Lost Discoveries

I finished The Hobbit, and with some reservation, I began Lost Discoveries by Dick Teresi.  It seems like the book will be reasonably interesting, but after The Hobbit I wanted to jump into LOTR. (My guide to italics did not cover abbreviated titles!  Thoughts, grammar nerds?)  I did not do this, because I am trying to purge hardcover books first (as they weigh more, and I am trying to cut 30lbs from my luggage).  As such, The Fellowship of the Ring will be a reward for learning about the lost scientific discoveries of man, owing, largely it seems, to a Euro-centric culture (though I am only on page 12).

Transferred

It seems like I am being transferred to a couple of projects near Chicken on 30 July.  I am not sure for how long I will be there, but estimates range from two to three weeks.  I initially found out about this through scuttlebutt.  Even with all of the confusion, I am looking forward to the change of scenery, and a break in the monotony of a long hitch in a camp.

Anniversaries and Letting Go

For the first time in years, 23 July slipped by me.  I knew there was something significant about the date when I wrote it in my field book, but I could not place it.  As if it was a memory from a past life.  In many ways, it was.  From my current life, 25 July has become a date to remember, though I always forget it.  On 25 July 2010, I met Sarah, and, though I did not know it, she would become an important part of my life, quickly.  


Honestly, 25 July would have slipped by me as well, but Sarah emailed me.  She wrote me a message about how she felt in the first few months of knowing me.  We were both in rough patches of our lives, and probably still are.  One of the paragraphs in her email was about coming back to Red Dog for the second hitch.  Apparently, she, like me, was looking forward to the only bright spot in my life, and that was spending time with my new friend.  She wrote about the airport, as we were on the same flight out of Vancouver.  At the airport, I got there early, and was reading at the gate, she said hello to me when she arrived.  She wrote in her email, "I sensed the density of your pain on that day."


I suppose a year after such things have happened it is no longer rude to let the whole world know some of the details of my life.  Corinne and I moved out of the Painted Rose house in May.  Kelly was kind enough to let us stay with her intermittently through the summer.  Eventually, I went to Red Dog, on my R&R, I moved Corinne to Vancouver.  Corinne decided to not move with me (she may object to this, saying that she "had" to delay her defense, but few things in life "have" to be done in a certain way).  In doing that, she talked her sister into taking the trip that I proposed we take together, as part of our move.  Thus, by her choosing, I drove the moving truck to BC alone, I missed her defense, I moved everything into her apartment alone, then I waited for her and her sister to arrive from their trip.  Once they arrived, I spent a couple of days with Corinne and her sister before going back to Red Dog.  When it was time for me to go to the airport, I took a taxi, and Corinne stayed in bed, not getting up to say good-bye.  For those, and so many other reasons, I was in a lot of pain that day in the airport, feeling alone, lost and unloved.


Reading that line of Sarah's email brought those feelings back to me.  I am so happy to have her as a dear friend.  I was so happy to be reading that email, but great happiness comes with great pain, and in my experience, it is the pain that is lasting.  It is the pain that fills my memories, and it is the pain that I am trying to let go of.


People have tried to relate to what I must be going through, others have just acknowledged that it must be awful, and some have asked what it has been like.  I cannot describe in words what my divorce has felt like emotionally.  It was shocking when Corinne asked for it.  It was painful to acquiesce.  With every step of the process of ending it, I have felt enormous pain.  At the same time, removing her from my life eliminated the pain that living with her brought me.  I am free to be more open and honest about who I am.  I have people in my life who support me in not knowing what I want in life.  I have the love and support of people who actually love and support me.  All this should not be taken to mean that Corinne and I were never happy.  She was often very good to be, and we had lover's rituals that I still cherish and long for, and probably always will.  This is why it is complicated, but suffice it to say, I am better without her, than I ever was with her.  My life has improved by getting a divorce, even though the process has had a painful resonance that vibrated every fiber of my being.  Never has the pain of the divorce exceeded the pain I was feeling while sitting in the Vancouver Airport.


How do I let go of all of that?  I cannot hope to imagine the direct path.  I find that she is a significant part of my life that still comes up in conversations about me, despite wishing to cut out those years, and those memories.  Cutting out is not how memory works, and is not how emotions abate.  Instead, the wounds are healing slowly, and time is moving forward.  This means that on 23 July I write the date, and recall some fleeting importance from a past life, and on 25 July I receive an email that is a celebration of the good in my life.  I let go of old anniversaries, and new ones come along.

Reading

I like to read, but I find that it is hard to find the time to do it.  Perhaps it would be more reasonable to say that I find it hard to make the time to read.  In camps, it is particularly difficult for me to accomplish this.  So I generally read at breakfast in camp.  When I work, I read at lunch.  I generally read before going to sleep, but this is also prime journal time.  In camp, I usually feel too tired to accomplish anything significant laying in bed, other than falling asleep.  Thus, breakfast is sacred time, reserved for reading.

For some people, a book is not a "do not disturb" sign, but an invitation for chatter.  To avoid being chatted to while reading at breakfast, I tend to get up earlier than others in camp, to sit in a secluded spot in the mess tent, early in the morning, and read.  I did this at Red Dog too.  Sarah relishes quiet reading time, so she would arrive to the Red Dog mess after me, sit across from me, and read too.  You have to duck out of the mess before the hordes arrive, otherwise you are stuck chattering away, holding a book, and getting steadily grumpier.

One problem with this method is that it makes me tired earlier at night.  Meaning I have less time in the evening to read, journal, blog, email, etc.  This makes my breakfast reading even more important.  You can see where this all goes.  In the real world, I still squeeze in reading, though I can usually find a place to read without being bothered, so I do not generally have to become nocturnal just to read a few pages of The Hobbit.

Which brings me to the next part of this post.  I am reading The Hobbit.  I have read it before.  I have listened to it on audiobook.  I have seen the movie.  I like the LOTR in book form.  I have listened to them on audiobook.  I have read them.  I plan to reread them after rereading The Hobbit.  I have seen the LOTR movies.  I like the LOTR movies.  I like the extended editions the best.  I have watched all three extended editions back to back.  I do not consider myself a Tolkien, or fantasy, nerd or fanatic (I do think of myself as a nerd).

With all that out of the way, it seems like an easy type of post will be updates on the book(s) I am reading.  Sometimes this will make me disappointed with myself for not reading enough, but overall, I hope it to be a fun way to share details of my life with anyone who cares.  Without further delay, here is my first reading post.

I just finished Lawless World, by Philippe Sands.  It was a good book about international law, and I would recommend it, but it would have been better six years ago.  It also was not the most engaging camp book.  To reward myself, I am rereading The Hobbit, a better camp book, perhaps even one of the best camp books (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, including all of the sequels, is also a great go to).  I cannot help myself from thinking about Middle Earth whilst bounding about in the field.  My responsible plan is to push through a bunch of books, hard bound first, to lighten my baggage to New Zealand.  Unfortunately for my plan, the call of the LOTR may be too strong after I finish The Hobbit.

Camp Living

It seems like there are two types of people in camp, those who look forward to time away from the world, and those who cannot wait to get back to it.  I am of the second group.  I like the idea of a camp.  I like the idea of camaraderie, of being away from the distractions and problems, and of working in the wilderness.  Unfortunately, that idea is not how it usually works out for me.

Camaraderie in camps does not usually seem to work out.  Some people make close friends, and treat the crew like their family.  This is not my way, if I am going to adopt people into my family, I am going to choose them well.  I look for certain aspects and characteristics that are rare in the world, and even more rare in a camp.  I have made very close friends in camps, so I can experience the camaraderie that I imagine having in camp, but most of the time, I just feel annoyed with those around me.

After having been out of a camp for a couple of months, I start imagining camp as an escape from the world.  It is not.  The world keeps going.  I still have all of the problems, chores and errands that I do when I am in civilization, but I have less ability to deal with them.  For me, this compounds the stress these things cause me.  For example, my visa was being held up because the immigration officer needed one further document for my medical examination (an unexpected certification from a physician).  When I called from civilization, the clinic estimated that it would take two weeks, putting me in camp when I could expect to have them fax the document.  They did not fax it after two weeks.  It took two weeks of daily calling from camp to get them to fax the document.  In civilization, that would cause me to be grumpy.  In camp, that caused me a great deal of stress trying to imagine a contingency.  The world keeps going, the fires keep starting, but I am without my usual tools to address them.

As for working in the wilderness, I am, but I am not.  I am miles from anywhere, at times without communication to anyone, tromping about in amazing scenery.  By most definitions, that is wilderness.  However, I commute by helicopter, so every morning I am confronted by a machine that can be taken as a symbol of man's domination of wilderness.  There are two camps on this landing strip, so at times it is deafeningly loud (this morning I was dispatching a telephone, and two radios, with four helicopters, two quads, an airplane, and a skid steer operating outside the office tent).  Beyond the noise of work, the only thing that this camp has more than bear-anoia are small arms.  They use firearms to haze bears, they target practice, and the camp next door does the same.  I reckon there are areas of Baghdad that have fewer gunshots than this patch of nowhere.  While out on traverse the trickle of water through boulders can take me to a place of zen, this camp, and my life however, are not in the wilderness.

As whiny as that all sounds, the point of this post is not to whimper to the web.  Instead, I want to focus on the interesting ways in which people operate out here.  I think it is a reflection of how they would operate in the world at large, but this is a microcosm of society, so everything that happens out there, happens in here.

Beginning with the attitude people bring into camp.  I, for example, can overreact to things.  It is, in some ways, a character flaw.  Maybe in most ways it is a character flaw.  Regardless, it is the way I work in the world.  In the pilot episode of 30 Rock, Tina Fey's character battles this same issue when she "buys all the hot dogs," then is later ready to quit her job over issues that eventually work out.  I have been on the brink of washing out nearly daily.  It seems one of the pilots is too.  Another geo has come close too, for him, it seems, especially the first week.  Previously, in my life, I have bought all the hot dogs, and during many stages of my life, I have been on the brink.  I am hanging in here just to get back to zero (a topic for a later post if I ever start posting regularly again).

Other people seem to relish the camp life, but I imagine that they would be happy (probably not the right word, content?) in most environments too.  They become close to one another, and throw themselves at their work (not generally in a competent manner).  Camp may actually be better for these people, because they would probably only work if they were not in a camp (essentially being in camp is being a workaholic, but you socialize at chow).  A few people resign themselves to serving out their sentence without happiness or gloom.  To me, these people are the worst, just as they are the worst in the world.  Workaholics and quitters have passion, those who are just serving their sentences seem only to have fear.

In this camp, there are 24 people living in close proximity with one another, all bringing in their own attitudes and problems, working in psuedo-wilderness to accomplish a job.  The interactions are great people watching if you could do it from your couch, but exhausting to be in.  The camp manager and one of the pilots do not get along.  The drillers (not here yet) and pad builders will faction into a group that are entertained at a different level.  Permanent geologists live to work, and want to control every aspect of the project.  Consulting geologists, like me, either have a clear mission, or are lost in the woods of a group of people (the permanent geos) who do not fully understand what they are doing, or how to delegate work load.

Inevitably, without strong leadership, the camp falls into factions.  Little microstates in the world of camp.  As of yet, it seems that this camp has only one superpower, but with time, all that will change (or people will leave).  I will try to stay out of it because most of it does not affect me, and I have already done my best to be hands off after the first five days.  My bet though is that the Millrock geologists will be/are the first nation.  A second state will emerge that will be a loose alignment of grumpy folk.  In response to them will be the camp manager with the drillers, pad builders, etc.  A fourth state of soil samplers is forming around nightly card games with the cook, though this group will be mostly loyal to the Millrock geos.  The remaining crew will be free agents who will eventually be claimed, or rejected, by factions until everyone is accounted for.

This microcosm is fascinating because it seems as though it is human nature in a power vacuum.  I am reading a book about international law right now.  It seems like the interactions of nations through international law is much the same as the people in camp.  Allies, rules (that are frequently broken) and private interests dominate interactions.  It must be innately human to want to behave this way.  Until I am claimed, or buy the hot dogs, I will do my best to enjoy the wilderness, escape/deal with the outside world, and watch the show from the comfort of my tent, counting the days until I am back in civilization.

Updates from the Field

I don't have a lot of time these days to write.  I will keep trying to, but working, posting photos and sleeping all take priority.  In lieu of posts, you can see my latest photos, and stalk my SPOT.  Photos are updated via Picasa, and can be viewed by following the link on the right of the page.  My SPOT can be checked here:  http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0vpsC1MvORVjAFZFUtqLifYlem5FjIWl5.  I will see if I can get a gadget that posts it directly to blogger, but no promises that I will do that soon.

Losing Time

Living in camp has advantages. I get to engage in activities that most people pay thousands of dollars for. My living expenses are paid, and life is, in many ways, quite simple. This camp is nice too, because the chef has been very kind to me in preparing lots of vegan meals! She has been making me a vegan breakfast and dinner every day, and seems to plan to continue to do that for her entire hitch. This will slow the loss of my excess weight, but should help with my mood.

As with anything that has advantages, camp life has disadvantages. Disadvantages in camp often correspond closely to the advantages of living in a camp. I do not really "get" to engage in great activities, but rather have to engage in them. I have to go out, and tromp around the bush regardless of weather, and how I feel. My life must be simple, my choices are made for me so I cannot complicate it. My meals are made for me, so I do not even get a choice in my day's meals. The biggest disadvantage of living in a camp for me is losing time.

When I leave this camp, I will have given it two months of my life. For everyone I know, two months of experiences shared with friends, family and the world will have progressed. For me, I will have spent 60 days doing the same thing, with the same people, most of whom, I will never see, or speak to, again. I will have memories from this time, but it will be as if they all happened over the course of one very long day. This day will not even have the sun for me to estimate the time of day, after all, the sun never sets in the Alaskan Summer.