Letters From the Bottom of the Earth, Part 1- or - Proof That Ice Numbs Everything

 *Originally written on January 20th, 2023 at McMurdo Science Station in Antarctica*

Hello,

I’m not entirely sure how to write this.  I’m not even sure what it is just yet, a letter, an email, a journal, a way to spend time while doing nothing.  I am not sure what it is or how to start it, but I have to start whatever it is somewhere, so I am starting with, I’m not entirely sure how to write this.

It’s gonna sound like I am complaining, which I guess I am, but there is a point, and I should be able to get to that point somehow, and I will end up somewhere, somewhere good I hope, but… fuck it, here goes.

The running joke here is that Antarctica is “a harsh continent” and it is used to simultaneously validate and dismiss any and every challenge, complaint, or criticism.  For Example:  It’s -30 degrees and the wind is blowing and you will get frostbite on exposed skin in 5 minutes. It’s a harsh continent.  Your flight has been delayed for 4 days and now the plane has fused with the ice runway and they are using a flamethrower on the landing gears to free then and there is no way to fly you out for another 4 days?  It’s a harsh continent.  You have frostbite on your nose, sunburn on you cheeks, and cracked skin on your elbows and eczema on your hands, a sinus infection, a bloody nose, an upper airway infection and a lower airway infection, a cough, and headache because the air quality in the dorms is equivalent to an airborne toxic event?  It’s a harsh continent.  The proximity sensor on the orange juice dispenser is broken and only gives you 2 squirts of reconstituted powdered OJ so you have to continuously move your cup around to find the “sweet spot” while a line is forming behind you but you keep trying even though no actual sweet spot exists and the sensor and the machine are just broken but you really want a cup of juice so you say sorry to the line behind you and keep moving your cup around under the broken sensor of the broken OJ machine for some fake OJ?  It’s a harsh continent.  

So it’s a great retort to anyone’s problem, and everyone has problems, and most people arrived here with problems, but most of the problems people have here stem from the fact that Antarctica really is a harsh continent.  Full circle.

I currently have a sleeping problem, I have a very hard time going to sleep when the sun is up… which is all the time here at McMurdo Station.  I’m starting to realize what time it is by the location of the sun, which doesn’t help one bit, because, light-wise, as in sheer volume of light, it looks the exact same outside at 3am as it does at noon but now that I know it is 3am because the sun is over the Hut Point cross, I know that I should have been asleep hours ago.  Knowing that I should have been sleeping only makes me a bit more concerned that I am not sleeping, which keeps me up for another hour until I notice that it is 4am and that I should be asleep.  And if I do get to sleep, I wake up every two hours like clockwork with a dry cough and a sore throat because the air quality is terrible in the dorms.  But it is warm in my room on this harsh continent, and there is a think black sheet that has Velcro to cover the window so it takes more effort to see which way the shadows lie.  And even though I can see through the black sheet over the window and can tell what time it is by the shadows of the rocks and the telephone poles, and I know how many hours ago I should have been asleep, and no matter how gross the air is an no matter how gummed up my sinuses are, I want you to know that I am happy here.  It’s a harsh continent, but I like it.

I work a lot, everyone works a lot, we are all on the same schedule and are at work at least 60 hours a week, the starting times just differ between the “day shift” and the “MidRats”.  Terrible name but it stands for Midnight Ration.  I believe the term MidRat is used because “night shift” doesn’t really work here considering there is no night.  For us day shifters, the whole place fires up around 5am for breakfast and then everyone goes to their respective work at 7:30-17:30 with an hour for lunch.  I compare it to what I think limbo would be like, everything is dusty and dirty, most machines are functional but broken in a way that doesn’t require repair but just makes the functionality slightly annoying (see the above mentioned OJ machine).  The ever constant shades of blue sky, brown rock, white ice blending into white clouds on the white horizon create an unshifting background to volcanic dust covered trucks and giant construction equipment.  So much does actually depend upon a red wheel barrel when you never see colors.  I am at work a lot, but I would not say that I am busy.  I am just AT work a lot.  The internet is slow and there is no Wifi which I gotta say is nice.  I read and do crossword puzzles and play banjo.  It is time alone at the bottom of the Earth, but at the same time I’m in a small village where there is no privacy.  You can hike alone to a small locked hut or the top of a look out hill called Obs (short for observation), but the big hikes, the ones where you get away from the din and whirr of the village generators, the hikes where you have all the potential to get lost on the ice and start to understand just how harsh the continent is, those hikes require a partner.  Someone who has done the stupid thing that you want to do, before.  It’s almost designed discouragement.  I asked someone to lead me and a coworker on an ice hike and he said, “I’ll do it, but, man, it’s just more ice out there, it doesn’t get better, it just goes on forever.”  Group housing, roommates, no personal kitchens, galley style dining room, common computer labs, everything is group access and there really is no alone time.  Strange to think about, one of the most inhospitable climates on the planet and I can’t pass gas without making a bunch of people’s lives a lot worse for a few minutes.  And yes, everyone is constantly farting here.  Everyone.  All the time.  There is no escape.  Anywhere.  Canned, salty galley food.  It’s a rough continent.

 

I have found a small group of people who want to learn and share bluegrass tunes.  We are the only vegetation on the continent… bluegrass.  It’s been a few weeks and as I start to recognize people and as I am recognized, I have noticed that people here smile at strangers, shake hands, wave from the driver’s seats of trucks and heavy loaders, people are goddamned friendly here.  Folks are just personable enough to ask you about what you do here, but very few people ask about what anyone does “back home.”  Could be that asking about “home” is a kind a torture knowing that we can’t go “home” until the contracts are done and the sun sets for winter.  Could be that people don’t care to begin with and knowing what someone does in the community of 800 matters more than what someone does in a small town outside of a slightly larger town in a state that is known for cities that are far away from where anyone here actually lives.  Some people stay here year round and are patiently waiting for the “tourists” to leave so that things get back to lonely normal again.  To clarify, there are no tourists, everyone goes to work from 7:30-17:30.  The “old crusties” just complain about the new folk and all the hustle bustle, and the sun, and the dust, and the food… and then they choose to live here because it has become home and they can’t deal with “the real world.”  It’s a rough continent, but much better than the alternatives.

 

Like I said, I am AT work but I do not do a lot of work.  Today, for instance, my paramedic counterpart is being trained on how to run the front desk of the McMurdo Medical Clinic.  He has the not-as-unique-as-I-wish-it-were ability to act as if any activity in which he is involved is a high stress, time consuming, highly complicated activity and requires immediate attention, more resources, quick answers, and fast hand movements.  He is good at making this very laid back responsibility of answering the door for no one, picking up a phone that isn’t ringing, and scheduling the 4 practitioners with the none patients that are waiting for appointments, seem like a soul crushing responsibility that he, and only he can just barely take control of and yet expertly handle while sighing deeply and saying things like “back to the grind stone” and “now, what did you need again?  Sorry, got tied up.”  The rest of us look around at the empty clinic and quiet phones and we shrug.  There are currently 4 practitioners, maybe more.  There is a head MD who does not see patients because I think he is constantly in planning meetings with administrators that have the same skill set as the guy being trained at the front desk who makes everything impossible but somehow pulls it off.  These administrators keep Chris, Doctor M, the lead MD pretty busy with meetings, so he rarely sees any of the none patients that come in to the clinic regularly.  There is a resident MD who is finishing an MD and PhD at the same time.  She works for NASA and University of Texas, plays piano and violin, runs ultra marathons and rock climbs (she planned and ran the McMurdo marathon here and then was not satisfied when she crossed the finish line so she decided to run the 10 miles back to the base from the finish line which was out on the ice.  That level of crazy exists here in abundance, as does the opposing level of lazy, but that’s a different story), and draws daily cartoons of the day’s events and interesting interactions she has with USAF (armed forces) and NSF (science) crews.  She do everything… twice…  There are 2 PAs on staff during the summer, an RN who is the clinic manager, a complete US Air Force crew with a flight surgeon, flight nurse, and critical care flight medic, last week saw the addition of a MD Dentist and an MD radiologist.  The winter crew (which is much smaller than the summer crew) arrives tonight and the summer MDs and PAs begin the handoff which takes a few weeks.  So it is madness, but that doesn’t mean that I am busy, it just means that I am at work and most likely in the way of someone accessing one of the hundreds of oral suction machines that are charging behind my best at all times.  I have a desk.  I can’t remember the last time I had an actual desk at which I had to do work.  I am currently at my desk writing this letter.  There are many like it, but this one is mine.  

So maybe McMurdo is a bit like the island of broken toys, but that isn’t stopping me from being the me that I knew existed before I came down here.  I was only allowed 50lbs of clothing and personal items and I brought a banjo.  It took up a significant chunk of my weight allowance.  Best decision I could have made.  I bought my banjo in July of 2020 as a response to the world shutting down because of Covid.  At the time, I sat on my porch in Boise and clunked/plunked/flunked out simple two-or-three chord progressions until I no longer clunked or plunked.  I brought that banjo with me on shift at Ada County Paramedics and sat on the tailgate of my ambulance between runs playing the same songs faster and faster.  So of course I am going to bring it down to the bottom of the Earth with me.  The remained 35 pounds of my personal items along with duffle bag in which they were being transported were lost by the capable hands of the baggage dept in Australia.  I made sure that my Banjo was carry-on even though it did not fit into any overhead bins, in my lap, or under the seat in front of me.  It just kinda worked and got all the way to ChristChurch with me where as my underwear and the rest of my clothes did not.  Priorities.  Anyway, the banjo is here with me in McMurdo and is currently in its hard case behind my desk chair in which I am sitting while writing this ever expanding note at my desk, did I mention I have a desk?  I have a desk.  Having my banjo and my desk seriously adds to the oddity of the entirely already peculiar adventures.  The point is that the banjo has become a travel companion.  I lean on it during down time… and I constantly choose time with my banjo over time at the bar quite often.  That has resulted in me being the anchor of a bluegrass night on Tuesdays at the weatherproof warehouse that has an espresso machine in it, thus resulting in the warehouse being named “the Coffee House.”  I guess I run bluegrass night at the coffee house.  Weird.

The other night I was in the one long hallway in the main public building where everyone bumps into each other, literally.  Kiwis make up a good percentage of the population here, Kiwis being people from New Zealand, not the awkward bird, which also fits as a definition of most folks here at McMurdo, and Kiwis drive on the opposite side of the road than drivers in the US and, thus, walk down the only hallway on the same side that they would drive and then run into Americans walking with the same driving instinct.  We call this hallway Highway 1.  I was walking Highway 1 and someone broke their leg while playing basketball in a weatherproof warehouse with a basketball net in.  We call that building the “big gym”.  So I called 911 which activates an alarm in the weatherproof warehouse that we call the firehouse.  Then a grabbed an EMS jump bag from the Medical warehouse and started walking past all the weatherproof warehouses towards the one we call the Big Gym, which is the warehouse with the basketball net in it.  His leg wasn’t broken, his knee was temporarily dislocated, subluxation if you want to be specific.  It had reduced already, but he was US Coast Guard so I knew he was going to Medical for evaluation.  The sun was out at the time, so I knew it was… sunny.  My watch said 21:00 (9pm and sunny).  The PA and I evaluated the knee, took some x-rays that showed no fractures, did some ultrasound examinations of the tendons, the ACL, and check the meniscus.  It was rad.  He was fine, his commander gave me a “challenge coin” from the Polar Star Antarctic Ice Breaker Vessel.  It’s a giant gold coin with a Polar Bear one side and the Coast Guard crest on the other that basically means that I did something good for a serviceman.  It’s just a coin but hot damn am I excited about owning it.

Tonight is Karaoke.  Maybe, just maybe I’ll sign “Everything I do, I do it for you” by Brian Adams because that song is ridiculous.  Probably not.  But maybe.  (I didn’t go.  Well, I guess I did, I walked in, but it was really crowded, smelled terrible, and was loud and obnoxious, so I left without singing any 90’s ballads).

This place is strange.  This place is uncomfortable and everything is slightly broken, dinged-up, damaged, but everything necessary, still working hard, limping along as best it can, useful.  This place is off-putting, dusty, dirty and simultaneously breathtakingly beautiful and serene.  This place hides its treasures inside beat up identical warehouses, an espresso machine invites strangers to sit and sip coffee together.  An out of tune guitar hanging on the wall invites a terrible rendition of “Wagon Wheel” to be sung as loud and as discordant as possible.  The community reflects the landscape.  The people mirror McMurdo in both its obvious and its hidden components.  We are ugly and broken and dusty and dirty and useful and happy and beautiful.  It’s a harsh continent and I couldn’t be happier anywhere else today.