foreign family

She has large blue eyes and a pretty face that is a bit too earnest. She has blond hair and a perfectly fit body, beautiful and not beautiful for that very reason. She's probably around thirty. When I tell her the news offhand she rattles off an almost disappointed epithet;
"You're moving out of tent city?"
In her brief parting utterance before she made our walking trio a walking pair, I sense notes of curiosity, pity, disdain, and banal smalltalk. These emotions are anchored in the context of Toolik Lake field station, Ecological Observatory and general science playground. The tent village, nestled along the lake and insulated from the tundra by the water and the various trailers and roads that emanate behind the village, has a kind of rustic mystique to it.
The tent people are the hard-core people in some regards. Many of the most extreme hikers, those who sally forth from the field station to traverse the peaks that populate the mountain ranges rising 10 or 15 miles south on the oil road, live in tent village. It looks like a pockmarked area of the tundra (there are pictures of it in my album "babycakes and toolik), distinguished from your average plotted-out campsite by the lack of roads and the proximity of the nylon hovels to each other. To some extent the mystique of the tents is equal to the myth of the Alaska beard; the men at Toolik often grow beards that connote a rustic, a wild, yes, a difficult experience, especially to the awed loved ones who great them at the airport. Yet we at Toolik eat great food and are met by most of the amenities a pampered westerner cries out for. Your current entertainment, or entrapment, is facilitated by high speed wireless internet that I access from my laptop. Case in point. Anyway, her remark was like those snake venoms which are used to kill people and to cure snakebites. I was moving out of tent city. In some senses I was acknowledging realities that will hopefully allow me to "move forward, to be more happy and more productive, and in some senses I was retreating from an important goal. I was both stung and made pleasantly self-conscious.
I don't sleep well in my tent, at least I'm pretty sure it is tenting's fault. The light gets in more than in my 'weatherport', which is essentially a permanent tent arrayed with identical tents to form a makeshift planned-out city on the other side of camp. The real clincher was the uneven ground under my borrowed foam camp mattress. That contraption was designed to leak at the ideal rate, just slow enough to be inevitable and imperceptible. It was born to mock my awkward attempts at blowing into the large valve, doubtless meant for an electric pump, at its nylon-ensconced bottom left corner. I enjoyed the mystique of the tents, looking out on the sun after unzipping my rain fly, I even enjoyed the high pitched clamor of the mosquitoes around the thin mesh of the inner tent on buggy days. But it was time to leave. In fact with my indecisive lug of a self it has been time to leave for two weeks, and for the last week I've awkwardly checked the housing list in the main office, off of the cafeteria, just briefly enough to leave before the manager can spit out an "are you looking for something?" But two nights ago I woke up at three a.m. after climbing into my nylon sleeping bag at midnight, and embarked on a ragged march of half-sleep that barely differed from the day that followed. My repose on the chubby mattress of the weatherport was far more favorable, despite the fact that it was accompanied by the snoring of a very large man, a sound something between a saw and a freight truck.
And, given the semi-journalistic tone of the first few paragraphs, now the speculation about ideals and ideas. A sidenote: speaking about ideals and ideas is not necessarily "philosophical." The word philosophy means love of knowledge, so thoughtful historical writing could be just as philosophical as speculation about the nature of life. Yes, the nature of life is a traditional field of philosophy, but that is because the philosophical method of rigorous thought is oft-employed to explore fundamental questions like that. Calling all talk of ideals and ideas "philosophical," especially if it is not abstract, if it is grounded in images and stories, seems to me a problematic modern tendency that cheapens philosophy and lends false credence to sloppy speculations. That perception of philosophy landed me in many a class where perhaps I didn't belong. Then again perhaps I did, and I probably learned some worthwhile things, or at least picked up some novel habits. Anyways, back to the pseudo-philosophical part of my assay on the twin cities.
To move from one place of high repute to another place of what appears to be personal gain seems to be a trend in my life, perhaps life in general. I often doubt the choices I have made, less in the case of leaving Tent city, more in the case of leaving other things more deeply embedded in my identity and my routes to happiness. All along the way there are people telling me to move in conflicting directions, people listening to me, people talking to me. There's also the obsessive back and forth swaying of my own inner scythe, processing and overturning decisions at a faster rate than they're made, often at a deeper level than I feel my five senses. Sometimes the benefits of decisions do not begin to accrue until long after the poison of withdrawal has had its day. Maybe it is in those tortured intervals that the posture of character allows one to continue moving. Words are scary things, because they conjure meanings that lend their swords to inner combatants, to armies engaged in battles where I believe only my mind and my best interests should determine the victors.
The mystique of tent city seems very overdone. I mean, lets be serious. We at Toolik live in Artctic wonderland. There's something to be said for taking benefit when benefit is available. Good services mean lots of good work is demanded because there's more free time, and that I have high standards for myself. Why live ragged in a tent when I can enjoy the arctic more by living in the rival city of half-cylinders just down the road, and left at the cafeteria? Maybe I've made one of those clarifying decisions that help on the road to good papers and books on the environment, one of those "to realize limitation is to strike at identity" moments. To talk less abstractly maybe I've come to a wellspring idea like "to be human is to alter the environment," ideas that have inspired many authors, including Alan Burdick, an author and journalist who is currently up at Toolik on a journalism seminar. He recently wrote a book about invasive species that I assume is in the Michael Pollan-y genre of sciency popular novel. It's called "Out of Eden." Pick it up maybe, and let me know how it is. I think this Burdick dude might be someone to maintain touch with.
All right, bedtime on my large mattress across from the freight train marathon snorer beckons. If you're in the mood for a laugh and are beset by being so well acquainted with me that you know my gmail, shoot me an enquiry and I'll relate to you the funniest and most appropriate namings of a person that I have ever heard.
best wishes.
love,
Jonathan