Terrible Things Happening in Cold Places
March 17, 2019 11:03 AM Subscribe
Terrible Things Happening in Cold Places
I started writing a blog about one of my dearest niche interests: terrible things happening in cold places. Whether it's explorers wrecking their ships in the Arctic or mountaineering expeditions mysteriously going wrong, I'm interested in it, and I will write about it for you here.
I've been writing this blog for six months or so and have about half a dozen posts so far. I deliberately don't have a posting schedule, but I also don't seem to be running out of steam!
This kind of project could easily become exploitative, which I really hope to avoid. There will never, ever be a photograph of a dead body on my blog, and I always warn when links contain that sort of image. My interest is in the human beings of the stories I tell, and the situations they found themselves in, not in gore or blame.
Here are the posts I'm proudest of so far:
- Janet has been taken away by the women who came on mules: an account of a climbing disaster on Aconcagua. This post was hard to research because of the time and place of the events, but I managed to pull together the threads of what happened.
- The polar bear on Phippsøya: an unexpectedly personal account of the polar-bear attack in Svalbard last summer.
- Tobiesen's graves: a story in one of Nansen's memoirs led me to research 19th-century whalers, discovering one mysterious grave after another.
I started writing a blog about one of my dearest niche interests: terrible things happening in cold places. Whether it's explorers wrecking their ships in the Arctic or mountaineering expeditions mysteriously going wrong, I'm interested in it, and I will write about it for you here.
I've been writing this blog for six months or so and have about half a dozen posts so far. I deliberately don't have a posting schedule, but I also don't seem to be running out of steam!
This kind of project could easily become exploitative, which I really hope to avoid. There will never, ever be a photograph of a dead body on my blog, and I always warn when links contain that sort of image. My interest is in the human beings of the stories I tell, and the situations they found themselves in, not in gore or blame.
Here are the posts I'm proudest of so far:
- Janet has been taken away by the women who came on mules: an account of a climbing disaster on Aconcagua. This post was hard to research because of the time and place of the events, but I managed to pull together the threads of what happened.
- The polar bear on Phippsøya: an unexpectedly personal account of the polar-bear attack in Svalbard last summer.
- Tobiesen's graves: a story in one of Nansen's memoirs led me to research 19th-century whalers, discovering one mysterious grave after another.
Role: blogger
That domain name will be worth millions someday, millions I tell you! :)
More seriously, this is fantastic and was actually something a colleague and I were talking about today at work. Thanks so much!
posted by Literaryhero at 3:18 AM on March 18, 2019 [1 favorite]
More seriously, this is fantastic and was actually something a colleague and I were talking about today at work. Thanks so much!
posted by Literaryhero at 3:18 AM on March 18, 2019 [1 favorite]
I love this! I have the same fascination actually. The arctic/antarctic are the second-closest we can get on Earth to totally alien environments, aside from under the sea.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:31 AM on March 21, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:31 AM on March 21, 2019 [2 favorites]
I, too, enjoy the unimaginable calamities of disaster in cold climes. "The Winter Fortress" by Bascomb is among my favorite books I have read recently. It looks like there are some other great stories like this on your site. Neat!
posted by metasunday at 10:03 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by metasunday at 10:03 PM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
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posted by mochapickle at 11:53 PM on March 17, 2019 [1 favorite]