Late night, post movies with friends. The end of a swing shift day, slowly moving from the station to home at five in the morning. Gather up momentum, and find the way to your cold weather gear from the lounge. Notice the station waking up for day shift, construction managers already leaving their morning meeting. Get dressed, drop your goggles over your eyes, and step outside into the air.

Fill your lungs, your mind waking up at the in-rush of cold oxygen. Equipment operators are starting up their dozers and cranes, prepping them to warm during breakfast. Step down the stairs of Destination Zulu as a snowmobile darts past. The bracket-bracket-bracket of bulldozer tracks echos past ears and vibrates feet as you tread across the snow to Summercamp.

The sun, as always, is up.

Step in the door to J-9, quiet-like, and push through the dark, finding your room door by touch. Eyes adjust later. Two coats are removed, boots and liners come off, layer after layer drops. Wrap in a blanket, power up the computer, and sit back to ponder the world, life, and all the aspects of it.

Think of responsibility and obligation, of lessons that life offers, regardless of the contexts that you choose. Think of leaving behind disliked situations that carry lessons of responsibility toward others, and find similar lessons in new environments.

Smile at the breath of air that gathers from another person entering the Jamesway, fresh and cool, carried by winds across a desert virtually untouched save the blowing ice crystals.

Wonder what you have left behind, but ponder at the deep contentment that you feel for your present. Settle in to communication and what you can do versus what you want to. Realize that life carries such universal similarities because you are always looking at situations from your perspective. The context changes, the view does not.

Or it can, should we choose.

And what of those who push to change their view, what of those who are pushed until they have no choice?

Perspective, all perspective…

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I watched several episodes of “Band of Brothers” tonight, and came away thinking on the level of sacrifice, obligation, and sheer terror that the men of Easy Company went through. Thought of the larger picture, of the fact that it was young men, differing likely by only language and culture (maybe only a generation or two of history) killing each other at the behest of other men. Caught on the realization that all they had was each other, all they had to trust, to understand, to hold steady in a world gone mad.

That for those who go to war.

And here, so far removed from the story based on truth of Easy Company, are we so different in relying on each other? Certainly we are more relaxed, with our day to day lives not so terrifyingly at risk. We are allowed the energy and time to see greys, to find subtlety in black and white, to think before responding (if we so choose to utilize that luxury). We cannot immediately leave and find a new place, cannot escape those we do not like, cannot easily take a break when needed. And so we hold, to those we share this life with. We share the context, share the struggle, and share the knowledge of the life we lead, all without having to state it directly.

A far cry from those who fought and risked all at Bastogne, but we learn, we grow, and we trust.

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We are responsible for each other here, so much more so when the winter begins. We start in the state of obligation, but we grow to respect and realize it.