The Skill Nobody Puts on Their Resume: Being a Good Camp Participant

You can be the best pilot, the sharpest data analyst, or the most experienced field technician in the industry. None of that matters if you're miserable to live with.

Remote fieldwork isn't just a job, it's a social contract. When you're confined to a small camp with a dozen other people for weeks at a time, hundreds of kilometres from the nearest town, technical competence is table stakes. What actually determines whether a deployment succeeds or fails, whether people want to work with you again, whether the project runs smoothly or grinds through interpersonal friction, that comes down to something much simpler: whether you show up as a participant.

Aeria CEO making buns for his team on northern Baffin Island.

We've spent a lot of time in remote camps. Arctic research stations. Fly-in mining sites. Coastal field camps accessible only by boat or helicopter. And one of the clearest patterns we've observed is this: the people who make remote work sustainable aren't necessarily the ones with the most impressive credentials. They're the ones who understand that their role extends beyond whatever task brought them there.

Beyond Your Job Description

When a team flies into a remote site, everyone arrives with a specific function. The geologist is there to collect samples. The pilot is there to fly. The safety officer is there to manage risk. The drone operator is there to capture data. It's tempting to think of these roles as boundaries, to show up, do your job, and retreat to your quarters until the next shift.

That approach creates problems.

Remote camps operate on shared labour. Someone has to cook. Someone has to clean. Someone has to haul water or fuel or supplies. In well-run operations, these tasks rotate or get distributed based on who's available, not based on job titles. The pilot who thinks dish duty is beneath them, the consultant who disappears when it's time to break down camp, the specialist who never volunteers for anything outside their narrow scope, these people make everyone else's life harder. And everyone notices.

Participating doesn't mean abandoning your primary responsibilities. It means understanding that camp life has a rhythm, and that rhythm depends on everyone contributing. Help with meals. Join the evening cleanup. Offer to assist with someone else's work when you have downtime. These aren't acts of charity, they're basic expectations for functioning in an environment where the usual social buffers don't exist.

The Comfort Equation

Here's the reality: a remote deployment can be an incredible experience or a grinding ordeal. The difference often has nothing to do with the work itself, the weather, or the accommodations. It has to do with the people.

When everyone participates, in cooking, in games, in conversation, in the small rituals that make camp life bearable, the whole environment shifts. People relax. Tensions dissipate. What could feel like confinement starts to feel like camaraderie. We've been on deployments where the conditions were objectively difficult, bad weather, equipment failures, long hours, but the team dynamic made it one of the best field experiences we've had. We've also seen projects with perfect logistics fall apart because a few people refused to engage with camp culture.

Long table dinner evening in a remote camp.

The stakes are higher than mere comfort. Poor team dynamics in remote settings create safety risks. People who don't communicate well, who isolate themselves, who build resentment through lack of participation, these patterns lead to mistakes. Someone doesn't speak up about a developing problem because they don't feel connected to the group. Someone pushes through fatigue because they don't want to ask for help. Someone misses a briefing because they've checked out socially. Remote environments are unforgiving; they require everyone to be present, attentive, and invested in collective success.

Health, Safety, and Showing Up

One place where participation matters enormously is health and safety programming. Every remote operation has safety briefings, check-ins, protocols. It's easy to treat these as bureaucratic obligations, something to sit through so you can get back to real work.

That attitude is corrosive.

When experienced team members engage with safety programming, asking questions, offering observations, treating it as genuinely important, it signals to everyone that safety culture isn't performative. When those same people roll their eyes or check their phones during briefings, it signals that the protocols are just box-ticking. Newer team members take their cues from veterans. If veterans don't participate meaningfully in safety discussions, neither will anyone else.

The same principle applies to mental health. Remote work is psychologically demanding in ways that office work isn't. You're away from family and friends. You're in close quarters with people you may not have chosen to spend time with. The days can blur together. Maintaining mental equilibrium requires active effort, knowing when to take breaks, how to create moments of privacy, when to push through and when to step back.

Good participants model this behaviour. They take breaks without apology. They communicate their needs clearly, "I need an hour to myself" or "I'm going to skip dinner tonight", without drama. They make it normal to prioritize mental health, which gives everyone else permission to do the same. Camps where people pretend they don't have limits are camps where someone eventually breaks down.

Communication as Participation

Perhaps the most underrated form of participation is communication itself. In remote settings, you can't escape to your own apartment at the end of the day. You can't call a friend to vent. The social world shrinks to whoever's in camp with you, and that means communication patterns matter intensely.

Good communicators in remote settings share information proactively. They mention when they're struggling before it becomes a crisis. They flag concerns about equipment or conditions early. They check in with others, not in a performative way, but because they're genuinely paying attention to how the team is functioning.

They also know how to navigate the inevitable frictions of communal living. Small annoyances that you'd ignore in daily life can become serious irritants when you can't get away from them. The person who chews loudly, who talks too much in the morning, who leaves their gear everywhere, in a remote camp, these things matter. Good participants address small issues before they fester, and they do it with enough social grace that conflicts don't escalate.

The flip side is knowing when to give people space. Not every moment needs to be social. Some people recharge through solitude, and respecting that is itself a form of participation, reading the room, understanding what others need, and adjusting your own behaviour accordingly.

What We Look For

When we're building teams for remote deployments, technical qualifications are necessary but not sufficient. We pay attention to how people talk about previous field experience. Do they mention the team? Do they describe camp life with some affection, or do they only talk about the work? Have they learned the rhythms of remote living, or do they treat it as an inconvenience to endure?

Ping Pong Champions of the Arctic

The best remote operators we've worked with share certain qualities. They're flexible about tasks. They're aware of group dynamics. They contribute to morale without being forced. They take care of themselves in ways that don't burden others. They communicate clearly and resolve conflicts constructively. They understand that their presence affects everyone around them, and they take responsibility for that.

None of this appears on a resume. It doesn't show up in certifications or flight hours or years of experience. But it's often the determining factor in whether someone gets invited back.

The Bottom Line

If you're heading into remote territory, your technical preparation is only half the job. The other half is preparing to be a good participant, to contribute beyond your role, to engage with camp culture, to communicate effectively, to take care of yourself in ways that support the team rather than straining it.

This isn't soft skills fluff. It's operational reality. The difference between a successful deployment and a dysfunctional one often comes down to whether people showed up ready to participate in the full experience of remote work, not just the narrow slice they were hired for.

Do the dishes. Play the card game. Ask your colleague about their work. Take a break when you need one. Engage with the safety briefing like it matters, because it does. These aren't extras. They're the foundation of everything else.

---

Aeria Solutions operates in remote environments across Canada, from Arctic research stations to coastal field camps. Our approach to team selection and field operations reflects years of learning what makes remote deployments work, and what makes them fall apart.