Home sweet home, from the top of Ob HillIt's about time I post something about station life here at McMurdo. Originally opened in 1956 by the Navy to support the US's scientific efforts during the International Polar Year (1957-1958), the station feels like the cross between a mining town, an army base and a college campus. The population during the summer months rises upwards to 1,100 people, 200-300 of which are scientists and the rest being support staff.
It's a place with no children, very few old people, even fewer minorities, a 3-1 male/female ratio, and virtually no private space. There are few colors, and most smells are associated with our human presence - the most common smells are fuel, cafeteria food, and soap on passerby. There is no nighttime during the summer months - no need for headlamps or streetlights for my entire residency here. The flora is limited to a few species of algae and lichen in the Dry Valleys, though millions of years ago the place teemed with prehistoric life, as evidence by fossil records. The fauna includes penguins, seals, whales, birds, microscopic organisms, and, most recently, human beings.
In a lot of ways, coming down here is like a long fast. Yep, it's weird. And challenging at times. I (mostly) like the weirdness and challenges.
Work
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My average day on station goes something like this: I wake up sometime around 7:30am and make it to the office shortly afterward. Throughout the day, I am busy prepping GPS gear, training science groups on how to use the equipment, processing data, and generally helping people with the GPS or LiDAR portion of their projects. Sometimes that means schlepping truck loads of gear to a central cargo location that will ship the equipment out into the deep field. Sometimes that means hunting around the rows and rows of cargo stored outside for that one pallet of batteries that is desperately needed for a field mission. Because plans change here so often, there's usually a surprise mission every day.
How our stuff gets down hereRight now I'm busy closing out the season, which means I have become a packing machine. Most of the equipment we've used down here must travel back to Colorado so that it can immediately be turned over to the Arctic projects that we will work on or support this coming summer. We have some 2500 - 3000 pounds of equipment that needs to get shipped north, and most of it travels in these large, triwall cardboard boxes. The gear first travels to New Zealand on a C17 military flight, and then to California on a commercial airliner. Once in the States, it will be put onto a FedEx freight truck which will deliver it to Boulder. All in all, the triwall will have traveled close to 10,000 miles over 7-10 days by the time it gets back to Boulder.
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The Galley
Food
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Twice a day, I head to the Galley for lunch and dinner (I know I'm not supposed to skip breakfast because it's the most important meal of the day, but I do anyway). The food is buffet-style, all-you-can-eat, and it's dished out in large bain maries. This year we were lucky to get a steady of "freshies" - salad, fresh fruit and fresh vegetables - about 3-4 times a week. The rest of the food is frozen, canned, or dried.
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My (messy) dorm roomHousing
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Everybody on station lives in a dorm, and everybody minus a few esteemed individuals must have a roommate. There are some dozen dorms to choose from on station, each having its own perks. The bottom line is that it's all about having a roommate you jive with because that space, no matter how you rearrange the furniture, will never truly be private.
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Recreation
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There's plenty to do on station, especially if you aren't afraid to get creative. It's possible that the center of social life on station revolves around the 3 bars, two of which serve beer and hard alcohol drinks. The third bar is really a combo coffeehouse and wine bar, and it's referred to simply as "the coffeehouse". About twice a month, there is a themed party of some kind in one of the work centers.
Around McMurdo, there is a small network of hiking and skiing trails that are open to anyone. There is also quite a variety of league and intramural sports and fitness classes, most of which take place in our small indoor gym. Like everything else, these activities are open to one and all.
ET and I duke it out in the gym.
For the more artistic members of the community, there is a crafts room with all sorts of artsy materials, from fabrics to beads to sewing machines to clay, etc. Every year, one work center - most recently the Carpenter's Shop - will host the McMurdo Alternative Art Gallery (MAAG), where members of our community get to showcase their art for one night.
The Legendary Beep Beeps play at Freezing Man
You can check out musical instruments of all kinds at the "Gear Issue", which also has some sporting goods (skis, mostly), costumes, and other random items. There are several bands on station, each offering its own genre of music to the community. My favorites are "Porn Spill" - a funk band - and the duo called "The Ukeladies", but bluegrass, rock 'n roll, pop, jazz, and indie are all represented in quality bands that play periodically throughout the season. Annually on New Year's Eve, all of the bands line up for Icestock, an all-day outdoor music festival of sorts.
And finally, but certainly not least, there is improvised recreation that people down here create for themselves. There are endless ads around station for anything you can think of - philosophy classes hosted in a dorm lounge, a call for submissions to the McMurdo Independent Film Festival, travel lectures, meditation sessions, metal-working classes, etc. Most of these activities are more or less underground and run by one or two dedicated and passionate individuals. This pseudo-counterculture is a really definitive part of the experience down here, and it's one of the things I find most interesting about McMurdo.
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The library is a good place to chill
Recreation
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There's plenty to do on station, especially if you aren't afraid to get creative. It's possible that the center of social life on station revolves around the 3 bars, two of which serve beer and hard alcohol drinks. The third bar is really a combo coffeehouse and wine bar, and it's referred to simply as "the coffeehouse". About twice a month, there is a themed party of some kind in one of the work centers.
Around McMurdo, there is a small network of hiking and skiing trails that are open to anyone. There is also quite a variety of league and intramural sports and fitness classes, most of which take place in our small indoor gym. Like everything else, these activities are open to one and all.
ET and I duke it out in the gym.For the more artistic members of the community, there is a crafts room with all sorts of artsy materials, from fabrics to beads to sewing machines to clay, etc. Every year, one work center - most recently the Carpenter's Shop - will host the McMurdo Alternative Art Gallery (MAAG), where members of our community get to showcase their art for one night.
The Legendary Beep Beeps play at Freezing ManYou can check out musical instruments of all kinds at the "Gear Issue", which also has some sporting goods (skis, mostly), costumes, and other random items. There are several bands on station, each offering its own genre of music to the community. My favorites are "Porn Spill" - a funk band - and the duo called "The Ukeladies", but bluegrass, rock 'n roll, pop, jazz, and indie are all represented in quality bands that play periodically throughout the season. Annually on New Year's Eve, all of the bands line up for Icestock, an all-day outdoor music festival of sorts.
And finally, but certainly not least, there is improvised recreation that people down here create for themselves. There are endless ads around station for anything you can think of - philosophy classes hosted in a dorm lounge, a call for submissions to the McMurdo Independent Film Festival, travel lectures, meditation sessions, metal-working classes, etc. Most of these activities are more or less underground and run by one or two dedicated and passionate individuals. This pseudo-counterculture is a really definitive part of the experience down here, and it's one of the things I find most interesting about McMurdo.
