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5. McMurdo
- Oregon State University Press
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30 5. McMurdo eee As Ivan the Terrabus docked on the ice alongside Building 155 at McMurdo Station, an ambulance pulled in beside us. From my seat on the bus, I watched the medics through a frosty window. Sunshine lit up the station, glaring off reflective surfaces and glinting on ice crystals. Frozen streets congealed with gravel, snow, and ice. Weather-worn exteriors looked shabby. Machinery lurked everywhere outside in parking spaces, alleyways, and empty lots: tracked Hagglund vehicles, monster Delta shuttles, Mattracked 4x4 pickups, bulldozers, tanks of oil and chemicals, ice drills, and industrial waste bins. Workers walked quickly between buildings, boots crunching on gravel, shoulders hunched into the crisp air. Such was life on the frontier. Kirsten, from her seat in the back of Ivan’s passenger space, leaned over and winked behind wraparound sunglasses. “You know, if you smile any bigger, your head might split. But at least the hospital is right outside.” If I couldn’t stop grinning, it wasn’t my fault. I looked everywhere at once, snapping photos and soaking in first impressions of places and people. Antarctic veterans sat quietly, amused by the raw excitement of new recruits. It would be a few days before we saw any penguins. The nearest colonies were miles away, and penguins rarely wandered past McMurdo. I had a week to chill in relative civilization before catching a helicopter to Cape Crozier, the penguin metropolis where I would be living and working for the season with Kirsten and Michelle. Meanwhile, McMurdo Station presented an odd place to spend time. The station itself is unusual. And everyone in it—up to fifteen hundred people in summer, forming the biggest “city” 31 McMurdo in Antarctica—must also be a little strange. The people, personalities, and culture among McMurdo’s eccentric population add to its outcast environment. The station is not by any means a diverse place. There are no kids, no old people, and no permanent residents. Men form two-thirds of the population. All are Americans, and less than 10 percent are minorities. However, on an individual level, everyone is unique. Ordinary people generally don’t apply for jobs in Antarctica. Werner Herzog’s 2007 documentary Encounters at the End of the World was filmed here, and portrays Antarctica’s most ingrained characters in a no-holds-barred, often unflattering (but mostly accurate) context. Probably for that reason, Herzog is viewed with suspicion or openly disliked by many who met him down south. Still, Encounters is an entertaining movie—totally Netflix it—and captures the eccentricity of life on The Ice. I watched medics carry someone on a stretcher from the ambulance into an adjacent building, next to a hand-painted sign: “General Hospital.” They disappeared inside, shutting the door quickly against the cold. Whoever was on the stretcher, bundled up, wasn’t moving. I was surprised to see a genuine ambulance here, red emergency lights flashing, thousands of miles from the nearest paved road. Later, I found out that the victim on the stretcher had been evacuated from the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station with extreme altitude sickness. The pole sits on a thick ice sheet about ten thousand feet above sea level, and some visitors can’t deal with such elevation. Their lungs fill with fluid, their brains swell, their doctors talk about edemas, and, unless the victims get to lower altitude, they die. e Building 155’s coat room was like something from a practical joke. Hundreds of identical Big Reds aligned on coat hooks around the entryway’s perimeter, two or three deep. A couple [54.145.183.34] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:31 GMT) 32 Noah Strycker guys had clearly forgotten where they had left their own assigned jackets, and were anxiously pawing through them all, one by one, reading name tags. I made a careful note of my chosen hook. Adjacent rooms formed the center of McMurdo activity and organization. Building 155 held the store, kitchens, bank (including ATM), offices, and dorm rooms. Inside, the structure defied all expectations of stark functionality. A large cafeteria was furnished in sharp contrast to McMurdo’s industrial exterior. Tasteful artwork decorated the walls, soft carpet padded underfoot, and comfortable furniture was arranged around tables. Against one wall, a bank of soda and juice machines dispensed unlimited refreshment. Like a few remote stations I’d visited in other parts of the world, McMurdo was outfitted with civilized accents. I found an unoccupied table with Kirsten...