I am not a fan of cold. I am from New England stock--going back to the time of the Salem witch trials--but a childhood spent in Southern California had the effect of working any cold tolerance I had acquired completely out of my system. When I was in Antarctica, I wore almost every article of clothing that was not an evening gown almost continually when I was outside, and still managed to feel chilled the whole trip--I am not resilient in that way.
I recently heard a wonderful piece on a close encounter that a photographer had with a leopard seal (a beast I have not encountered and do not plan to arrange such a meeting) and it inspired me to read this book about cold places. And in spite of myself, I loved it. There is a mixture of odd facts, historical perspectives, and personal experiences in the coldest places in the world that I found engaging and memorable.
Not that I was at all tempted to repeat them. You will not find me skinny dipping in Barrow, or tempting the fates of cold if I can avoid it. I hope never to have someone say over my frost-bitten body that you are not dead until you are dead and warm. Nope. Not on my to-do list. But I have been to the northern and southern ends of the globe, I find icebergs and glaciers extremely beautiful, and I was transported to those places by this book.
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