The Trouble with Having 972 Roommates

McMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA


Salad is a rare occurrence here. Between our general inability to grow things on this continent, limited budget, and a bulging population, we are lucky to see greens more than once a week. But tonight I bypass the salad line for the second day in a row, in search of chicken soup and chocolate pudding. Of course, there is none of that to be found either, and I settle for orange juice and toast. It seems I have come down with a case of the crud. I've developed a deep raspy man voice, and find myself constantly coughing, trying to (unsuccessfully) clear my throat. The crud is a particular strain of disease that occurs when you swirl together the germs of several hundred people from all over the world, then just when they've been together long enough to develop some immunity to each other, introduce a plane load or two of new people bearing germs from the wide wide world. If this can happen at about the time of year (mid-january, for example) that everyone's immune system has been completely disabled by poor nutrition, inadequate sleep, and overwork, all the better. 
While I only have to share my bedroom with one other person, I share a kitchen table with nearly 1000. Along with exercise equipment, and computer keyboards, and doorknobs, and telephones, and all manner of other germ bearing equipment. It's really only a matter of time for me once the crud starts sweeping the station. I sat down at breakfast yesterday morning with nine of my favorite people. We did a quick survey to find that exactly one of us was completely well, one teetering on the edge of health, and the other eight of us with some symptoms. Just as we had sorted out who had the "throat thing" and who had the "congestion thing" and the unlucky few who had both, one more friend and coworker joined us announcing that she was having trouble breathing. Perhaps we'll be adding an "upper respiratory thing" to the mix. 

A Good Day for the Emperor

McMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA


Three Austral Summers came and went without any sign of an Emperor Penguin. In this, my fourth, with a new job that takes me out on the ice shelf with some regularity, I have been a little more fortunate.

On a particularly blustery evening, I found myself once again traveling across the ice shelf in a cargo delta, heading out to the airfield to meet an incoming plane.  I had long ago developed the habit of scanning the white horizon any time I am out on the sea ice or ice shelf, looking for any speck of black that doesn't belong. Up ahead and on the left side of the road, two black shapes appear. I stare at them, waiting to get close enough to tell whether they are flags (the usual case) or penguins (a much more exciting rarity). Lo and behold, two emperors crane their necks to see what is making so much noise. I pause for a moment and watch them stretch out their shimmery white chests and flap their disproportionately small black flippers. I curse under my breath that I neglected to bring my camera today, and after a few minutes have passed, continue on my way out of obligation. 


Four hours later, with my toes numb and my cheeks rosy from the cold, I find myself making the return trip, now carrying three pallets of cargo that have just flown in from New Zealand. It is the first time in over a week that the plane has been able to land due to weather, and so it has been several days now since anyone on station has seen the likes of a fresh fruit or vegetable. One of the pallets on my truck is mounded high with "freshies," boxes of bananas and sacks of potatoes, wrapped in a black quilt to keep them from freezing between the time they leave the plane and arrive in the galley. I am the first of a caravan of three deltas leaving the airfield, and I have just put mine in fourth gear to cruise on home when a flutter of black catches my eye. And there they are: four Emperors dawdling just off the snow road. I slow to a stop. 


I had always considered the Emperor penguins to be the old men of penguins- the Adelies that we see more regularly stand just a couple feet tall, and remind me of toddlers. They bump into each other like cartoon characters, and slide on their bellies and leap over cracks, and stand in long lines to jump into the water one at a time like children on a diving board. Everything about them seems playful. Emperors, on the other hand, at nearly four feet tall, are less childish somehow. Their shape, along with their golden markings and iridescent chests, make them seem regal, which is, I suppose, exactly how they got their name. While Adelies practically scamper across the ice, Emperors have this slow waddle which lends further to their airs. I always imagine the two types of penguins together, the Adelie being the young whippersnapper  jumping up and down with endless quests for attention at the feet of the more somber wise Emperor penguin. 


But the four Emperors who run alongside me now seem out to prove me wrong. It is true that they don't have quite the same skip in their step, but they alternate between glissading across the snow on their bellies and chasing one another on foot. Occasionally one lags behind, and the others may stop to let him catch up. In a cluster at one point, they flap their wings and sing their awkward songs- penguins aren't exactly the most melodic bird. 


As I sit in the delta admiring the creatures, swearing that I will never ever again leave home without a camera, a coworker slowly cruises past and looks over at me giving me the universal hands-in-the-air symbol for "what are you doing?" I point past him to the penguins on the other side, and he smiles and nods, then pulls in front of me and stops. I wait for a moment and then feeling a little guilty, decide it's high time to get my goods back to town. But as I pull past, I see his camera lens sticking out his window and quickly pull over once again. He agrees to take a picture, finally proof that I have coexisted with the penguins. The third delta pulls up behind us and the driver climbs out as well. All of us, giddy with delight over a few birds, take turns having our picture taken. I figure the ten minutes we spend snapping photos is paltry in comparison to the two hours that the freshies will spend being unloaded and transported. 


In my haste, I had neglected to put my gloves on, and now I can't feel a single finger. I hurry back to the delta and awkwardly climb up the ladder with my numb hands. As I slide the truck into first and then second gear, I smile not only at my good fortune, but also the way three grown-ups will run and skip across the snow like children, and pose for a picture, at the mere sight of a few penguins. 

Out for a drive

PEGASUS AIRFIELD, ROSS ICE SHELF, ANTARCTICA


I am hurtling across the ice shelf as fast as my wings will carry me in a 15 ton cargo vehicle. The previous three days of blowing snow have rendered the other lanes nearly unidentifiable, if not for the green and red flags marking the boundaries. Drifts have covered the sinkholes and low spots, so that as I travel along, I cannot see where to slow down and inevitably plunge into each divot in the road sending me flying into the (thankfully padded) ceiling.

The now clear skies leave me surrounded by a splendid panorama of mountains and ice shelf. The low hanging late night sun reflects off Mt Discovery across the ice shelf so that the glaciers appear to be on fire. Behind me a marshmallow cloud creeping over the ridge threatens to swallow Castle Rock entirely.

Midway into my one hour, 14 mile journey over the snow roads, I pass the aptly nicknamed halfway house. Three emperor penguins have gathered here to molt. They stand still with their heads hung low,  looking rather pathetic, as clumps of their feathers fall out. Because molting leaves the penguins, well, not exactly waterproof, they'll stay here on the shelf, far from the ice edge, until their new coat comes in. They have gathered around a snow pile left by a groomer. Two of the graying emperors are standing together, while the third stands on the opposite side, just out of sight of the two. I wonder about this little guy. I mean, if you're going to stand in one place for several weeks while you're feathers do their thing, perhaps some company might be nice?

Boat Season

McMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA

It is always a bit startling when the boats arrive. The Oden, the Swedish icebreaker contracted by the National Science Foundation to clear our shipping channel, has been a part of the program for three out of my four summers in the Antarctic. It is the first of a small caravan of ships to arrive at the ice pier, and it no surprise when it will arrive. The talk of boats begins just as soon as the talk of moving the ice runway ends. For days before, I can make out the dark shape of the icebreaker on the horizon, still miles away. By the time it actually gets here, we have long been expecting it. Still, when I turn a corner and the behemoth of steel comes into view, I am a bit surprised. To suddenly see a boat where we were until recently driving wheeled vehicles is odd to say the least. It will quickly become the norm here. The Nathaniel B Palmer Research Vessel lies in wait in the turning basin. It sits now in the same place where a mere month ago I was unloading cargo planes that landed on the then solid sea ice. I wonder if there are very many places on earth where one has been on a plane, a boat, and a truck in exactly the same spot. 

I have never had to eat my dog.

McMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA

Douglas Mawson, a polar explorer from Australia who was first to explore and map much of the Antarctic coast, lost two of his companions in 1912, and nearly died himself, from what was later diagnosed as probable overdose of vitamin A due to the over-consumption of dog meat, particularly the livers. It is but one of the differences between Mawson’s experience in the Antarctic in the early 1900’s, and my own 100 years later. Mawson, and others before him, relied on their dogs as emergency rations. Modern expeditions tend to rely on dehydrated meals.

I recently finished reading Racing with Death by Beau Riffenburgh, the latest book on my informal reading list of Antarctic tales. I enjoy reading the tales of Antarctic explorers while I’m here in the Antarctic, because it lends history to this place, my seasonal home. I enjoy, too, reading stories of those who traveled and worked in many of the places I have been. I have stood in the same hut that Mawson wintered in. I have marveled at his acetylene generator. I have run my fingers over Oates’ signature on a wall in the hut at Hut Point. I have also marveled at the poor insulation of these buildings in which people have spent the coldest parts of the Antarctic winter, and shivered looking at the meager cold weather gear left behind, paltry compared to my layers of polar fleece and down. The experience of the hundreds of men who set foot on this continent when no one was quite certain that it existed at all is vastly different than my own. While Mawson and others like him took months to arrive in Antarctica via aging icebreaking ships, I arrive in a matter of hours via a behemoth of an airplane. It took Mawson two days of sledging to travel as far as I do each morning to reach the airfield. My existence here is quite plush in comparison- a warm place to sleep, an abundance of food, not to mention the luxuries of modern washing machines, hot showers, and reliable communication with the outside world. And I have never, not once, found myself raiding crates for rusty nails to push through salvaged leather straps in order to replace the crampons that I left in a crevasse. (Mawson found himself in this position twice in a matter of days). 

But while the differences are apparent, the thing that intrigues me most is how often I read journal excerpts from a hundred years ago, and find myself nodding, or laughing quietly because I know exactly what the writer is referring to.  Mawson writes of walking into a stiff wind, leaning far forward in order to move through it, and then a lull in the wind suddenly drops one to the ground. Yessir, been there.

The most striking aspect for me of these polar ventures is the human component. Life in Antarctica has been one very large sociological experiment for hundreds of years. The challenge of life in close quarters with a finite amount of people has apparently always been quite a struggle. There is an intimacy in relationships that simply doesn’t have the opportunity to develop in the rest of the world, where one has the pull of family and various social circles; where one always has the option of leaving; where work and life operate in separate spheres. But there is tension too, the unique strain of not having those escape options or distractions. Here at McMurdo, the largest of the U.S. research stations, the January phenomenon strikes every season- the point in the busy austral summer season when the novelty of Antarctica has all but worn off for even the new folks. The point at which we have all been working long hard hours for months now, living with too many roommates, eating lousy food, and suddenly run out of patience for all of it, and particularly each other. Tempers flare, blame is laid for the pettiest of incursions, friendships strain. There are always the team members who slack off, having decided they’ve had enough. But none of this is unique to our generation of polar travelers. They are exactly the same troubles described in journal after journal left by the old Antarctic explorers.

Over the course of his expeditions, Mawson found himself with a wireless operator who developed paranoia and delusions, a captain with whom he couldn’t seem to agree about fairly basic things like direction of travel, and a crew member who simply refused to work. I find myself plugging names into each of these scenarios, the major difference between then and now being that when the situation got bad for Mawson, he had to find a way to make the best of it for the duration of the trip, while at McMurdo, my bustling seasonal home, these sorts of folks are usually met with a pink slip and a plane ticket home fairly quickly.

I wonder how similar perhaps the men (the first woman to set foot in Antarctica was Caroline Mikkelsen in 1935) who joined Mawson, Scott, or Shackleton, (who placed the notorious recruiting ad promising poor wages, terrible living conditions, and likely death), are to those who choose to work in Antarctica in modern times. Certainly the element of likely death has been all but removed, but still those that come are drawn by some version of a sense of adventure, and some lack of ties to the conventional world of family and career. And of course, the science: the possibility for discovery that left Scott dragging hundreds of pounds of rocks across the ice shelf, and Mawson steadfastly recording daily meteorological data, and the entire reason for the modern day Antarctic programs.

So here I sit, typing on a laptop, hooked up to the internet, drinking hot tea for which I did not have to melt snow, making comparisons to those who huddled in damp sleeping bags in meager tents scrawling in a journal in the face of frostbite. Things have changed a bit over the years.