The snow falling heavy outside, you with people you know better than almost anyone else in the world. It’s dark outside, and unfathomably cold, but in here, you’re warm, and being aware of that dichotomy makes it all the sweeter.
I don’t know about you, but a winter scene like this sounds like paradise to me. More than summer or autumn or spring, winter holds a certain feeling of peace and, for lack of a better term, “comfiness” than any other time of the year.
So, I suppose that it is only natural that the poles of the earth, where it is winter all year round, are particularly strong sources of fascination for me. The image of living out in a shack in a place where it can get so cold that the carbon dioxide freezes right out of the air, so isolated from the rest of the world that you have a good chance of going stark raving mad? I honestly can’t think of anywhere else I would be more fascinated to be.
McMurdo Station– the closest thing in existence to a “city” in the Antarctic.
It would seem it’s not just me, either: countless tracts and works of literature, from At the Mountains of Madness to Pym, have been written on these nether regions of the earth.
Outside of literature, the fascination mankind holds for these places has been evident throughout our history. Think about it: if you’re a Greek in the 3rd century BC hailing from the warm Mediterranean, you’ve in all probability never seen ice before. How do you explain an entire sea made out of the stuff? Or how do you explain a walrus, an orcha, a narwhal? Sea pigs, leviathans, unicorns?
Now, of course, the Arctic was not unique in this regard: the Greeks (and all antique peoples, for that matter) have been bewildered and confounded by what lay at the edge of the known world since the beginning of their culture. What makes the arctic so unique among the places at the edge of the map was that it stayed that way
1488, the Portuguese rounded the Cape of Good Hope (then the Cape of Storms). 1492, Columbus sails the ocean blue (and prosecutes a genocide, but that’s another story). Before you knew it, there weren’t many places beyond the edge of the map. No more terra incognitum, no more license to write “Here There Be Dragons”… except for one place…
The Arctic, and Antarctic.
Here can be seen Crockerland, a landmass purported to exist in the Arctic Ocean. It has since been proven false.
It would not be till 1911, well into the age of modernity, that the final frontier was fully explored and the South Pole was reached. Perhaps this is why we are so fascinated by the polar regions– they fly in the face of our pretensions of civilization, our belief that we have subordinated nature to our will. There, at the ends of the earth lay a wild, untamed frontier that spits in the face of our notions of mastery over the earth. It doesn’t matter if you can make an iPhone or split the atom– all that matters is if you can survive the cold.
Whatever the cause, in this blog, I hope to write on the curious, the strange, and the fascinating histories of the Poles.
I love this passion for the cold and the Antarctic! Your writing style is very crisp and distinct, and I can sense your personality through your writing. I also love how you captioned your images which gave them context. I’d love to read more about this, especially to see what direction you take your blog in next. Great job… this is so interesting and cool (pun not intended)!
I really enjoyed reading this blog post! I love how you incorporated facts with a little humor, and I’m interested to see what your next post will be about. I never thought about the fact that Antarctica doesn’t even have any cities. To be honest, I’m surprised that people choose to live there permanently. I guess they like to live on the edge a bit.
I can tell you really love the cold, and have a vast knowledge on history. Its impressive that you manage to combine both your passion for the atric poles and history into one blog! This blog is awesome keep it up!
The idea of exploring unknown realms has always interested me so much. I love that you brought up Lovecraft, because his cosmicist themes of humanity discovering its own irrelevance are similar to what drove people to want to explore the polar regions in the first place – to understand and subdue nature and thus solidify our own significance. I’m also interested in exploring a final frontier of sorts, but mine is a bit more extraterrestrial.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: your dark humor and macabre descriptions are both parts hysterical and chilling. I hang on every word that you write and I adore the obscurity of your topic.