The Men and Their Igloo

“Is anyone in there?” said a voice from outside the Igloo. I was inside, wrapped in two sleeping bags, several layers of insulation and a whiskey jacket. It was the voice of a Campus Safety officer. “It’s a Nor’Easter out here. You better go inside.” I’d been caught.

When I decided to attempt a full night’s sleep in the Igloo of South Campus — or “The Harkness Annex,” as it’s officially called — I didn’t think the issue would be getting written up at 6 a.m. for unauthorized “camping.” Don’t get me wrong; this little overnight challenge was never going to go down in history as an example of great human fortitude. But for a thin-skinned Irishman, who grew up in a country where 2-inches of snow leads to a national emergency, a night in a room made of ice can seem truly life-threatening. Especially when you have friends (supposedly there for moral support) saying things like “I hope you don’t get snowed in here,” or “Just make sure you don’t freeze in your sleep,” or “I hope that candle doesn’t go because there isn’t enough oxygen in here and you die from carbon monoxide poisoning.” I know, this is all over-dramatic paranoia… well, except for this fun fact: In 2011, Yan Lavalliere of Montreal, while building an igloo for his girlfriend’s four-year-old son, was crushed to death when the structure collapsed on his ribcage.

“I think I’m okay in where I am,” I said to the officer.

Exactly seven nights before this, a group of young men known simply as “The Builders” put the last brick of snow on what Builder Jake Junda ’14 called “the most important thing I’ve ever done.” Junda made a documentary of the process. In the final moments of construction Michael Guappone ’15 exclaims, “Anything is possible!”

The Igloo took 15 hours of manual labor to build over the course of a few days. It was completed, of course, on a snow day. But why would a dozen college males, busy with classes, athletics and video games dedicate so much time and effort to building a fort in the snow? Well, it started with an idea in a dorm room. The visionaries were Hugh Demers ’14 and Nicky “Bruce” Haik ’14. They found followers in the hallways of Harkness and started to build. By the final day of construction, they were a committed party of eleven.

“The Builders” may sound like a quasi-Marxist group of equals – comrades, even – but don’t be fooled; the group established a regimented hierarchy early on. There were, on the one hand, the Minions used mainly for collecting mortar (powdery snow) and for building snow-bricks with trashcans or a brick-making instrument from Target. Then there was the Inner Circle, who didn’t leave the Igloo except for occasional breaks. These included the Architects, the Engineers – “the brains of the operation” and the Padders (although Iggy Sterling ’14, a devoted brick-maker, said afterwards that his branch was the unsung heroes of the project). The sung hero was Haik, unanimously voted Most Valuable Player due to an inspired solo shift on the last day.

Haik was also at the center of a dramatic philosophical split in the camp early on. The issue was the means of production. After a few feet of wall had already been laid down with small bricks, Nick Kensey ’14 suggested a radically new approach: bigger bricks. A heated debate followed. Kensey thought the small bricks were taking too long. Haik, and others, argued the big bricks wouldn’t work when it came to rounding out the roof.

With small bricks still being laid, Kensey took action. He built the walls of the doorway in an impressively short span of time, but when it came to the curved ceiling of the archway, Kensey needed Mr. Junda to lean over and use his back as a scaffold (“I literally put the team on my back,” said Junda). After that, the small-brick method was generally accepted by the group. Time, it seemed, was not in short supply. All that mattered was the making of a good igloo.

The cynics will be baffled by all this fuss over something that’s going to melt in a matter of weeks. These same people also didn’t give any roses on Valentine’s Day. But, besides the good times that were had in its making, this structure might change Connecticut College history. For on one of the Igloo’s first days, a group of top women’s lacrosse recruits visited Conn as part of an East Coast tour. They were charmed, to the point that they all tweeted something along the lines of “Conn College: Best school on the East Coast! Only one with an igloo!!” Good criteria for judging an academic institution? Maybe, maybe not, but if there’s a dynasty of Conn Lady Lax over the next decade, you’ll know why.

Igloos aren’t always made for fun. In fact, the real purpose of the igloo is purely survivalist. The Inuit never really lived in igloos. They made them on ice-fishing trips to survive a few days in the outdoors. So, in my mind, this igloo wasn’t a real igloo until someone had survived a night in it. So I thought I would take it upon myself to test it out.

I dragged a few sleeping bags, a sleeping pad and all of my clothes into the Igloo to form a respectable sleeping area. A few chairs made up the living room. As people came in and out over the course of the night, the rules, established by The Builders, of course, were asserted. No farting. At one point, when a cozy seven people were sitting around the circle, a suspicious smell circulated. But this rule is so sacredly respected, for obvious reasons, that instead of the usual round of “Who was that?” the only response was Builder Patch Lonsdorf ’14: “How could someone do that? It’s against the rule!” Not so much a rule as an unwritten courtesy of the Igloo is to say, “Watch out, it’s slippy” to anyone entering through the low-ceilinged entrance. But this served mainly as an ironic introduction to newcomers arriving headfirst into the group.

The largest occupancy of the night surprisingly occurred at about 3 a.m.: a record-setting 14 humans. Those lucky enough to grab a chair in the living room had the most space, those on the bed the most shared body warmth and those on the ice-floor; well they had pretty cold butts. But the Igloo was literally melting hot; drops of water started trickling down from the roof. It was about then, as we gathered together to form a tight circle of body odor, that things got religious. Builder Junda raised up his arms, touched his fingers together and somehow invented The Igloo God Salute. We watched this moment of divine inspiration and then formed igloos with our arms over our heads and prayed: Thank you Igloo Gods for blessing us with this igloo. Let us do you proud.

Eventually it became evident that however much fun we were having, there was only one person actually staying there. People gradually trickled out. I thought of Christopher McCandless and his famous last words: “Happiness Only Real When Shared.” If he were in my position in that last scene of Into The Wild, they would have read: “Igloo Only Warm When Shared.” But I wrapped up warm and, thankfully, remembered John the Campus-Bar-Doorman’s advice: to sleep on my belly. A devoted right-shoulder sleeper, I struggled to make this life-or-death adjustment. And believe it or not, I fell quickly off to sleep, dreaming of the same thing as every other Camel that night: The Email. The school’s-cancelled-don’t-even-bother-checking-with-your-professor-it’s-a-freakin’-snow-day Email. It was a good sleep.

At least until the campus safety officer on igloo-duty had to get involved.

“It’s pretty warm in here, actually,” I said back to him. After a pretty bizarre conversation I convinced him I was in the Igloo for good, at least until JA opened for breakfast. Like the finest Campus Safety officers always do in such situations, he turned the blind eye and left me alone. At 8:30, I stepped outside for the first time, into a blizzard. At least, that’s what it seemed like to me. But to a Builder, it was nothing but “prime mortar!” and a perfect chance to re-layer the South wall. But with a devastating “School opening at 10 a.m.” email, the snow day was cancelled.

Fast forward to 11:46: The snowstorm has persisted and is given its reward: “School Cancelled… effective immediately.” The Builders started appearing from all directions, M.V.P. Haik, in a sprint. By noon, the entire crew was back to work.

“Building an igloo is so interdisciplinary,” said Junda, who admitted that after the Igloo was initially completed, he found it hard to find anything as purposeful in life. “You got architecture, art, survival skills… thermodynamics!”

But I think the real appeal of all this snow carpentry has got something to do with boyhood. The atmosphere on-site was as boyish as a pair of scabbed knees. The mantra that college kids jokingly say, and realistically live by: “Work Hard, Play Hard” doesn’t allow for this kind of self-made fun. There are days we’re supposed to party and nights we’re supposed to study, but an igloo on a snow day is the inner-kid’s idea.

“Forget jobs. Let’s just build snowscapes,” said Haik, as he rolled a massive snowball along. He had the excitement of a boy who just made an igloo—and a fully functional Inuit-life-saving igloo at that. Remember when you were young enough to have such blind excitement? Now, doesn’t it seem like any moment of true excitement or ambition is accompanied by a very mature, very realistic thought that it might not turn out just like you want it to?

After helping the guys out a little, I needed to go home and have a hot shower. As I was walking away, I think they were making a pyramid. •