The Entire Earth and Sky: Views on Antarctica

An Antarctican Gazetteer

An Antarctican Gazetteer Please note: The details and facts, circumstances and encounters included in this list came together over time with the help, swiftness, and assurance of my children, Will and Helena , provisional Antarctic experts in their own right, and in it we sought to establish the minutiae and vastness of the Antarctic continent and what it means to us. We selected these facts from among tens of millions at our disposal. We recorded many of these facts during scientific lectures or when watching films about Antarctica or when reading aloud from our mountainous Antarctic library. A key disclaimer must be inserted at this point: While our process could be described as random, it could also be considered deliberate, given that we see history and the earth sciences as foundational collages. The privileging of some facts over others, and the reasons behind these hierarchies, is never far from our minds. Specifically, we rarely separate ideas about “people” from “landscape.” We also see all ideas on “ice” as different categorically from “habitation habits.” If you xviii * an antarctican gazetteer prefer more familiar information baskets, this may not be the section for you, and in which case we advise you to skip these pages entirely. The fact is many readers have made it quite happily to this point knowing very little about Antarctica . You could also fill in by visiting the Central Intelligence Agency’s Web site, where you will find a method of recording place that some will find thorough and informative but that others may judge synthetic and pure fiction. Like all data collection, the cia’s method does introduce misunderstanding , and while we do not want to cast any shadow on our colleagues in research and facts in the U.S. government, we would be doing no one a favor to remain silent. Antarctica , for instance, is reported as having no arable land. We believe this is inaccurate and plan to file a complaint when we return from our current explorations. There are no indigenous Antarcticans The cia World Factbook offers this rank-order list: World 510,072,000 square kilometers Pacific Ocean 155,557,000 Atlantic Ocean 76,762,000 Indian Ocean 68,556,000 Southern Ocean 20,327,000 Russia 17,075,200 Arctic Ocean 14,056,000 Antarctica 14,000,000 Canada 9,984,670 United States 9,631,418 It is the only continent where all people compete on an annual basis for the chance to reside and work there and where you need no official documentation to “prove” who you are. When you arrive, they have been expecting you. an antarctican gazetteer * xix Twenty-six nations have stations and people on the ice, including Great Britain, the United States, Russia, France, Australia, Argentina, New Zealand, and China. Thirteen Belgians, eighty Brazilians, and sixteen Bulgarians also make residence on the ice. When winter’s twenty-four-hour darkness descends, the community shrinks from four thousand to one thousand . (The continental population in summer is equal to that of Sioux County, North Dakota.) Antarctica was once the center of the Gondwana supercontinent , which included Africa, India, South America, and Australia. As the continents drifted apart, ocean water surrounded Antarctica. The Earth’s rotation caused the West Wind Drift with its clockwise movement , thus isolating the continent from warmer northerly weather and water. Because of this, ice crept across Antarctica about 40 million years ago and has remained largely intact since then. Ninety-eight percent of the continent is covered by ice, with a volume of 30 million cubic kilometers. At the South Pole the ice is 2.8 kilometers thick. The ice’s weight has depressed continental bedrock by 600 meters. Although Antarctica contains 70 percent of the Earth’s fresh water in the form of ice, the continental interior averages less than five centimeters of rain a year, making Antarctica as dry as the Sahara desert. On November 29, 1929, Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd of the U.S. Navy became the first to fly over the South Pole for the first time. In 1956 the American doctor Paul Siple and seventeen xx * an antarctican gazetteer colleagues wintered at the South Pole while conducting experiments for the International Geophysical Year. The South Pole has had residents every year since then. A group of five Norwegian men were the first to stand at the South Pole. They arrived on December...