A happy 'Camper'

A Jamesway is Quonset hut, essentially a large semi-cylinder, wooden framed, canvas tent. I live in a tiny room in a Jamesway, among, give or take, 100 other people living in a cluster of Jamesways affectionately and ironically referred to as ‘Summer Camp’ (Pictured below from above . . . huh?).


Rooms in the Jamesways consist of three canvas curtains and the insulated canvas wall draping the wooden frame. The floors and walls are freezing, (don’t leave your pee bottle on the ground at night!), but a heating duct spans the apex of the structure. The lone piece of furniture is a decades old, smooshy bed. The building is divided into half by a dark, red-light lit hallway that runs the length of the structure and leads to doors at either end. Due to shift variability, quiet hours are 24-7. Every creak of the bed, every squishy footstep of an outside passerby, every click of your headlamp radiates through the entire building. The air is dry and stagnant. Privacy is an illusion (even if you are lucky enough to have a room with plywood walls). People tromp through the hallway at all times of night and day. In order to pee in the middle of the night, you have to brave a -70 F wind-chill on your short hike to the ice palace (the name of the summer camp bathroom). Walking barefoot in your room is a mistake you make only once. So is turning the knobs of the outside doors with bare hands.

On the surface, my living situation isn’t cozy. Over the years, however, inhabitants have made this temporary housing into a home. Walls, desks, and shelves have been patched together out of spare plywood. Windows have been cut into the canvas. Art has been sketched onto any and every workable surface.

When you move into a Jamesway, you move into a piece of the life of its last inhabitant. Maybe they left you flannel sheets or a bottle of Jack Daniels as a welcome present. Maybe they painted a mural into the wall. Maybe they sewed a curtain out of used clothing to cover the gross, dark green canvassed walls. In most cases, the previous tenant went to great length to make improvements, functional or aesthetic.

Living in summer camp is like house-sitting, only the owners are a constant string of transients, and every house-sitter tries to leave the room a little bit nicer than they found it. It’s actually very homey!

Of course, I’m romanticizing the experience. But I like it here. It sure beats having roommates. It sure beats a tent. My room has character, and I have collected endless amounts of decorations and knick-knacks (left behind by the thousands of people that have lived and worked at the South Pole before me) to decorate my room and make it my own. I feel at home here.