The Weird Ways of Camp Life
One of the things that you learn doing fieldwork is that you pick up some weird habits. You know, things that we accept as normal that might seem outrageous to the rest of the world. For some insight into the oddities of living in a remote camp in the arctic, I have compiled a list of some of these things. Enjoy, and don’t judge too hard – I swear we can actually be “normal” people when immersed in the real world!
Tundra Time is its own time zone.
While in the real world people have commitments to jobs, responsibilities to others, social events, and in most places in the world have daylight to give cues to what you should be doing with your life, we lack most of these time triggers up here. Granted, we have jobs to do, but who really cares what time of day they happen as long as they get done? Cory and I have basically given up on watches out here. Firstly because they both were very sluggish when it was cold, so they weren’t doing much good anyway. But it also works out great whether you’ve got a tonne of work to do in a day, or just a few things; when we’re putting in long days, as long as the sun is out and there are lots of snacks in your bag, it’s really easy to put in a 10 hour workday without realizing it (knowing the time just makes it worse). When there isn’t much to do, it’s pretty obvious – there’s no need to rush. And we basically only had a few days where there was actual darkness since we’ve been here, so the sun certainly isn’t helping keep any sort of normal circadian rhythm. In a typical day, we wake up around a very bright 10 am (maybe later lately since we’re just working from camp), have some breakfast, work until mid to late afternoon, have lunch around 5 pm, work more, have dinner around 10 pm (though often later depending on how frozen dinner ingredients still are), and go bed by around 1:30 am (still very much light out).
Bathing is optional, and rare. Especially in the winter.
While in the summer it’s possible to grab a bucket of water and give yourself a sponge bath, or brave the icy cold waters for a dunk in the creek to freshen up, things get a bit tougher during the winter. It’s cold. Being wet is cold. Clean is just not worth it. In the month that we’ve been here, there was a day not too long ago that I decided that I could survive having wet hair and not freeze too much, so I washed my hair in a bucket. The biodegradable body soaps that we have don’t really cut the grease anyway, so I basically still looked like a dirtbag (but smelled faintly of peppermint). Did some laundry too though, so at least if I didn’t look clean, I had clean underwear. Despite the fact that I am one of the most-bathed people in camp at a rate of one hair wash per month, things are surprisingly not smelly. Either we haven’t been working hard enough, or we’ve all just slowly acclimatized to the smell, it isn’t too bad. We do occasionally take advantage of baby wipes and powder to “freshen up”, so that probably helps too.
In the summer, camp food is limited to non-perishables. In the winter, we eat like kings!
Who would have thought that the dinner menu would involve steak, chicken parmesan, roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, and frequent burrito nights? Not me, given that in the summer most dinner is based around various types of canned things (some less appetizing than others) and whatever onions/carrots/garlic that haven’t gone too moldy. Or pasta. Between the cold temperatures allowing us to bring in meat and keep it from spoiling, and the epic stove/oven that we now have (goodbye days of Coleman stoves!), we’re cooking up a storm here! I’m exploring my inner chef and making some pretty darn tasty meals with all that we’ve got here, and some decent baked goodies too (my peach crumble was amazing, if I do say so myself). We’ve had some weird things … like pork neck bone. Didn’t know that was a thing that people ate, but it came in our bulk bundle of meats so I made something of it. Pretty darn tasty in the end – just a bit of WTF?! upon finding it. Now that things are warming up quite rapidly, we’re on a high protein diet trying to get through all of the meat before things spoil. It’s a pretty tough life having to go through two packs of bacon a day between five people … :P
Your bowel movements become scheduled to the times when the generator is running
We got new incinerating toilets this year, which is awesome because the former “Ecojohn” was crap (pun intended), but they’re pretty big power hogs and our solar array can’t handle the load (pun intended again). Running a generator all day just to power a toilet isn’t the most efficient, and you’d be surprised how quickly one’s bowels become triggered by the sound of a generator starting. Okay, that might’ve been TMI, but you don’t get how exciting it is to have a working incinerating toilet! Thank you Incinolet, for your fool-proof, auger-less “inshitterator” design!
The internet quality changes with the weather
Do you know what happens when you have satellite internet for which the satellite sits upon a platform that seasonally sinks into the thawing ground? Crappy internet when things warm up! Today we had to readjust the satellite for the first time this season due to its platform dropping and losing signal entirely for most of the day. But, we’re back online! This is going to be a common occurrence as the summer progresses – there are good days, and bad days, and sometimes you just have to re-angle the dish. Still worth it to be able to have internet in the middle of the tundra!
The local helicopter pilot is the camp hero
When you’re in a camp like ours, when once things melt the only option to get anything in or out is helicopter, everyone worships the bringer of the goods! We’re especially lucky that our local pilot, Chuck, is a superstar – we couldn’t ask for someone better to be the one in charge of getting us and all of our stuff in and out safely! So Chuck has gained some pretty high status among camp residents – he brings us food, power, shelter, and sometimes he brings us the only new face that we’ve seen for weeks on end! We might come across as a *little* obsessed, but rightfully so – Chuck and co. treat us pretty darn well up here at Trail Valley, and we’re super grateful for it (and really deprived of human contact). Also, the sound of a helicopter is super exciting, even if it isn’t coming for us. There is usually an exclamation of “CHUCK!!!!” (even though it could be any of the pilots) and a feeling like we aren’t all alone in the world out here.
Anyway, I’m sure that there are more things that I’ve forgotten, but that’s all I can come up with for now. If I think of more camp-isms, I will be sure to share!
Until next time, from the half-thawed tundra,
snowghoul
tangentwithtanner
janainaart
areudirty
romaincrisis
dededos
yousharknotpass
