Ever fight that late night brain fire? That rant and rumble, idea stumble that can boil out and prevent sleep? My mind won’t stop burning the midnight oil this eve and here I am, an insomniac typing.

Normally (in the real world) I’d haul myself out of bed and get outside. Go for a barefoot walk through the downtown Duluth streets. Feel the warmth of the concrete ebbing from the summer day, the grass struggling to survive in patches between the road and the sidewalk.

My mind would wander through paths and twists and turns I may not have expected while my bike and I fly down the hillsides toward the Lift Bridge, kick as much speed as possible forward on to the end of Park Point. Admire the full moon rising over the lake and crest the sand dunes, smiling as the waves drown out all other sound.

I might write, later, when it’s done. Might write when my mind has paced itself enough to collate thought more carefully. Might just crawl back in to bed and sleep the sleep of ages.

Stir-crazy and cabin-fever are not words that I use to describe life here often. Mostly, when others ask me about them (a favorite question from off-ice folk) I scoff and say we know damn well how to entertain ourselves. Tonight? I’m stir-crazy. Cabin fever is raging some. I’d like to go for that barefoot walk. The scenery, though, just isn’t doing it and, funny thing, it’s cold outside!

I’ve two hallways and two sets of stairs to cycle through, a few rooms to poke my head in to, and that’s it. The same two hallways I’ve walked through for the last ten months. The same two sets of stairs that I’ve climbed. The same covered windows (no light leaks for science projects). The same lockers lining the halls. The same checkerboard patterns, scientifically configured to appeal to the various aspects of the psyche, all appealing to me to tear their appalling colors down.

The station, large as it is for sixty people, is old hat. It’s getting hard to find new nooks and crannies, hard to not want to throw some color on the walls (not without the appropriate CCR and approval, you don’t). Hard not to seek an escape.

_________

They’re there, though. The escapes. The alternative angles. Get done with a rant, stand there huffing and puffing, catching your breath, and you can see them. You can find that spot of comfort. Maybe in the green house, buried in the smell of plants and the dense humidity. Maybe in the high ceiling and cavernous feeling of the dark gym. Maybe in the galley, empty and quiet for a change.

Maybe, just maybe, you find it by bundling up and hauling yourself outside. In staring at the moon, admiring the brightness of it, the length of your shadow, the play of the drifts that have recently formed. In the horizon, lit up like daylight in the moonlight. In the stars and the hint of aurora.

Maybe, just maybe, what you need is always there, waiting. Change your perspective, you just might find it.

Posted by noblehobo at 08:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Fundamentally, I am lazy. I enjoy few things better than a slow, languid morning. Rising to the sun, lounging in bed in the tail of dreams, a slow path to mindfulness with tea and bare feet - the day not beginning so much as sliding very slowly toward the evening. I can take that steaming tea, find a porch, and read for hours, only remembering to be active (like a nocturnal creature) as the sun begins to set.

Two day weekends (or longer) are perfect in this regard. I can have a day of productivity (hiking, biking, building, scheming, socializing, etc.) and a day or more where I take life at the pace I enjoy - slowly and openly. Here, encased in a schedule that offers us one-day weekends, the mix of productivity and laziness get crammed. Neither feels fully completed and the work week starts up with a muddled mind.

Still, I try to find what I can - seek my rest where I need it and my activity where I can find it. I may not be able to find easy mornings in the sun with tea and a book here, but the lights of the greenhouse run a close second.

Posted by noblehobo at 02:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It’s not uncommon, in my life, to find myself at the beginnings of a career field. I’ve tried a number on for size already, each time moving on after a taste. An expert I’m not but well-rounded? Drop me into something new and I’ll find my pace quickly.

My current gig, as the Systems Administrator for the South Pole Station’s IT network leaves me a bit stymied, however. I’ve a good base for IT work, with a history of computer geeking and Graphic Design under my belt. Our environment here is unique though. With our time zone differences, lack of consistent internet, and limited resources (human and other) I find myself working in an isolated environment on a regular basis.

All of us provide help to each other when we can and there are folks off-continent that we can turn to when it seems the planets align correctly. I’m working without a consistent mentor this time around and doing so has been a learning experience. The breadth and depth of knowledge required to be an expert in the IT field amazes me. There is a constant need for training, experimentation, and active practice to be able to resolve issues in a timely manner. Rare is the day that goes by in which I do not encounter something new needing to be solved and researched, or in which something I only recently taught myself becomes necessary.

In the past, working other technology related positions, I’ve quickly realized that though I pick up on it readily, I don’t always enjoy it. Here, I’ve found a good deal more satisfaction. I credit that, however, on the Pole, on working with such wide variety of (generally) good people under the auspices of supporting scientific research.

So I wonder, lately, if IT will be something that I pursue when I leave here or if for me it is a career anchored to the seasonal work of Antarctica. It matches up to all of the “adult” considerations in my life but can I still feel passionate toward my existence if I pursue it? Can I find that away from here?

Satisfaction in work can come from so many different possibilities be they co-workers, missions and statements, love of the thing that one is actually doing, or a place. It’s hard to tell for me why I’ve moved from career to career so many different times, why I’ve side-slipped from idea to idea. That’s the kick though - it’s the idea that drives me, experimenting with something new.

Here it is the idea of the people I work for and with at the South Pole - the “family” I’m isolated with. In trail work it’s the power of nature and the simple pleasure of solid physical labor. In teaching? The awkward moments of uncertainty - wondering if you’re making any sort of impression or difference, finding out on the rare occasion that you are. In Graphic Design it’s the joy of making art.

All of these ideas still end up balancing with the other parts of life, though. Ideas mix with the reality of making a living and being responsible for self. Dreams mix with the actuality of the market or economic sector you hold in. Trail work and Antarctica offer only contract positions - a constantly changing flux of having to look for the next job. The utter lack of passion I felt for supporting consumerism led me to leave design work and the difficulties of maintaining a relationship left me reconsidering seasonal trail work.

All in all, life continues to maneuver and the reality of financial stability doesn’t disappear. So do I complete my contract, grab some certifications, and hang on to the IT world for a punch? Do I meander back to school to focus on something new? Or do I try for a little bit of everything, keep exploring, keep traveling, keep playing and give a shot toward something that might support my life as is?

I’d say the latter. I’d say that I start working at building a writing career in the same way that I once built a freelance Graphic Design business. Slowly, with interest and passion, mistakes and successes, and a willingness to see where it might lead. Who knows? I could just end up on a bike, writing stories as I go.

Regardless, I’m giving the writing vein a shot. I’m learning how to put together query letters, contacting several different sources offering my services as a writer, and working with a couple of friends already in the field to find a start. It could be a nice side income, it could be a career. In the end, that doesn’t necessarily matter. For now, it’s exploring something new that can run concurrent with the rest of my dreams and with the ideas that drive me.

Posted by noblehobo at 02:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I went for a walk the other night, hoping to catch the Southern Lights in the tailing edge of the dark. There was a hint, the barest spot of light against the black - enough for the Aurora to say hello. The brightness of the stars and the Milky Way though? Potent and mystifying. I sat out as long as I could in the winds and the frigid air, watching the sky through the small space left in the neck gators (two), hats (two), and hood protecting my face.

Turning frequently, I tried to scan the horizons for new stars, for meteors, for the Aurora. I took in what I could and at the end, my eyes fully adjusted, caught a hint of light on the far edge of my view - saw the the very beginnings of the rising sun.

Posted by noblehobo at 01:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’m not the only one, it seems, who has caught a morning driving toward a Great Lake where the clouds arc high above the horizon in the morning light. All the low-angle sunlight, breaking behind the cloud bank offers a visually stunning feat. Driving toward the water, you see mountains behind.

Those mornings, driving along Lake Superior, cresting a hill to witness this, those mornings were damn fine. I’m a child of flat horizons and I know the comfort of Superior and the hills of the North Shore. The distant flats where Superior’s waters meet the sky bring a peace to my mind like few other landscapes can. Still, when the sky, the sun, and the clouds conspire to add mountains to the horizon, to crest my lake with a visage of ancient rock? I can’t think of a better magic trick.

In talking with a friend the other day who calls Chicago home, it turns out that Lake Michigan knows the trick too.

With a little luck, when the sun finally slips above our Antarctic flats, we’ll see mountains here too.

Posted by noblehobo at 02:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Trust is an interesting bird - too much too quickly and the sun melts the wax. Feathers languishing behind, you spiral toward the ground.

Tarnish it, once earned, and the resentment stays lasting. No chemical bath, no amount of frenzied scrubbing, no mechanism can release the clustered fear and anxiety. Time and aging may fade the surface around the tarnish, may dim its dark brilliance but the moment remains. Scar tissue - resentment, the brutal remnant of a past not so easily forgotten.

___________________

In other news (and certainly of a brighter sort) we passed an official mark on Friday. At 10 AM the circling sun hit eighteen degrees below the horizon. This marks the official designation between complete darkness and astronomical twilight. Not that we can see anything with the blowing snow at the moment (we’ve some quality sustained winds at thirty-five to forty miles per hour drifting in the station) but if we could, there would be the faintest of faint bits of light on the distant edge of our view.

When the winds clear, I’ll be out to look for the signs of the sun’s return, be out to catch the glow of the Southern Lights while I still can, and look forward to consistent daylight in another month or so.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the dark, the stars, and the quiet cocoon-like feeling they can offer. I’d be happy to keep them a while longer too but the physical and mental effects of the lack of light are beginning to take their toll. As a whole, our memories are failing, out tempers rising, and our patience faltering. We’re fortunate to have a very easy-going crew but the dark wears everyone down somewhat.

That, and it’ll be nice to take the coverings off the windows and to be able to see the horizon from inside again.

Posted by noblehobo at 01:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you close your eyes and breathe deep, relax reality for a moment, sitting in the greenhouse here can almost feel like summer sun. You can sit there, clothes growing damp in the humidity, air handlers a low rumble of constant comfort, and flex your toes in anticipation of the green grass they will feel in a few months. Not yet, though - so you sigh gently, come back to your present, and quietly celebrate your brief trip elsewhere.

I spent the night putting together mix tape (CDs, actually, but I still like the sound of a mix tape better) playlists in the greenhouse. For a change, the songs were for no one in particular, just gathered against a loose collection of differing themes. Generally, when I use others’ words for my own, I’m focused on a particular friend, crush, or lover (and occasionally all three wrapped into one). Those moments feel like the creation of art - complete abandon and attention paid to the meaning and feeling that the songs carry, a mission made easy be the resolute passion toward the playlist’s target.

As of late, I’ve had no particular aim - no burning goal in my future of person or place. Instead, there has been a theme in my life since making the decision to come here over a year past. A theme of calm orientation toward the passage of time, toward the unknown of next year.

For certain there have been moments of near panic (in bouts of insomnia in the wee hours) where I struggled to determine the great “what-next?!?” that many of us struggle with. I have spent a great deal of hours both in excited thrall at possible futures and light dread at worried outcomes. Overall, however, I return to the feeling that enveloped me last July.

One year ago I was involved in the first full-time, salaried employment of my life. I had managed to settle in to a world of permanence - of a job, home, and world with no end date in sight, no contract termination to spur the next adventure. It was a good life and taught me a great deal of lessons but I found consistently that something was not right. The urge to move on, particularly related to my work, was strong.

Over time, previous dreams of Antarctica wound their way into my head - the winter season that I had not yet had a chance to do, that I had walked away from in my attempt at a more settled life. I started to pursue jobs at the bottom of the planet again, not entirely certain of whether I was going to take them or not. I struggled a great deal to find the happiness and comfort I was craving but always saw it elsewhere, not in the place I was.

Calm came, however, when I made the decision to quit my job, to move on. Because of the timing of the hiring process for the Antarctic, I did so without any guarantee of work or home at the end of last August, at the end of my settled experiment. That calm was manifest in the knowledge of moving toward satisfaction in my life, in learning to again listen to my whole self (not just my head) in decisions about my future.

I did not know what the outcome would be - no specifics were available to me. I did not have a guaranteed home, income, or work but I had no doubt that I would be well set to roll with the punches of what was to come. Should Antarctica have not worked out? I’d use what savings I had to find another path, to push to another ideal. The calm was that of confidence of path, even if the path was uncertain.

I’ve been in many moments of my life where I knew very well the direction I was headed and did so with fortitude and strength. I will gladly accept moments like that again in my future. The strength that I am finding in patience with the great unknown - well, there’s a tenacity there I’m new to. My future is yet undetermined, my path unclear, but the options are all intriguing and my confidence in my ability to provide for myself and to thrive are at a solid, even keel.

I have always felt right with the world when in the midst of a powerful love or at the beginning of a new adventure - that’s an easy fix one can quickly become addicted to. Feeling right with world in the middle of the long haul? That’s escaping the hold of previous dependencies for the freedom of enjoying the present.

It’s not perfect in the ebb and flow of confidence and future but it’s a welcome addition to my life here, to my psyche, to my eventual pursuits, and toward the patience and open eyes I’ll need when I next try to settle in one place for a spell.

I’ll again welcome the passion of a resolute path when it comes my way. In the mean, I’ll be glad to cull the larger picture for memorable moments and to write my story from the broad swath of an open theme. I’ll mix tapes of others’ words for traveling the unknown road toward the sunrise.

Posted by noblehobo at 02:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’ll dig into the scientific background of it soon but for once in my life I’m in a place where procrastination and a lack of ambition have a background grounded in place. The dark effects us in strange, strange ways.
For the last three weeks or so, I’ve been as anti-social and withdrawn as I get - a tired, quiet sort escaping to books, movies, video games, and solitude. Maintaining a sense of exploration and creativity here can be a struggle against the dark.

Fortunately, the struggle seems to come in waves and it feels as if I’m about to slip back into the mainstream. Sleep is coming again in large, all-night chunks and (at least after a cup or two of coffee) I feel awake and rested. We run an interesting gauntlet here in the space between sunrise and sunset. The human body is not built to handle so many months without the sun, so many months without it touching one’s skin…

Posted by noblehobo at 10:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The science lecture tonight covered the background of solar weather - the interaction between our sun and the varying systems of the Earths magnetosphere and atmosphere. Central to the lecture was the cause and the basics of the Aurora, of the shimmering, shifting pools of light above our heads.

There’s a story connected to this I love to tell but it’s best done so around a fire, under the moving skies themselves. I’ll save the story but offer this:

I know that the auroras are caused by the interaction between the particles of the solar wind and the upper atmosphere of the Earth, that particles from the sun sliding down into our atmosphere at the magnetic poles excite the electrons in the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen, that when those excited electrons return to their static states they release light in varying wavelengths, that the light released shines in a set oval depending on the magnetic fields of the Earth, that the light released is what we call the auroras… I know all this. When I stare up into the sky and watch the stars hide behind a pulsating band of green or a writhing shield of red, the science is not the first thing, however, that comes to my mind. When I try to hold the sky within my sight, all that I can think of is magic.

If you’d like a taste of what we see nearly daily - a taste of why I’m here, take a look at the pictures.

Posted by noblehobo at 10:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The other night, in a severe bout of insomnia, I looked to writing to clear my head. I plied my history, digging back into former jobs, former homes, former loves. I piled history up as numbers and statistics, titles and positions, locations and places. At the age of twenty-nine it appears that I’ve been through several mid-life crises, am still in the process of growing up, and have loved fiercely if not terribly long-term. Based on the statistics and stories that I pulled together I think I more than adequately fit the title of this site, of a noble hobo.

Some examples culled from the sleepless nights of the South Pole:

I have held over twenty different jobs with a variety of organizations and groups, leaving each for good reasons or the end of contracts - I’ve never once been fired or let go. At varying points in my life I’ve been a short-order cook, grocery store grunt, audio-visual technician, interactive television consultant, general laborer, graphic designer, freelance designer, president of a 250 member student organization, wilderness trail laborer, crew leader, youth leader, alternative teacher, heavy equipment operator, prep cook, materialsperson, logistics coordinator, project manager, technical consultant, help desk, emergency response on scene command, artist, amateur writer, political organizer, system administrator and wilderness first responder. I’ve volunteered and worked for others, worked for the government, owned my own design firm, and held my own in the wilderness for extended periods of time. I’ve experience as a state-level participant in discussion, in presenting and debating issues and budgets with college school boards, with a variety of protests and protest groups, have learned financial balance the hard way (and recovered), have a background in music and theater, know the basics of climbing, kayaking (whitewater and flatwater), and am well-experienced in backpacking and hiking. I’ve traveled to foreign countries, speak some Spanish, have seen most of the United States, have been detained, have made various newspapers for both good and bad reasons, and seem to have a talent for moving into positions and pursuits under qualified but coming out with a growing expertise and success.

I have moved thirty-four times in my life, thirteen of which took place before I graduated high school. I have lived in seventeen different places (I tend to leave and come back a lot - just ask my friends in Duluth) ranging from the states of the midwest to the shores of Lake Superior, from Chicago to the forests of the great Sequoias in California, from the mountains of Vermont to the hills of Isle Royale, and to the wide expanse that is Antarctica. I have lived in everything from tents (canvas and nylon) to 2000 square foot lofts in downtown Chicago and from giant, multi-bedroom homes (the Lemondrop) to isolated lake cabins.

I have loved six women in my life, known more, and have seen a future with three women. Not that I’ve been permanently successful in my long term pursuits but I have tried, have had others sacrifice for me and have sacrificed for others. I’ve had my heart broken and broken hearts. I’ve known many friends and acquaintances, strive to offer others what they offer me, have been taught the meaning of loyalty by a very good, very old friend, have been able to offer a good word toward friends seeking particular jobs, have been offered such in return, and am learning just how small the world really is.

I’ve done a lot and experienced a great deal. The kicker is that I’ve got plenty more to see and do - that for all I’ve done I continue to look up to those around me with admiration, astonishment, and awe. I’m fortunate to be surrounded by many others who pursue life as I do both here and in the real world, many others of whom inspire me to continue to learn. Instead of an odd man out with a few others to lean on, in the world of Antarctica, I’m in a collection of my peers.

Posted by noblehobo at 11:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Played chess tonight for the first time in years. Funny enough, the last time I dragged out a board was four years ago in the same place with an old friend for Whisky Wednesdays. He and I were the only people on station with Wednesdays off (we were both on the Galley schedule) and took advantage of the time to drink ourselves silly playing intellectual games (chess, go, risk, connect four, etc.). But I digress.

I played chess tonight and lost. No biggie on that account, there’ll be more games to come. What was worth noting was both a good moment with a good friend and a remembrance of the give and take of strategy. In games and life (though it’s far easier to see and think through on a board) I forget how much I enjoy a challenge that leaves you searching a constantly changing scene for answers. Whether the solutions work or not (not so much today) there is something uniquely rewarding about giving the best with what you have, then having to reevaluate and do the same the next turn. There are great analogies to be found in decisions over what to risk, what is worth taking a stand on, and withdrawing to a point of greater strength.

We have sixty individuals on station and as such, sixty different approaches to issues that arise, sixty different styles of compliment and criticism, sixty different viewpoints… When an issue comes up that involves the whole community in a public response, there is as much intrigue for me to see differing approaches as there can be frustration. A number of us joke about the psychological experiment that we’re taking part in but that’s what it is. Short of the horrors and stresses of war and disaster, few other planned opportunities will test the human mind and spirit like the long dark of an Antarctic winter. If one can observe as well as react (kudos to anyone with the strength to hold back their own personal feelings, if such a person exists), there is a great opportunity to learn how others and self tick.

News came my way today as well regarding several dreams that are no longer possible to pursue - at least not in the context first imagined. Tonight, in response, I took stock in my place, my resources, and my goals. I reevaluated the scene, looked at what is important, and chose to explore opportunities for the next year in a different fashion.

I’ve a few moves to make yet, as does the world, but I can see a potential check-mate on the horizon.

___________

Also, music.

I forgot how damn nice it is to have such easy access to the collections of tunes of others. There are few places (short college) to have so many different influences tossed your way and to toss so many back. On top of that, we have a number of very talented musicians here this year, so I catch my fix for live shows as well.

Really, I can’t complain. Maybe I’m easy to please but the benefits still outweigh the annoyances. This place still makes a good home.

Posted by noblehobo at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Not too bad a day following the mystery hours between years.*

I woke up late to a phone call from old friends spending time working in Greenland,** made a couple more phone calls, had a lazy breakfast, and then split the eve between two regularly scheduled movie bouts (horror and space, Ghost Ship and October Sky, respectively) and a lecture put on by Keith, one of our two Ten Meter Telescope scientists. Keith has been putting on a series of lectures about the more bizarre areas of science from quantum mechanics to the theories of specific and general relativity. He’s basically taking a large number of lay-folk through an English translation of where science no longer equates to the empirical reality we see everyday, to where the explanation of a theory resembles science fiction and dream as much as it does fact.

Afterward, I wandered off for a late-night sauna and close to my day, only to find another couple of Polies present. Good people, both, but I’m apparently becoming an introvert as I grow older and the winter life here is only emphasizing that. I hung back until they left, ready for silence in the dark.

I’m realizing that there is a great deal more satisfaction for me to be found in the company of a good friend, a book, or writing. Maybe this is an outgrowth of the comfort of a few good friends conversing around a wood stove or a campfire. I’m a far different man now, however, than the one who used to refuse his girlfriend calling him to bed in the middle of a party during college. I’ve (thankfully) learned that lesson - I no longer need to hang on to see the end of every social function, no longer feel that I might be missing something. I’m far more content to spend time with those close and with self than in my past.

On a different note, the rumor mill has been good for laughs lately. It seems that life at the other stations on continent must be rather boring (or at least at McMurdo) as all manner of interesting tales about the South Pole station have found their way back to us, none of them true. I’m also intrigued by what fact I know about friends at other stations when it comes to the stories that find their way here. Scuttlebutt, it seems, travels faster than anything else in Antarctica.

*The mystery hours were a term put forth by a friend some time ago - the space between one year and the next, the idea that you go to sleep at twenty-eight, to wake up twenty-nine, with a great unknown in dream spanning the distance between the two ages.

**Catch that - a phone call from a remote field camp in Greenland to a winterover at the South Pole. We really do live in interesting times.

Posted by noblehobo at 12:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I spent some time outside today (a rarity for my job), walking about a mile to an outlying building to get some information from a few pieces of equipment.

I remember days when the entire state of Minnesota shutdown due to cold and wind (-20 to -40 F temps and a windchill of -50 to -80 F). All schools were closed, all government funded jobs, and many private schools and jobs as well. The highways closed (due to the wind and drifting) and in general everything shut down tight for a couple of days.

Short the joy of getting out of school, I remember griping at the bitter cold that day. My walk this afternoon? It was set to a wind chill of -120 F and an ambient temp of -80 F. All the more proof that if you prepare for a situation correctly, it’s a non-issue. I was toasty warm.

Dressing up for these temps leaves me feeling like an astronaut - several layers underneath, followed by puffy down coats and a face so covered that only a space slightly smaller than your eyes is open. You’ve no peripheral vision and end up having to bend at the waist to see your feet when going down stairs. Sound is muffled by the layers and by your own breathing and glasses and goggles are nearly impossible to use without fogging up.

With the wind kicking heavy and the moon obscured by clouds, the drifts are a surprising part of walking - as in into them or off of them with little or no notice. If we could see each other in the dark outside, we would all be stumbling. For a good chunk of time, with the blowing snow and lack of light, I could only see one or two of the flags from our flag lines running in either direction. The station proper disappeared quickly from view.

Amazingly enough, in the dark, with next to no visibility, in the coldest temperatures I have yet encountered, on a walk alone to empty buildings, hundreds of miles from no where (and our station hidden from view), I was comfortable and calm. It was the moon that scared the crap out of me.

Caught from the (mostly covered) corner of my eye, its bright light in a temporary cloud break had me do a double take and a jump. I paused after that, to catch my breath. Looking around, even though the horizon was blurred, I took in the view. The stars above me were brilliant, the Southern Lights were dancing faintly overhead, and the snow, moving across the dunes and gathered from the coast hundreds of miles away, was blowing fierce patterns beneath the moon.

I could gripe, could complain about our barren, cold, dark, wasteland of a home, but to do that? I’d be forsaking its true worth. I would be blind while still seeing.

Posted by noblehobo at 11:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We have a good deal of time available to us here. While we work (job dependent) anywhere from fifty-four to eighty hours a week, we are able to skip many of the time-consuming portions of life off-continent. There is no commute greater than a half-mile walk (most are no greater than a couple hundred feet), meals are prepared and cooked for us, cleaning is done weekly as part of the work day, we have no dependents immediately with us, and our personal possessions to care for are few.

Barring emergencies and broken equipment, when we finish up with work, we are immediately done and on our own recognizance sans responsibilities. This leaves plenty of time to think.

Add a ratio of ten women to fifty men in the winter isolation, and it becomes easy to not lose time to dating or the building of a relationship.

Casual dating is weighed differently here as we are all working and living shoulder to shoulder for the next six months. Relationships are similar. Romance moves at a curious speed over the winter, often more carefully than it does stateside, and definitely not in the hormone-fueled, camp counselor drama style of the summer season. Not everyone acts in this regard, but stable friendships carry more weight than casual risk.

Sans dating and/or love, however, and with the time available that we have, it becomes easy to step into the past and look at former lovers, to analyze and theorize, to play the “where did I go wrong” game. When I slip into that mindset, it never ceases to amaze me how different not only I am, but how different my former partners are. It’s intriguing to look at their lives (those whom I’ve stayed in touch with) and where our paths diverged to where they are now.

There have been scars, healed now into interesting characters, and marks of the good kind, those that leave you stronger, more wise, more gentle and patient. There are moments of all manner that still hold a laugh, a wicked smile, or wincing pain. There are thoughts which lead to phone calls and the simple art of sharing that which you still can, of sharing the lives and memories you built together, and the feeling, unlike any other, the mix of respect, distance, nostalgia, lust, regret, and love all tied into the last few seconds before hanging up the phone.

There is silence too, of the nature needed to move beyond difficulties not worth overcoming, hard-fought lessons in forgive and forget, with the former still a work in progress. A silence more difficult than the myriad emotions left in friends turned lovers turned friends. A path not easy but one which the feet and the gut know is the right direction.

So what’s the point of all of this esoteric rambling? Just that of looking back, of remembering and smiling at all the good and all the bad and the fact that I’m still here, still capable of love and hope, still laughing, and still dancing (any takers?). That of gratitude, for those I’ve been able to share the closest of human connection with, for those I still love, and for all the parts of the man that I am now that come from my past.

We certainly weren’t perfect, we certainly didn’t last, but we wrote our own unique story, left our marks on each other, and left our marks on the world.

And that is a thought that I can sleep on.

Posted by noblehobo at 01:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Life here can be monotonous in the extreme, an endless series of days similar to the previous, surrounded by the same people as the day before, walking the same hallways, all exacerbated by the isolation preventing change.

Life can be that, if you let it.

Or you can laugh as those around you join in the goofy, bizarre pursuits to keep life here interesting. You can find change in watching a movie in a different building, admire the surroundings (and the shadows) beneath the brilliant light of a full moon, dig deep in old memories, make art, make conversation… It is all a matter of perspective. If you can stay entertained here, live off of your own intellectual fat, then you can make it anywhere.

If you can stay alive and intrigued here, then the rest of the world is a miraculous playground by comparison.

So here’s to the simple joys of Pole - the friends, the explorations, the sky, the clear and cold air in your lungs, the simplicity of life, and the mental clarity sans out-world distractions. I may not encounter any vastly life changing moments that can be easily described here but the subtle effects of the landscape, the horizon, and the winds are carving something finite, something literal that will be with me for the remainder of my life.

The subtle interplay of the environment, of the line where sky and land meet - it becomes a reason for my pursuit, for my home here, my home on Lake Superior, my comfort on a coast or beneath the skies of the Great Plains.

Posted by noblehobo at 06:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’m intrigued by determined personalities, by those who have a particular goal or singular pursuit in life.

Intrigued because I don’t understand it. I’m not built that way, at least not for the long-term. Some people have the ability to build their life around a specific dream, every detail striving toward that final assumption. I maneuver in a wider circle, a track that jumps trains of thought and interests widely and quickly. I can focus my attention tightly for short term goals of various natures but devote my life to one single idea?

Maybe the fact that I’m currently in the middle of seven different books is a good example.

Or maybe the specific goal doesn’t have to be so specific, maybe an ideal is what exists, a goal focused on with a wider-angle lens.

Is a sense of curiosity and wonder enough? What greater gift do we receive than that of learning what it is to be human? We spend our entire lives attempting to understand the meaning behind our existence, our world as it relates to self and others, our hearts, our minds… Learning just how we tick - that’s an adventure I can focus my entire life on.

Posted by noblehobo at 01:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This was taken by a good friend, Calee - the fine stories and photos to be found in the link to the upper left.

The night sky here - it keeps you humble.

Posted by noblehobo at 02:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Tonight, a group of us closed the evening by watching the movie, Apollo 13. It was the tail end of a series each Sunday night that included documentaries and a mini-series about the Apollo space program.

I remember, growing up, of boyhood obsessions with rockets, with the lunar module, with the entire idea of our traversing to another planetary body. Some of the first drawings that I remember hanging on a wall were of the Apollo spacecraft, dreams marking the summer before third grade. There was still a public excitement about NASA and our pursuits beyond Earth’s atmosphere, or so I remember. The shuttle program was exciting, I tracked satellites to the other planets, and the images of the Challenger disaster are still seared in my mind.

Lately, it seems, the only public information I find regarding NASA deals with budget cuts, the end of the shuttle program (and its lack of a clear replacement), or the Columbia accident. It’s rare to see passion, fire, or drive toward the exploration of our heavens, at least that as directly experienced by fellow human beings.

I don’t aspire to be an astronaut myself (unlike a very committed man here, but I still dream. The auroras never cease to steal my breath or the moon to add shadowed comfort to a late night. My imagination runs rampant that here, on the bottom of the Earth, if I just let loose my feet, I might fall into the stars below…

…and I find it troubling, that in order to explore the wonder that grew in me as a child, I have to look to our actions, our stories, from before when I was born. To go to the moon, Mars, or else may not be the most pragmatic choice possible for a society, but to unify as a community behind that idea, that ideal? To me that seems a far better focus for our energies than war.

Posted by noblehobo at 12:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our station is sleep-addled today, a community-wide malaise of exhaustion and the tired mind. The vast majority of us were woken at 5 AM when a fire alarm went off in the Rodwell, the building that provides our water supply. The Rodwell, an out building, is several hundred yards from station, so a crowd of bleary-eyed folk dressed and hustled to respond. It was -80 F, with a 12 knot wind.

In the end, there was no major surprise, just a small footnote in our response to any alarm as a serious one. A fan in a heater had gone out, allowing the heating element to warm the air directly below a heat sensor, rather than dispersing it throughout the room. All told, the response, stand-down, and investigation took little more than thirty minutes. As for getting back to sleep, however…

Conversations today represent the lost dream-time. Words are flipped, brains are scattered, and trains of thought rumble in anything but a straight line. It makes for an interesting (and laughable) series of personal interactions, light-hearted moments, and deep thoughts - the best parts of sleep deprivation.

It’s exhaustion like this that makes it difficult to maintain relationships with friends and family off-continent. Our community, insular in nature, is an easy out to turn to. When the day is over, dumping down in front of a movie with several others makes an easy escape. We stay entertained in our own ways, from modern media to evenings of pub trivia, or the upcoming race (BF5K) and concert (Polestock ‘08) this weekend. We provide an atmosphere of ambivalence or creativity as needed.

That being said, when I return to my room tired and satisfied (or at least tired), it becomes monumental to tackle the timezone difference, contextual distance, and mental fatigue in the efforts to contact back home. Or at least that’s how it feels.

When living in Duluth this past year, I’m not convinced that I was any better at communicating with my friends and family than I am now. The distractions, however, seemed more wordly, seemed to keep me in a sense that I was more in touch with those a few hundred miles distant than I was.

Here, with no one a few hundred miles distant and nearly all interactions created within our crowd of sixty, it becomes a poignant note when you remember who you haven’t spoken with in a few months or written to lately. It is placed mostly on your own time and ability to reach out, because technology makes it difficult to reach in. My phone, barring emergencies, is effectively one-way.

What does all this resolve out to? Possibly a self-guilt trip, but an expansion on one of the many things that we deal with as loyal Antarcticans. It’s an environment where challenging oneself takes a constant willful walk, where love and friendship seemingly happen easy, but take time and care for true depth, and where great perseverance and presence is required to stay fast to friendships 8000 miles away.

Most people I’ve known who have wintered in the past have a limit, a wall that they hit when it comes to this experience. After a season, several, a career, eventually there is no more challenge or dreams dig in toward another existence. Watching the pattern of friends’ ebb and flow, I used to think it related to this continent. While it does, in some manner, I’m finding that it is more internal - a human imperative.

For some of my friends, the traveling life is coming to a close, the modern hobo way losing appeal to larger, more singular pursuits. Some, like Dane, seek a path with goals that will leave a mark on this planet. Others, like Jeff, are simply ready to settle for a bit and try something else. There’s also holding to one place and maintaining a hold on wonder. It catches me every time someone I know chooses to dream more solidly, more static-like in place or pursuit, prepared for a long dream, because I do not yet know that feeling. I’ve tried it, quite unsuccessfully, and instead end up happy here.

Here, where outside is a deep breath unlike anywhere else, and above me, the sky dances.

I crave aspects of the long moment, but I don’t yet see my path there. I wonder if the guilt I wear in the distance between conversations looks to be assuaged in a long-settled future, in a place where friends can be gathered for a lifetime instead of the simple present. Or is building the simple present simply enough?

Perhaps in increments of year-long contracts and months-long dreams I’ll grow my way in to the multitude of years. In the mean, I will treasure those I meet, know, and love. In the mean, I’ll listen to the ether and thank those who understand, those who’s smiles grow no dimmer by time or distance.

And always, I’ll be learning…

Posted by noblehobo at 11:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tonight I feel as if I earned some cred as a Systems Administrator. We had a brownout around 9 PM this evening - nothing very noticeable to the eye, but two five second periods where we dropped 25 volts from the 440 volt station feed. It seems a small amount but that little change can play hell with electrical equipment.

The next several hours was spent by facilities engineering, science techs, and IT running around checking to see what equipment was affected and, if affected, to what degree. Personally, I had about ten servers lose power in a distant building due to reasons unknown (they are supposed to be connected to UPS systems to prevent that).

Most everything we have can be accessed remotely, so I spent two hours doing so, checking services, restarting servers, looking at error logs to see if anything else was affected, etc. Most everything was fine. Our redundant domain controller was not.

A domain controller (for the non-techies) is an essential part of the computer network infrastructure in a large corporate environment. It doles out the rules that allow various computers and network-capable devices to talk to each other and the outside world. If you lose access to your domain controllers, your network becomes very unhappy very quickly. We run two here for the purpose of redundancy.

My backup domain controller had decided to power down during the brownout and I could not contact it via remote services. Because of its necessity, I had a late night trip in store, all to push a button.

The building that the domain controller is in, the RF (Radio Frequency) shack, is about a mile from station, on the ‘edge of the world’. It’s the building that houses all of the control systems for our satellite connections, the network components to communicate with the satellites, and our backup computer systems. So, off I went to make an 11 PM trip to the RF building. I bundled up. It was -70F with a -100F windchill.

The walk was eerie in the best of ways. Most everyone on station was asleep and no equipment was running. The only sounds were the thrum (soon distant) of the power plant and the wind. When I stopped, letting the crunch, crunch, crunch of my walk in the snow wind down, it was as quiet as I’ve heard here yet.

The stars, newly arriving in our final days of twilight, are incredibly brilliant here. More so when you are on the edge of the world, so to speak, with the nearest manned station 800 miles distant. Out past the buildings, on the edge of the horizon, the sky holds great power. Looking up, smiling, I could only imagine the sheer magnitude of awe I will carry when the Southern Lights begin.

Stateside, winter nights after a fresh snow are my favorite times to wander. Whether in a city or in the woods, sounds are somehow both muted and amplified, the light heavy - as if the entire world has been draped in a thick blanket. It creates moments that are easy to share and easy to lose oneself in, easy to find warmth in a smile or the glow of a window.

Here, that window is covered (to protect light-sensitive science projects), that smile frozen (covered up by two layers of neck gaiters), that blanket stretched over an entire continent, but the warmth is still present. We just look around in a few different places to find it.

Tonight, I looked up.

Posted by noblehobo at 03:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sitting here, in my hammock, typing away, it’s not a bad life. The sun is nearly gone outside, the last seconds of twilight are fading to night. We can see the first stars (when the sky clears) and all of our light sensitive experiments are finally being powered up. Our windows are all covered now (to keep stray light away from the instruments) and our interior world is now distinctly separated from our external one. Outside is parceled off by insulated freezer doors, a red-tinted headlamp (unless the moon is up) and enough clothing to keep warm at -80F.

I struggle to remember to go outside. When your job does not require it, it is easy to forget. I haven’t been out since Sunday…

I’ve got a new batch of pictures ready for you to peruse, all annotated with the stories that accompany them:

February, roughly, covering random activities, a trip off-station to a hole in the snow, and our sunset party. Next up, a pile from a tour of SPT (South Pole Telescope), my room, and our wine tasting from two weeks ago. Heidi has a good deal of photos from our wine tasting as well.

I also added another couple of links to the mess at the left - Heidi’s from above (the Amazing Flying Lim) and Jeff’s (eighteen percent), a former Polie who has decided to leave and attempt a different life. We wish him well and that nostalgia does not haunt.

Posted by noblehobo at 10:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We’ve a new light in the heavens, gliding gently next to the moon. Not a star, technically, but Jupiter has made an appearance. Not long now and the sky will fill with constellations I’ve only rarely seen. Not long now and I’ll see the Milky Way for the first time since early October.

Posted by noblehobo at 12:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Every night, as I walk through the B1 lounge (our game room) on the way back to my berthing, I pass the pool table. I don’t know who does it, but with each evening pass I see a fresh rack waiting for the next game.

Posted by noblehobo at 11:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I forget, quite often as many of us do, to wonder at the greater spectrum of things, to find significance in insignificance, to respect accordingly the miracle that we are alive…

We had our first science lecture of the winter season tonight. The winterover cosmologist (our Canadian beaker, Keith) for the South Pole Telescope gave us an overview of the equipment and what it is the SPT team is currently pursuing.

Turns out, in short, that they are working to better understand the forces of entropy. In a series of steps, they are utilizing images from the beginning of time (or as far back as we can see) to better reveal the expansion of the universe since its explosive start. In more completely understanding just how galaxy cluster upon galaxy cluster has traveled over the eons, they will begin to gain an understanding of how gravity and the theoretical force of dark energy interact to keep the universe expanding, rather than contracting as gravity alone would dictate.

SPT begins the first step in this process by identifying thousands of galaxy clusters in the distant sky. Upon identifying the clusters (each themselves made up of thousands of galaxies), they will provide that information to other telescope teams (such as Hubble) which will then track the identified galaxy cluster to measure its distance from and the speed at which it moves away from us.

They identify the clusters by observing the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) which is, in effect, the afterglow of the Big Bang. In essence, the light from that first explosion, from the very beginning remains present in the background of the sky as microwave radiation. If it was part of the visual spectrum, we would see the night sky glowing with iridescent clouds - remnants of our violent start. Although we can’t see it completely without the mechanics of SPT (a massive machine and mirror, bringing the sky to receptors sensitive to 1/100,000,000,000,000,000,000 the energy of a 100W light bulb), we’ve all seen it to some extent. About one percent of the static that you see when a TV is struggling to find reception is due to the noise of the Cosmic Microwave Background. If you sit to watch the snow traveling across your unreceptive television screen, you are bearing witness to the beginning of the universe. In my eyes, that should be defined as reality television…

What amazes me about tonight (as always when it comes to the stars) is the sheer scope of it all, how truly small and insignificant our spaceship Earth is when compared to the vastness of space - how daunting and amazing it is that we exist, struggle, and thrive so tiny, so isolated in the larger view. The image above is from a very small portion of our sky. It is a rendered image of the data that SPT is working to collect and the black specs, each one of them, is a galaxy cluster standing out against the background radiation. Catch that - each tiny black spec in this photo is a galaxy cluster - a grouping of thousands of galaxies, each galaxy made up of billions of stars. Try multiplying those numbers up…and that’s from only a sliver of our sky. Our own single galaxy, our Milky Way, has over two hundred billion stars - two hundred billion brothers and sisters to our own sun.

And here we sit, on spaceship Earth, traveling around as part of it all.

After the presentation, I sat down for parts three and four of From the Earth to the Moon, a mini-series documenting the Apollo space program. Suffice to say, watching the risk and the struggle of our first steps to orbit another heavenly body, of our attempts to grow beyond our humble sphere…it was magic. And soon, when the sun completes its slow spiral downward, I’ll be able to gaze up at the night sky in the darkest space imaginable, be able to see the great beyond as only we can here. Gaze up, and dream of falling skyward.

Jim Lovell, William Anders, and Frank Borman, while orbiting the moon for the first time in human history closed a message home with this:

“good night, good luck…and God bless all of you, all of you on the good earth.”

Posted by noblehobo at 10:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I’m in thrall at the winter setting sun here. My favorite hours of dusk - the light of the last hour of sun on a snow covered Lake Superior shore in January - are extended here. The sun is almost set, but what I might spend an hour watching in my life stateside, here I can watch for a week.

Posted by noblehobo at 08:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I find myself piled down in front of my computer tonight, a chunk of memory from (and slight nostalgia for) Chicago. Memory of a moment of hauling my ass a few miles from my condo on my bike (in January) to go to attend a life drawing session. Short the drawing (writing some tonight took care of that craving), the nostalgia is calling forth a multitude of happenstance. The strong presence of the early winter chill fresh in my lungs and on my lips, my core warmed by the exercise but my hands frozen, the confidence of tackling something new in an unfamiliar place, and the slight fear and hesitation of it too (welcomed, with the follow-through of the act) - these things are gathered in my mind tonight. It was one one of the first times that I had a chance to play in a world so alien to me (millions of people, rough neighborhood - cheap rent for artists) and I knew no one. I was free to explore any path that I might choose, rise up or crash down, with no one local to fall on or share my story with. It was a unique freedom, and part of the promise I find in the frost of cold air entering my body.

There are small parts of the winter here like that, though not as many as I had expected. Routine is easy to find and though there is much to learn about the other fifty-nine folk here (hell, still much to learn about myself) we all share the same context. If we choose, we can walk easily with an assumption that we know something about everyone around us because, to an extent, we do.

What catches me are the glimpses of the unknown and the unexpected. The former comes most often in the setting sun - in shadows and colors I’ve not before seen here. It comes in temperature too, -79 F with a -118 F windchill tonight. The latter shows up in conversation, in the break of assumption as we grow to know those around us more completely.

It still blows my mind how simple it is to presume that the next several months will be like they are now, one month in. It hits me equally hard to know that change is expected, and in a community this isolated, this compact and protracted, interesting things will be afoot.

_________________

On a side note, my bike in Chicago? A used mountain bike purchased on the cheap from one of the most intriguing cooperatives I’ve come across yet. A slew of volunteers (grease monkeys, bike messengers, able passerbys) gather together donated bikes, repair them, and sell or warehouse them. When they get enough working bikes together, they (with the appropriate party and fanfare) pack a millvan (giant shipping crate) full of them and send them off to a country where a bike is worth a year’s salary or more to those that need them. If you’re interested (especially if your from around Chicago) you can find out more at www.workingbikes.org.

Posted by noblehobo at 10:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’ll call it a good day, today.

The afternoon was spent with the rest of the IT crowd outside, flagging the route to the RF building so that we can find our way in the dark. The RF building holds the controls to our satellite dishes, our backup servers, and our backup radio systems. An important building, as things go, and about half a mile from the station proper. We now have a line of black flags on bamboo poles to shine our lights at come night and I was able to drive around one of the snowmobiles for the afternoon (missed that more than I thought). We came in frozen. Though warm for here and the season, it was still -65F with a -95F wind chill.

After that, I wandered out to summer camp to get the remaining feather pillows I needed for my bean bag - since we don’t have any plastic beads, and the galley frowned on my wanting to use rice, down was the best I could think of. That experiment should pan out in another half hour or so - I interrupted the creativity binge for a bout of badminton and just got back.

Strange, to do two things this past week that I haven’t in over fifteen years. The last game of badminton that I played was in fifth grade, and the last time I used a sewing machine was in junior high. Still, badminton went well (no injuries, no major losses, hell of a lot of laughs) and my bean bag looks fairly decent. I only had to rip apart a few seams…

The sun is winding down farther in the sky - it no longer blinds us while playing pool in the game room. The temperatures fluctuate, but average out a steady drop, and time moves steadily, but slowly. In a week and a half we’ll be having our sunset dinner, celebrating the last we’ll see of it for months. Already the shadows and colors are taking on that of the last half an hour of the setting sun, only we get another couple of weeks. I’m looking forward to the vibrancy of color that normally winks at you lasting days, at the green flash that fortunate few see only for a second lasting hours…

Sounds like something to wax poetic on.

It’s been tiring these past few weeks, a time spent withdrawing into self much more than I am used to, especially in a place where social activity is so easy to come across (reminds me of the Lemondrop and the art house). I haven’t written much, nor pursued art as I am used to. The time has been good, simply mellow in a way that is somewhat new to me. I’m beginning, however, to feel recharged; ready to kick out the hammock, lay back, and write to the fine folk that I am fortunate to consider friends.

Glad to know that you’re all out there.

Posted by noblehobo at 09:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not much to say tonight, as it reaches the close, just relishing a good conversation about books and meanings, some story trading, a sauna and a shower.

Still have to celebrate those simple things to keep perspective here.

The sun continues to circle lower on the horizon, the shadows lengthening each day. You notice this not directly, but in smaller ways. During a game of pool two of us found ourselves blinded looking down the table toward the windows in the lounge. One or two more days and the sun will have lowered enough that the station will block it. We won’t be blinded again for six months.

It’s hard to believe, but we’ll be in the dark by the end of this month - or at least in a long-term twilight.

I’ll throw up some photos soon of day to day life here. A brief traverse through the waking hours of my world and a few last photos of the horizon before it goes dark. Also, there’ll be a couple of pictures from a trip out to SPRESSO on Sunday. SPRESSO is a vault, buried about 35 feet down in the snow, seven miles away from station, that houses equipment to measure seismic activity around the world. It was a good Sunday trip, a couple of hours away from the station and out on the polar plateau.

Posted by noblehobo at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

-65.7 Fwith a -97.8 F windchill.

That ought make Minnesota weather feel downright warm at the moment. A long night of work (monthly server maintenance) followed by an early morning video conference to arrange for a medical consultation. Tomorrow will be a tired one in the ceaseless daze of my IT world.

The world is feeling mellow tonight, steeped in nostalgia and memory. They are vibrant forces here, strong and clear, beautiful and dangerous. It’s a fine line remembering distant friends, family, and former lovers - not allowing the past and the distance to steal from life here. It’s a fine line enjoying this current space and not losing track of the world outside.

Tonight, work is distracting me in a pleasant way. I’m mellow, but in such a manner as to fall toward the nostalgia of worlds away. Funny that I find it work focusing my mind here, at my current home. Time to go out in search of a conversation, then sleep, then dream.

Posted by noblehobo at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

We’re not a close community, by the standards that I know Youth Conservation Corps, anyway, but there is a nice balance to the group thus far. We all seem to move our own way as we adjust to winter, social to a point, but primarily acting solo or in small groups. There is no “include everybody” focus to our activities, just an easy meander about our days. This summer season felt very similar.

So the question, then - is the community different, or am I? Likely bits of both, to ponder as I fall to sleep.

We all adjust in our own way, but (save that it feels much longer) this week has been anti-climactic. Few folk seem publicly troubled by way of what they’ve committed to, and our transition to winter has gone smooth in regard to the pragmatic aspects (i.e. we have all of the fuel we need, we have enough experienced winterovers that station close was not a giant reinvention of previous wheels, nothing broke or blew up, etc.). While summer was fun (and had some wild dancing), the goodbyes were not terribly difficult. The folks I care to see again, I will, and there is rare exception to those not here whom I wish were.

I hesitate (and fear) when I think what a winter would have been like two years ago upon first planning to commit to one. What unfolds in this winter remains to be seen, but I am more confident with every day that I made the right choice to be here now as opposed to then.

And it’s a two-day weekend, so I get to sleep in tomorrow. I have to treasure these - we only get one a month. Projects on tap include making a couple of bean bags with feather pillows (so I guess not bean bags), patching up pants that didn’t survive the dancing season, some pictures (to be posted of our winter home), some cooking (the galley is ours on our days off, the cooks join us in leisure), and some board games (World War II strategy). It should be very, very laid back.

As an added bonus, it was -20F today. That may sound cold, but its thirty degrees warmer than two weeks ago. Summer attempting to make a brief resurgence…

Posted by noblehobo at 01:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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.

Posted by noblehobo at 11:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With a flourish, a sharp bank in our direction, and the aid of a full circle rainbow, the last flight of the summer season flew off into the sun.

The station has closed for the season, leaving a grand total of sixty individuals to learn to navigate through the next eight months and the return of the outside world.

The closing came one day early (along with an associated amount of confused and unexpected hubbub as departing folk were caught by surprise) due to weather. The Air National Guard decided that it was against their best interest to wait out the potential weather and pulled the remaining fifty or so summer employees by two this afternoon. We spent the rest of the day in an easy sort of manner, moving into the new station (for those of us out in summer camp) and letting the commitment of the next eight months sink in.

We finished the eve with the traditional showing of John Carpenter’s The Thing - a horror movie about an alien in an isolated Antarctic station creating mayhem, paranoia, distrust, and murder. We’re nothing if not morbid!

Tomorrow I begin my role as the IT Systems Administrator full time, with a lovely backlog of work and a heap of good education from the previous tenants. So goes the switch from day to day, from summer camp to the new station, from Cargo to IT, and from summer season to winter.

Posted by noblehobo at 11:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Just two and a half more days until sixty-odd winterovers are snowed-in at the world’s most expensive treehouse for the next eight months. The station is a hustle of activity as the population drops from roughly 220 down to our estimated winter crew of 65. People are running around packing, celebrating, panicking, rethinking, laughing, wondering, wandering, dancing, and eventually flying out of here. You’d think I’d know by now exactly who I’m spending the next eight months of winter with, but that’s in flux to, as always until the last minute.

When the final flight is in the air Friday afternoon, then we’ll be able to look around and know just who is staying. Then it all begins.

Posted by noblehobo at 01:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It’s getting cold again, the weather making its inevitable march toward winter. The plumes of steam and smoke from the power plant, equipment, and out-buildings stretch for hundreds of feet in the wind. The air is crystal clear, as if frozen in place. The snow crunches differently, more loudly, more sharply. People are dressing heavier again - skin is covered and clothing for short hops has gone from fall and spring stateside clothing back to our heavy ECW gear. You can feel the wind creeping into the Jamesways, and poorly insulated buildings struggle to stay warm.

It’s -35 F with a -60 F wind chill. That leaves me several months to get used to another 65 degree drop in air temperature.

The moon was up in the sky today and I can’t help but wonder what it will look like in the dark of the winter freeze, if I see it differently than in Minnesota, standing upside-down and all. The sky is powerful here, and I look to it often. We may even see a solar eclipse (partial) next week, or so goes the word of mouth. I’ll be looking into that. My first season here was opened with a 90% totality eclipse - a view of the world quieting for a moment as an entire community paused their breathing, spoke few words, and the sky dimmed.

Cold, yes. But beautiful and serene too.

Posted by noblehobo at 05:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’ve been speculating, as the summer season progresses, what sort of lessons that my upcoming winter will challenge me with; been dreaming of what might come to pass. What has become apparent to me is that I may be learning to hold back a portion of myself I seldom do not these days.

I live my life on my sleeve, emotionally, situationally, and physically. I keep few secrets (regarding self) and am open to discussing nearly every thing I encounter, am, and nearly every one that I know. There is great joy that I find in pondering over a person, situation, or thing, wondering out loud with others about the core of a thing, it’s purpose or pursuit. I often speak freely of those I care about, those I fall for, those I’ve been with. I hold curiosity and care in my mind when I am critiquing another person - not disdain or ill-will.

Others, however, may not see the world from the same perspective as I.

As we enter into winter, we prepare to spend eight months with sixty-odd (in number and in personality!) fellow folk. We will converse, play, laugh, annoy, anger, disgust, please, disturb, and love each other without escape. Small things misinterpreted may grow and distort over time, rendering friendships in new light, pulling together and pulling apart beneath our months-long night.

I see myself, in the way that I lead my life now, as potentially injuring someone with words not meant to do so. I’m uncertain if that will be the case at all, but am interested to know if I can live my life and thought more internal than currently. If I can back off a touch and hold my curiosity within my head, my journal, or a more limited group of confidants…

At the least, I am interested to know if I can do this and maintain my current level of bouyancy and comfort, or if, in sacrificing external expression and discussion, I find myself more exhausted.

My first summer season in Antarctica tested me in that way, as did my first season as a Conservation Corps crew leader. I’ve had a difficult path since then, and let go (inadvertently) of the lessons I learned several years ago. Whether I can resurrect them or not remains to be seen.

Time and the development of my winter season friendships and relationships with others will tell the story.

Posted by noblehobo at 03:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Stepping away from the South Pole for my “involuntary” vacation (also known as Rest and Relaxation) in McMurdo gave me a chance to look at mid-season life with fresh eyes. What I had always known in the past, but had never taken a direct view too, was (and is) the exhaustion that we all face.

I have been told over and over that wintering at the South Pole will tax both my body and mind. That wintering will leave me with a poor short term memory and a difficult time with concentration, problem-solving, and conversation. What I had not seen previously is that the summer season can bring this on as well.

Returning from R n’ R allowed me to see just how exhausted our station population (self-included) becomes over a short season of months. Generally, we miss how dramatic the change is as we are all going through the process of it together. Leaving, even briefly, allowed me to realign myself around others who were not as tired and coming back made it obvious just how beat we all are.

So for myself, I withdrew. I took time to write, to think, to simply rest and to let my mind slow down. I paid for a massage (we have several professional masseuses here who take on clients in addition to their day jobs), found some time for saunas, set up my hammock (no small feat in a 6’ by 8’ room), and let go. I did not write in public very much, and both my exhaustion and our limited satellite time gave me an easy excuse to avoid the phone.

I am not alone in this. When you are away from the continent, you notice it. Friends who are in Antarctica and write on a regular basis slow down, their responses are limited or tardy in arriving. When you are here, it is sanity. There is a limit to how much energy one can expend and maintain a balance. Smart individuals pay attention to it, savor what they can, and work to recover when they need. Those who don’t figure it out decide not to come back, become an individual of extreme emotions (whatever form those take), or at worst, crack completely and leave. The majority of us get a handle on it. A few of us learn it well enough to balance both our lives here and our communication with our family and friends back home.

I’m working on learning to do better with the latter.

As for the exhaustion, my efforts are paying off. I’m beginning to find my way back to a healthy medium - no more defeated look or rings around my eyes.

Posted by noblehobo at 05:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apologies for the lack of communication stateside lately, but we’ve had some issues with the satellite dishes that provide our connection to the outside world. We haven’t lost our connection entirely (far from), just the portions during which I’m awake. With luck, all should be resolved in the next couple of days, at which point I’ll have easier access to phones and my personal email.

Posted by noblehobo at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Finally, after many, many days in the bizarre limbo that is McMurdo, I’m back at the South Pole. Back home to the world I know, damn fine food, my projects, my space. McMurdo would have been nice for three days, getting stuck there for nine was, well, excruciating.

Others have captured the moment better than I. Tim, our Power Plant Technician, does a damn fine job at his blog (linked on the left). I’ll update more later.

I spent my night here putting a new hard drive into my computer, banking that it will decrease the flakiness that I’ve seen with the last. The best part, though? This hard drive is finally large enough to store all of my music on it. No more external drive for tunes, I am now much more portable.

Portable so far as it relates to the station I choose to live at. Otherwise it’s a long (800 mile), cold walk elsewhere.

While waiting on glowing progress bars during software installations, I tore through some unsorted piles of paper and old letters from friends. The output? A couple of letters ready to send and some great memory bits from Chicago and business-lessons learned over the past several years.

Posted by noblehobo at 03:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Some photos of the MCI Drill that we had before Thanksgiving. Descriptions to come shortly.

MCI Photos

Posted by noblehobo at 07:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So the stories that go with the pictures will have to come at a later date, but here are some of the photographs from the last few days:

A few shots of our working days in Cargo and the social mayhem of James Brown Bingo.

Pictures of Christmas dinner, Cargo White Elephant party, Disc Golf, dancing, the Race Around the World, MET Wine and Cheese Party.

Turns out I forgot to upload photos of the Airdrop, so I’ll catch those (and descriptions) when the next satellite pass hits.

Posted by noblehobo at 01:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Everyone likes packages in the mail. Some of us like them even better when they come from the sky on parachutes.

Yesterday, the Air National Guard, in cooperation with the National Science Foundation, air dropped a series of packages about two miles south of South Pole Station. As a member of the Cargo department, I had a front row seat for the event.

The weather was gorgeous, -15F with clear blue skies and very little wind.

as an aside, that is gorgeous, if you’ve been here for -60F with twenty knot winds

The drop was part of training in the event that a mid-winter airdrop is ever needed. Being that I’ll be one of the few members of Cargo here in July (even though I’ll be working for IT), I paid close attention. The Air Guard delivered twenty packages to us, each consisting of roughly one thousand pounds of food, a foot of honeycombed cardboard to cushion the landing, and a small, high-velocity parachute. The ‘chute, being high-velocity, doesn’t so much slow the package down as it orients it so that the honeycomb cardboard crashes into the ground first.

The packages were dropped from a height of one thousand feet in two passes of ten packages each. It was a beautiful sight to see, goodies from the sky falling from the bottom of a C-17 aircraft. No matter how old I get, aircraft will always enthrall me…

The sound, though, caught my attention. The rumble of the C-17s four jet engines was low and solid, a welcome signal like few others. I imagined what that might sound like in the dark of July, if supplies were needed for an emergency, where the lights of the plane might barely be visible against the stars. Pennies from heaven, with a roar.

After both passes had completed, our Cargo department, BK Grant, the South Pole Area Coordinator (big cheese, amazing woman), several photographers, and two Air Guard Officers (including the head of Operation Deepfreeze, the C-17 support group for Antarctica) proceeded out to the drop zone to investigate the carnage. With the exception of one package landing on another (only slight damage to some broccoli) and one chute not fully deploying (no visible damage, but the package had completely cratered into the snow, little sticking out), the drop was a complete success. The C-17 crew landed the first package within twenty feet of the drop zone target, and both passes strung out within one hundred yards of that.

Cleaning up the parachutes was a cinch, we twisted and bunched them up, packed them away, and wandered back to station to watch the C-17 do a fly-by at 300 feet. One day the plan is to have C-17s land here, but that is an additional Power Plant, several Rodwell water drills, a full Aircraft Rescue Fire Fighter team, and additional housing away (to provide the necessary support). Until then, overfly passes are all we get.

Later that night, Toby, Greg, and I went out to gather packages, but a piece of our equipment broke at the drop zone. After some toying around with a snowmobile to gather some resources (crossing the vast polar plains at high speeds and smiling like a jackass as I hopped drifts), we got our forklift working again. Working again, just in time to drive it back to the station. While we did get to sit in the sun and relax for a few minutes, waiting for our Heavy Shop mechanic to show up, we didn’t get any work done.

The packages are still out there, cratered in the snow two miles grid south of the station.

Pictures for this, Cargo operations, and some of random Polies (folks here) will be up soon.

Posted by noblehobo at 09:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)