On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks by Simon Garfield

Author:Simon Garfield [Garfield, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Reference
ISBN: 9781101606575
Google: DCqbHd2KcBAC
Amazon: 159240779X
Publisher: Gotham
Published: 2012-12-27T00:00:00+00:00

A long white trail of despair: Cherry-Garrard’s map from ‘The Worst Journey in the World’.

Paul Theroux has made the point that great explorations demand fine writers to bring it all home – the fierce desperation, the unbound elation, the emotional and humane mixed with the procedural. This explains why we know what cold feels like, but we don’t really know what it’s like to walk on the moon. A good sketched map delivers a similar bounty. We may detect the emotional state of the amateur cartographer through the graphite and nib of hand-drawn markings, and because we know we are witnessing history as it happens. In the introduction to his book, Cherry-Garrard expressed a sense of duty to pass on to the next set of adventurers as much systemised knowledge as possible to aid them on their travels, just as Cook had passed to Ross and Ross to Shackleton and Scott. Cherry-Garrard maintains that ‘exploration is the physical expression of the Intellectual Passion’, and the gradual filling-in of the maps is the most direct and literal way of reflecting progress in this field.

n

In December 1959, the map of Antarctica was made anew. Or rather it was settled anew, after twelve countries signed the Antarctic Treaty in Washington DC and agreed to use the continent for scientific and peaceful purposes. Weapons testing and nuclear waste disposal were banned, and the free sharing of information was encouraged, and when the treaty was renewed on its 50th anniversary, 36 other countries had agreed to its terms. Between 1908 and 1940, seven countries staked territorial claims to the land (Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, Great Britain, New Zealand and Norway), and the treaty officially refused to recognise or dispute them. When occasional spats – usually between Britain, Argentina and Chile – flare up over the possibility of exploiting the natural resources beneath the ice, the land-grab map is dusted off to reveal about fifteen per cent of the pie left unclaimed. It is widely understood that the United States will make a claim should the treaty fail, although it already seems to run the place.

In 2002, 165 years after Ross began to put the region on the map, and 93 years after Amundsen and Scott reached the Pole, the Americans built a permanent road there. Stretching some 1,400 km from McMurdo Sound to the Amundsen-Scott research station at the pole, it is a road through half the map of Antarctica. The South Pole Traverse is a strip of packed ice marked by flags, the coldest man-made roadway on earth. A trail of huge-wheeled vehicles pulls sleds of food, medical supplies, waste, communication cables and visitors, and since becoming operational in 2008 it has saved an estimated forty flights a year. This being an American enterprise, the traverse has another name too: the McMurdo-South Pole Highway.

It takes about forty days to make the trek. No dogs, horses or possessed explorers die en route, and those who passed this way less than a hundred years before would have perished from shock if they had been told of such a thing.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.