Back in Abisko, Sweden. The long twilight and darkness, so missed over the past few months, gives Abisko Naturvetenskapliga Station an intimacy it lacked earlier in the summer. An intimacy increased by the wild, stormy weather and imminent fall. An intimacy that leaves me with some wistfulness at having not spent more time getting acquainted with people outside my lab group. Perhaps I will have some nostalgia for this place after all. I had been adamant earlier in the summer that I could wish away this time as foolishly as I pleased, sure of the fact that I could build no fond memories here without Mac. But the place has endeared itself to me, and the people, as people everywhere are apt to do, have unwittingly claimed places of fondness in my heart. I will miss them, however little they may know of it. I'll be left wondering years from now what their fate has been, somberly contemplating the privlege and tragedy of passing through so many curious peoples' lives and not having the time to fully unfurl the mystery of each.

It wouldn't be appropriate to go into descriptions of each of the residents here, but an explanation of the research station would give a sense of the space we share. It's a state-of-the-art research facility, much nicer than any of the other research stations I've had internments at. It gives airs of of luxury and is riddled with delightful little quirks. Each step and staircase is marked with broad, yellow and black striped, caution tape applied to the floor, tape that's used plentifully on the spiral staircases and the many single steps in the winding and narrow corridors. There are no 'normal' staircases, but the most unusual is through the doorway aross from my room. This staircase exists in a cupboard approximately 4 feet squared; it winds steeply up to the next floor, where it spills out through another door into a quiet corridor, a secret passageway of sorts.

The halls are peppered with an abundance of doors with strange latches that require a substantial use of muscle to get them to give way. Once the latch has been undone they whoosh open wildly and then gently shut, the latches redoing themselves in a magical, mechanical way. Air suction from the trash and laundry shutes (standing ready to whisk any hint of untidiness away) causes an eerie whistling to echo through the halls, changing in pitch and volume with the opening of each door.

There are two indoor saunas across from the gas chromatography room. Tiny kitchenettes and cozy dorm rooms are nestled between hydrology labs and drying cupboards. One room is strictly used for the 10:00 AM coffee break. It's elegantly decorated with woven birch bark wainscoting and star shaped lamps that form constellations on the ceiling. Overall, an exemplary model of Scandinavian efficiency, tidiness and attention to detail. A haven for the all-consuming life of field research. I roll out of bed and across the hall to the kitchen for breakfast, then walk through a few whooshing doors to the labs, where leave samples wait to be plucked. On rainy days I walk down a narrow corridor and up two spiral staircase to the library. There I settle can settle in for a day of data entry next to the modish, white, adobe fireplace, from which point I can watch the storm rage across lake Torneträsk through the floor to ceiling windows.

If set to sail, the station would be the perfect reincarnation of the Bellafonte, the ship from Bill Murray's Life Aquatic.

I spent all day in the weighing cupboard, weighing 753 individual envelopes of dried leaves. Attempting to extract some modicum of truth in 0.0056 gram increments.