One of the things that made me persist in the Antarctic in the face of sickening discouragements was my determination to name a portion of the earth's surface after my father.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I went to Antarctica on a science research boat just to sort of clear my head.
'Earth' is a silly name for this planet.
Antarctica is otherworldly, like nothing I've ever seen before. Stark, cold, beautiful desolation.
My childhood landscape was not land but the end of the land - the cold, salt, running hills of the Atlantic. I sometimes think my vision of the sea is the clearest thing I own.
Almost any American can connect on some level to a family background of having come across some ocean. They say, 'My great-grandparents came from wherever... this is why we have this last name, why we do this thing at Christmas.' All the details get watered down but don't quite disappear.
Our oceans cover two-thirds of what my grandfather called our water planet, and the part of the ocean that falls under the jurisdiction of the United States covers an area larger than the country itself.
All the earth is mine, and I have a right to go all over it and through it.
My sweetheart is to me more than a coined hemisphere.
The thing that is most beautiful about Antarctica for me is the light. It's like no other light on Earth, because the air is so free of impurities. You get drugged by it, like when you listen to one of your favorite songs. The light there is a mood-enhancing substance.
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.