It’s hard to believe that it was one week ago when I watched the final flight of the summer season bank over our heads toward the coast and the North. Time has stretched itself out and it feels as if I’ve been here for many more weeks of the winter season. This is not a bad thing, just one of note.
I’ve spent little time doing work in the IT department this week, falling behind in my tasking as the System Administrator. This is not for lack of ambition or responsibility, however. Preparing the station for the close of the season is an activity that takes everyone we have. The first two days of my week were spent with my department brining in all of our electronic equipment from buildings that are slated to go cold this week. Yesterday I joined a large group to tear down the fuel line and fuel pit at the skiway apron. And today, I spent ten hours hanging out in the dishpit.
Because of the limited size of our population, some positions are considered unnecessary to staff. They are not, however, unnecessary. As a result, the community must step up to fill the needed roles. Our emergency response teams are one example of this, dishpit duty is another. Today was my day.
Though my tasking is falling behind, it was a good change of pace. Working in the galley holds nostalgia for my first season down here as a prep cook. It also gives me a space to turn my music up, sing along like a smiling idiot, and work that let’s my mind wander.
And wander it did. I meandered thoughts from home, to future, about the friends I have left back stateside and those nearby, about the transition of friendships, about relationships and love, self-worth and self-control, good mixed cds yet to be made, writing to be done, and a few art projects. Found myself the surprise recipient of a chocolate banana milkshake, a frappuccino (we suffer so, down here), and was occasionally spotted in the moment of the aforementioned singing.
Walking through the B1 lounge on the way back to my room (our game room area, with a couple of couches, a pool table, ping pong table, and such) I ran across a good crowd. I looked around at those who I consider friends, those who I might build friendship with, and those distance holds sway. I laughed at the permanence of my perspective, realizing the futility of trying to guess what friendships will be strong, new, or faded when there are eight months of intense community to go.
I thought something solid on relationships today as well, in general as well as regarding my own self. A few thoughts on love, wondering when I’ll find it again (and laughing at my friends who made me swear off falling for anyone for six months, it’s now been a year and a half), smiling at the opportunity to focus on friendship here (the ratio being decidedly not in my favor), and marveling (again) at the intensity and speed of relationships here at the Pole.
Like any closed or isolated community (summer camps being an excellent comparison) relationships and dating here traverses in days what may take weeks or months in a stateside community. Entire sagas from beginning to end can take place in a month, let alone over the course of a summer season. And the thing is, there is little choice or option to avoid that intensity. You see each other everyday, find every meal in the same location at nigh the same time, deal with the same friends, the same context, the same community… Effort is not required to see each other, but to take the time to avoid doing so, to right ones own self. It’s a change of pace that works well for some (I enjoy it immensely) and can be destructive for others. To complicate matters, nearly everyone down here is intelligent, competent, and adventuresome - well-steeped in the criteria wanderlust-filled folk search for.
So, thoughts. A good deal many, provided here in abbreviated form, perhaps to be expounded upon later. Time now to settle in for sleep and see, of the mess of ideas, what travels with me to dream.