The Ice
It appears out of the fog and low clouds, like a white comet in the twilight.
To enter Greater Antarctica is to be drawn into a slow maelstrom of ice. Ice is the beginning of Antarctica and ice is its end. As one moves from perimeter to interior, the proportion of ice relentlessly increases. Ice creates more ice, and ice defines ice. Everything else is suppressed. This is a world derived from a single substance, water, in a single crystalline state, snow, transformed into a lithosphere composed of a single mineral, ice. This is earthscape transfigured into icescape. Here is a world informed by ice: ice on such a scale that it shapes and defines itself: ice that is both substance and style: ice that is both landscape and allegory. The berg is a microcosm of the world. It is the first and, paradoxically, the most complex materialization of The Ice. It is a fragment torn loose from the bottom of the globe, the icy underworld of the Earth; from the ends of the world, its past and future: from the Earth's polar source, the end that makes possible the means. The berg is both substance and symbol. "Everything is in it," as Conrad wrote of the human mind, "all the past as well as all the future." The journey of the ice from core to margin, from polar plateau to open sea, narrates an allegory of mind and matter.
-- Stephen J. Pyne, The Ice: A Journey to Antarctica (London: Arlington Books, 1986; ISBN 0-85140-709-9; http://www.amazon.com/Ice-Antarctica-Stephen-J-Pyne/dp/0345348451)
To enter Greater Antarctica is to be drawn into a slow maelstrom of ice. Ice is the beginning of Antarctica and ice is its end. As one moves from perimeter to interior, the proportion of ice relentlessly increases. Ice creates more ice, and ice defines ice. Everything else is suppressed. This is a world derived from a single substance, water, in a single crystalline state, snow, transformed into a lithosphere composed of a single mineral, ice. This is earthscape transfigured into icescape. Here is a world informed by ice: ice on such a scale that it shapes and defines itself: ice that is both substance and style: ice that is both landscape and allegory. The berg is a microcosm of the world. It is the first and, paradoxically, the most complex materialization of The Ice. It is a fragment torn loose from the bottom of the globe, the icy underworld of the Earth; from the ends of the world, its past and future: from the Earth's polar source, the end that makes possible the means. The berg is both substance and symbol. "Everything is in it," as Conrad wrote of the human mind, "all the past as well as all the future." The journey of the ice from core to margin, from polar plateau to open sea, narrates an allegory of mind and matter.
-- Stephen J. Pyne, The Ice: A Journey to Antarctica (London: Arlington Books, 1986; ISBN 0-85140-709-9; http://www.amazon.com/Ice-Antarctica-Stephen-J-Pyne/dp/0345348451)