Out of Order No2

Summer’s Coming

Summer’s on its way at last, and soon we’ll be complaining about the heat, so to prepare myself for the upcoming hot months I’m taking a look at some of the newest arrivals about a somewhat cooler place.
Still Life by Jane Ussher is a breathtakingly beautiful photo study of the Antarctic huts used as bases for the expeditions of Scott and Shackleton.
These flimsy huts were left behind as reminders of the brave men, some of whom were never to return, who risked their lives exploring new lands.
Looking at these amazing photos, you wonder how they survived the privations of life in this cold unforgiving climate. What remains is a potted history of the “Heroic Age”, the years from 1895 – 1917, when men were men and women waited at home for them to maybe come home.
Another wonderful  photographic Journey; Improbable Eden – The Dry Valleys of Antarctica by Craig Potton. The Dry Valleys of Antarctica are one of the last truly remote places left on earth. With no cover of ice or snow and no rainfall, these dry valleys are  ‘islands’ in the midst of the frozen ice of the Antarctic continent, a strange environment of ice – covered lakes that hold some of the planet’s purest water, huge expanses of wind-sculpted rock, barren eroded land forms and glaciers that intrude into the edges of the valleys. Access to this unique environment is extremely restricted.
This book is built around the photographs of Craig Potton, who gathered the images on two separate trips to Antarctica. The text is provided by Bill Green whose previous
non – fiction writing on the Dry Valleys won him the John Burroughs Medal for Nature Writing in the USA.
The final book in our trilogy is The White Desert by Noel Barber  _ his personal story of the Trans – Antarctic Expedition.
Flown in on an American plane, Barber was the first Briton to reach the South Pole since Scott’s party of five in 1912.
He was at the Pole to witness the memorable meeting of Hillary and Fuchs converging on it from opposite ends of the continent,across the white desert to this strange little white oasis.He learnt how and why Antarctica is lonely,dead,cruel,inhospitable and irresistible.
Feeling chilly? Well then, hop outside and enjoy the sun for a while, but spare a thought for those down south in the freeze