“I am awed by these creatures and their adaptations, as I also am—please forgive my digressions—by icebergs, whales, the sea and ships, circumpolar currents, geologic time, the origins and evolutionary histories of life-forms, the quirks of birds, birders, and explorers, antifreeze in fish blood, the blue in ice, human folly, the ozone hole, and the earthly balances upset by global warming—in short, the mysteries of the natural world in their endless variations, the myriad petals of creation that open up and fall away in every moment.” –Peter Mathiessen, in End of the Earth (2003)
Earlier this year, I spent five months working in communications at McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Antarctica is a place that has seriously gotten under my skin since I first went there in 2003, but I was ready to leave by the end of this year’s contract. After those five months, I found myself missing things that you can only get above 60-degrees South latitude—things like spring flowers, gas station coffee, road bikes, and microbrews. But—funny—now that I’m back in a place where I can find those things, I find myself thinking of The Ice. I take little journeys there in my mind, and a recent read, Peter Matthiessen’s End of the Earth: Voyages to Antarctica (2003), has also helped revivify my memories of the place I love.
Matthiessen is also the author of The Snow Leopard (1978), which is about his work with zoologist George Schallar in the Dolpo region of the Nepalese Himalaya; The Snow Leopard is a classic in the natural history category, 
and End of the Earth is characteristic Matthiessen in that it also involves a journey interspersed with history and the author’s acute observations of the natural world. In End of the Earth, Matthiessen actually takes two journeys, both to Antarctica and both by sea. In the first, he sails through the stomach-churning Drake Passage from the tip of South America in order to view wildlife on the Antarctic Peninsula. On his second journey, Matthiessen sets off from Hobart, Tasmania to Antarctica’s Ross Sea, still hoping to see the emperor penguin that has so far eluded him.
Even though seeing the emperor penguin was one of Matthiessen’s objectives, he admits that this singular goal simply “was not good enough” to justify the voyage when he still had many things undone at home. “I might mutter uncomfortably that Antarctica is monumental, an astonishment,” Matthiessen further explores the reasons for his desire to go back, “…More than any region left on Earth, I plead, 
Antarctica is immaculate, inviolable, a white fastness of pristine air and ice and virgin glacier and the farthest end of Earth, where frigid seas abound in marine creatures in a diversity still marvelously intact—all true, all true. Yet there is something else.” Matthiessen, in the end, doesn’t tell us outright what that “something else” is, but a person can’t read this book without getting at least an idea of the incredible allure of this place.
For more “Down and Out” on Matthiessen’s The Snow Leopard, click Categories: LITERATURE
Last weekend, I participated in my first French protest. Being in France, the event involved passionate shouting, some gendarmerie (police), and—of course—bikes. It was the Chamonix valley’s annual “NON AUX CAMIONS!” bike ride from Passy le Fayet to Chamonix, an environmental protest against commercial trucking in the area. “Camions” are what the French call semis—and the people that live here in the valley are opposed to the pollution that the trucks bring while transporting goods through the Mont Blanc tunnel.
The police blocked off traffic along the 20-kilometer stretch of major highway while we cycled up the alpine pass, portions of it elevated high, as if it were propped up on stilts. Cars passing in the opposite direction honked their horns and blinked their lights. Protest banners had been draped on overpasses along the way.
Over 400 people—ranging in age from 4 to 84—gathered for the ride on all types of bikes—road, mountain, recumbent bikes, and cruisers. My favorite was an old brown cruiser with a workable front light (a good bike for riding home late at night in Chamonix, I thought). The guy who rode it wore a white haz-mat suit with the campaign’s characteristic logo on its back.
We whooped and hollered through the tunnels, and as we rode into town, a cheering group of fellow-protestors held up banners and began chanting “Non aux camions!” (it rhymes in French). Overall, the protest was tame for France. There were no fireworks or street fires—as I observed last summer during the World Cup finals. No one looted anything or toppled any cars—as has happened in recent protests near Paris. No heads got chopped off. But I could still feel it, that fiery French spirit, in the air.
For more photos and info about the campaign, see the ARSMB website: here.
Categories: LIFE
“From a bare ridge we also first beheld
Unveiled the summit of Mont Blanc…
…The wondrous Vale
Of Chamouny stretched far below, and soon
With its dumb cataracts and streams of ice,
A motionless array of mighty waves,
Five rivers broad and vast, made rich amends,
And reconciled us to realities…”
-William Wordsworth, in The Prelude (1850)
Gray skies and an unexpected snow kept the mountains hiding for over a week after I arrived back in the French Alps. I knew that they were there—those colossal forms covered in snow and ice—but the low clouds kept me from catching a glimpse of them. When the Chamonix skies opened up over the weekend, I finally saw it: Mont Blanc, unveiled.
Rather—the entire Mont Blanc massif is what I wanted to see—its collection of peaks inspire me more than the sloping summit of Mont Blanc, itself. Jagged rock spires called aiguilles (“needles,” in English) run up and down the massif for as far as the eye can see, in both directions, and on both sides of the valley.
At night, after the sky turns from soft blue to inky purple to black, I still feel the presence of those forms. They loom—in a someone-watching-over-you kind of way—so that even when you can’t see them, you know that their summits are still there, touching stars or floating in the clouds.
Categories: LANDSCAPE
“The fear of sounding foolish is the insidious enemy of learning a foreign language.” –Rita Golden Gelman, in Tales of a Female Nomad (2001)
Rita Golden Gelman is a modern-day nomad. She has been on the go for over twenty years, traveling all over the world to live within different cultures and to learn from the people she meets along the way. RGG says: “I’ve been living my nomadic existence since the day in 1986 when, at the age of forty eight, on the verge of a divorce, I looked around and thought, ‘There has to be more than one way to do life.’ There is.” Her book, Tales of a Female Nomad, is a collection of tales about how people “do life” all over the globe.
As I read RGG’s book this week, one theme emerged: it’s that in order to be with others and to learn from them, a person must consciously live in the present. “While I’m here,” says RGG—“here,” meaning wherever she is at the time— “I want to be 100 percent here…When I am writing, I am inside the sound and meaning of the words…When I am eating, I luxuriate in the taste and texture of every bite…And when I am with people, I am really with them.” Espousing this attitude, RGG has been able to move throughout the world and share meals with women in their kitchens or around their cook fires. She has slept in palaces and thatched huts. She has learned to speak in foreign languages and to communicate without words. RGG is older than my mom, and I found her story to be an inspiration because it’s really a story about living without constraints. Age, gender, color, and culture do not stop this lady from living out her passion for people.
One of my friends working in the Peace Corps in a rural village in Fiji sent this book to me, and while I read it last week, it made me wonder at what point a person attains “nomad” status. I haven’t had a permanent address in nearly four years, so I wonder if I fall into the category. I’ve been hoping for more stability in my life (this autumn, I’ve promised myself, I will stay put)—but RGG’s book certainly rekindled my desire to be present within these beautiful moments of geographic unrest.
Categories: LITERATURE
I basically carjacked someone today. Yep. I was hitchhiking, and a car stopped, so I went up to it, opened the door, and got in. A few minutes down the road, it dawned on me that the guy had stopped to make a left-hand turn, and I just assumed that he had stopped to pick me up. But no. I opened the passenger door anyway and hopped inside. The conversation was awkward in French, and when he dropped me off at my destination, he turned his car around and headed back in the direction he came. That’s when it hit me: ohmygosh. I’m a carjacker.
Welded into the sail’s structure are parts of a stove, a radiator, a fondue pot, and a lamp, among other things. It’s over four times as tall as Andy is, and it’s also meant to be climbed.
