i recently read a book entitled, Terra Incognita; Travels in Antarctica, by Sara Wheeler. It harkens a return for me to my one-time favourite sort of literature, Travel Writing! I am years away from being able to afford any sort of travel beyond the armchair variety... Some day though. This book is wonderful because it feels like and i think was intended as an introduction to Antarctica. Wheeler quotes all the big names of Antarctic exploration heavily and those were the passages that won me over.
I quote:
"When you look upon such things there comes surging through the confusion of the mind an awareness of the dignity of the earth, of the unaccountable importance of being alive, and the thought comes out of nowhere that unhappiness rises not from lacking as from having too much...And you guess the end of the world will probably look like that, and the last men retreating from the cliffs will look out upon some such horizon, with all things at last in equilibrium, the winds quiet, the sea frozen, the sky composed, and the earth in glacial quietude."
-Richard E. Byrd, from Discovery
Doesn't that just kill you? I'm making a list of books from the bibliography to read.
No comments:
Post a Comment