't even access her existence anymore (for that matter, what's-his-face may have done the same, since he doesn't show up in a search, only by proxy through other friends), but Google reaches into all sorts of odd corners, and Flickr isn't such an odd corner. Flickr linked to her blog, and the most recent entry was all about the trip south to Denali and Talkeetna this last weekend with her lovely boyfriend, who was playing some shows there. As if that wasn't sickening reward enough for my nosiness, I kept reading, and there was an entry from the evening I blundered across her radio show, ending thus:

Each day is a gift
Choose your own path
Live unafraid
Love unashamed

Well christ, how insightful. You filthy hypocrite, how come to cried on the floor and begged him not to leave you? How come you didn't honor his request when he said he thought you should break up? How could you live with someone who said he wants to leave you? You'd already been cheating on him, what the hell were you so afraid of? Master your fear. Choose your own fucking path. You might not be calling him a liar, but I AM.

Another bad night, and entirely of my own doing.

It would be the easiest thing in the world to call her up and spill the beans. Never mind the accessibility of the internet. This town is so small that acquaintances cross-hatch in a veritably alarming fashion. I know where they live. I'm not afraid to look her in the eye. I could call into her radio show, for crying out loud. "Hey lady, would you like to hear about the night your gentlemen spent at my house while you were hosting the airwaves?" Part of me would love to take that razor-sharp Scorpion knife and slide it neatly into the place I know it will bleed the most. What do I care? Now I'm done with work, I will never see him again. Serve him right for lying to her, for lying to me. Serve her right for being such a leech. I don't believe half of what I was told about her emotional instability, her lack of close friends and family nearby, her complete inability to deal with a breakup, her having no money to move out; I'm firmly convinced it was a well-played combination of drama, manipulation, and scare tactics. She played him exactly the right way, heaven knows they've been together long enough that she should know how, and he was too terrified by her tears and too ashamed of his own "misdoings" to see it. He wouldn't leave her because he cheated on her. And he's going to let that secret fester in his mind forever; he's going to wait now until she leaves him.

But I won't tell her--because it just isn't my responsibility. In the most literal sense. Whether or not it is any of my business was, at best, debatable, and now very frankly it is none of my business at all. It is his responsibility. I had a routine pap test come back funny last fall, and I had to wait six months for a retest to see if I had HPV. That was a very difficult thing to have to communicate with a new lover, especially one whose affections you are unsure of for other reasons, but I told him, because I felt obliged to do so. It was my responsibility. The retest in March came back clean, as I expected (it was just a yeast infection before), and I told him that, too. And I realized at that point that I had half-hoped I had a little-understood STI because it would force him to tell his girlfriend he was messing around (never mind that he was supposedly in love with someone else)--or else give me license to do it myself. And I would. But he was off the hook. He will never tell her the truth.

I was so crazy in love with that boy. And however briefly, so happy. It makes me feel sick to know that everything to do with me is now a source of shame to him. I wonder sometimes if he hid that drumhead I painted, or threw it away; how could you live with that kind of reminder in your house? How can you climb in bed with your girlfriend knowing you don't respect her enough to be honest? How can you just passively get on with your life without taking any kind of responsibility for your own fuck-ups? Doesn't living in silence like that make everything else seem empty? My friends are all quite dissimilar, but as I think of it, they do seem to have one principal reigning theory in common: get your shit done. Take responsibility. No matter what. If you can't get your shit done I will leave you behind. Kim was right; Charlie was right. It hurts, but as much as I loved him, he isn't the sort of person I want in my life, isn't even the sort of person I can be friends with; and the disappointment (because I thought that he was) hurts too. I know the patterns of the coffee shop literally inside-out, and even if I stop in to cadge coffee and say hello to my barista friends or to Charlie, it will be the easiest thing in the world never to see him again. I didn't even say goodbye.

Dream

2011-05-21T15:07:00.004+12:00

The key lime pies that were sent to the VRC* are too runny, the whole batch. I have to go and fix them. Clearly I was the one who made them because they were tinted a pale green, nobody else does that.** I head to the VRC and the building above it resembles a cross between Eliot Hall as I knew it and the fictional Eliot from one of my favorite stories--old scarred woodwork, tall dusty windows, seventies decorations--but the library basement where the lab is located is the same, dark and cool, lit with jittery fluorescent bulbs. Karin^ greets me warmly, as though she saw me yesterday, but I know it has been years. There are no filing drawers or slides or computers, the lab is wall-to-wall with metal sinks, and they are full of strange, multicolored, anemone-like specimens, I was supposed to clean them up and I forgot. Annoyed with myself, I start cleaning them up, scrubbing the sinks and rinsing the anemones down the drain. Why didn't I do this before? I knew I was supposed to, it was my responsibility.

*Visual Resources Center, repository for the Reed art department's slide collection, where I was employed for three years.
**At the coffee shop, the key lime juice comes in gallon jugs, and in a characterless khaki color that I find repellant.
^My employer. A description of this remarkable woman would take all day.

Shakeout

2011-05-18T06:24:00.002+12:00

Shortly after posting "House of Cards," I was "unfriended" on the book of faces by the principal character; possibly my local readership is larger than I had assumed. Perhaps he just got tired of being ignored at work and abruptly decided to acknowledge the obvious--because we aren't friends anymore. I can't even look him in the eye these days; it's entirely possible that he's thanking his lucky stars that he didn't get mixed up with a vindictive bitch like me any more than he did. A real conversation would inevitably deteriorate on his part into a stream of excuses and apologies, on my part into a vicious, pointless attack. There are moods in which I would love nothing better than to blow up his entire tiny social infrastructure; hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. It shouldn't have surprised me to discover my enumeration of friends had dropped by one. But I suppose that given how long he spent swearing his loyalty, swearing he would come back to me, it smarts that the final dismissal took place in that blasé social media forum.

A couple of days spent thus brooding, with no Ashley at hand to break the tension, a hairdresser-turned-baker to train (and she's one of those who profess allergies to everything: wheat, corn, soy, eggs, and dairy...and doesn't like vegetables...so our personalities do not jive, to say the least), and glorious sunny weather calling my name, I realized very suddenly that I couldn't do it anymore. I can't work through August. Nor do I have to; for the present I am financially solvent and even if I find myself at loose ends I can pick up another job at the drop of a hat. I told Charlie that I wanted to be done by June 1. DONE. The news has filtered through the store very slowly; in a way I feel that I am flying under the radar of Ashley's departure. The few I've informed have been asking where I am headed, if I have travel plans, if I have another job lined up, and answering in the negative has seemed peculiarly inadequate.

The irony levels in the atmosphere were particularly oppressive at the end of last week, when Charlie made the colossal mistake of mentioning within my hearing that upon my departure my erstwhile lover would be taking my position as Assistant Pig Keeper of the kitchen. I really have no words for this. He is very good at what he does, and has often agreed to take on extra shifts when I found myself short-handed. But he is not the one we call when someone is sick or doesn't show up at 5am. He is not the one training new hires how to wash their hands, not the one perpetually staying late to finish the bread or make sure the soup is done for tomorrow. Mind, I don't think it was something he volunteered for--I suspect that, feeling as though his troops are deserting, it was Charlie's bright idea--but talk about twisting the knife. Not only is the source of his discomfort removing herself, but a raise and a promotion drop on his plate to boot.

I've never quit a job without immediate plans to leave the state and/or another form of employment pending. It is both freeing and terrifying. This job has been my whole life for over a year and a half, and I'm done. Last week I applied for a six-month contract job at McMurdo station in Antarctica in a haze of excitement--but it's one hell of a long shot. I try to remind myself of that as I toy with the game pieces of my life and contemplate possible moves.

Why Old Books Smell Good

2011-05-15T03:31:00.001+12:00

As a baker and a bibliophile, I'm sold.

“Lignin, the stuff that prevents all trees from adopting the weeping habit, is a polymer made up of units that are closely related to vanillin. When made into paper and stored for years, it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores to smell like good quality vanilla absolute, subliminally stoking a hunger for knowledge in all of us."

—From Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez’s Perfumes: the guide

via Fuck Yeah, Book Arts!

SYP Chocolate Chip Cookies

2011-05-08T16:50:00.015+12:00

As I anticipated, I can't bear to look at a post like the last one for very long before I feel compelled either to 1) delete it, or 2) demote it with a new post. Commentary on weighty, interesting topics like Human Custodianship of Wild Places, provoked by my visit to McCarthy, or Why Silas and I Should Pool Our Resources and Move to Japan, seem a bit daunting at the moment. So we turn, inevitably, to the thing nearest to hand that occupies my time and energy: food.

Lately I've been on a browned butter kick. (This may appear seasonally inappropriate to a southerner currently inundated with fresh strawberries and the like, but keep in mind that nothing is actually growing yet, here in the northern realms--we're just operating on 20 hours of daylight and the taunting, flavorless summer fruits shipped up from California.) Browned butter isn't brown butter; it hasn't been dyed, cured or fermented; isn't produced by an outlandish species of lactating animal. (Although my grandfather liked to inform his credulous young listeners with great gravitas that chocolate milk came from brown cows.) It's butter that has been browned, cooked on the stove, swirled often and watched carefully, until it has frothed into a state of quiet and acquires a nutty, mouth-watering aroma that is unmistakeable. Never made browned butter? Put a stick in a pan on the stove and try it out. Trust me, you will know when you've found it.

At the chocolate shop we made a Browned Butter Rhubarb Tart, and it didn't look like much, but the flavor profile was a thing of glory: a flaky, slightly salty crust, tart chunks of rhubarb, and a crispy-sweet topping made of whipped eggs, sugar, and browned butter. Theoretically, you can use browned butter in pretty much any application that calls for melted butter (accounting possibly for a slight volume differential, since the water cooks out of the browned butter) and it will enrich the flavor of your creation tenfold. It seems to be one of the baking world's best-kept secrets, hidden in plain sight.

Although I often prefer darker options when I am baking--toasted nuts, toasted coconut, dark brown sugar, bittersweet chocolate, deeply burnished bread, puff pastry just this side of burnt, caramel cooked within an inch of its life, I've even found a shortbread recipe that calls for toasted flour--I more or less dismissed browned butter from my mind after leaving the chocolate shop. Then a few weeks ago, Ashley and I were discussing cookies, and she mentioned that a friend of hers had passed along a recipe from America's Test Kitchen that had in transit been dubbed Shit Your Pants Chocolate Chip Cookies--they were just that good. Naturally I demanded both a trial and a copy of the recipe, which were duly accomplished. As it turned out, the big secret lay not in the ratio of ingredients (although that unquestionably plays a role) or the exemplary chocolate, but in the browning of the butter. At work, too-soft butter can spell disaster: the cookies spread into next week and we wind up with sheet pan after sheet pan arrayed in chocolate-studded manhole covers. But somehow this recipe--butter not only melted but cooked--works.

Shit Your Pants Chocolate Chip Cookies

14 T. unsalted butter, divided
1/2 c. (3 1/2 oz.) granulated sugar
3/4 c. (5 1/4 oz.) dark brown sugar
1 t. salt
2 t. vanilla
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1/2 t. baking soda
1 3/4 c. (8 3/4 oz.) unbleached flour
1 1/4 c. chocolate chips (I prefer Ghirardelli 60% Bittersweet)
3/4 c. toasted and chopped nuts (optional--I used almonds, but anything goes)

Preheat oven to 375F.

Cook 10 tablespoons of the butter in a pan or skillet over medium heat, swirling the pan often, until the butter is browned. Remove pan from heat.

Whisk the remaining four tablespoons of butter into the still-hot browned butter until melted. Pour into a heatproof bowl and whisk with both sugars, vanilla, and salt until incorporated. Side note: a fancy pastry chef might strain the browned butter to remove the solids (clearly visible in the photo), but I think they add to the flavor, so I scraped them right in. Add the egg and yolk, and keep whisking until no lumps remain. Let this stand for 3 minutes, then whisk it again. Repeat. This process produces a marvelous batter that thickens as it cools. Rest and whisk again. It smells amazing; I kind of wanted to make out with the bowl.

Fold in the soda and flour until just combined, followed by the chips and nuts.

Scoop dough onto cookie sheets in whatever portions seem desirable. (I recommend using parchment paper, but even if you prefer not to, there is no need to spray the pans.) Bake one tray at a time until the edges of the cookies are set and golden brown, but the centers are still soft and puffy. Allow to cool on the pan for a few minutes before removing to a wire rack or your mouth.

I can't account for how much my first test batch would have spread, since I realized rather late in the game that I had relegated my single (dreadful) cookie sheet to the greenhouse, and it was covered in peat pots full of pea seeds. So I baked my cookies in a muffin tin. The second batch, shown here, spread a little more than I would have liked, but I was also fiddling with the flour ratios (Mom presented me with a bag of coconut flour following a trip to Natural Pantry, resulting in much experimentation), and in both cases I produced a half-batch (a single woman can consume only so many cookies), which gets tricky when the recipe calls for one egg and one yolk. I feel confident, however, that the recipe is sound.

And they are delicious. The toasted butter and relatively generous portion of salt add a depth of flavor that chocolate chip cookies--often cloyingly sweet--frequently lack. I may never make them any other way.

House of Cards

2011-05-01T18:31:00.000+12:00

The last real blog entry that I wrote--"Flour Child"--appeared here just before I found myself with a wave of material that I did not deem wise to publish. I've had occasion to consider carefully the function of this blog and the nature of privacy before, but not to such a degree. I haven't "kept" this blog very well since coming north, nor have I spoken about it to people I met, and I have some reason to believe that nobody in my immediate vicinity is aware of its existence. I find this comforting, as far as it goes, always remembering the power of the search engine and the complete uniqueness of my name. But I think I am ready to throw caution to the four winds. It isn't that I wish to recount the details of a dark and troubling winter so lamely after the fact--I tend not to write about my vacations because the long, summary descriptions make such dull material, once the trip is over--but they have occupied my mind so fully, and for such a duration, that anything else I write seems maddeningly irrelevant. And despite the probable appearance to the contrary, I have a healthy respect for continuity: I'd like to make some account of where the hell I've been these silent months. I'm tired of being haunted; I want the story exorcised from my mind, finished.

The story began, as these stories tend to, with a guy, and most unfortunately it happened to be a man I worked with. You'd think by this age I'd know better. I'd taken an interest in this man the day I started work at the coffee shop, probably within fifteen seconds of setting eyes on him (not that appearances have much to do with it), and as is customary in these stories, he had a girlfriend of considerable duration. The dual occupancy cabin, the joint bank account, the health insurance, and most importantly of all, the longstanding social infrastructure that an interloper such as I could scarcely imagine. I didn't have a chance. But it's a funny thing about Scorpios--once truly decided on someone, we don't seem able to give up. I can be charming if I am well and truly trying, and it helped that he and I held a number of interests in common. Enthusiasm is often attractive. Over the course of last spring and summer he seemed to be showing an interest. Showing an interest is a very long way from pursuing an interest--a lesson I'm very familiar with--but I couldn't help but wonder. I liked him enormously. As much as I was earnestly seeking a way out of Fairbanks, I was also very curious to know if there was something to be pursued with this man.

When he showed up at my house during the first week of August, ostensibly to drop off a bass drum for me to paint on commission, my curiosity and conviction were justified. He told me that he'd been planning to leave his girlfriend, that their relationship was over and they were living together as companionable roommates, out of convenience. He said he wanted to be with me. To say the least, I was thrilled, happier than I'd been in...a very long time indeed.

I went to Oklahoma for ten days to visit Kim, and returned to the northland. He hadn't yet told his girlfriend he was leaving her. (Should that have sent up a red flag at the start?) But he had told our boss (who is also my gay "husband" and good friend) what was going on--which surely indicated that he was serious about it. I waited. He continued sneaking out to my cabin, which made me uncomfortable--surely cheating on his girlfriend at the beginning was bad enough, better to make the break as cleanly as possible--but it seemed exciting and dangerous and I wasn't in a frame of mind to start remonstrating someone I was so infatuated with about Right and Wrong. I was deliriously happy. A couple of weeks passed. The schizophrenia of keeping the secret out of the workplace began to wear on me. I expressed a modicum of disapproval and impatience. Not to mention unease--if he was so apparently comfortable with cheating on and lying to her, who was to say he wouldn't do [wasn't doing] the same to me?

So with a great deal of trepidation he announced to his girlfriend one evening that he thought they should break up--there was no mention of me at this time--and by his account it was a disaster. He did not come to work the next day. He got scared. She is/was not an emotionally stable person. He decided that the truth would be too heavy for her; he was afraid to provoke a reenactment of her history of depression, of self-mutilation. I tried to be understanding. Obviously breaking up was proving harder than he thought; I told him clearly that if he didn't want to go through with it, whatever the reasons, he should say so. If he was as fond of me as he claimed, he should have enough respect for me to tell me the truth. No, he said, there was no possible way he could back out now, it would just take longer than he thought. Baby steps. Wait a bit and let the dust settle before making another move. I was far from happy with this approach, but felt obliged to be patient. I wasn't the one uprooting my comfortable domestic life, after all; how incredible it seemed that anybody should do that for my sake. I wanted so badly to have this guy in my life.

This went on for longer than I could ever have imagined myself allowing. All I had to do was wait, to be patient. Patience is not my strong suit, but knowing that, I mustered enough "patience" to bludgeon my self-respect into a muttering, smoldering state of submission. I could not understand what was taking so long, why he was dragging his feet, unless he just wasn't that into me in the first place. I suggested in less delicate terms that if he had changed his mind, he should have the balls to say so; I'd be damned if I let him lie to me just as he was lying to his legitimate ladyfriend. We work together, for god's sake, I didn't want this whole thing to blow up and become so awkward that it forced one of us--me, of course, he couldn't afford to anyway--to quit. No, he reassured me constantly, he could not possibly change his mind, he wasn't the type to string me along--he was crazy about me. He loved me!

Actions speak louder than words, though. His confidence was a sham; he started seeing a counselor at the university to help him with his own depression, his own past, his own demons. Scared of losing my chance with him, I'd get impatient and push him to do something, to move out himself, to tell his girlfriend the truth. He eventually told her that he had slept with me--once--and evidently she cried and wailed enough to scare him into retreat again, prevent him from coming clean, and then everything settled down. Something broke in him during that confrontation, I think; but nothing changed. I can't understand why his girlfriend didn't pack up her toothbrush and leave instantly, because I certainly would have. It leads me to believe that she doesn't really care that he was messing around, as long as he stayed with her. But again, for all she knows, I was just a one-night stand, instead of a five-month affair.

He stopped sneaking out to my cabin. He couldn't live with the guilt and the lies. In retrospect I think better of him for it, even though it took so long; at the time I was miserable, sensing that I was losing. Just before Halloween he promised me--promised--that January 1 would be the final break, they had agreed to it. I could not believe this request. But embroiled in this cycle for so long, it seemed impossible to "give up". I take promises pretty seriously. I spent a week in Boston with Silas, thinking of other things and mentally adjusting to this new bargain. Upon my return, I resumed daily life but with an increasing sense of impending doom. He did not write when he said he would write. He did not call and of course I never saw him outside of work. I could see by now that his fear and the comfort of habit were winning out over any feelings he may have had for me. Mid-December I confronted him--by now via email, since it was impossible to stand outside the kitchen and talk, and of course it is hard to hold a telephone conversation with your mistress when your girlfriend is in the same house--and eventually he got around to admitting that January was not likely to produce any of the "results" I was expecting. His counselor had helped him understand that the important thing was not to set a deadline, but to "do it right." He wanted to be with me, yes, but he could not say when he would leave his girlfriend. He felt responsible for her. They "needed each other." That was the phrase that did it for me, the one that sent the message home. I was hurt, I was disappointed, I was heartbroken--and I was furious.

Merry fucking Christmas.

It sounds so stupid, at this distance; so many other things were happening in the world. The disappointing events of my small life sound so cheap and cliché and predictable, like a really bad novel, and yet that clear streak of happiness lit up my whole life so brilliantly that it took a very long time to readjust to mere daylight.

For a couple of months I lived in a protracted state of limbo, aggravated by the cold and darkness of the season. I was determined not to quit my job until I was ready to leave town, so I still had to see him pretty frequently, where distance would have been healing. He made a few more empty promises that I almost believed. Said he could not bear the thought of my leaving, that he would find a way. Much as I wanted to believe him, it rang hollow. Something Kim had voiced about cyclical emotional abuse had struck a chord in me, and I was so tired of being sad, of crying over the loss of something I never really had to begin with.

Spring arrived, and I don't know that I have ever welcomed it so wholeheartedly. As I write this, there are still no leaves on the trees, but with the return of the sun and the lifting of the bone-chilling cold, the world opened again, let in the light and fresh air. Considering how I had spent the winter, I suddenly felt sick. Sick of being ashamed. Sick of hiding. Sick of being strung along. I am no man's dirty little secret. That is not a role I was meant to play in this life, and finally the world loomed large enough to put a winter's misery in perspective. The fallout seemed to happen very fast, for all that it took more than six months for me to get it through my head that I'd lost the game, that he was never going to leave her. I shut it all down in the space of a couple of days. There are no more emails or text messages. No more conversation outside the bounds of a necessary work exchange. No more exchange of books, or music. No more rubber bands. Courtesy, but not friendship; I don't hate him, but neither can I pretend that everything is fine. I don't have anything to say to him, no emotion to spare but anger, so I don't say anything at all.

I'm still incredibly saddened by how it turned out. He is a coward and I am a fool. But I'm not sorry. I'd have been sorry if I'd left and never known for sure. I'd have been sorry if the sham had continued any longer. I begin to see that I would have been very sorry to have to choose between moving someplace new and staying to be with him, and I'm almost relieved to have been spared that. He's the one who is sorry; if I hear it again I may attempt to do him physical harm.

As it stands, I badly want to quit both my job and this town. Not just because of interpersonal tension in the kitchen, either. The staff are turning over, going their ways. My friendly fellow food-scientist (who unknowingly made working through the winter possible, bless her), is about to leave and head south for the summer to build her cabin. Helping her move some of her belongings last week compounded my determination to get out. I've had a lot of fun and learned a great deal, but I'm not having fun anymore, and I think that I reached the apex of the learning curve some time ago. The idea of spending my hard-earned summer months cooped up in a stuffy, overheated kitchen makes me want to quit immediately, but I've decided to cram in as many trips and hikes as possible over the next three months, including meeting up with Si for HP VII.ii and (I hope) a foray to Istanbul, and in the interim the kitchen can just learn to cope without me; that I'll be done with work no later than August 4; and that I'll have my bags packed to leave town before snow flies. It's time for a new hand, a new skill set, a new adventure. Hopefully, sometime over the approaching three months, the next step will reveal itself.

Wild Geese

2011-02-05T18:10:00.002+13:00

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Scorpio: 2011

2011-01-01T15:30:00.003+13:00

"2011 brings communication, learning, partnerships, work, and health into strong focus for you, dear Scorpio. January can bring fruition to a creative project or a job offer in the creative fields, and the possibility of excitement in a romance. From January to June, some joy can be found in work and daily routines, as long as you don't overload your plate with too many new responsibilities (your confidence that you can handle more might stimulate you to overreach). Improved working conditions or new job offers might be part of the picture now. (Michael is leaving on January 4th, for an estimated six months, to set up the new store in Miami...)
"From March forward, you may turn to alternative health methods, discovering new regimens that you're especially motivated to incorporate into your life. Changes to how you approach your daily life are in store. Nine to five is unlikely to bring much satisfaction, and you might experiment with new schedules or working from home, which can point to more flexibility, although effective time management becomes important. Altogether new routines will be necessary. Health can dramatically improve, and you might find that you're taking more pleasure in managing it. (I am not going to stop drinking coffee, forget it.)
"While 2010 likely brought more opportunities to socialize and enjoy yourself, new relationships may not have been very serious or long-term in quality. 2011 brings partnership opportunities of a more serious or involving nature. This influence begins in June, 2011, and runs until June of 2012. There can be a relationship that brings much joy into your life - a connection that puts a bounce in your step. More freedom may be necessary in existing partnerships. Stale or lifeless routines and dynamics in your relationships will no longer be tolerated. Your social life continues to be strong in 2011, but there is more focus on quality now. Some of you will be faced with decisions between more than one person as a partner! (Hilarious.)
"Communication and learning continue to be areas of evolution and change in your life. Your powers of influence run exceptionally high - others are truly listening to what you have to say. You may be communicating about matters that you previously kept very much to yourself, and this can be felt as a relief. You may also find great pleasure in research or other serious study. Shifts in the distribution and sources of income are also likely this year."

Cheers to Café Astrology for their perennially dubious insight.

Deceiving Words

2010-12-24T18:38:00.002+13:00

"It feels so good to be by myself,
to wander through my house
that speaks of memories
exempt of divisions..."

In a soliloquy I convince myself of that.

"How good it is to be by myself!
To fetch that faded out picture
in a hidden deck of cards,
a glimpse of what we were."

In a soliloquy I convince myself of that.

"More than ever, to be by myself!
To go to the orchard, to grab a ripe fruit
in the improvised lunch
at a table, without guests."

In a soliloquy I convince myself of that.

"For ever, to be by myself.
To roll over on the big bed disheveled,
and like an animal
sleeping with no mask."

In a soliloquy I convince myself of that.

By myself for eternity.

In parks were couples embrace,
the false persuasion
useless curls itself in
and the soliloquy is flooded by tears.

Out of Alaska

2010-11-05T13:25:00.006+13:00

Alright, no, I haven't been blogging for months...because I haven't. That's all. Updates are posted as events warrant.

But never fear, not only is winter beginning to exert its characteristic grip on the denizens of the northland, but this year I have internet at my cabin! Yes, running water is still for pansies, but the world wide web now extends a tenuous thread into The Hermitage. We are very excited.

Presently I am on holiday in that lovely hub of a northeastern city that I briefly called home: Boston. It so happens that the New England Webcomics Weekend, featuring a couple of dozen of my very favorite writers and artists, coincides this year with the weekend before my birthday. Fortunately I came to this realization sufficiently in advance that I could decide to make my attendance at the comicon a present to myself. Mom and Silas generously intervened and gifted me airfare and convention tickets (respectively) so it only remains for me to rent a car and convey my brother and myself to Easthampton (which, as I have never driven in a large city, nor rented a car, will probably constitute as much transportational adventure as I have stomach for).

The strangeness of being back is almost enough to qualify as culture shock. So many people and buildings and cars, all packed so closely together. So much noise. I forgot how young the majority of the inhabitants of this city are, and how out of place I frequently feel among the determinedly hip hipsters in their haunts. I forgot about bicycling like a maniac, neither permitted to ride on the sidewalks among unarmed pedestrians nor accepted among the cars on the streets, and abiding by the traffic signals for neither of those parties. It is disorienting. Not to mention the fact that liquid precipitation fell more or less continuously today, and the air moved around in the willful and unpredictable manner of wind. The weather is incredibly mild, by my estimation: a balmy 54 degrees during the day. I slept on the couch in the covered back porch of Silas' house last night, at my own insistence, and was almost too warm in my sleeping bag. The trees here still bear leaves, some of them green, astonishingly. And the rest are these beautiful yellow and red specimens that I picked impulsively off of street corners and out of puddles all day today; whenever the scuffing noise of my trouser bottoms halted, Silas would turn around in mixed amusement and exasperation to find me stuffing my pockets with damp maple leaves. There are no leaves like this in Alaska.

Forecast in Fairbanks for this week:

As much as I'm enjoying New England culture, climate, architecture, and mass transit, however, unquestionably I am here to eat. I've already insisted on going to eat Indian food--there is no Indian food in Fairbanks--so we've been to Punjabi Dhaba, where I gloried in chicken dar masala, saag paneer, mango lasses, naan, and chutney, and went home feeling distinctly uncomfortable for having eaten too much. I may have to go back for another round before I return home. Boston boasts a strong Indian population and the restaurants are certainly on par. Tomorrow Silas has to work, so I plan to start the day at Burdick's with dark hot chocolate and a croissant, and make my way through my favorite haunts in Harvard Square before heading across the river to the Common, where I intend to spend some time (and probably money) at Brattle Bookshop. Having lived here for a year, a bit of the novelty of the city has unquestionably worn off, and I don't feel obliged to appreciate History or make the utmost use of every waking minute of my "vacation"--but that's probably a healthy attitude to foster anyhow.

In a way, now that I'm here I feel like I'm attending to unfinished business. Not just closing my local bank account, but reaffirming that this big, bustling city--and since Boston is probably my favorite, by extension any big, bustling city in this country--is not in fact the place that I want to be right now. Because I don't really know what I'm doing right now. Although I left for Alaska with absolute certainty last fall, the fact that I am still in Alaska (and moreover still in Fairbanks) this year has provoked a lot of...disquiet. Questions. I don't want to be working in food service, pressing "restart" every year as I change locations and cafés, for the rest of my life. What am I doing? Why am I still living in a dry cabin, making cookies and cinnamon rolls for a café in a seedy little town like Fairbanks? Is there something I would rather be doing? If so, what? What is stopping me from doing it? And where do I think I would go to pursue it? Has moving so frequently become a compulsion that prevents some kind of accountability or commitment to a lifestyle that I hold in vaguely-defined terror, or do I in fact enjoy it for its own sake? What am I looking for anyway?

My painting professor in Spain, Oscar the Bald, continually nagged at us to step away from the canvas, to examine our work at a distance, the better to see its flaws and correct them. I think that may be some of what this trip is about. Perspective.

A Year of Dry Living

2010-10-02T10:34:00.000+13:00

2010-08-05T10:59:00.001+12:00

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay