Wintering Over (III)

Richard W. Frank

Wintering Over (III)

Week 3-Lucky Charms and some Joe

All's quiet on the Southern Front as I revel in the throes of an endless two day weekend. All productive members of our little family are tucked safely in their offices, and I have the computer room and the coffeemaker to myself. Wahoo, whoopee!!

To begin at the beginning-this week was much like every other. The menu was rather uninteresting, but Peggy and I had fun with the Mexican day. Us galley folk are under strict orders to use all the fresh vegetables before they go rotten. Hence, the station is getting more than it's due of sautéed cabbage and roasted beets. Made a Chicken curry that went over well. Also, I have been more creative with the pancakes (I will throw almost anything in there from blueberries to cherries and chocolate chips for a little variety).

The populace is getting to know me as I greet them every morning with a smile and some new music (they like the salsa, are indifferent to the Ellington, and positively hostile to the techno) while making their daily ration of 4 fried eggs over easy or an everything omelet. My schedule is proving a hindrance, as at Pole, to getting to know everyone socially. I wake at 3am and have problems staying conscious past 7pm. This is alright by me, as I have the gym, sauna, and computers to myself.

This place reminds me more and more of the hotel in "The Shining" with scores of empty hallways and dark rooms. The galley is almost spooky when I am the first to arrive at 4am, and all the lights have yet to be turned on. The high ceilings echo my footsteps, and the silent equipment sits apathetic to everything around it. The kettles, ovens, and tables just exist cold and hard as we long for some warmth and color to give a human touch to such surroundings. The baker last winter cracked up and wrote messages to herself at various inconspicuous places around the bakery ("breathe" was the most popular one) in frilly and colorful crayon. I am still finding them.

Several trips spiced up the week: I was trained how to maintain the gargantuan greenhouse which will supply us with daily fresh food throughout the winter. It is an order of magnitude larger than the one we had at pole and is complete with a hammock and radio. I plan to while away many an hour in the overwhelming 50% humidity and full-spectrum light. I signed up as a volunteer DJ for the local radio station, and will have 31 weeks to polish my on air persona with a listening public at any one time of @4-6 people. I get to play and say whatever I want provided the listening public and the Navy brass does not object. We have a room filled with old albums that I get to pore through at my leisure. It should be fun. The only dilemma I have is what to call myself and the program (Richie Rich on the Radio, The McMurdo Masochist, Tunes and Tales of Antarctic Cooks, Lost, Lonely and Loony, et al).

The galley slaves were taken on a tour of the warehouses that hold a year's worth of supplies. It was awe-inspiring. What pole had was scattered around the inside of the dome. Here were enough pallets of food to feed the Polees for a decade or more. We found the legendary Pigs of the Antarctic that I had heard so much about and had the opportunity to roast one at pole. They were brought down to the ice in 1973, and they were suckling at their mother's breast before I was born. It is a ritual thing down here on the ice. There is still over a hundred old pigs frozen, but only three will be used this season to celebrate the Fourth of July. The skin is leathery, the eyes still stare vacantly, and the meat is a tad dry. During the rest of the week I was able to perfect my forklift techniques with the supply guy (Mark, the seedy and unkempt type that would find himself unwittingly on "Cops" yelling obscenities and trying to slap his red necked, tattooed and white trash girlfriend yelling "I looooove you Annie Maye").

On Wednesday, one of the guys ran into a telephone pole and flipped his truck. He was sober and was lucky not to have been hurt because no one wears a seatbelt down here where the speed limit is 15 mph.

Yesterday morning I went out in the early morning darkness @9am to watch the sun rise from a vantage point near Hut Point. The early morning hours were bitterly cold, and I put on every form of cold weather gear in order to protect my fragile warm weather bred SoCal self. The hardest thing for me about the cold weather is having to restrain my head with neck gaiters, pile hats and the hood of my down parka (complete with coyote fur around the edge). The town is the more attractive because of the growing snow on buildings and roads.

I walked down past the ice pier where the annual Coastguard icebreaker, supply ship Greenwave, and fuel tanker dock at the end of January. The water is slushy and gradually freezing over. I have been told that the ice shelf has retreated more than it has in several years releasing a captive iceberg and tour attraction over near Scott Base. The road was halfway covered in snow and the volcanic stones showed through sporadically. I went over to Scott's 1902 hut to see if the two molting penguins were still there. I found their tracks in the snow to the lee of the hut, but they were gone for the season. I walked out to Vince's Cross (commemorating the death of one of Scott's party in the winter of 1902) and sat on one of the porous volcanic stones.

Looking back toward town, I was struck by the poetry of the moment. The sun was just below the level of the mountains on Ross Island and the morning fog hugged and obscured Observation Hill above the town. The wind was blowing North towards me and the tendrils of the foggy wraith caressed the hills and the open water below the town. I felt compelled to record the moment, and the raw and instant pain in my fingers when I drew off my glove to take a picture recalled the immediacy of the weather and cold here in Antarctica. My frail grasp on life was reinforced by the many ways people have found to kill themselves on this harshest of continents. Vince drowned himself in McMurdo Sound near to where I was standing. A Mr. Williams was plunged through the thin ice in a tractor in 1956 and plunged straight to the bottom 350 fathoms below never to be found. A person would freeze to death where I stood in a matter of minutes without the layers of technology I wrapped myself with. A false step from my perch would land me in the water that is cooled beyond 32F and quickly lethal. By experience I have found that ice hurts like granite or steel when fallen upon (DOH!). A man lost his life in '86 when he became trapped in a crevasse below Castle Rock. His friends and rescuers could not remove him from the 15" apart walls that he had become wedged in between. They had to watch while he slowly froze to death. Still, the harsh beauty of the place made me loath to leave until the bright and brittle rays of Apollo's chariot chased away all the ghosts of the past and warmed me in the glory of my rarified and starkly beautiful home. Recharged, I plodded up the volcanic rubble up the hill to gain a higher vantage point and a look at the memorial mound to William's death. It is a 3' statue of the Virgin Mary with a cross behind her and a plaque in English, Spanish, French, and Russian telling of his story.

On the walk back my eye lashes began to freeze together, and my steps quickened towards building 155, my home. The neck gaiter was frozen with the moisture of my breathing, and the wind bit at my ankles. The best thing about exploring in this area is returning to the warmth of civilization. I quickly drank a large cup of coffee and indulged in a steaming shower. Sheer bliss!!

The rest of the day of idleness was spent reading and surfing the net expanding my horizons beyond my necessarily narrow scope of personal experience. I delved into the many ways of investing my millions, learning languages and getting myriad degrees, or getting lost in the other far reaches of my world (only $360 to spend seven days on the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Beijing or $260 to Vladivostok).

While trying to fix my borrowed VCR, I accidentally broke the coaxial TV cable to the wall and killed my TV reception. Liberated from the newly discovered tyranny of broadcasting, I have made little attempt to fix my availability to the idiot box and have resultantly discovered much more time in my busy day.

My next project is to make myself a larger coffee mug in the ceramics room. My current one eats up an 8 cup cafetiere of coffee in two goes. I am aiming for one. The one disappointment I have yet to escape is the unfailing mediocrity of the 12kg of coffee I bought in New Zealand. I should have expected as much from a nation of tea drinkers. Now, I am faced with the challenge of making the best use out of $200 of bad bitter coffee (now that would take ALOT of Bailey's). It is indeed a rough continent.

And so this week's missive screeches slowly to a halt. So much to do in so much time. Thanks again for all your humorous and interesting (some more, some less) e-mail. I will try to get back to you all individually with pithy and apropos e-mail, but I find myself with little to say (ha-ha, not bloody likely). Do not forget this little ice gnome gone into hibernation.

Dreaming of 7-11s and Domino's Pizza,

Rich

To Winter Over (IV)

Back to Antarctica

Back to Wintering Over (II)

The fearless 1997 winter-over galley crew