Books
Antarctica - A Different Adventure
Travel stories
Antarctica
Foreword
Jason Kimberley's
book, Antarctica: A Different Adventure, is informative, beautiful
and fun.
It is a book that will make you smile and make you laugh. However,
there is also poignancy
- Antarctica and the great Antarctic web of life surrounding it are bearing
witness to
profound climate change.
Introduction
I hate the cold. It
invades your entire being – your mind, your body and your soul.
In Antarctica,
staying warm is an unremitting challenge, requiring your
fullest attention every minute of the
day. One of my greatest fears is that of being stuck, exposed
and helpless and slowly freezing
to death, in some lonely wasteland. I think this is one
of the reasons that Antarctica has always
intrigued me.
Chapter 1 - Preparation Begins
The most daunting part of an Antarctic expedition is coming to terms with the training required to get fit enough for the physical challenges ahead. I despise the gym and have more of a "sit in the shade and have a cold beer" attitude to training. So after several weeks of putting it off - rationalising the delay by telling myself, "It's still five months away; I'll start next week" - I finally bite the bullet and book into a gym class with a personal trainer. To avoid running into anyone I know, I pick a gym several suburbs away. I choose a group session so I can hide in the corner when it becomes apparent that I am hopelessly out of condition.
Chapter 5 - Horseshoe Valley, Antarctica
After nine months of
planning, training, gear-gathering, list-checking and travelling, we
are here. The weather is perfect: not a breath of wind; clear
blue skies; brilliant sunshine;
a temperature of -15°. The time is 3.40 a.m. I shuffle down
the stairs at the back of the
Ilyushin onto the very, very slick blue ice. These are my
first steps on the frozen continent,
so I move with enormous care and trepidation as I have heard
many horror stories of broken
arms and dislocated shoulders through lack of respect for
this slick blue ice. Shuffling
carefully, I reach the relative safety of the firm snow and
grab Mertz and the Boss for a
photo opportunity before beginning the 2-kilometre walk to
Patriot Hills camp.
Chapter 6 - The Epic
The weather is so good
at camp one that we decide to spend two nights here. We spend the
day walking around and photographing nearby. As the air is
so still, I ask Mertz if he will
do some nude modelling in the frozen icefields (current temperature
-15°).
To my delight
and surprise, Mertz agrees straightaway, with only one question
and one request: "Where do
you want me to stand?" and "Please do not highlight any of
the shrinkage that will inevitably
occur." What a guy!
Chapter 13 - Where Are We Going?
As a group the Boss, Mertz and I managed to find our way back to Patriot
Hills, out of
Antarctica and ultimately back home. But now that I am back,
I keep asking myself, "Where
are we going?" Humankind is the dominant species on the planet,
capable of altering
and determining the quality of the global environment and
our lives. But how carefully
are we exercising this power and are we looking to the future
or merely satisfying our
short-term interests? We find it easy to dismiss many of
our fellow humans as arrogant,
selfish, careless, aloof, egotistical, greedy, opportunistic,
ignorant, disingenuous, abusive,
devious, unscrupulous, immoral, ignorant, excessive or just
plain wrong. These are not
labels that we would like applied to ourselves, yet, as a
species, they accurately describe so
much of our behaviour in relation to our environment.
