Williams Field: Show Up and Improvise

McMurdo might be the big hub for us, but there are many branches that grow off the main base. Field camps, research stations, and temporary operating bases are vital to supporting the research and discovery work that goes on down here. And all of them need to eat. For the past couple of weeks, and for what will be the rest of my season, I've had the good fortune to work at the newly rebuilt Williams Field.

Affectionately known as Willy Field, this is the replacement landing zone for the cargo planes coming down to the Ice. Despite the freezing cold, it does get to warm up in some fashion, and eventually the landing strip that is Phoenix Base gets too soft for the wheeled C-17 cargo planes. But C-130s, which are propeller driven, can be fitted with skis and are thus still able to land. So Williams Field gets set up each season before the snow softens to act as the new runway.

When I say "newly rebuilt" it's not because they made some vast improvements to the structures. Willy is one of those temporary operations bases and is set up and taken down every year. All the buildings are not much more than storage units or trailers. Thin and boxy, they manage to stay pretty warm. Every building is on a heavy-duty trailer with skis on the bottom. Each season the buildings are towed out to the landing strip and set up for habitation. In a week or two, a fully functioning air field is established, with maintenance facilities, fire house, guide towers, and of course, the kitchen.

Calling it a kitchen is being rather generous. I toured the USS Drum submarine a while back and having seen the kitchen on that, I think working at Willy is preparing me for life as an undersea cook. We're not equipped with much out there. We've got two ovens that are maybe a step or two above an Easy-Bake Oven, we've got a two burner hot pad that can almost boil water, two induction burners that only work with specific outlets (one that is located in the dining room) and don't work on aluminum pots (the only large one we have), and two table-top fryers that take twenty minutes to crisp up a batch of tater tots. All the same, we put out meals at all four meal times and lunch is our busiest time with upwards of sixty people coming through.

The way out to Willy is by the shuttles. Every day at the start of my shift, I catch the Willy shuttle with the front of house steward working that day and pile in as much of the boxes and trays of food we have to bring as we can. Storage is pretty limited at the Willy kitchen, and while we have a walk-in cooler and a standing freezer, it's hard to keep it stocked. So we have to be in constant communication back with the main kitchen and to each other each shift to know what we're missing and what will need to come out on the shuttle with us. Technology makes this...challenging, but even if we can't match the menu perfectly, as long as people are getting fed, that's the important part. That's the "improvise" part. If we don't have the material to make char siu pork for an Asian night, figure out what you can make with the little bit of leftovers and sauces you do have. Very often I don't know what I'm going to cook until I get there. It's some pressure, but I enjoy the opportunity to try.

But the real interest for me is not the work itself. Cooking is cooking at the end of the day. But the location is so fascinating. The shuttle takes us off the main land and onto the ice shelf. By the time we get to Willy, a whole section of the horizon just stretches into nothing. From behind you can see Mount Erebus and Castle Rock, and way off in the distance are more mountains. But when you imagine Antarctica as this flat wasteland of ice and wind, this place pretty well encapsulates that image.

Willy is probably not the place to work if you're a social butterfly—especially not on the midrats shift. I see next to no one on the regular, and even after work for me, most people are grabbing breakfast and heading off to work, so getting to talk with people is a limited opportunity. But for me, a hermit at heart, the freedom to do things your own way and reside mostly in solitude at the edge of the world, it fits perfectly.