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.

Katy writes: "For

me, there were two best things about the event at Magers and Quinn. One was

the overwhelming range of emotions associated with being on “this side” of

a reading... from apprehension to acceptance to the rushes of adrenaline

that kept me awake all night. But my favorite best thing

about the event was finally meeting Susan in person. Nobody understood how

we could have collaborated on a book without even talking on the phone, but

when we stepped into Lucia’s for tea, I felt like it was something we did

every week. And when the ball of leaves in my tea glass expanded into a magical

flower, it was both wondrous and appropriate. Susan has that effect on people:

she disarms them with candor and then delights them with vivid adventures.

I can’t wait to see what’s next!"

And I can't wait to see what's next for Katy, who has just started working for Lockheed Martin. She shared one story of meeting an astronaut she admired. She was a bit tongue-tied until he shook her hand and said, "I never thought I'd meet someone who has been to the South Pole." Katy hasn't just been to the South Pole, she has spent more than four years in Antarctica, including three winters at the South Pole, where, for two seasons she was the station’s first female area manager.

Here is a cool fact about the Antarctic: geographical features can be named for living people (unlike in the rest of the world where you must be dead to be remembered in this way). Five contributors to Antarctica: Life on the Ice have features named after them: Uberuaga Island, Joyce Peak, Ainley Peak, Guthridge Nunataks and for Katy, Jensen Rampart, a set of cliffs in the Darwin Mountains. Some day she hopes to visit her cliffs. And I want to tag along.

You can read more about naming on the continent in an Antarctic Sun article from November 12, 2000.

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 Iceby 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.

"How did it get there? What does it look like? How tall is it? What role did it play in the formation of the ice sheet?

Those are a few of the questions an international team of researchers

will attempt to answer beginning this season, as they venture into the

Antarctic Gamburstev Province (AGAP), a high-altitude region in East

Antarctica.

“We don’t know why that mountain range is there. It’s really a

mystery,” said Robin Bell, a principal investigator for AGAP’s

aerogeophysical component, nicknamed GAMBIT. “It’s kind of like finding

a mountain range in the middle of Canada.”

A Soviet overland traverse discovered the Gamburtsev subglacial range

during the International Geophysical Year in 1958. Scant other data

exist aside from a few aerogeophysical surveys dating back to the 1970s.

A multi-nation effort to study the subglacial mountain range in more

detail came together as a result of the International Polar Year (IPY).

U.S. investigators are teaming with scientists from the United Kingdom,

Germany, China, France, Italy, Japan and Australia to tackle a place

that is logistically tough to work alone."  The full text at The Antarctic Sun

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.

There’s about a half hour from 10:30 to 11:00p each night this time

of year when the sun wheels around to the south and aligns with the

slot between the peaks over the Taylor Glacier and if it happens to

clear up, the evening light spills in like butterscotch (as Joni

Mitchell would say), and the face of the glaciers light up like

multifaceted glass. I was partway up a ridge in a particular location

that should remain undisclosed. I felt the cold starting to seep in as

soon as I stopped to watch the light, frost on my eyelashes, flapping

my arms to keep warm—but comfortably within my personal system for

staying warm in this climate. The ridge across the valley lit up as the

golden light began to crawl across the valley floor. I poured myself a

cup of green tea from my thermos (I take it a little too strong and a

little too sweet to keep me going on long hikes).

The sound of me sipping was remarkable—I noted suddenly how deafeningly

quiet and calm it had become, and I realized that the only sound I’d

heard for the last seven hours was my own breathing, my own feet

crunching on the fresh snow. I had become mesmerized by the cavalcade

of my own thoughts as I’d hiked, and I realized that for the first time

in four seasons on this continent, I was utterly alone in Antarctica.

There were only two other people at all in this entire valley and they

were miles away and I knew they’d be fast asleep by now. (My radio was

off inside my pocket.) The light rolled around and climbed the ridge

where I stood, and the effect of the radiation was immediate—I shed my

parka and watched the sweat steaming off my fleece, felt the back of my

hands warming when I held them to the light, and I had to admit that

this place had trumped my funk: alright, I conceded aloud, this was an

extraordinary moment.

In a few more moments, the sun slipped behind the peaks, and the valley

returned to hard blue shadow, biting cold air in my nostrils. I packed

up and started walking again— The weather had cleared. I had a

scheduled helo pickup in about 9 hours and that was at least six or

seven hours on foot from where I stood. If I hustled, I might get a

quick nap before I had to get back to McMurdo.

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