Only just charted territory

By Sara Wheeler

This tatty map, kept safe in its cardboard tube for two decades, takes me back to one of the happiest moments of my life. In 1994 I spent seven months in the Antarctic, camping in the Transantarctic Mountains, close to the Taylor Glacier at about 77 degrees south. You can see a loop of the Taylor close to the foot of the page. I was the guest of an eight-strong American science camp investigating nitrates in the water columns of Lake Bonney. It felt like stepping off the planet.

I spent my time taking notes for a book and helping with the donkey work in the camp—spooling rubber tubes into a hole in the ice, dragging water samples on a Nansen sledge, cooking bread-and-butter pudding with powdered egg. We each had a pup tent for sleeping, and did everything else in a Jamesway—an arched rigid-frame tent heated by a drip-oil Preway burner. The Jamesway was a relic of the Korean war in the 1950s. A sign above the door said, "Good morning scientists! It’s a good day for science!" We ate at a long trestle table which had an inflatable palm tree sprouting from it. A gas-powered fridge was filled with water samples in test tubes, leaving the food to be stored on the floor.