A classic: There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. Young!me thought: oh this is gonna be good.
Antarctic Navigation by Elizabeth Arthur is about a woman obsessed with polar exploration who eventually recreates the Scott expedition. I knew I would love it as soon as I got to this part in the first chapter where she describes being born:
So I’m fighting and fighting to reach it, to gain an exit from that burning interior, and I’m scrabbling for purchase on the slippery walls that keep closing against me. For the first time in my life, I feel I have a thing to do, a place I must get to, and with only willpower to help me, I yearn to escape. I do battle. I see the world. It disappears. Again, I see it.
And then I am out, all in a slither, and the courtesy of the sudden cold is wonderful as I reach the place where, on maps, they used to write, “Here There Be Dragons.” I am euphoric because there is space, and there is whiteness, and there is something luminous trembling in the air. From up to down, from heat to cold, from darkness to whiteness, from enclosure to freedom. I have reached my first latitude; I am here, in the world, arrived, and I love it.
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Antarctic Navigation by Elizabeth Arthur is about a woman obsessed with polar exploration who eventually recreates the Scott expedition. I knew I would love it as soon as I got to this part in the first chapter where she describes being born:
So I’m fighting and fighting to reach it, to gain an exit from that burning interior, and I’m scrabbling for purchase on the slippery walls that keep closing against me. For the first time in my life, I feel I have a thing to do, a place I must get to, and with only willpower to help me, I yearn to escape. I do battle. I see the world. It disappears. Again, I see it.
And then I am out, all in a slither, and the courtesy of the sudden cold is wonderful as I reach the place where, on maps, they used to write, “Here There Be Dragons.” I am euphoric because there is space, and there is whiteness, and there is something luminous trembling in the air. From up to down, from heat to cold, from darkness to whiteness, from enclosure to freedom. I have reached my first latitude; I am here, in the world, arrived, and I love it.