Ice Camp After Hours

After work we've enjoyed each other's company in the main tent getting to know each other, listening to music, talking about physics, philosophy & politics, enjoying hot chocolate with Kahlua, and once we watched a movie. Outside after work we've enjoyed Bocce ball, listening to music around the pole at the bottom of the big pit, a snowball fight around the pit's edge, and taking walks down the 1km line of flags that mark the area safe from crevasses. Here are pics of the snowball fight and a Bocce ball game (hard when the balls sink into the snow!).

Nate has worked for NPR and the Washington Post and is now a general assistant at McMurdo. He and Julia, in that job will travel to various research sites around Antarctica for a couple weeks at a time helping with general tasks. For us they've helped un-bury equipment, dig pits for ice tests, and assemble and erect solar and wind towers. Without their help we'd need twice as much time here to complete our work. Bija's role with us is camp master: she's managed all the logistics for the camp and meals with help from Nate and Julia, is our regular radio check-in contact with McMurdo, and is a woofer (wilderness first responder) responsible for the emergency medical kit. Without her, we could not even last more than a day here. Her name is Sanskrit means "seed". I've been learning some Sanskrit this year and understand that the language is constructed from seed concepts (stemming from an even earlier language), so the word "seed" is very fundamental to the philosophy behind the structure of the language. We are very grateful for their help, and ever-joyful presence. Often I hear Julia singing in the morning, and the accents Nate and Julia pretend are delightful.

Here's an audio clip at the end of a 1km walk the other day. Nate starts, Julia chimes in then Joulien starts making a drilling noise with the flag (with corresponding photo).

On another day, December 8, I stayed at the end of the 1km line alone sitting for a period of zazen meditation respecting Rohatsu (Buddha's enlightenment as observed in the Zen tradition). Here's a panorama taken there at that time which you can only imagine. The snow up close is perfectly white (unlike the photo), and you can somewhat tell the difference between grey sky and white snow.

Here is a close up of one part, showing a black dot = our camp 1km away behind a wind tower we setup. You can also see some dark part of the distant Mt. Morning.

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Coming back to camp that day it occurred to me that you might wonder how we make water for drinking. We designated a place near camp where we would only walk to to shovel snow into a plastic bin. In the kitchen a large potful can be melted down to water if you pour some water in to get it started (otherwise there's not enough contact between the snow and the pan to melt it unless you wait a very long time). The snow here is very dry, light and fluffy and the water tastes great!