Reflections from time on ‘the Ice’

• MCMURDO STATION, Antarctica
Dec. 2, 2006 | 3:10 a.m. ET
The hearts, souls and stomachs of the 1,100 scientists and support staff here get their fill at each meal at The Galley, the only dining hall at McMurdo.

Not that competition is needed — the food is great, catering to carnivores and vegetarians alike, and tempting all with incredible bread and desserts.

On top of that, there’s no cashier — it’s all included in the price of admission to the U.S. station, a cost covered by the National Science Foundation.

But it’s not just the food that brings people together. This is also the main social hub, where folks plan their day or catch up. Long shifts are the norm at McMurdo, and so too is a break to recharge over vital vittles.

It’s always all-you-can-eat, and tonight is the weekly Italian buffet, which includes beef, chicken and cheese pasta dishes as well as focaccia bread. For Italian night, you’re even allowed to bring in your own wine and/or beer. That you have to pay for yourself, but the general store around the corner has a sizable supply of both, and the cost isn’t outrageous.

Grilled cheese sandwiches and hamburgers are also regular menu items, part of the strategy for keeping spirits up.

“Morale is big around here,” says executive chef Sally Ayotte, “and of course food is morale.”

Thanksgivings and Christmases are especially sensitive times here — “people definitely get a little on edge,” says Ayotte — so The Galley puts on big dinners then. This Thanksgiving, the staff welcomed anyone who wanted to help prepare the feast, which included 1,200 pounds of turkey and 400 pounds of roast beef. Christmas will feature duck, lobster, tenderloin and white linens.

Produce is flown in weekly from New Zealand, but all the frozen, dried and canned goods come in the single supply ship that arrives before the start of each season. That includes 70,000 pounds of beef and 50,000 to 60,000 pounds of poultry gobbled up in the main summer season and during a winter season housing 100 to 200 people.

Considering the logistics of bringing food in, it’s all done on the cheap: $7.90 per person each day. Compare that, Ayotte says, to the $12 cost at the private oil fields in Alaska’s Arctic.

Ayotte, who’s in her 11th season here, would love to have a bigger budget, but for now she makes do with a special ingredient. “There’s love in the food here,” she says of the passion she and her staff put into each meal.

• Greenhouse on the hill
That dedication extends to McMurdo’s greenhouse on the hill — an unsightly, boarded-up shack that magically turns into a feast for the eyes on entering. Started by volunteers in the 1980s, the greenhouse is now funded by The Galley, which pays for “production chef” Brent Salazar — who’s normally a University of Arizona student of controlled environmental agriculture — to tend the rows of tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs, lettuce and other veggies.

John Brecher / MSNBC.com Miguel Llanos enjoys a tranquil moment in a McMurdo greenhouse hammock.

At one time, the greenhouse was sunlit, but it was so energy-inefficient in winter that it was sealed in and now operates under lights. In addition, the international Antarctica Treaty bars soil from being brought to the continent, so all plants are grown in trays and fed mineral nutrients.

Given its small size, the greenhouse can only supply a fraction of what’s consumed here, but its value is far beyond pure consumption. Ayotte sees it when folks organizing special events specifically ask for the colorful chard, lettuce and edible flowers to cheer things up.

Salazar sees it in the visits to his refuge — from scientists longing for herb smells after days on the ice, to support staff hanging out in the hammocks here and surrounded by the only green for hundreds of miles.

People even bring their meals and a bottle of wine. “I love it,” Salazar says, “It tells me I’m doing a good job.”

• Winding down on the whine
I didn’t get to my reader feedback mailbox until this morning and, while I’d hoped to move beyond the hassles described in our first dispatch, I figured I’d better deal with this one more time, given e-mails like these:

“Do we need to call a WAAAHmbulance for you? … We all go through the same thing to come down here every season.” “Your eyelids will freeze shut with all this crying.” “What did you expect, a first-class ride on Virgin Antarctic?” “You have an opportunity to travel to one of the last truly adventurous places on Earth and all you can do is complain.” “I have worked here in the Antarctic for 14 years now. I leave behind this season a 3-year-old son and my lovely wife. Your article is a smack in the face of everyone of use that serves this nation in our capacities here. You do not deserve to be here!!! … There are many whom suffer through much more than your minor inconveniences.”

So it’s either elaborate here, wear a disguise around McMurdo for my own protection, or possibly face exile on the Ross Ice Shelf!

To those readers pointing out the suffering that real explorers have gone through here, all I can say is that I’d never compare my experience to theirs.

To all who felt I was dissing their work and the enormous logistical effort to make Antarctic research happen, I’m sorry. And, honestly, I was kidding about the lack of videoscreens on the C-17!

The point of that dispatch was to show readers that getting here is no easy task, i.e., hardly a junket, which is what I often hear when I’m off on a working trip. (By the way, these daily dispatches are not the core of our reporting. They’re just reflections as we gather information and interview scientists for our larger climate change package in January.)

I’ll admit I didn’t stress that the bureaucracy — from the tests to the clothing — is for one’s own safety and that the computer screening is to protect vital research from viruses and hacking. But consider the fact that I was writing late at night, just after completing the journey to get here. Would the tone have been different if I’d been writing the next day after a night’s sleep? Probably.

So can we let bygones be bygones and just get along????? If not, anyone have a disguise I can borrow? I forgot to bring one with me.

And by the way, this will be the last post on this. Enough about me ... I’d rather spend my limited time here getting to know folks than being enclosed in a room responding to e-mails.

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