Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica
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It is the coldest, windiest, driest place on earth, an icy desert of unearthly beauty and stubborn impenetrability. For centuries, Antarctica has captured the imagination of our greatest scientists and explorers, lingering in the spirit long after their return. Shackleton called it "the last great journey"; for Apsley Cherry-Garrard it was the worst journey in the world. This is a book about the call of the wild and the response of the spirit to a country that exists perhaps most vividly in the mind. Sara Wheeler spent seven months in Antarctica, living with its scientists and dreamers. No book is more true to the spirit of that continent--beguiling, enchanted and vast beyond the furthest reaches of our imagination. Chosen by Beryl Bainbridge and John Major as one of the best books of the year, recommended by the editors of Entertainment Weekly and the Chicago Tribune, one of the Seattle Times's top ten travel books of the year, Terra Incognita is a classic of polar literature.
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Too much introspection, not enough about Antarctica and the people there. I don't care that the author gave up alcohol or suffers from depression back in the UK.
I've returned a bit to my Polar obsession, since reading Brother Ice earlier this year. A continent full of ice, beautiful, frozen, cruel, alternating between the eternal night and the eternal day. The romantic ideal of many late heroes.
Terra Incognita is a travelogue interspersed with the history of men on Antarctica. In the mid 1990s Wheeler visits the many international science camps that are distributed over the continent. We learn of all the minute details life on Antarctica entails. We hear of exploding toilets, frozen beards, many delayed flights, dart games over VHF radio, igloo sleepovers, hygiene without showers. In small quarters, shared tents and huts, we meet all these characters - mostly scientists, but also a few escapists - who keep returning to the ice, again and again, despite it's many hardships.
Unsurprisingly it's quite the boys-club down there. Though the unwelcomness that Wheeler experiences at the British camp, really reads like quite a little nightmare. Yet she bites back in her writing, keeping it sharp and funny at the same time.
Reading this book made me curious about how life down in Antarctica has transformed in the last 2 decades.
