"At this moment I can picture Ekok, somewhere out in the wilderness of the North...The wind blows fiercely into her face, and sharp pains tingle in her nose as the frost nips it. It is bitter traveling, and maybe as she stops a moment to get her breath she wonders what all her hardships are for, what good comes from all the suffering and futility and misery of life. But if so it can only be for an instant. Reasons are only for children who have time to dodge actuality with philosophical diversion. Here is snow and wind and freezing in the storm-filled sky. Here is life and the Arctic and the great, instinctive surge to live. She bends her head a little lower and pushes forward once more into the blizzard."
-Bob Marshall, Arctic Village
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Chris Dunn, PhD
Researcher, writer, explorer*, photographer, thinker. Wrestling with nature, culture, technology. Archives
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*When I use the term "exploration", I mean it in a personal sense (discovery for myself, or at a unique moment in time [everywhere after all--even crowded cities--endlessly await rediscovery--by new eyes and in new moments]), not in an absolute sense. With few exceptions (notably Antarctica), almost everywhere on earth has had other people around for a long time (though to varying degrees - high mountain tops or places like the interior of the Greenland Ice Sheet for instance were far less visited and populated, and undoubtedly at least some pockets of the earth were never visited or populated). It is an enlightening experience though when on an isolated ridge in what feels like the middle of nowhere to wonder if anyone has set foot there but never knowing for sure. What is significant is that the landscape itself is left in such a condition that it isn't evident. Some places ought to be kept that way.
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