Susan Fox Rogers

Blind(s)

Late fall paddles have a certain thrill to them. The air warms for a day, but the water has already begun its pull to cold. Sitting so close to the water, my feet begin to numb from the cold of wet feet while I’m in a t-shirt, basking in the sun. I think of it as two worlds: the world of light and the world of dark, the world of warmth and the world of cold. In other words, paddling is a lot like life.

On Sunday I ran into two men who swim with the Bard master’s swim team I join from time to time. They were heading south so off we went together. We debated popping into the North Tivoli Bay to disrupt the happy gunshots of duck hunters.

When I first began to paddle I had no idea that hunters took over the Bays for a period every fall. I wandered in and delighted by the sight of a duck bobbing at the edge of a clearing of cattails, I slowly approached. It was beautiful, that noble teal head, a white ring like a necklace, a brown chest. I got closer scootching along with the current, delighted that the bird was allowing me to admire it. And then I realized the obvious. I swiveled in my seat. Behind me stood a hunter on a ramshackle duck blind, gun slung to the side, shaking his head.

I could have paddled away and left this embarrassing moment in the Bay, a secret held by the unknown hunter, his beautiful decoy and me. But in fact, I tell this story a lot—there is nothing like telling stories that make me look like an idiot. But there is something else to the story. I am gullible, in more than decoys. Though I know people hunt, part of me still doesn’t understand that people with guns want to shoot and kill other creatures. By understand I mean that because this makes no sense to me I choose to live as if people who hunt to kill do not exist.

We stayed on the main river that day, finally dipping into the South Tivoli Bay, wide and open after a season clogged with the beautiful, invasive water chestnut. On the return we bobbed off of Magdalen watching an eagle shred its dinner. The warm air had created low-lying clouds that formed a skirt around the Catskills on the far shore. I felt warm and strong and happy.  I ignored that my feet were cold. I also ignored the sounds of guns exploding on both the west and eastern shores. I had journeyed onto the river to marvel, feel free, explore and have fun. And I didn’t want to alter that, even given those shots that told me I am perhaps naïve in how I see this world. This is my own blind.

 

 

Chincoteague

As a child I read Misty of Chincoteague (which is on sale in every store in town for $2.99) and have always had a mental image of this place as wild, with farms dominating the landscape. The town itself is hardly worth mentioning. There are beach stores aplenty selling t-shirts and other tourist necessities, and a range of restaurants selling fairly mediocre seafood. Of course.  But the island itself, across the Assateague Channel, where the ponies graze remains open, with sandy soil, pines and plenty of birds. This area is protected as part of the national seashore. Though it is very managed, you can still get the feel that comes across in Misty. If you have not recently read the book, do—the descriptions are marvelous and the writing clean and vivid.

So, to get to it: we did see ponies, at first at a distance, in groups of four or five. Brown and white, a bit on the big bellied side (from the salt in the grass—they hold water). Then on our final day we visited Assateague on the Maryland side and there they were grazing right next to the parking lot, wandering around so close some reached out to touch them though of course there are warnings galore not to do so. They lose a bit of their wild mystique being so “tame.” And hardly elusive. The ponies are managed differently in Virginia—there is the annual auction as in Misty, while in Maryland they shoot the mares with birth control so that they bear only one foal in a lifetime. In this way the population is kept in control. The ponies, though, were not nearly as thrilling as all of the birds migrating through this beautiful landscape.

Promise, this won’t be a list. But I’ll describe the refuges we visited and some of the marvelous sightings.

 

Michael Werner

    A few days ago, I called my rock climbing friend Rich Perch, who lives in Colorado

    “What are you doing inside on a glorious day?” I said without a hello. I was full of the early autumn glory of the east coast.

    “It’s hailing here. And lightening.”

    He’d been climbing in the morning but had retreated to his home in Estes Park in the afternoon.

    I’ve known Rich since I started climbing in 1975. He and Thom Scheuer were then  the rangers at the Gunks, a world-class climbing area in New York’s Hudson Valley. I remember walking down the carriage road beneath the blocky, sheer cliffs, and seeing the two of them in the back of their blue Toyota pick up trucks reading the New York Times, collecting day fees and bantering with climbers. The moment I saw them I knew this was a world I wanted to be a part of.

    Since that first encounter, Rich and I had shared a rope for days at a time, as well as many friends, some of whom, like Thom, had died.

    “Tomorrow is my anniversary,” Rich boasted.

    “You’ve never been married,” I pointed out.

    “Tomorrow is the day of my first climb, forty years ago.” Rich has a list of every climb he has done and with whom.

    I tried to think back to the date of my first climb, now 39 years ago. I can picture the thick, stretchy goldline rope and the cliff itself, a crumbling piece of rock in Huntington, Pennsylvania. I can even smell the hesitant fear I had then at 15, when I was told to fall, to learn to trust the rope.  I can remember the mixture of pleasure and thinking this was crazy all bundled together. I don’t remember the date of that first day at the cliffs, but I know that that fall day draws the line in my life. Before, I was a teenager with energy but no focus, after that day I had a passion that has kept me looking skyward, and led me to climbing areas around the country and overseas.

    It’s not surprising, then, that my first lover was a rock climber. I confess that I remember a lot less about that first time and that the shift before and after was hardly the monumental one I had so imagined.

    I congratulated Rich on 40 years of happy marriage to the cliffs of New York and Colorado, California, Nevada, Arizona.

Full Moon Paddle

Not much blogging this summer, but some adventuring (which I’ll perhaps get to recounting at some point). Last night was the September full moon—not as special as the August full moon, which is the Sturgeon Moon, but it is the Corn Moon and the corn has been pretty wonderful here. I put in at Cheviot, which is just a bit north of Tivoli. It’s almost across the river from the St. Lawrence cement plant, which looms on the western shore. When it’s dark I confess that the plant is magical with its lights.

I put in around 7:15 and pointed north. It’s a great section to paddle because the river spreads wide and shallow so the channel snakes up very near the western shore  (where barges dock to load and unload at the cement plants). So I could paddle down the middle of the river and except for the occasional sea monster it’s pretty safe.

Birds, Birds, Bicknell and Blackburnian

Mid-May I woke up and heard bird songs. Of course I had always heard birds rattling away in the morning, a blur of noise that told me the world was alive. Suddenly, though, as if a part of my hearing had suddenly clicked into place, there emerged distinct calls in rhythm and volume, in pitch and repetition. That’s all I heard. When in the past I could walk without really seeing or hearing anything, now I can’t walk without hearing every peep, chirp, chip, slur. And wondering who it is.

I’m not the first to suddenly be taken with birds and their songs. But I feel lucky to join a large and often nerdy bunch of people wandering the globe with a range of binoculars, scopes and cameras and a will to see. If only for a moment. There’s one thing I’ve learned: birding is about moments, flashes. You don’t hold onto these birds. You are lucky to get a glimpse.

Across the Hudson River Mark DeDea at the Forsythe Nature Center  organizes nature walks that often focus on birds with the John Burroughs Society. For the past two weekends I’ve joined them on walks/hikes led by Christine Guarino, an energetic young woman who is part parrot and who hears everything.

The Game of Go

OK, we're taking a break from the cold of Antarctica and the steep cliffs of the Gunks to report on the Game of Go. Turns out my nephew, Thomas--above--is a Go champion, which has our family both baffled and delighted. At the moment he is representing France in the 30th International Amateur Go Championships in Shizuoka. After Friday's games he is ranked 12th. The big news is that he beat a stronger player today: Ondrej Silt a 6d (that's 6 Dan) from the Czech Republic. Here is the commentary on the game:
Commentary by Michael Redmond 9p, transcribed by Chris Garlock.

Sixteen-year-old Thomas Debarre 5d comes up with a new variation on a  popular joseki played by top Japanese player Cho U in his 5th-round game against Ondrej Silt 6d of Czechia. “This is a completely new variation altogether,” says Michael Redmond 9P in his commentary on the game. “It’s very interesting.” But Debarre falls behind in the opening, playing “too many moves in the small area,” says Redmond.  Silt maintains his lead through move 89 when Debarre manages to generate a severe attack that threatens to either kill a large group or wipe out Silt’s side position. Silt rolls the dice, protects his  side and, seven moves later, his group is dead…

To learn more about Go, the world of Go and Thomas, read this overlong essay I wrote in 2004 when Thomas was ranked a 3 Kyu and Ondrej a 5d. At this early competition (for Thomas) Ondrej was the star of the event. To have Thomas now win against Ondrej seems somewhat miraculous.

Picking up Garbage

One day, when I was about five and my sister seven,  the two of us were floating on an inflatable raft on Long Pond (Cape Cod). Our father sat on the tiny sand beach and watched. It was a lazy, quiet moment of drifting.
“Susie, it’s your duty to keep America beautiful,” Becky said.
And we continued to drift.

My father loved this story, perhaps because he thought Becky had made up this great line. I’m pretty sure Becky had pulled it from a TV ad, though we did not have a TV in our own house. He told the story over and over again, emphasizing how the comment seemed to come out of nowhere and Becky’s seriousness in delivering this mandate. Whether it came from Becky, or from hearing the story so many times, I have taken it seriously. It’s my job to keep garbage from ruining the beauty of the Hudson River and of the Tivoli Bays in particular.

Back on the River

April 18, 2009. Back on the river. On Friday evening I slid my kayak into the water off of Tivoli and shoved north toward Cheviot. As I put in a man pulled onto the rocky landing in his boat. He tells me he lives in Tivoli and paddles almost every day, though through this ice-choked winter he missed a few days. I paddle almost every day in the warmer months and have never seen this person. Makes me think about how solitary this sport is.
There is some new graffiti in the walls just north of town. Big bulky letters: Tell the Truth. Will do.

Red Rocks Climbing Trip

Here is a short piece I wrote about the joys of climbing.

At Red Rocks, Nevada, you can find guides who act like soccer coaches with their clients, cheering them on as they dangle from top ropes. There are super buff climbers gliding up 5.12s, and mothers with their toddlers in climbing harnesses and miniature sticky shoes. In the campground you’ll find climbing bums living out of the backs of their trucks, like you always have at every climbing area in this country. Sprinkled in there are a few tourists who found their way out of Las Vegas, tore themselves from the slot machines to drive the 12 mile scenic loop through Red Rocks National Park. Some even get out of their cars and take a walk. A hike. Then there was me, a middle-aged woman, college professor on spring break, desert lover in search of canyon wrens and desert tortoise, and in search of a good time climbing as well. 

Anarctica Reading

If you live in New Jersey near Lambertville, come  join me at the Acme Movie Theater on 25 S. Union St. at 6 pm on Saturday January 24. (for a bit more information click here). I will speak about Antarctica, and read from Life on the Ice. After, there will be a screening of Werner Herzog's documentary, Encounters at the End of the World.

Jon Bowermaster, back in the Antarctic

No one gets around the globe like Jon Bowermaster. He's back in the Antarctic this austral summer after his successful kayak trip there last year. During that trip he was on hand when the tourist ship went down and oddly he was there this year when the tourist ship went down. I'm not going to say he's bad luck but...

Read his blog. It's not just full of glorious photos, like that above, but also lots of information about the Antarctic. There's a terrific, and terrifying post on overfishing. 

Update from Antarcticans

 

One of the great pleasures of editing anthologies is the sense I have of creating a literary community around a place, subject or activity that I love. That certainly is the case with Antarctica: Life on the Ice. Recently, some of the contributors sent updates about their activities. Since their talents are varied and their interests range around the world, I thought I'd share their words about their lives. 

Slightly embarrassed to say that I am still here in Antarctica, trying to make it through the five-month-day, but feeling honored by being able to tag along after Jules and her hardscrabble army of Basque liberationists, torches thrust skyward and bodices ripped away at the shoulder. Still revising Novel #2, The Winter of My Discount Tent, making tentative and incremental progress on it, which is continuously undone when I discover some fatal defect in the plot that forces me to rewrite it yet again -  Anyway.  The hope is to have it ready for someone else's eyes by the time I leave here in February. 

 Also doing a lot of painting. Very soothing paintings. Mostly makeovers of famous works, with an Antarctic theme. Above is Tina's World - Tina Green out at Siple Dome last season.

--Karen Joyce

 

I drove the Alaska Pipeline haul road from Valdez to Deadhorse in August for a book chapter. I'm due to start work in January as the founding director of the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art come January, but will again be working in Australia and the Atacama Desert of Chile this next year. 

--William Fox

 

The big news on my end is that my book on meteorite hunters is set to come out in spring/summer 2009 + the reprint of Hope is the Thing with Feathers is set to come out then too. I turned in the last big revision of THE FALLEN SKY a couple of weeks ago, promptly got a cold (some celebration) and I'm happily turning to some Utah essays and helping Tarcher/Penguin plan p.r. for the books. All that to the good--a nice counterbalance to budget cuts at Utah State, which are putting Isotope, the magazine I edit, at some risk. I hope we'll pull through that. And if you're not subscribing, please do! And if you have a rich uncle... 

--Chris Cokinos

 

I'm trying to stay put for a while and have been living in Vail, Colorado for the last 9 months (longer than I've stayed anywhere in the past 6 years). I'm still regularly writing book reviews and doing other freelance writing work as it comes along...and I'm taking my stab at yet another book proposal--this one on the topic of a literary adventure in the footsteps of William Wordsworth. To keep my sanity (ha--and have health insurance for a while), I'm working comms in the Eagle County 911 center--alternating moments of hilarity and tragedy.

—Traci J. Macnamara

 

My last novel, Biting the Apple, came out a year ago.  Since then I did a wonderful and challenging trip in the Peruvian Andes and just returned from a decadent (why not spend all my money, it’s all evaporating anyway?) trip in Sicily where the most strenuous thing I did was navigate cobblestones (which oddly make the body ache more than rocky mountain passes). 

--Lucy Jane Bledsoe

 

Kris (as in Kristen Hutchison) has been with me to Armenia a couple times.  Last time we were there she joined the Peace Corps by leaving the hotel and walking down the street to them.  (Weird to work in a place where we have an active Peace Corps group deployed.)  She got into teaching English as a second language.

Kris and I just finished a small vacation in Az.  Hiked the desert for old time's sake read about here.

--Joe Mastroianni

Since retiring from NSF in 2005 I've mainly been keeping the boat running that Lynn and I live on and talking to researchers and others about the intersection of science and societal concerns regarding the Chesapeake Bay.  We write an occasional column for a newspaper called Bay Weekly; Lynn has assembled the columns and her photographs into a web site.  We may have a book in us, too, but despite the many writers I sent to the Antarctic I've never done one.

--Guy Guthridge

 

I'm still working for UNAVCO (GPS science support), but went part-time last year in August and have been bopping around a bit--two months in Africa (Ethiopia and Tanzania) on project and then 'pleasure' (travel doesn't always turn out to be fun...) and a few weeks here and there working in CA and WY--and now am mostly working on some web content stuff at UNAVCO.  It's kind of nice to be in one place for a while.  But I'm also ready for big adventure again.

I'm not working on any writing projects in particular, just trying to get my creative juices flowing and periodically posting photos and stories to my blog. 

I'm getting inspired reading about all the writing everyone else is doing, though.  Guess I better get on it!

--Beth Bartel

 

So there I was writing a weekly column for Salt Lake City. It was in the Salt Lake City Weekly and I wrote about my favorite subject--me and me doing cheap things around Salt Lake. The column was called "Cheap Shot."

My photo was in the paper each week and I was beginning to get recognized around town. People bought my drinks at bars and owners of restaurants would come out and shake my hand. Everyone hoping that I'd mention them in my next column. Life was good. Life was great. Then I asked the newspaper for a raise.

Now I'm delivering mail for the United States Post Office.

--Phil Jacobsen

To read Phil’s columns go to: www.slweekly.com

 

 

 

Back in the Catskills

Late fall and winter are hiking season in the Catskills--especially if you are bushwacking. That's what I did with Connie (also known as Killer Connie, in red) and Edna on November 15 as we trudged up Mount Sherrill and North Dome. When we arrived at the trailhead in Westkill it was ten degrees out. I was not ready for the cold, even though I had on four layers. I kept all of them on during the hike and even added my down jacket on the descent! Our goal was that red canister in the background--there are canisters on the summits of all bushwack peaks in the Catskills--not a glorious view. 

There are 35 peaks over 3,500 feet in the Catskills. Lots of people have their lists and the 3500 club promotes climbing all of them. Some hike them all in the winter as well. And then there are those who climb all of the peaks in every month of the year (this can take a year or two, depending on how obsessive you are). Connie is one such hiker--she has done this grid twice and is working on her third grid. She's an amazing woman: bakes great cookies we eat at the end of each hike, runs a health club, and practices reiki. Connie is keeping my Catskill list for me. I've got a few peaks to go...

Antarctica wins Silver Medal

Antarctica: Life on the Ice has won the Silver medal from the Society of American Travel Writers! This is part of their Lowell Thomas awards in journalism. Thank you writers for  making this book such a success!

I know I have been dormant here. But the return of friends to the ice will get me going. For now, my friend Holly (who I met in 2004--she was working with a science team digging for nematodes in the Dry Valleys) is down there working with helicopters. Read her blog to hear some stories of big weather and to see some great pictures.

And I'll be back soon to describe the 2008 Gunks Reunion.

More Radio for Antarctica

Thursday I'm traveling to Central Pennsylvania--Harrisburg--to talk with Sandy Fenton on her radio show "Let's Talk Travel with AAA" about Antarctica: Life on the Ice. Harrisburg is near where I grew up, State College, home of Penn State (where I also went to college). It's in the Allegheny mountains that I first hiked--up Shingletown Gap--backpacked and rock climbed on small local crags. Wherever I end up, it will always be home.

Here is the press release for the radio show. Come listen!
On "Let's Talk Travel with AAA" from 3pm to 4pm Saturday on WHP-AM 580,
host, Sandy Fenton will feature "Antarctica : Life On The Ice" with
author , travel writer and outdoorswoman, Susan Fox Rogers.
Antarctica has become a very popular destination, especially for the
adventurer and the "been-there, done-that" experienced traveler.
Rogers spent six weeks on "the ice" walking in the footsteps of
Antarctic explorers and learning the ways of the penguin researchers,
ice diggers, scientists, pilots and others who are living in the most
foreboding climate imaginable.
A teacher of creative writing and first year seminar at Bard College,
Rogers is also the editor of 11 anthologies.
"Let's Talk Travel with AAA" can be heard online.  Go to www.whp580.com
and click on "WHP580 Now Live Online."

Kayaking the Antarctic

If you have not been following Jon Bowermaster's trip by kayak into the Antarctic--you must (it's almost over!).  The images of ice, penguins and seals are simply extraordinary and he describes the day to day of this five-week adventure in terrific detail, capturing in words and audio tapes the beauty of being in a kayak in such a place. Don't miss his audio in week 4 (Jan 22) when he talks about the sounds in the Antarctic. He says that sounds are what linger from the Antarctic. I'd agree with this. The silence (of course) but also wind, the movement of ice, the clang of penguins (you can hear the sounds of penguins in the video on the Hazards of Penguin Life--which is also very funny).

Being in a kayak in Antarctic waters--this is something I can not imagine (a slice of fiberglass separating you from water that hovers just above freezing...). If you watch the video clips you can see how careful they are in the boats; watch the video of paddling through pack ice.

In between the daily posts, Elizabeth K. Andre offers helpful information on ice, or climate change or katabatic winds. The albino penguin pictured here was seen on January 25--one of my favorite posts (week 4).

(Jon has a thrilling story in Antarctica: Life on the Ice about flying onto the continent with Adventure Network International.)

India in the Antarctic

Sudhir Khandelwal, a psychologist from Delhi, India has been blogging from the Indian base, Maitri this 2008 season. According to the News Post India his is the first-ever blog from an Indian from Antarctica. It's a great blog--at the moment focusing on the skuas he has named Shiv and Uma and their chicks. The photos of the views of Lake Priyandiarshini, seen from their base, are simply beautiful.

I realize, in writing this post how American-based focused I am (for obvious reasons). But 30 countries operate bases--either permanent or summer only--on the continent. I'd love to visit some of them.

Christmas at the South Pole

Somehow Glenn Grant ("Shrink Rap" in Antarctica: Life on the Ice) has ended up at the South Pole after months of being off the map. He has been working on an ice breaker and has traveled to both sides--and the middle--of the continent. More to come on his adventures--I hope. Meanwhile, this photo shows that the inventiveness of Polies can not be beat.

Glenn's hilarious essay in the anthology is about the dreaded psych test, which all who winter-over have to take.

Book Passage Reading on TV

On December 7, Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Bill Fox, Kristan Hutchison, and Joe Mastroianni read  (brilliantly) from Antarctica: Life on the Ice at Book Passage, the "Bay Area's Liveliest Bookstore." And it is a wonderful place, with a string of amazing readings and a terrific audience. The reading was filmed by ForaTV and you can watch it here.

The next day I swam outside (heated pool!) then visited with my high school friend Neil Wright (then known as Munch) and we relived the summer of 1979 spent climbing in Eldorado Canyon, Colorado. There were a few epics--Rosy Crucifixion--that we both remembered vividly. From time to time I still have nightmares about that climb... Neil practices acupuncture in Santa Cruz, is married and has two children he clearly adores.

Don't Eat Chilean Sea Bass

Every Thursday and Sunday evenings in McMurdo there are lectures, mostly given by the scientists working on the ice. This follows a long tradition in polar travel and exploration. Scott and his men had weekly lectures as well. They knew that to survive, or even thrive, on the ice they needed to keep their minds active.

When I was in McMurdo, David Ainley ("A Letter from Cape Royds" in Antarctica: Life on the Ice) gave a fascinating lecture on the fragile Antarctic ecosystem. I came away with many ideas, a vast appreciation for our planet and the determination never again to eat Chilean Sea Bass (which I had eaten; it's delicious). During the virtual tour someone emailed in a question about whether it's ok to eat "sustainable" Chilean Sea Bass. My first thought was that it is not possible to have "sustainable" Sea Bass, since it is a fish that begins to breed only when it is twelve years old. For a more in-depth answer, I turned once again to David. Here is what he has to say:

Antarctic Meteorites

One question we got for the virtual tour was this:

Where can I get genuine Antarctic meteorites? Is there anyone who ships them to the US?

As it turns out, Christopher Cokinos, one of the contributors to Antarctica: Life on the Ice has an essay in the collection about searching for meteorites on the polar plateau. The photo here shows researchers on snowmobiles, combing the ice for meteorites. One of them could be Chris. I post this photo so you can get a sense of how vast the landscape is, especially when you are looking for something as small as a meteorite (see the next photo).
Chris is the editor of one of my favorite journals, Isotope, which publishes literary essays focused on science and the natural world. Chris is just finishing a book on meteorites, titled, The Fallen Sky: A Private History of Shooting Stars, to be published by Tarcher/Penguin in the fall of 08 or Spring of 09--I'll keep you posted. Here, then is his response about buying Antarctic meteorites:

Blog Talk Radio!

We did it! Katy Jensen called in from Colorado Springs, Guy Guthridge hopped off his boat long enough to phone in, and  Karen Joyce and David Ainley called in from the Ice for the  virtual book tour. My first ever. It was a fun experience and I could have talked all night with these four writers who contributed to Antarctica: Life on the Ice. We covered a lot of topics--climate change, sunrise at the South Pole, penguins and their lives and the fact that it's now 40 degrees in McMurdo (warmer than here in New York). You can listen to the interview by visiting my website. There were more questions than we could answer so I'll try and tackle a few here in the next few days. In the meantime, here's one response from my friend Sue Pierce, from Philadelphia:

In the Antarctic Ocean

When I traveled to Antarctica, working on finding writers to contribute to Antarctica: Life on the Ice (then just a hope in my heart and an idea in my head), I spent a night in Christchurch, New Zealand. There, I shared a hotel room with a complete stranger, Julie Rose, a scientist who was heading out to research on the Nathaniel B. Palmer. I tracked down Julie recently to find out what she's doing and how her research is coming along. It wasn't hard to find her, since she works at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the world's largest private, nonprofit, ocean research, engineering, and education organization. Read on to hear about Julie's experiences on a research vessel and to get a sense of polar ocean research.

VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR!

From anywhere on planet earth you can log into the Virtual Book tour for Antarctica: Life on the Ice. As someone I know would say, how cool is that?

When: Thursday December 13, 5 PST, 8 EST
How: log into SusanFoxRogersBookTour.com
What: Ask questions--any questions you might have about the Antarctic or about the anthology--and someone will answer it. You can ask by calling in, or by sending an email (now or during the tour). You can listen live or if you can't make it you can listen to it later.
Who: I will be there (of course). Joining me will be former NSF representative Guy Guthridge, who was in charge of the Artist & Writers program and Katy Jensen, who was station manager at the South Pole and has wintered there several times. Also, direct from the Antarctic will be IT guru Karen Joyce and Mr. Penguin, David Ainley. Karen will be calling in from McMurdo and David from Cape Royds. This is a rare opportunity!

Please Join us!

A View from Above of the Bottom of the Earth

Look at the Antarctic from above! This image, from the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica is of Antarctica--anyone want to guess what we are looking at? The entire continent except the South Pole is covered and you can zoom in and out of various locations. For a map nut, it doesn't get any more exciting than this.

Log from Cape Royds, or, More Penguins! and Whales!

David Ainley gave an overview of his work with Adelie penguins at Cape Royds in an earlier blog (below) and now he's generously sharing the day to day (including Thanksgiving!) and the science of his life on the ice.

We began this 12th year leaving the USA on 4 Nov, arriving in Christchurch NZ on 6 Nov and then, after a few days of weather delay, arriving at McMurdo Station, Ross Island, on 11 Nov. While in McMurdo we attended courses on survival in extreme conditions, proper conduct in specially protected areas, and the proper disposal/recycling of no-longer-need materials (cans, bottles, paper, metal, etc). McMurdo saves for recycling about 80% of its refuse (the remainder goes in a landfill in the USA). During this period, too, we sorted through our field gear and acquired our camping gear from the Berg Field Center. We had to do this for 3 camps, all on Ross Island, at Cape Crozier (a hut there), Cape Bird (a hut), and Cape Royds (a tent). We had at least a ton of stuff, including food.

Antarctica is for Dreamers and Readers

World Hum is a marvelous website devoted to travel writing. Editor Jim Benning interviewed me yesterday--it was a fun conversation--about the Explorer sinking and about Antarctica: Life on the Ice. Here is the World Hum interview.

They have lots of wonderful material at World Hum, and in their dispatches they published Jason Anthony writing about the Antarctic: "A Brief and Awkward Tour of the End of the Earth." This essay was selected for Best American Travel Writing, 2007.

Here is the opening of Jason's "AGO 1" from Antarctica: Life on the Ice:

November, 2000: After five seasons of fairly civilized Antarctic work, I took on a ominous job offered to me at the end of the polar summer by a drunken friend. Kip reeled across the floor of McMurdo Station’s darkened carpenter shop during its massive end-of-season party in February and shouted a slurred version of the question we all ask at the end of an Antarctic contract: “Hey man, are you coming back next year?” When I shrugged the shrug of the restless, he yelled “You should come back and work for AGO next year. It’s crazy!” AGO (pronounced like the end of “Winnebago”) is the Automated Geophysical Observatory program, the maintenance of which demands some of the most notorious work in the United States Antarctic Program (USAP). Kip had graduated to management, and would be doing the hiring.

Spirit of Shackleton

The cruise ship Explorer that sunk in Antarctic waters has gotten a lot of attention. Those aboard were on a trip in the "Spirit of Shackleton." They were probably thinking of his 1914 Endurance expedition, not the trip with Scott in 1901 when he was sent home with scurvy. During the Endurance expedition--the Antarctic adventure with more amazing plot twists than any before or since--the ship was crushed in the ice. So these tourists got a real taste of Shackleton's adventure! But it took a lot longer for Shackleton's crew to be saved--21 waited on Elephant Island for four and a half months, through an Antarctic winter, while Shackleton set out over 800 miles of open water to South Georgia Island  where he found help at a whaling outpost, Stromness Station. The photo here is either of Shackleton's men waving goodbye or welcoming the ship in. The photo is taken by Frank Hurley--if you don't know his photos, go find them. All of Shackleton's men survived--by keeping busy and singing songs. I wonder if the survivors of the Explorer sang as they waited to be picked up?

There are a lot of amazing things about this story of the Explorer, and one that has not been explained in any article I've read is how an iceberg can pierce the hull of a ship without the captain being aware of the location of such an iceberg. Icebergs are big. Technology that tells a ship what is where underwater is very sophisticated. If anyone sees information on this--let me know!

The other  amazing  detail is that  help was so close at hand. Several other cruise ships were close enough to quickly pluck everyone from the icy waters. One of those ships was a National Geographic cruise ship. Jon Bowermaster, who contributed a thrilling essay about flying onto the ice to Antarctica: Life on the Ice, was on that ship as a tour guide. He was also using the trip south to drop off supplies for his upcoming Antarctic kayaking expedition. Be sure to look at his posts and the audio descriptions of his trip. Because he was close at hand, Jon has been interviewed by the New York Times, ABC news, and NPR. The article in my local paper from Kingston, NY, the Daily Freeman, celebrates Jon, as he's a local boy:

Antarctic Sun!

Read all about it! Peter Rejcek has written a lovely piece about Antarctica: Life on the Ice for the Antarctic Sun. Thank you, Peter.

Thanksgiving in the Dunes

My wish on Thanksgiving was to spend most of it outside, and to eat lobster (not turkey) as I did last year with my father. So I headed to Cape Cod to visit my friend Jody Melander, who has lived in Provincetown year-round since 1984 and knows every tree and bird and fish. Together, we walked out Snail Road, a path I’ve walked many times but will never tire of it. After a short passage through trees the path explodes out on the dunes, which stretch to the ocean. The endless mounds of beige sand and above blue sky (and it was very blue)—there is nothing more exhilarating. A constant warmish wind kept the temperatures around 55 but out of the wind we both were hot. In the distance flitted Snow Buntings. They could look like snow flakes falling, but I thought more of moths, disoriented in the light.

Burning calories AND keeping warm

From Karen Joyce--thanks Karen!
Who are these people? That's a great split off to the right!

Thanksgiving on Ice

Happy Thanksgiving! For those of you sitting warm inside, watching football and smelling the turkey roasting I want you to send a warm thought to our friends on the ice who are not eating turkey. To give a glimpse of what Thanksgiving can be like on the ice, I'm offering up the first few paragraphs of Traci  McNamara's richly detailed essay from Antarctica: Life on the Ice. The woman in blue with the marvelous warm smile is Traci. Enjoy!

                We Ate No Turkey: A Holiday on Ice
                       Traci J. Macnamara

    Instead of spending Thanksgiving Day as I usually did in Colorado Springs—watching the Macy’s parade on TV in my pajamas--I was shivering in my work clothes on the McMurdo Ice Shelf, learning how to make a storm-worthy shelter by cutting dense snow into blocks with a paper-thin saw.  Snowcraft, as our mountain-savvy instructor called it, was only one portion of McMurdo Station, Antarctica’s two-day survival skills course optimistically called Happy Camper School. 

Ululations Have Been Increasing

David Ainley reports that he has just arrived at Cape Royds, where it is egg laying season. Here is the great surprise: penguin populations are going up! David's lyrical essay in Antarctica: Life on the Ice is about contemplating the future of Adélie Penguins. There is a webcam at Cape Royds, which you should not miss.

David introduced me to his penguins at Cape Royds in 2004-2005. He even let me pick one up--they are the size and weight of a large football--while he injected it with a pit tag. Needless to say, I was overcome by the cuteness of penguins. Two of my essays about my time on the ice posted here on the blog and my essay in the anthology describe the miraculous life of penguins that I experienced at Cape Royds.

Here is David's description of what they are researching, titled "Ululations Have Been Increasing":

16 November 2007
We have set out in the 12th year of a project in which we seek to understand the answer to the question of why Adélie Penguin populations have been increasing in the Ross Sea since

Polar Disorder

No, don't worry, penguin chicks are not suffering from Polar Disorder. The chick comes from Nicholas Johnson's marvelous website, Big Dead Place, that is dedicated to Antarctica and to thinking about Antarctica. This penguin comes from an essay about the proliferation of cuteness...Nicholas, whose essay in Antarctica: Life on the Ice is about going "toast" offers a real insiders view of life on the ice in his book, also titled Big Dead Place.

At his site, Nicholas serves up stories and interviews and this month Harper's excerpted an interview with "Nero" an independent contractor who has worked in Antarctica, Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the polar disorder...

Nicholas reports from the ice:

I'm in McMurdo, working in Fleet-Ops.  Today I'm dozing snow out at Pegasus.

Into the Cold: Antarctica travels to Minneapolis

Don't we look like cousins? Katy Jensen on the left, me on the right. We read together from Antarctica: Life on the Ice on November 11 at Mager's and Quinn (a fabulous bookstore--both new and used) on a balmy early evening in Minneapolis. Katy--whose essay is about wintering at the South Pole--finds Minneapolis too cold...

We had an extraordinary audience. My real cousins Polly and Deborah Talen were there with their three girls Grace, Lydia, and Eliza (in reverse order of age). Polly is the funniest woman alive and Deborah is a founder of Rainbow Families. Victoria Nohl, a former student from Bard, showed up still looking like Queenie (her name while at Bard). But most of the standing-room only crowd was Katy's family and step-family. They stretched back into the stacks of books and listened, enraptured, while Katy read her beautiful and emotionally complex essay. When I first met Katy it was through her essay, which has an amazing grace and intelligence to it. Meeting her was that rare moment of person living up to their writing...and then adding that special something that comes only with sitting down and having tea with someone.

Here is Katy's account of the reading, which I post with a blush.

Who is that webmaster?

We're going to take a little break from the Antarctic to ask an important question: who is my webmaster. Many of you have been wondering--and well you might. Here are some clues as to who he is.

He is the one who said:

"An honorable blog is and always was my first wish! I can take no delight in the effusion of bandwidth; but, if this blog should continue, I wish to have the most active part in it. "

and:

"I have not yet begun to blog!"

and:

"I wish to have no connection with any blog that does not blog fast; for I intend to go in harm's way. "

he is a pretty quotable guy, so he also said this:

"If a website is cultivated it will become stronger, if a blog is cultivated it will achieve mastery."

He really can't be beat for good quotes:

"It seems to be a law of blogs, inflexible and inexorable, that those who will not blog cannot win."

We'll end with this:

"Whoever can blog well must conquer."

If you know who he is, please leave a comment.

XTRA, XTRA: Read All About The Antarctic Sun

The best and cheapest all-points-north bulletin on the planet is delivered right to your doorstep by clicking The Antarctic Sun, a fun and exciting, web-based magazine with "News about the US Antarctic Program, the Ice, and the People." Funded by the National Science Foundation, The Sun brings you incredible tales and characters from the bottom of the planet (not unlike Antarctica: Life on the Ice by Yours Truly). 

The current edition of The Sun tells the amazing story of a subglacial mountain range beneath the high plateau in East Antarctica "the size of the European Alps but buried below hundreds of meters of ice and snow [that] has puzzled and enticed Antarctic scientists since its discovery 50 years ago."

This photograph by  Doug Wiens accompanies the article.  It is a dramatic and true image of the conditions that Antarctic researchers routinely endure. Click on it to enlarge. Here's the photo's caption from The Sun: 

"Researchers headed into the field for the seismic instrumentation of the AGAP project in 2007-08 can expect the same sort of extreme weather conditions experienced during TAMSEIS (2001-03), a project in the Transantarctic Mountains that used an earlier generation of seismometers for similar research."

An excerpt follows from The Sun story.

Bill Jirsa: "Antarctica Trumped my Funk"

It's hard to describe Ice People--but if I had one word it would be eclectic. I was fascinated, intrigued and often in awe of those I met, so in these pages I will introduce you to some, and have them describe their experiences this season. So: meet Bill Jirsa, computer wizard, master of languages, and a beautiful writer. I recently asked him what he was up to on the ice and this is his amazing response. You can find more of his writing at icetongue (the world’s southernmost literary journal) or on his website elementarypenguin.

Bill writes: I was stranded at Lake Hoare last week. The weather changed while I was there to install the computer systems. I had about one day of work, and I ended up there for six nights as the weather remained just dodgy enough to cancel helo flights. I had to stay close to the radio through the day in case the weather opened up, but each day by about 3 or 4 pm they would cancel the day outright and tell the pilots to get some sleep. That’s when I set out for a night of wandering the Taylor Valley.  This is my fourth season working in Antarctica. My job seldom takes me far from the station, and I’ve resisted returning to work here this year—thinking I should grow up and get a job where I don’t live in a dorm, start cooking for myself again. Mostly I’ve started to feel a bit sad that Antarctica has begun to feel ordinary to me.

Antarctica: Life on the Road

Antarctica: Life on the Ice hit the road this past weekend. First stop: Boulder, Colorado where I read with Traci Macnamara and Beth Bartel. Traci brought a blow-up globe so that everyone would know where the Antarctic is (not "up there with the polar bears"). She read from her essay about spending Thanksgiving on the ice, while Beth read from her essay that describes her time spent on Mt. Erebus. They were both stars. In the audience were a lot of ice people, including Elaine Hood, from Raytheon who was my guardian angel during my trip. And then there were friends and fellow writers BK Loren and Sallie Greenwood. Christine Weeber, who contributed to Solo: On Her Own Adventure showed up, as did Jenny Dellaport, from my hometown of State College, PA! Watch for news of more readings at my website: www.susanfoxrogers.com

Karen Joyce: Frozen Hard and Thawed Out

A storm has been walloping Antarctica for the past few days. Karen Joyce, intrepid to the end, has ventured out to take this photograph. I wish I’d been there…

The contributors to Antarctica: Life on the Ice lead fascinating lives. From time to time I’ll track them down and find out what they are doing.

Karen, who contributed a hilarious essay, “The Day It Rained Chickens,” to Antarctica: Life on the Ice is currently in McMurdo, as she has been for the past 17 years during the austral summer. She will be joining us live from the Antarctic for our virtual book tour on November 29.