Terra Incognita (48 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

¹
They free cyccled, to use the standard physiological term.

CHAPTER FIVE

¹
Blackborow was a man of few words, but when finally he got home to Wales he was asked to give a talk at the YMCA Boys' Club in Newport. Speaking of the period after the loss of the ship, he said, ‘I like to think of our leader as I recall him at this time. His hopes and ambitions had all been shattered, yet he was cheerful and went out of his way to impart some cheerfulness to others. He had a genius for keeping men in good spirits, and, need I say more, we loved him like a father.'

¹
Spencer alone of the multitudinous Resurrection artists sends everyone to heaven. His Christ does not judge. I love this picture.

CHAPTER SIX

¹
The ice moves in the direction 40 degrees west of Greenwich (‘That's Greenwich, England', I was told by the U.S. Geological Survey staff member who had landed the Pole-shifting job).

¹
The ASTRO project went on to achieve notable success, including the first detection of atomic carbon in the Magellanic Clouds.

¹
The British edition is called
Antarctic Discovery
.

¹
David Hempleman-Adams, a Briton, arrived at the Pole in a similar flurry the following year. When he flew out of Antarctica, to Punta Arenas in Chile, he telephoned home at once, eager to share his triumph. At his home in Swindon he heard his own voice on the answering machine, so he tried his grandmother. She refused to accept the call.

CHAPTER SEVEN

¹
A diatom is a microscopic unicellular alga.

¹
Wind-carved ridges of ice.

CHAPTER EIGHT

¹
The same issue of the paper included a reworking of
Henry V
in which Lieutenant Evans strides in declaring ‘Once more unto the beach, dear friends, once more.'

¹
A krill is a small, shrimplike marine crustacean, and a vital constituent of the Antarctic food chain. The word comes from the Norwegian noun for a young fish.

CHAPTER NINE

¹
Lopez is an established and highly respected author who has visited Antarctica five times. His trips were not exercises in seeing how dead he could get – he went to see, and to learn.

¹
A sundog, or parhelion, is a bright spot near the sun formed by the diffraction of light by ice crystals in the atmosphere.

CHAPTER TWELVE

¹
British people often wonder why the U.K. didn't claim any territory explored by Scott, notably around Ross Island. The answer is almost certainly that it was too far away for any British mission to have any hope of establishing a presence. The peninsula is far more accessible.

¹
Antarctica might be the last frontier, but it has been occupied by man long enough to begin developing its own language. A sparky Australian researcher is currently compiling the world's first dictionary of Antarctic English. The book is listed as an official project by the Australian Antarctic Division.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

¹
Fragments of floating ice. Also used to refer to lumps in the custard.

¹
Film that forms before the sea ice freezes

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

¹
The countryside beyond Stanley is known to Falklanders as ‘the camp'.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

¹
Like all mirages, a result of temperature inversion.

¹
Incorporeal ribbons of snow blown across the ice and used by pilots to assess wind speed.

¹
High-altitude, low-temperature formations. Nacreous clouds are the most dramatic manifestation of polar stratospheric clouds, but they are rare in the Arctic; northern polar regions are warmer than Antarctica. Nacreous clouds, typically, are visible in September. Incidentally, the reduction in ozone only occurs when polar stratospheric clouds are present, which partially explains why ozone depletion is significantly lower in the north.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

¹
Later in the season Wooville appeared as ‘Artists' Colony' on another map, and a sign was made for the door of the Clinic saying ‘The Ant Art Chicks'.

¹
Another was their disapproval of higher education – at times one almost felt of any education.

²
It was quite likely that for several weeks Lucia and I had been the only people living in a field camp (as opposed to a base) in an area one and a half times that of the United States.