Memories of the Last 200 Days of Mars

Two hundred days have passed -- 165 remain. The vivid slideshow behind my eyes plays on, even though, looking through the pictures I've taken, I know our tiny world is wreathed in glowing white, patient grey and bloodrust red.
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Two hundred days have past on simulated Mars -- days of sun where we were able to cook, turn on the heater, clean ourselves with warm water; days of dark rainy skies and fog when we wore five layers, hid our fingers in gloves, filled and refilled our flasks with hot tea.

Now, 165 days remain in which to grow plants, run experiments, design and build space suits; to avoid injury or succumb to it; to build friendships and amend personal affronts; to fail and succeed; and to take photos of ourselves standing on the surface of the swirling red, black and grey lava rock.

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Looking back on the last 200 days feels like flicking through a photo album: a single, distinct image, followed by a blur, and then another image. That's how it should be, I suppose. There's no reason to scratch days away one at a time. By definition, days, minutes and hours mark themselves. That's their province and power: to permit us count and recount certain, particular points. What remains in the end isn't a teeming pile of seconds, but rather a starred display of flashbacks; a sensual chronology, complete with thunderbolts of touch, snowmelts of taste, carillons of sound, and tendrils of smell.

If you could peer into the kaleidoscope of my memory from the last 200 days, turning it over in your hand, you would see:

* As I crest the hill behind the dome for the first time, great broken fields of frozen lava turn their scarred faces upwards and greet me. I think: at some point, the whole world looked like this. Maybe at some point every solid planet looked like this.

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* The persistent tapping grows louder and louder. A child of the desert -- I saw water fall from the sky for the first time when I was 11 -- it takes me a while to place the sound. It's raining for the first time since the mission started.

Then it hits me: I'm living in a tent. A tent resonant with the sound of rain falling from the sky. A tent that holds a hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment, supported on a wooden platform a few short inches above the ground. Wind whips the white fabric stretched out over the bare metal frame. The fabric ripples, tense, like the sleeping surface of a lake.

* There is a hurricane somewhere off-shore. On this volcano, the only truly solid thing with a door that closes is the Sea Can, a steel shipping container where we keep our food and power system. Fitting all six of us in there at once is going to be some trick. If we dump out all of our suit gear and move the telescope... yeah.

We could all SIT in there, probably. If this storm hits us head-on, get ready to get cosy people! My dark blue "bug out"dome in the bag is packed and sitting at my feet. It holds shoes, socks,a toothbrush, water, a hat, granola bars, and a kindle. If you were about to spend a day locked in a trailer with 5 other people, what would you bring? I stand, walk towards the bookshelf, grab the "Cards Against Humanity" box and stuff it in my bag.

*For the first few months, we discover item after item stashed all over the habitat. It's like a treasure hunt with no clues. One day we find a piece of lab gear from the 1950s: a pea-soup-green masher than seems to be hand-powered. The next day we find a stove-top espresso maker. Curious, because these coffee makers don't work on convection ranges, which are the only kind that we have here. I seriously consider the amount of heat transfer I can get by partly submerging the giant red device in a large pot of boiling water. Not enough. I try anyway.

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*Finally, our tomato crop is ready. We've been living off tomato powder for what feels like forever, stalking the marble-sized fruits as they retreated from green into deep orange on the mutant, fist-sized tomato plant. In my pale palm, they look like unpolished jewels. I raise one up to my nose, inhale... and cough. It smelled like....Earth.

Earth in the heat of summer, panting and dipping under a sweltering blanket of soil. It injected its ripe perfume right up my nostril. For 10 minutes or more, I hold this tiny thing, and smell. Hold, and smell. Breathe in, breathe out. I pick one little fellow up by his green stem and twirl him around.

Even tomatoes at the farmer's market are typically stripped of their pointed crowns by the time you get ahold of them. This one looks regal, even jolly, in his cap, which is about the same size as he is. When I finally take a bite, another surprise. Burning. The juice of this living thing, unprocessed in any way, stings my mouth like a potent acid.

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It goes on an on like that. I don't have days, weeks and months here. I have moments, strung out like fairy lights. They flash on, and they flash off. Lying on my side in the gravel, I press my cheek against the invisible inside curve of my helmet and watch the Milky way overrun the night sky overhead. In my thick gloves, I'm struggling to find the best way to strap someone wearing a space suit onto a longboard for safe transport.*

I am sitting in my bunk room writing to a dying friend back home, saying, "I am so sorry, T. I cannot call you." Every day I send video, audio and hope into the void. The replies are swift, sometimes. Sometimes they are slow. At times, they never come at all.

Two hundred days have passed -- 165 remain. The vivid slideshow behind my eyes plays on, even though, looking through the pictures I've taken, I know our tiny world is wreathed in glowing white, patient grey and bloodrust red.

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*Hint: It's really hard. Carrying that board with someone in a space suit on it while you are in a space suit is even harder.

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