Sleeping

The sleeping situation at Summit is way less cush than in Antarctica. In McMurdo, everyone complained about having to have roommates in the summer (which is one of the reasons I preferred to be there in the winter). And at South Pole people get their own rooms, but they are notoriously tiny. Here, I am in a room that is the size of a South Pole room, AND I have a roommate. So basically I don't spend any time in my room except for when I'm sleeping. It's in a trailer that feels kind of like a train car and so is aptly called "The Caboose." Needless to say (?) it doesn't have indoor plumbing. This pic shows The Caboose on the right (the red structure); an even MORE utilitarian berthing structure in white in the middle ("The Flarm"), that has multiple bunks stacked three high all in one common space; and then, on the left, the outhouse that we all use. There are indoor bathrooms with sinks and showers  less than 1/4-mi away in The Big House.

Here's the indoor hallway in The Caboose...

...and my room, with my roommate, B, organizing some of her things. It's pretty not possible for us both to be standing up in the room doing anything at the same time, so if we're both in the room simultaneously, one of us needs to be in bed, and we've been doing a pretty good job of coordinating our comings and goings to accommodate that. And I'm just grateful we do have heat in The Caboose!

The outhouse pictured in the first shot is also the outhouse for the construction team, as our workspace (not pictured) is just to the right of The Caboose. I'll do a post on that later. Also, sometime this week, The Flarm and The Caboose are going to be dragged (by heavy equipment operators) closer to The Big House. They are trying to consolidate berthing structures for safety, as last year a polar bear wandered into the camp, and no one wants to be surprised by that. (More on that in another post, as well.) It will still mean walking out into the sub-zero temps to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, but at least it will mean a shorter walk from where I brush my teeth and wash my face before bed over to my actual bed. The constant daylight and shocking cold can be a real sleep-killer! But since I got mostly adjusted to the altitude and the new routine, my sleep has been pretty okay, and I'm grateful for that.

Summit Station

For those of you who haven't yet cracked open an Atlas to take a closer look at Greenland, let me help you out. The bits of land you see to the left of the island are northern Canada, and that little bit of land poking into the frame on the lower right is Iceland. The vast majority of Greenland lies above the Arctic Circle and its native people are Inuit. Though in a lot of respects Greenland acts as an independent country and would (as I understand it) prefer to be so, it is technically a department of Denmark, which is why you won't find it on a list of the countries of the world. Kangerlussuaq, the town I first flew into, is labeled on this map, about 1/4 of the way up the west coast of the island. And Summit Station, where I am now working until late June, is located at the red dot marked just above the L in the word Greenland.

We flew from Kanger to Summit South-Pole-style, in an LC-130 (Herc) piloted by the Air National Guard.

It was fun to be in one of these super-uncomfortable cargo planes again for the first time since I last left Pole, 2.5 years ago. Part of the cargo on our ride were two new snowmobiles for Summit--very exciting.

It wasn't too long into the flight when we said goodbye to the thawing coast and headed out over the ice sheet, no dirt to be seen again until we descend back to Kanger in June.

And after a quick, two-hour trip, we arrived. Summit is at 72-degrees latitude--definitely the furthest north I've been on the planet. Pictured here is the main building of the station, dubbed "The Big House."

The landscape looks pretty much exactly like it does at South Pole. Flat. White. Endless. :)

So that's where we are, now! You can read a lot more about the camp at this website. And I'll start telling more about various aspects of life here in coming posts. Till then!

Field trips from Kangerlussuaq

We have been told we are very lucky that we got to have a whole weekend in Kanger before our flight up to Summit. And I do feel lucky; it was so fun to explore around town! And then outside of town.

One evening after we finished our training session, I took the two-mile walk out to Lake Ferguson. I love this "Caution: Muskox" sign I saw along the way.

And somehow everything, even decomposing junk, is pretty in this sweeping, grand landscape.

The temperature next to the lake felt 10-20 degrees cooler than on the road leading to it, with the chill off of all that ice drifting over me. But it was a beautiful sight.

On Sunday, we took advantage of the rare opportunity to have a day off in Kanger and two of the full-time staff here were kind enough to take us on a huge adventure on Greenland's longest road (15+ miles! of graveled joy...which is to say there aren't any long-distance roads in Greenland; it's just a massive ice sheet with coastal towns along its edges that generally require boat or plane transport) to visit Russell Glacier and a spot further up at the edge of the ice sheet labeled "660." It was especially exciting for me because I got to drive the third vehicle, so now I can say I've actually driven Greenland's longest road. And what a road it was. We saw a bunch of caribou...Can you spot them?

And we passed by a lake with shores littered with "sea tomatoes"--apparently a type of bacterium.

It was weird and surprising to see just a few fir trees growing along the road at one point. I can't even imagine how long these guys must have been growing to be this big (maybe 6 feet tall or so?) above the Arctic Circle.

There is also the detritus of a long-ago plane crash along the road, looking very forlorn.

And then we started approaching the edge of the ice sheet, and: WOW.

We walked about a mile through terrific, exhausting wind to get to the edge of Russell Glacier, which was mind-blowing and TOTALLY worth the slog. So glad there are people in this picture so you can see the incredible scale of this ice.

We also got to watch it calving and the bergs floating down the outflow. Totally stunning.

We also drove to the very end of the road, to the 660 site, but I don't have any pictures of that as impressive as these, so let's just end on a high note. By the way, this area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and you can read about why that is, here. (Spoiler: it has to do not with the natural beauty of the place, but with its cultural significance to the native Inuits.)

With all this amazing exploring under our belts, it already feels like I've had an epic Greenland adventure, and my job hasn't even really begun. Next step: the journey to Summit Station!

Kangerlussuaq, Greenland!

I had no idea when I wrote that last Indonesia post that my next venture outside the US would be to Greenland. I'm so grateful to be here!

So the backstory is: I got a job with a company called Polar Field Services, which operates the US Arctic Program, which is a sister program to the US Antarctic Program and is (as you might imagine) lush with Antarctic folks who bounce back and forth between Poles each summer. So I'd heard about Greenland as a work option my first summer at Pole (almost five years ago now--that's crazy) and have since then hoped to get up here. I still can't quite believe that it worked out on my first try; I feel so lucky and happy to have this experience. Especially because I got hired (obviously based on my polar experience and not on my work history) as a Trades Helper. So basically, I'll be spending the better part of two months at a scientific research base called Summit that is about as high as you can get up on the Greenlandic ice sheet (we'll be at about 10,500 feet), shoveling snow and helping with construction projects.

But first we have to get to Summit, which is of course a process. I flew from Milwaukee to Chicago for my overnight flight to Denmark (because Greenland is a department of Denmark, and so Air Greenland flies regularly there), really excited that I'd be arriving mid-afternoon and able to spend my arrival evening exploring Copenhagen, a city I've never seen before. Unfortunately, due to strikes happening at Scandinavian Air, I found out in Chicago that my flight to Copenhagen was cancelled. I ended up on a flight to Heathrow and then on to Copenhagen by late the next night, but my checked bag did not end up on those flights with me and as of this writing has still not caught up with me. That's been sad and stressful. And it was a bummer to miss out on an afternoon of checking out what I hear is a fantastic European capitol.

BUT, other than those unfortunate events, things have been great. The morning after my arrival in Copenhagen, I flew on to Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, a town that exists mostly because an American Air Force Base here built it up from the even tinier town it used to be, and now it's handy as the largest airfield in Greenland and the most common place on the island to fly into.

I arrived with the eleven other people who will comprise the springtime construction crew at Summit, and we've had the entire weekend here in Kanger to start getting to know each other, do some orientation and trainings, and explore! I'll spare you the sleep-inducing info on expense reports and general safety awareness training and instead skip to the exploring part. Starting, in this post, with the town of Kanger.

The setting is GORGEOUS, in a fjord that has a river running through it.

One of the claims to fame is Greenland's token road sign to everywhere. It's crazy that we're closer to the North Pole than to Copenhagen, after our 4+-hour flight from there.

A charming Greenlandic...post office box? Not sure if it's decorational or operational.

And some typical Greenlandic table runners?

I have NO idea what this sign says, but I think it's hysterical.

And I want to nominate this daycare for "best scenic backdrop."

There are a whopping four bars in this tiny town, and one of them apparently occasionally has live music on a stage with a duct-taped drum set and a polar bear hide watching over it. So of course this is the bar we frequented the most during our time here.

My absolute favorite picture I've taken so far is this one of a couple who were walking down the street toward me, hand in hand, as if out on a date..and both carrying their rifles. So as soon as they passed I whipped around and took a picture. There is the possibility of polar bears wandering into this area, but it's not incredibly likely. More likely they were...going to hunt caribou or muskox? I really don't know, but this is so sweet and striking to me.

Also, if you're a golf-lover, never fear: Kanger has a golf course. It looks like an apocalyptic nightmare, set in the floodplain of the river valley, but if you're desperate...

Seriously, though, it's gorgeous here. And wait till you see the next pictures I post, from the excursions I got to take outside of town....

Ruteng

My last new stop on this trip was the town of Ruteng, back in the highlands, but even closer on my way back to Labuan Bajo. I stayed three nights via Airbnb with a lovely Indonesian divorcee, U, who lived in Tasmania for a decade and speaks great English. It was so much fun getting to know her, and as I was her only guest at the time (high season ended in October, and I'm hitting the beginning of rainy season, which is PERFECT, because there aren't too many tourists around, yet it's not really raining that much yet) she very sweetly took the time to show me around and come with me on walks and activities.

The town of Ruteng itself is pretty bustling...

...But U's place is just a bit outside of town, and my little bungalow there had it's own porch with this beautiful view, which I enjoyed to the fullest over my breakfasts and dinners and lazy afternoons reading and catching up on computer work.

U (who makes me look like a total giant...she seemed taken aback by my height, even though I'm not really that tall by Western standards) went with me to see the "spiderweb ricefields," which I was very confused and curious about, but turns out are just rice fields that are laid out radially from a single point, like wheel spokes. Kind of cool.

From there we went to a "traditional village," which I was very skeptical about, and kind of tried to get out of, though I didn't try hard enough, and away we went. The structures are lovely and striking, and I learned afterward that each modern day village is supposed to have one as a meeting place for community gatherings, which is nice.

But this spot just felt like the total tourist trap I'd been sadly expecting. The guy who runs it had built himself a massive concrete house with all the money he's raking in to dress people up in batik wraps and walk them 100 yards over to see the traditional houses from a bit closer. And he has a pitch of trying to get you to pay four times more to go into the houses, one of which, he says, contains the world's only human-skin drum. And he told a story that I couldn't understand, that U reiterated for me after: that there was a beautiful woman that three local kings were fighting over, and when they got tired of fighting, they just killed her and used the skin from her stomach to make a drum. A totally horrifying story, though U says she doesn't think it's true--that she never heard it as a kid, and this guy might have just made it up to try to get more money out of tourists. Which, unfortunately, is even more horrifying. Either way, U said, not worth it to pay extra to see it, so at least I was spared that.

Ironically, the most interesting part of the traditional house visit, for me, was that the guy who runs the place grabbed my phone from me and was insistent that we do these very involved glamour photo shoots. He had a fun flair for playing with perspective, but I was just laughing so hard the whole time I was sure the pictures were not going to turn out. This one is the best; the rest are just really embarrassing.

Definitely Indonesians love to take selfies, I've noticed. I don't know if the sole focus of this traditional village being selfies, though, is something they learned that Western tourists like? Which would just be so depressing, but is very possibly true. Or do Indonesians just really love it and want to make Western tourists happy that way? I don't know. Maybe it's just PEOPLE in general who are like this. Which always makes me feel like an alien sociologist just watching people and scratching my head.

My favorite parts of the Ruteng visit were the ones not really intended or engineered. After our scheduled tourist stops, we swung by the village where U grew up to visit her sister, whose house I just LOVED.

And the morning I left, U and I got up very early for a sunrise walk through the village as it was waking up, to a viewpoint over Ruteng. I loved seeing the kids on their way to school...

...and the view from the top of the hill down into town was like a fairytale, with some morning mist still blanketing the valley.

Also, the sunset over U's house on my last night there was jaw-dropping.

So, from Ruteng, I caught one last ride back to Labuan Bajo, and I'm spending the last weekend of my trip here without much of an agenda. Take some walks, enjoy the good restaurants and cafes here,  read, do some computer work that I know I won't have time to get to once I'm home and trying to catch up with everyone and the holiday season is pressing down hard. So for now, I'll have a few very peaceful days staying in yet another little private bungalow, this one with a fantastic view of the Labuan Bajo harbor.

If all goes according to plan, on Monday afternoon I'll fly to Bali and from there catch my flights back south to New Zealand. Pick up my luggage from the Antarctic center, sleep for a night there in Christchurch, and then on Dec 5 fly hoooooooome...to WI.

I suppose it's possible there will be enough unexpectedly photogenic moments between now and then to warrant another blog post, but I'm not really anticipating that and so will sign off for now. Thanks for following along on my 2018 global adventures. I really have no idea what 2019 is going to bring for me. It seems pretty safe to assume I'll be venturing outside the US at some point; I just don't know where or when. But when it happens, and wherever I go, I'll meet you back here to tell you all about it.