A friend I just hooked up with again on Facebook after who knows how many years, reminded me of an experience I thought I'd share.I'm one of the (relatively) small group of people who have spent 6 months at one of the poles. In this case, the place I'm talking about is Alert, Nunavut. I was there over the winter of 1989 / 1990. When I got there at the beginning of September, the sun was up 24 hours a day (although very low in the sky). This phenomenon makes it very hard to sleep well unless you completely black out your room window. But by mid-October, the sun dips below the horizon for good and doesn't re-appear again until the 1st of March. That's 24 hour darkness. That really messes up your system. You step outside at noon and it's pitch black. The only natural source of light comes from the moon. After the few months of darkness, when twilight begins to brush the horizon in late January for an hour or so surrounding the noon hour, it has a hypnotizing effect on your soul. Each day, the twilight gets brighter and lasts a while longer. I can remember staring out the window at lunch time in February, watching the sky get brighter and brighter, knowing that once the sun breached the horizon again, I would be on my way home.
During winter, the temperature is an almost unwavering -35C (-31F). There's snow everywhere - of course, but it's not deep in most places - maybe a foot, but it's hard packed and it makes a loud crunching sound when you walk on it. It's the wind that you should be afraid of. When a storm whips up, it can reduce visibility to zero for hours or even days at a time and you dare not venture outside. Not only would you freeze to death, the wind is strong enough to disorient you and even blow you away from safety. There are actual ropes that are tied between occupied buildings to assist in getting from one to the other to get to the safety of the main complex before the crap hits the fan at full force. Buildings that are far removed from the main complex are stocked with enough provisions to last a week or more, just in case you didn't make it back to the rest of the camp before a major storm hits.
Being in Alert is akin to being on another planet. There are no trees or obvious plant life of any kind. The lack of trees makes it difficult to gauge distance. Mountains that look 20 miles away are more like 150 miles. You are so far removed from civilization that news arrives days or even weeks late. Everything must come by aircraft. There are no live TV or radio signals from down south (or at least - not in the era while I was there). Recorded TV programming arrives up to 6 weeks after it originally aired. Alert has its own radio station, which is a blast to operate I might add, but you still must follow CRTC protocols (no swearing, etc.) because flights that fly over could tune into your station. Being in isolation does nasty things to your psyche, among other things, anything happening back home is so totally outside of your control that you really do feel like you're on an unstoppable space mission. So you have to try to keep your wits about you by keeping busy. Doing things you'd never dream of doing under normal circumstances. That sounds worse than it is. By that I simply mean that activities that wouldn't normally interest you suddenly are intriguing. You can't survive as a loner in Alert. You need to belong to the fraternity you live in and play their fun, silly games (the details of which I swore an oath not to divulge). Because these brothers and sisters are your new family - the only people you can depend on to help keep you sane until your tour is over.
It's not all bad. They have a gym that stays open 24 hours a day. Curling rink. Bowling alley. Weather station, which is usually populated by some awesome people. Visiting the weather station is like visiting the neighbouring small town - it is almost completely self-contained. In daylight hours, there are amazing ice caves to visit a short tracked vehicle drive away. You can climb onto an iceberg! How many people have done that? The cooks in Alert took real pride with the meals they served. I can't think of a time when I ate better.
One would think that being only 500 miles from the North Pole, there wouldn't be any animals. Under normal circumstances, you'd be right. Even the Inuit are smart enough not to live this far north. But over time, the garbage dump has attracted a growing, sustainable population of arctic fox, arctic hare and arctic wolves along with the occasional visit from a polar bear. I had a close encounter with the wolf pack while visiting the dump during the dark months. It was fascinating, but scary as hell.
3 comments:
It's amazing how one can endure a situation when going into it seems like it will be a death sentence. What a great experience though.
Alert is farther north than Barrow, Alaska where I lived for nine years. Very similar in that we lived for poker night, movie night, board game night etc. Also the sun set in November and rose in January. At it's deepest darkest bits there was a lovely pinkish pre dawn period about 1 p.m. The moon rise was spectacular. The buses ran regularly, the taxi service was reliable and there were three grocery stores, a bank, a hospital, a court house, a jail, an airport and various residences. The jet flew in twice a day. It was isolated but not impossible. There were animals as well, there was a caribou herd, arctic fox, polar bear, walrus, seals, glorious song birds. And the snow was not deep, just blew around a lot and was crunchy to walk on. The tundra was springy, like walking on a very firm mattress, depending upon the season.
Alert only had one or two flights per week. Bad weather delayed the flight in Thule (Greenland) until the next day, which usually sucked for anyone looking forward to getting home after their 6 month tour.
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