A Little More Whiteness, Please

[Scott Badger]

RJ:

>Another Narrator:
>"There have happened, though rarely, in geographical space, journeys
>taken northward on very blue, fire-blue seas, chilled, crowded by floes,
>to the final walls of ice. Our judgement lapsed, fatally: we paid more
>attention to the Pearys and Nansenso who returned -- and worse, we named
>what they did "success", though they failed. Because they came back,
>back to fame, to praise, they failed. We only wept for Sir John Franklin
>and Salomon Andree: mourned their cairns and bones, and missed among >the
poor frozen rubbish the announcements of their victory. By the time we
>had the technology to make such voyages easy, we had long worded over
>all ability to know victory or defeat.
>     What did Andree find in the polar silence? What should we have
>heard?" (589)

An interesting thing about the northern cultures these European explorers
encountered - the Innuit, or Eskimos - was that without any of the
European's technology - the compass, sextant, clock or charts - they were
far superior at navigating, even in areas unfamiliar to them.  And that in a
truly open landscape of constantly shifting physical features, lacking even
the convenience of the delineation between night and day.

Scott