If I had to describe McMurdo Station. I might be hard pressed to capture it. It is a bit like if a town in the old west was run by OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration). Or if a mining town was taken over by environmental scientists. I don't mean any of that in a disparaging way. The people are really great here and they all have got their jobs down to a science. But McMurdo really does have the feel of a frontier like the old west. It does have an industrial quality like a mining town. But safety and conservation are both always in the forefront of people's minds. The training you get influences your actions and attitudes. People are always willing to go out of their way to help and keep you safe. They will lend a hand, or offer a ride, or give some helpful advice if they see you need it. Just today we took a shuttle out to CosRay. The shuttle driver went out of his way to make sure that there was a phone at CosRay and that we had proper gear because he knew that some weather was coming in (we are currently at around -6F with the wind chill and the visibility is below a quarter of a mile.) The signs of environmental conservation are all around you also. They have taken big steps to be respectful to the environment here. There are wind power generators so the Station doesn't have to run entirely on fossil fuels. Some use is probably inevitable given the demands of the environment here but it makes a whole lot of sense to use the wind here. Antartica has no shortage of wind... trust me. It is the muddy season here on the world's windiest continent and the wind kicks up volcanic sand sometimes so bad that you can't go out without goggles.
Wind generators in the distance as the weather roles in.
But you see it in the little things as well. People always turn the lights off when they leave a room and never leave the faucet running when they brush their teeth. People even limit their showering and leave the faucet off when they soap up to wash their hands. Water is an important resource and it makes sense to conserve it, especially when you use energy to heat it up. Of course, that make good economic sense as well. I think that this attitude is best illustrated b something I saw yesterday. There was a van taking crew out to Williams Airfield (affectionately known as Willie Field). They were just getting loaded when a large seabird, known as a skua, landed on the roof. Rather than just driving off and forcing it to fly away they waited. They waited for 10 minutes for that bird to fly away on its own. There are rules about not interacting with wildlife here but you could tell that everyone there was fine with waiting patiently so that they could minimally impact this frontier and the creatures that inhabit it.
A skua wants a ride.
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