August 2nd-Lazy day on the Atoll

     Just another lazy day on the atoll. It’s the lazy days that set my mind rolling about anything and everything under the sun. After a wonderfully long vacation, I am a few pounds heavier than I would like to be, so I set off for a long walk around the island of Roi-Namur this morning, and the memories began flooding back. Upon walking past the illustrious Chow Hall, I could almost smell the delicious food and fun of holidays past. It’s always special at the Chow Hall on holidays, which usually includes all the crab legs, shrimp cocktail, silky chocolate pie, and berry tarts you can eat. It’s our family meal out here since we cannot always be with our biological families on the usual Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter dinners. Picking up the pace a bit, I look to my left and see a bank of grey in the sky above the coconut trees, but to my right are blue skies and cotton ball clouds, so I know I’ll most likely make it around the island without getting wet. The grey can hang around half the sky for most of the day without ever dumping, so I stopped waiting out the potential rain a few years back. Even if it does rain, it will be warm, and the trade winds will blow it to the next island quickly. As I pass the exposed reef near my friend’s beach shack (affectionately known as the “Gabby Shack” in honor of its former caretaker), I remember mornings with my boys walking the reef, finding a juvenile moray ell stuck in one of the pools until the tide came back in or it jumped into another pool leading back to the ocean as it did when nervous from our “sightseeing.” Walking the reef and finding treasures is one of our favorite pastimes here, and such an educational experience in nature for all of us. Walking past my boyfriend's beach shack, I smile at the thought of our camp outs and teaching the boys the art of roasting marshmallows and not simply setting them on fire as my oldest son likes to do. All the afternoons of sand castle building, Easter egg hunts, and feeding the hermit crabs just to watch their antics come rushing at me like the wind that has picked up since I turned the corner around the end of the airport runway.
     Just as the colors of the ocean here amaze me, so does the brilliance of the greens in the plants and grass during rainy season on the atoll. It really is beautiful, so beautiful that I can see why the native Marshallese spend so much time under shady tress outside instead of in their meager unairconditioned homes on the neighboring islands. I pass a few hanging out in this manner on my way toward the radars. The tell tale sign of the radars presence nearby is the buzzing in my Ipod headphones, so much at times that I have to take at least one out of my ear while walking past the danger zone. The radars and their capabilities are the reason we are here, but most of us don’t have the privilege of working directly with them, so we sometimes forget the larger mission of missile defense research and space tracking that the range serves. The mission of the range is what brings us here, but not what keeps the families and civilian employees living here for years at a time. For me, it’s things like the beautiful tree lined road leading past the scuba shack where we once found empty coconut shells to clack together and sound like horses for the viewing of “Monty Python’s Holy Grail” at the outdoor Tradewinds Theater, and the days exploring the island in a golf cart with my boys. Even though my man says he has seen every nook and cranny of the island already, we almost always find a new one along with some WWII treasure like a busted old radio or the abundant bullet shells kicked up by the recent rains or trucks traveling through the jungle. Roi-Namur is sometimes called “Roi Resort” for those who live on the neighboring base of Kwajalein where my children and I reside, but it is very quiet and sometimes “boring” to those who are used to the big city life on Kwaj. It is never boring to me. It’s about making your own fun with treasure hunts in and around the WWII ruins in the jungle, geocaching, fishing the reefs, and snorkeling or diving the surrounding clear, colorful waters. In fact, I may end up missing Roi and all my adventures here more than Kwaj when it’s time to go. It is my home away from home, my family in the middle of the Pacific.