Sublime

Through one means or another, they kept their spirits up—mostly by building dreams.

John Muir liked to limit his “supplies” to a tin cup, a loaf of stale bread, and an overcoat.

Only very occasionally did they think about South Georgia. It was so remote, so Utopian that it was almost depressing to contemplate. No man could have endured with just that to keep him going. Instead, life was reckoned in periods of a few hours, or possibly only a few minutes—an endless succession of trials leading to deliverance from the particu

Like the entire British adventure in India, Curzon was at once pompous and vain, earnest, ruthlessly enterprising, and rigidly devoted to a mission of moral superiority.

Men Wanted: For hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.4 The ad may have been apocryphal, but the sacrifice it illustrates was not. These were the realities of exploration only a century ago: Our progress on the frontier was limi

The Jeannette expedition had thus begun to shed its organizing ideas, in all their unfounded romance, and to replace them with a reckoning of the way the Arctic truly was. This, in turn, led De Long to the gradual understanding that an endlessly more perilous voyage lay ahead. They might reach the North Pole yet, but almost certainly they were not

After ‘a few years’ Patrick was able to return to his family. This is remarkable: how on Earth was a young man, stolen from his home at sixteen, able to navigate his way back in a country with no maps or road signs and not much more than local knowledge of place names?

the desire to face the unexpected in a wilderness environment; to live by my wits; and, in the process, I hoped to develop higher levels of skill, intuition, and confidence. I was drawn to these types of challenges. I found them compelling and, as I got older, increasingly difficult to resist. I’d had my share of adventure. The

As perilous ice quickly surrounded the ship, Sides recounts, the team had to “shed its organizing ideas, in all their unfounded romance, and to replace them with a reckoning of the way the Arctic truly is.”a