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On the Ice: An Intimate Portrait of Life at McMurdo Station, Antarctica
Travelogue, cultural meditation, and love story, On the Ice casts a panoramic view on one of the oddest communities in one of the most extreme places on earth. Sent to Antarctica as an observer by the National Science Foundation, Gretchen Legler arrives at McMurdo Station in midwinter, a time of -70 degree temperatures and months of near-total darkness. A lesbian struggling with a tumultuous past, she hopes to escape her own demons and present an intimate view of a place few will ever visit. What she discovers is a community of people stripped of any excess by the necessities of existence in a harsh land, where revered scientists are referred to as "beakers"; where cherished belongings are left without regret in a communal lost-and-found; and where women are rare but lesbians in high proportion. Forced to confront her own fears, Legler experiences firsthand how landscape and community allow a life to reset.
195 pages, Paperback
First published October 25, 2005
3 people are currently reading
310 people want to read
About the author
Gretchen Legler
7 books14 followersGretchen Legler is currently an Master’s of Divinity candidate at Harvard Divinity School, focusing on the intersections of spirituality and ecology. She is on leave from her position as a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Maine at Farmington, where she specializes in memoir writing, the personal essay, and nonfiction essays about the natural world. She has taught in the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Alaska Anchorage and in the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Southern New Hampshire University, and often offers community workshops on writing and the environment.
Previous to her stint at Divinity School, she and her partner, singer-songwirter Ruth Hill, owned a small farm in Western Maine, raising goats and chickens and their year’s supply of food. When not in Cambridge, MA, Gretchen lives in a one-room rustic cabin on a pond in the woods. In her community of Farmington, ME, Gretchen has been on the board of SAPARS, a volunteer chaplain at Franklin Memorial Hospital, and is the co-founder of the Left Bank of the Sandy River Gay & Lesbian Literature and Cultural Salon.
Previous to her stint at Divinity School, she and her partner, singer-songwirter Ruth Hill, owned a small farm in Western Maine, raising goats and chickens and their year’s supply of food. When not in Cambridge, MA, Gretchen lives in a one-room rustic cabin on a pond in the woods. In her community of Farmington, ME, Gretchen has been on the board of SAPARS, a volunteer chaplain at Franklin Memorial Hospital, and is the co-founder of the Left Bank of the Sandy River Gay & Lesbian Literature and Cultural Salon.
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November 11, 2019
I bought this book while scooping up all the Antarctica books at the library's annual book sale. At home, I noticed the book was classified as "Nature/Travel/Gay & Lesbian Studies", so I was curious to see what added perspective that would bring. Legler traveled to Antarctica as a writer in the nineties, and in her essays not only talks about falling in love with a woman named Ruth, but also of learning to love herself and receive love. It's what I always love about Antarctica, triumph of the human spirit. The love story weaves through the essays, but it's also a story of friendship, science, exploration, and ice.
My overall takeaway from this book was that I loved it and I loved it for bringing a woman's perspective. It was different from other Antarctic books I have read; traits considered by society to be female (even though we know men and women can both be many things, gentle, emotional, etc.) change the writing, enhance the story. The essay about women in Antarctica - I marked almost every page.
My book is a mess of dog eared pages, some chapters almost every page. I'm just going to go with some of my favorite parts as I'm too emotionally charged by this book to put together a coherent review in a reasonable amount of time.
When describing drawing the animals scientists brought up form the bottom of the ocean: "...my visions of Antarctica were exaggerations; they were not accurate by any means, but then accuracy was not my goal; interpretation was. The images I created, full of wonder and imagination, continue to move me and others to whom I show them in ways that more factual photographs of Antarctica do not. They seem still to speak with many voices- a rich babble of fact and longing." The facts are miserable- you could freeze to death, there's almost nothing to sustain life and if you did need to find your own food you would have to stick to the coast and bear the emotional burden of killing penguins. Don't forget death by crevasse. It's not just the facts! I keep coming back for the wonder.
Legler described to me what I discovered to be my ideal Antarctic experience; that she gravitated to this routine makes me think we would get along well: "I developed my own rhythm on board the ship. Each day after waking I would take coffee, an orange, and crackers to the back deck, where I would lean against a pile of fishing net, or sit on an upturned crate feeling wind on my face, feeling the cold, and smelling the sharp scents of ocean bring and ship fuel. I would drink and eat there, then travel up each level of deck...eventually ending up on the bridge. There I would meet with Troy Endicott, the third mate, who walked me through the most elementary rules of Antarctic navigation."
"I had become obsessed, in Antarctica, with maps, directions, locations, compasses- anything that would help me see, in a larger context, where I was." Me, too.
My overall takeaway from this book was that I loved it and I loved it for bringing a woman's perspective. It was different from other Antarctic books I have read; traits considered by society to be female (even though we know men and women can both be many things, gentle, emotional, etc.) change the writing, enhance the story. The essay about women in Antarctica - I marked almost every page.
My book is a mess of dog eared pages, some chapters almost every page. I'm just going to go with some of my favorite parts as I'm too emotionally charged by this book to put together a coherent review in a reasonable amount of time.
When describing drawing the animals scientists brought up form the bottom of the ocean: "...my visions of Antarctica were exaggerations; they were not accurate by any means, but then accuracy was not my goal; interpretation was. The images I created, full of wonder and imagination, continue to move me and others to whom I show them in ways that more factual photographs of Antarctica do not. They seem still to speak with many voices- a rich babble of fact and longing." The facts are miserable- you could freeze to death, there's almost nothing to sustain life and if you did need to find your own food you would have to stick to the coast and bear the emotional burden of killing penguins. Don't forget death by crevasse. It's not just the facts! I keep coming back for the wonder.
Legler described to me what I discovered to be my ideal Antarctic experience; that she gravitated to this routine makes me think we would get along well: "I developed my own rhythm on board the ship. Each day after waking I would take coffee, an orange, and crackers to the back deck, where I would lean against a pile of fishing net, or sit on an upturned crate feeling wind on my face, feeling the cold, and smelling the sharp scents of ocean bring and ship fuel. I would drink and eat there, then travel up each level of deck...eventually ending up on the bridge. There I would meet with Troy Endicott, the third mate, who walked me through the most elementary rules of Antarctic navigation."
"I had become obsessed, in Antarctica, with maps, directions, locations, compasses- anything that would help me see, in a larger context, where I was." Me, too.
March 16, 2008
Nature writing is changing. The surest mark of that change is the fact that Gretchen Legler's book, On the Ice: An Intimate Portrait of Life at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, was chosen as the best book of environmental creative writing published in 2005-2006 by the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment.
On the Ice is the story of what it means to find home, and heart, in the frozen place at the bottom of the world. With other artists, Gretchen Legler was offered the opportunity to spend a season in Antarctica under the auspices of the National Science Foundation Artists and Writers Program, to tell the story of the land, to try her hand "at making some human sense of its vastness and its terrible beauty." It was a quest, she says, not only to explore and discover new lands, but also inner worlds, "places that I hoped being so far from my ordinary self would help me find."
Antarctica as a place is extraordinarily far from the places our ordinary selves inhabit, and Legler wants us not just to know but to feel the distance, and to feel it as the explorers of a century ago must have felt it. She sleeps in a room that is only a stone's throw from the hut where Robert Scott set off in 1911 for his tragic bid to reach the Pole: "Good God, this is an awful place," he wrote. She spends time with other explorers who are looking even farther back, into the unthinkably remote geologic past of the Polar region, into samples of sea floor at Cape Roberts, goes naked into the coldest water on the globe, and ventures into ice caves in the Erebus glacier, blue caves, blue, blue "like an endlessly deep hole in your heart . . . a color that is like some kind of yearning, some unfulfilled desire, or some constant, extreme joy." And then there is the sea ice, glowing "peach and pink, nearly neon, buttery yellow, lavender, jade, and indigo," colors painted by Edmund Wilson, Scott's chief scientist, whose watercolors, she says are filled with, focused on light and color, color and light. And finally, there is the Pole, a "sacred destination," she says, not only for explorers but scientists and, yes, artists and writers, who find it the perfect place to look down into the mysteries at the earth's heart and up, into the mysteries of the universe, "the very farthest edge of darkness."
On the Ice is a luminous study of a remarkable place, a place that is so sublime as to almost defy human description. But as humans, we must place ourselves: we long to live in place and to make even the remotest place a home. And so the book is also about the men and women who live there, about the scientists, support staff, builders, workers, engineers, electricians, cooks, communications technicians--all the people it takes to make a home in an inhospitable place. These are people, by and large, who are willing, perhaps even anxious, to shed their ordinary selves and live in an extraordinary way, coping with the isolation and the cold and the loneliness, building a community of fellow-travelers, each with his or her own sometimes desperate reasons for coming to a place so unimaginably distant and different from the places where the rest of us live. These are funny people, weird people, misfits, heroes, people who live on hope and thrive on hard truths, people who have come away from the "real" world to invent themselves in a different reality.
But On the Ice isn't just about the place or the people. It's about Legler's own journey to the frozen wastes within herself, into her own frozen heart, which is thawed, incredibly, by the power of love. "How do you come to know place?" she asks. "How do you come to know self? . . . How do you let go of wounds and resentments and fierce anger, not begrudgingly, but as an act of grace?" She finds the answer to this age-old question in her relationship with Ruth, an electrician who helps her to shed "all that junk . . .all those layers of old self" and discover a new and loving self, a warm and passionate heart, in this frozen world. Some readers, particularly those who believe that books of natural history ought to exclude the historian's experience, may think that this part of the journey should have been omitted, as not quite worthy of the heroic spectacle that is the Antarctic. But that's the way it's always been, Legler reminds us: the personal has always been defined, she says, as "somehow gossipy or small, beyond or below the reach of proper recording." But why? Why do we deny the human perspective of place, since this is the only perspective we have? And why exclude the innermost experience, merely to focus on the outer? "Why obscure the intimate?" Legler asks. "Why shorten the story of the glorious complexity and depth of the human in order to make a neater, grander tale?"
Legler's journey--and her record of it--is all the more remarkable because it is an intimate journey, not only to the farthest place on earth but into the deepest desires and dreams of the human spirit. It's a singularly brave journey, as heroic in its way as the journeys of Scott and Shackleton and Amundsen, one more exploration of the truest human question: what it means to be at home on this earth. There are a great many books that will give you the cold, hard facts about the Antarctic. But as a book about place, a chronicle of life at the bottom of the world, and an intensely honest record of a spiritual journey, On the Ice is the most richly illuminating of a
On the Ice is the story of what it means to find home, and heart, in the frozen place at the bottom of the world. With other artists, Gretchen Legler was offered the opportunity to spend a season in Antarctica under the auspices of the National Science Foundation Artists and Writers Program, to tell the story of the land, to try her hand "at making some human sense of its vastness and its terrible beauty." It was a quest, she says, not only to explore and discover new lands, but also inner worlds, "places that I hoped being so far from my ordinary self would help me find."
Antarctica as a place is extraordinarily far from the places our ordinary selves inhabit, and Legler wants us not just to know but to feel the distance, and to feel it as the explorers of a century ago must have felt it. She sleeps in a room that is only a stone's throw from the hut where Robert Scott set off in 1911 for his tragic bid to reach the Pole: "Good God, this is an awful place," he wrote. She spends time with other explorers who are looking even farther back, into the unthinkably remote geologic past of the Polar region, into samples of sea floor at Cape Roberts, goes naked into the coldest water on the globe, and ventures into ice caves in the Erebus glacier, blue caves, blue, blue "like an endlessly deep hole in your heart . . . a color that is like some kind of yearning, some unfulfilled desire, or some constant, extreme joy." And then there is the sea ice, glowing "peach and pink, nearly neon, buttery yellow, lavender, jade, and indigo," colors painted by Edmund Wilson, Scott's chief scientist, whose watercolors, she says are filled with, focused on light and color, color and light. And finally, there is the Pole, a "sacred destination," she says, not only for explorers but scientists and, yes, artists and writers, who find it the perfect place to look down into the mysteries at the earth's heart and up, into the mysteries of the universe, "the very farthest edge of darkness."
On the Ice is a luminous study of a remarkable place, a place that is so sublime as to almost defy human description. But as humans, we must place ourselves: we long to live in place and to make even the remotest place a home. And so the book is also about the men and women who live there, about the scientists, support staff, builders, workers, engineers, electricians, cooks, communications technicians--all the people it takes to make a home in an inhospitable place. These are people, by and large, who are willing, perhaps even anxious, to shed their ordinary selves and live in an extraordinary way, coping with the isolation and the cold and the loneliness, building a community of fellow-travelers, each with his or her own sometimes desperate reasons for coming to a place so unimaginably distant and different from the places where the rest of us live. These are funny people, weird people, misfits, heroes, people who live on hope and thrive on hard truths, people who have come away from the "real" world to invent themselves in a different reality.
But On the Ice isn't just about the place or the people. It's about Legler's own journey to the frozen wastes within herself, into her own frozen heart, which is thawed, incredibly, by the power of love. "How do you come to know place?" she asks. "How do you come to know self? . . . How do you let go of wounds and resentments and fierce anger, not begrudgingly, but as an act of grace?" She finds the answer to this age-old question in her relationship with Ruth, an electrician who helps her to shed "all that junk . . .all those layers of old self" and discover a new and loving self, a warm and passionate heart, in this frozen world. Some readers, particularly those who believe that books of natural history ought to exclude the historian's experience, may think that this part of the journey should have been omitted, as not quite worthy of the heroic spectacle that is the Antarctic. But that's the way it's always been, Legler reminds us: the personal has always been defined, she says, as "somehow gossipy or small, beyond or below the reach of proper recording." But why? Why do we deny the human perspective of place, since this is the only perspective we have? And why exclude the innermost experience, merely to focus on the outer? "Why obscure the intimate?" Legler asks. "Why shorten the story of the glorious complexity and depth of the human in order to make a neater, grander tale?"
Legler's journey--and her record of it--is all the more remarkable because it is an intimate journey, not only to the farthest place on earth but into the deepest desires and dreams of the human spirit. It's a singularly brave journey, as heroic in its way as the journeys of Scott and Shackleton and Amundsen, one more exploration of the truest human question: what it means to be at home on this earth. There are a great many books that will give you the cold, hard facts about the Antarctic. But as a book about place, a chronicle of life at the bottom of the world, and an intensely honest record of a spiritual journey, On the Ice is the most richly illuminating of a
May 29, 2022
Antarctica is interesting and i definitely enjoyed learning about it but parts felt a bit force and the organization of the work was a little confusing for me.
June 26, 2009
Gretchen Legler's account of her experiences in Antarctica was an honest and fascinating experience. She doesn't hold anything back, and that makes her writing superb. It made me want to go there and experience it myself.
August 12, 2018
I am trying to understand why the National Science Foundation paid for this drivel.
The woman was supposed to go to McMurdo Station to give us an account of what life is like living and working on Antarctica. What we got instead was a somewhat disjointed personal diary of Ms Legler's personal feelings on everything. I knew things were headed south (so to speak) when she took the time to tell us about her troubled relationship with her father, her sister's suicide, then told us about her failed heterosexual marriage and coming out as a lesbian. I may be going out on a limb, but I have no idea what any of that has to do with Antarctica.
An early warning quote: "I wanted to embark......(to) where I might be able to lay down burdens of resentment i'd carried so long, places where the unappreciated flesh and desires of my body might find themselves at home, places that I hoped being so far from my ordinary self would help me find." Page 7. Not a quote I would want to read if I were for example, a lead scientist considering this woman's application to work with other people at the station under the severe living conditions one encounters in a remote wilderness. She sounds like she is ready to snap.
My take:
The author is a troubled individual who has relationship issues. She got paid to take a vacation, study her personal emotional troubles and put them down on paper for all of us to contemplate, initiate a same sex affair while on station and then take the time to badmouth the early explorers of Antarctica.
What a waste. Look elsewhere to read about the good work going on at McMurdo by teams of dedicated people trying to make a difference.
The woman was supposed to go to McMurdo Station to give us an account of what life is like living and working on Antarctica. What we got instead was a somewhat disjointed personal diary of Ms Legler's personal feelings on everything. I knew things were headed south (so to speak) when she took the time to tell us about her troubled relationship with her father, her sister's suicide, then told us about her failed heterosexual marriage and coming out as a lesbian. I may be going out on a limb, but I have no idea what any of that has to do with Antarctica.
An early warning quote: "I wanted to embark......(to) where I might be able to lay down burdens of resentment i'd carried so long, places where the unappreciated flesh and desires of my body might find themselves at home, places that I hoped being so far from my ordinary self would help me find." Page 7. Not a quote I would want to read if I were for example, a lead scientist considering this woman's application to work with other people at the station under the severe living conditions one encounters in a remote wilderness. She sounds like she is ready to snap.
My take:
The author is a troubled individual who has relationship issues. She got paid to take a vacation, study her personal emotional troubles and put them down on paper for all of us to contemplate, initiate a same sex affair while on station and then take the time to badmouth the early explorers of Antarctica.
What a waste. Look elsewhere to read about the good work going on at McMurdo by teams of dedicated people trying to make a difference.
July 6, 2019
I rarely rarely rate a book below 4 stars, because I respect writers and I am aware writing is a hard enough job.
But I am disappointed with this book. Though, I am not sure if it is the author’s fault or the publisher’s. The book subtitle - an intimate portrait of life at McMurdo Station, but this is NOT what this book is about!
This is a book about the author being paid to travel to Antarctica and write about Antarctica, and she spent huge amount of time talking about her life, her feeling to things (both in Antarctica and out of Antarctica). It would have been more accurate if it is called a personal diary of someone who spent a few months in Antarctica. The book covers huge amount author’s personal stuff that has nothing to do with Antarctica, to the point that whenever she does that, I speed read so to get to the part where it IS about Antarctica!!
I am not sure how the publisher managed this book and how the editor didn’t see the problem.
If you want to read about life on Antarctica, I highly highly recommend “Big Dead Space”, now that’s a book about Antarctica. The author might mention a bit of his life (maximum one paragraph I promise you) but you will learn about life in Antarctica after reading that.
But I am disappointed with this book. Though, I am not sure if it is the author’s fault or the publisher’s. The book subtitle - an intimate portrait of life at McMurdo Station, but this is NOT what this book is about!
This is a book about the author being paid to travel to Antarctica and write about Antarctica, and she spent huge amount of time talking about her life, her feeling to things (both in Antarctica and out of Antarctica). It would have been more accurate if it is called a personal diary of someone who spent a few months in Antarctica. The book covers huge amount author’s personal stuff that has nothing to do with Antarctica, to the point that whenever she does that, I speed read so to get to the part where it IS about Antarctica!!
I am not sure how the publisher managed this book and how the editor didn’t see the problem.
If you want to read about life on Antarctica, I highly highly recommend “Big Dead Space”, now that’s a book about Antarctica. The author might mention a bit of his life (maximum one paragraph I promise you) but you will learn about life in Antarctica after reading that.
November 5, 2013
I had high hopes for this one. Something about Antarctica is intriguing to me...and clearly to others. Its a ripe topic for a journalist to review and write about. So, the opportunity is here for a great insiders look into a world that few have seen.
So here's the problem - the writing here is disjointed and jumbled. The "story" as it is, hops from place to place with little sense of time and place. This could have been a great scientific look at life in Antarctica, with details about the tools, tasks and experiments. There's room to get very down and dirty with the details and very much into the weeds (or glaciers) on this. This could have been a great look at the day-to-day life of the people and places that make Antarctica tick. I can't say I know there is that much here as the population is small, however the individual stories and details could have kept it interesting. This could have been a walk down memory lane exploring the history of Antarctica, its early explorers and adventurers and the paths that they tread. There's room here to get fairly detailed into the lives and times of how we got from a completely barren land to a barren land. Lastly, this could have been a story of one woman's introspective look at her own life in the context of the isolation of Antarctica and her quest to open her heart to love again. Any of those directions would have been good and entertaining.
The real problem here is not that she chose the wrong angle, its that she chose ALL the angles. In a short 185 pages, Ms. Legler touches on Scientific exploration, Arctic life, history and her personal/love life. Essentially, she doesn't give any topic enough time to develop or get into detail at a sufficient level. In addition, she jumps somewhat haphazardly between the topics. There's not a coherence to the story lines. There seems to be a randomness to the tales. They aren't linear (or don't appear to be) and don't seem to link in any other manner...with small exceptions. What is included, I feel was glazed over too much.
She made three-to-five forays into deep scientific items. Her writing on this topic is dry. Might be the topics, but I found it semi-yawn inspiring. I could have done with far less of this, although I'm sure there are many out here who might be captivated by this aspect.
The day-to-day life at McMurdo and other stations is the main crux of the book. There are reviews of the lifestyles and tours of the facilities. Personally, this is what I wanted to read. I want to get in deep with the characters that make up this community. I want to "see" the details and background of the community and how it ticks. There were several missing elements here. First, the detail behind the people was not quite there. We delved into a few of the characters, but seemed to pause before going too deep. It almost as if she got a point where she was worried about infringing upon their privacy. In my opinion there is a huge amount of story here and she did a decent job on it, just pulled up too close to the surface. She failed however in the description. Its possible that what she's describing is impossible for me to comprehend. But I felt that this needed to be a photo-essay. Or in the absence of photos (massive oversight in my opinion), this needed to be really, really, really descriptive and I didn't get that.
History is actually weaved into the story fairly well. Although at some points she gets too deep into this somewhat without rhyme or reason. Some of the descriptions of Shackleford/Wilson and his drawings was a little too heavy for me. But for the most part she did this well. She weaved together the history and the science or day-to-day life fairly nicely. I can't really complain about her use of history to propel the story, as it was...
...and then there's the personal story. This is where the real story lies. The day-to-day life is interesting and can be captivating. The soul of the artist, however, will come out in her own self-discovery and her own openness to new experiences. While she gives a decent backstory on her own feelings and how life in Antarctica has reflected, I feel that she was holding back. This is particularly evident in her story with Ruth. We go fairly quickly from meeting to tokens of affection to blind love, with little explanation/details about how we really got there. Were there dates? What did they do? I feel there is a context that is missing. Its just, I met her, she brought me a cupcake, I love her, we're sleeping together. I don't want to impose on her life, but, well, she's the one putting it on paper. I don't need the gory details, but some context would be nice. Part of this is the skipping around in the story and context to where she is and how long she stays anywhere. I just really feel that there is a deep, deep story here and its highly personal. Its her prerogative to withhold or display it as she deems fit. But I think she gave us a taste without the full story. I would have preferred either somewhat full disclosure or none at all. The funny part, is teh non-Ruth piece, the history, she dives right in. Although she covers it a bit with what I would call flowery language. Too flowery in my opinion, but still detailed enough to get a feeling. Then with Ruth, there's no flowery language. Its blunt and lacks in detail.
All in all, I just feel this book missed the mark. There is potential here and her story could be sooo much better with a little more detail and focus. I should have been more engaged than I was considering the topic. I'm not looking for a 600 page monstrosity...but 100 more pages could have given some more life to McMurdo and its characters. What really happens at the cantinas. This could have been fantastic in an almost blog format.
I got On The Ice as part of the haul from my mother at Christmas 2012. she picked it up in one of those library "bag for a buck" deals. Something about got into my head the last few weeks and I felt the need to read it ahead of some borrowed books currently at hand. Overall, eh...
So here's the problem - the writing here is disjointed and jumbled. The "story" as it is, hops from place to place with little sense of time and place. This could have been a great scientific look at life in Antarctica, with details about the tools, tasks and experiments. There's room to get very down and dirty with the details and very much into the weeds (or glaciers) on this. This could have been a great look at the day-to-day life of the people and places that make Antarctica tick. I can't say I know there is that much here as the population is small, however the individual stories and details could have kept it interesting. This could have been a walk down memory lane exploring the history of Antarctica, its early explorers and adventurers and the paths that they tread. There's room here to get fairly detailed into the lives and times of how we got from a completely barren land to a barren land. Lastly, this could have been a story of one woman's introspective look at her own life in the context of the isolation of Antarctica and her quest to open her heart to love again. Any of those directions would have been good and entertaining.
The real problem here is not that she chose the wrong angle, its that she chose ALL the angles. In a short 185 pages, Ms. Legler touches on Scientific exploration, Arctic life, history and her personal/love life. Essentially, she doesn't give any topic enough time to develop or get into detail at a sufficient level. In addition, she jumps somewhat haphazardly between the topics. There's not a coherence to the story lines. There seems to be a randomness to the tales. They aren't linear (or don't appear to be) and don't seem to link in any other manner...with small exceptions. What is included, I feel was glazed over too much.
She made three-to-five forays into deep scientific items. Her writing on this topic is dry. Might be the topics, but I found it semi-yawn inspiring. I could have done with far less of this, although I'm sure there are many out here who might be captivated by this aspect.
The day-to-day life at McMurdo and other stations is the main crux of the book. There are reviews of the lifestyles and tours of the facilities. Personally, this is what I wanted to read. I want to get in deep with the characters that make up this community. I want to "see" the details and background of the community and how it ticks. There were several missing elements here. First, the detail behind the people was not quite there. We delved into a few of the characters, but seemed to pause before going too deep. It almost as if she got a point where she was worried about infringing upon their privacy. In my opinion there is a huge amount of story here and she did a decent job on it, just pulled up too close to the surface. She failed however in the description. Its possible that what she's describing is impossible for me to comprehend. But I felt that this needed to be a photo-essay. Or in the absence of photos (massive oversight in my opinion), this needed to be really, really, really descriptive and I didn't get that.
History is actually weaved into the story fairly well. Although at some points she gets too deep into this somewhat without rhyme or reason. Some of the descriptions of Shackleford/Wilson and his drawings was a little too heavy for me. But for the most part she did this well. She weaved together the history and the science or day-to-day life fairly nicely. I can't really complain about her use of history to propel the story, as it was...
...and then there's the personal story. This is where the real story lies. The day-to-day life is interesting and can be captivating. The soul of the artist, however, will come out in her own self-discovery and her own openness to new experiences. While she gives a decent backstory on her own feelings and how life in Antarctica has reflected, I feel that she was holding back. This is particularly evident in her story with Ruth. We go fairly quickly from meeting to tokens of affection to blind love, with little explanation/details about how we really got there. Were there dates? What did they do? I feel there is a context that is missing. Its just, I met her, she brought me a cupcake, I love her, we're sleeping together. I don't want to impose on her life, but, well, she's the one putting it on paper. I don't need the gory details, but some context would be nice. Part of this is the skipping around in the story and context to where she is and how long she stays anywhere. I just really feel that there is a deep, deep story here and its highly personal. Its her prerogative to withhold or display it as she deems fit. But I think she gave us a taste without the full story. I would have preferred either somewhat full disclosure or none at all. The funny part, is teh non-Ruth piece, the history, she dives right in. Although she covers it a bit with what I would call flowery language. Too flowery in my opinion, but still detailed enough to get a feeling. Then with Ruth, there's no flowery language. Its blunt and lacks in detail.
All in all, I just feel this book missed the mark. There is potential here and her story could be sooo much better with a little more detail and focus. I should have been more engaged than I was considering the topic. I'm not looking for a 600 page monstrosity...but 100 more pages could have given some more life to McMurdo and its characters. What really happens at the cantinas. This could have been fantastic in an almost blog format.
I got On The Ice as part of the haul from my mother at Christmas 2012. she picked it up in one of those library "bag for a buck" deals. Something about got into my head the last few weeks and I felt the need to read it ahead of some borrowed books currently at hand. Overall, eh...
September 28, 2023
This book might not be for everyone (in fact the reviews are… one might say… polarizing). But I flipping LOVED it. The fact that I couldn’t get through more than a few pages at a time without marking and highlighting to come back and read passages again speaks volumes.
Legler received a grant to experience and write about Antarctica in the nineties… and I read her resulting account/memoir with my entire body. If my jaw wasn’t hanging open (sometimes in wonder, other times in horror) I was laughing out loud (you need a sense of humor to survive in Antarctica), or shaking my head (at several historical facts including how women were excluded from the content until WAY too recently), or misty eyed at the astonishing beauty of a landscape of extremes as seen through both figures from history (I loved the stories about Edward Wilson’s science and art) and also the eyes of a woman cracked open with wonder… and that same icy landscape’s ability to melt her fear and invite her to feel safe in love.
The overriding juxtaposition of the austere, frozen landscape and the warmth of human connection was threaded throughout the narrative, and I loved it.
Legler received a grant to experience and write about Antarctica in the nineties… and I read her resulting account/memoir with my entire body. If my jaw wasn’t hanging open (sometimes in wonder, other times in horror) I was laughing out loud (you need a sense of humor to survive in Antarctica), or shaking my head (at several historical facts including how women were excluded from the content until WAY too recently), or misty eyed at the astonishing beauty of a landscape of extremes as seen through both figures from history (I loved the stories about Edward Wilson’s science and art) and also the eyes of a woman cracked open with wonder… and that same icy landscape’s ability to melt her fear and invite her to feel safe in love.
The overriding juxtaposition of the austere, frozen landscape and the warmth of human connection was threaded throughout the narrative, and I loved it.
September 13, 2023
I picked up this book as I research for a novella I'm writing that includes settings in Antarctica. I was more than pleased with how Legler depicts the landscape, the aura, and the mystique of this foreign land. But what I was not prepared for was the way she wrapped her own evolution into the legend of this place. I began flipping back through this thin book to find more of its meaning. She uses "enchantment" to describe the continent and the love she finds there. But she weaves her own spell by embedding parallels of existing in Antarctica with some of her own internal struggles in every chapter. They are so seamless and intricately wrought with meaning that I often had that sought after reading experience of staring at the wall in contemplation after finishing a paragraph. And her journey, I believe, is one many of us share. When Legler looks in the ice she describes her reflection, but really we are seeing our own. I'm glad I found this gem and am excited to read her new book.
October 1, 2023
This book is about the American Arctic station McMurdo. The book covers life in the Ice City with people from all walks of life, scientists, mechanics, explorers, cooks, and anyone you would have working in the average city. The only difference is that it is below zero. The author takes side trips to historic sites on the continent and travels on a research ship.
October 4, 2023
An interesting topic to be sure, and I enjoyed reading much of this book. Maybe the organization of it didn't work quite right for me? I wanted more detail here, less detail there. It's a short book but it took me while to read which I guess says something. Also it might be a bit dated (the epilogue in particular) since it was published in 2005.
{library, paperback}
{library, paperback}
January 13, 2024
If this book had been more accurately titled, I would have rated it higher. I read this hoping for a portrayal of life at McMurdo, but a large chunk of it was waxing poetically about the author's various self-discoveries. If this was advertised as a personal diary of the thoughts and feelings of a writer in Antarctica, I could have enjoyed this book a lot more, but instead I was just disappointed
January 16, 2024
I am OBSESSED with all things related to survival in extremely cold environments so I read everything I can about it. This book was exactly what I was hoping it would be! The first story in the book has stayed with me for years. 😆
May 18, 2016
Lovely writing, but I spent the second half of the book less focused on that writing than I was on why the writing wasn't doing much for me. I think it comes down to this: Legler lived in Antarctica for six months as a...writer in residence, I suppose. She was there to learn and there to write; as she notes, she's doing more or less the same thing the scientists there are doing (trying to understand Antarctica), but through a different medium.
I enjoyed the writing and enjoyed the details; in particular, I learned quite a bit about Discovery Hut, which I had previously assumed to be significantly smaller than it actually is. As a writer without (as far as I can tell) hard-and-fast day-to-day duties at McMurdo (the U.S. base in Antarctica), she had the luxury of time to investigate projects that interested but did not directly involve her, and she writes about some of those adventures. But the story is in many ways more internal—Legler had, at some point before leaving for Antarctica, come to terms with being a lesbian, and there are elements of love story and references to major losses in her past. By the end, though, I think I wanted the book to have swung more in one direction or the other: to be more focused on those little Antarctica-specific things, bringing them to light for those of us who don't expect to ever go that far south (too effing cold), or to hone in more closely on the personal and explore those elements in more depth.
One that will work well for a lot of readers interested in Antarctica but that just didn't suit my reading mood, I suppose. On to the next thing.
I enjoyed the writing and enjoyed the details; in particular, I learned quite a bit about Discovery Hut, which I had previously assumed to be significantly smaller than it actually is. As a writer without (as far as I can tell) hard-and-fast day-to-day duties at McMurdo (the U.S. base in Antarctica), she had the luxury of time to investigate projects that interested but did not directly involve her, and she writes about some of those adventures. But the story is in many ways more internal—Legler had, at some point before leaving for Antarctica, come to terms with being a lesbian, and there are elements of love story and references to major losses in her past. By the end, though, I think I wanted the book to have swung more in one direction or the other: to be more focused on those little Antarctica-specific things, bringing them to light for those of us who don't expect to ever go that far south (too effing cold), or to hone in more closely on the personal and explore those elements in more depth.
One that will work well for a lot of readers interested in Antarctica but that just didn't suit my reading mood, I suppose. On to the next thing.
December 17, 2009
I bought this book because it was just about the only one that came up when I searched for books on the hydroponic greenhouse at McMurdo Station in Antarctica.
Gretchen Legler spent a season 'On The Ice', as a writer-in-residence in Antarctica. She lovingly describes every aspect of her life there, from the beautiful scenery through to the colourful characters who live on the edge of the world.
There's not much mention of the McMurdo hydroponic greenhouse, which is a shame (for a keen gardener), but if you've ever wanted to know what it would be like to spend some time in Antarctica then this is definitely a book you should read. Gretchen has a unique view point, as she went there with the goal of observation rather than science or conservation.
But she passes on some of the science with ease, talks about the need to protect the Antarctic environment and the lessons it can teach us about the wider environmental issues we face, and also delves into the heroic and tragic history of Antarctic exploration.
She has lots of wonderful experiences during her time there, from spending a night camping out alone, to travelling to the pole, to sitting in the diving bell and watching Antarctic aquatic life pass by to diving naked into the diving hole and emerging reborn.
But ultimately this is a love story. Gretchen arrives in Antarctica broken. She has chosen to go there as a kind of retreat, a last attempt to mend a damaged soul and make her life whole. And despite the inhospitable surroundings and her inability to imagine a bright future, she finds one.
Gretchen Legler spent a season 'On The Ice', as a writer-in-residence in Antarctica. She lovingly describes every aspect of her life there, from the beautiful scenery through to the colourful characters who live on the edge of the world.
There's not much mention of the McMurdo hydroponic greenhouse, which is a shame (for a keen gardener), but if you've ever wanted to know what it would be like to spend some time in Antarctica then this is definitely a book you should read. Gretchen has a unique view point, as she went there with the goal of observation rather than science or conservation.
But she passes on some of the science with ease, talks about the need to protect the Antarctic environment and the lessons it can teach us about the wider environmental issues we face, and also delves into the heroic and tragic history of Antarctic exploration.
She has lots of wonderful experiences during her time there, from spending a night camping out alone, to travelling to the pole, to sitting in the diving bell and watching Antarctic aquatic life pass by to diving naked into the diving hole and emerging reborn.
But ultimately this is a love story. Gretchen arrives in Antarctica broken. She has chosen to go there as a kind of retreat, a last attempt to mend a damaged soul and make her life whole. And despite the inhospitable surroundings and her inability to imagine a bright future, she finds one.
May 3, 2012
This book is such a beautiful and unusual combination of things--part memoir, part nature-writing, part nonfiction account of Antarctica and the people who live at McMurdo Station. I love that it is so personal and so deeply-felt, and at the same time so outward-looking. Gretchen Legler explores so much in this relatively little book, and she does so absolutely honestly--there's her own personal family history, her heart, her fears and dreams and the way she falls in love with one of the other McMurdo residents, Ruth, during their time "on the ice." And there's also science and personalities, and art, and beauty and history. I learned about Edward Wilson, a scientist/artist who was part of Scott's Antarctic expeditions and who saw divinity all over the place and tried to represent it in everything he drew (I want to read more about him). I learned about dark matter and ice core samples. I learned about the race to the South Pole. I learned about maps and the desire to locate oneself on the earth. I learned more about love--for a person, a place. I wish I'd had the time to read this book straight through, because it seems to beg readers to do that--to really enter its world--but I didn't. Think I will have to read it again...
December 18, 2015
This was sort of 'meh'. To be sure, there are moments of writing in here where she is totally on the money--where she has powerful and moving words that are profound, and those moments were awesome.
Buuuut then there's the rest of it. The narrative was disjointed and felt without-direction. She goes to Antarctica writing about how she is a broken person and all this, but it turns out that the solution to this is finding a girlfriend. Okay. Love can be an incredible thing--but her writing there is flat and uninspiring. The parts before sound too much like "boo hoo, poor me," and the parts afterwards are not convincing. I mostly felt like she didn't know what to write about the whole experience, so we just get snippets here and there that are not cohesive, which is too bad, because those passages she gets right are incredible. I would be interested in reading her book on Shackleton--maybe having a clear purpose would clean the writing up.
Buuuut then there's the rest of it. The narrative was disjointed and felt without-direction. She goes to Antarctica writing about how she is a broken person and all this, but it turns out that the solution to this is finding a girlfriend. Okay. Love can be an incredible thing--but her writing there is flat and uninspiring. The parts before sound too much like "boo hoo, poor me," and the parts afterwards are not convincing. I mostly felt like she didn't know what to write about the whole experience, so we just get snippets here and there that are not cohesive, which is too bad, because those passages she gets right are incredible. I would be interested in reading her book on Shackleton--maybe having a clear purpose would clean the writing up.
October 23, 2011
Really beautifully written--probably my favorite of the books I've read so far about modern life in Antarctica, and one I'll definitely read again at some point. I really appreciated Legler's introspection and honesty about who she was before she came, about who she was when she left, and about how those changes came about. And there's a real palpable sense of warmth and wonder in her words that I haven't often seen in other writings about Antarctica, which tend to focus so much more on the hard and the cold and the frustating and the life-threatening. She also meshes science and history and personal experience in a perfectly balanced and very engaging way, which not a lot of other authors seem to have managed well. It's really excellently done.
March 10, 2008
I'd still recommend starting with Legler's All the Powerful Invisible Things, but this is another strong collection. I really admire the way Legler handles self-examination differently from other nature writers--she's more interested in autobiography than phenomenology, which is a nice wrinkle.
January 8, 2008
I loved this book. It tells the story of an adventure I dream of having one day. The writing is beautiful and it's an engaging balance of nature writing, history, and emotionally intelligent memoir.
August 11, 2011
This was an interesting account of one woman's time spent in Antarctica, at McMurdo Station. Since she is a writer rather than a scientist, she brings more introspection to the book than I think another author might have. An enjoyable read.
May 6, 2009
Since I knew nothing about the McMurdo station, reading this book was like a travelogue with someone's personal journey added.
June 29, 2015
I can never read enough about cold and desolate places. And Legler tells it very well. Never allowing the sense of place to eclipse the perspective of a person witnessing the wild.
March 20, 2012
My review at Bookreporter.com: http://www.bookreporter.com/reviews/o...
April 12, 2013
Saw Gretchen Legler at the 2012 AWP, and she was amazing. This is a beautiful little book, combination of memoir and an account of place. Honestly written.
Read
August 9, 2013I own it, but I guess I never got thru it. reading the description given it didnt sound like I read it. So itis waiting for me to dig in again & see ifI can get through it this time.
May 16, 2015
more personal reflection than collection of facts, but not in a bad way
September 25, 2020
What can I say? It just left me cold!
April 20, 2017
While I enjoyed this book, something bothered me and I couldn't quite put my finger on it until later. But I feel like the author was given this amazing experience, she was given access to places and people most people will never even dream experiencing, and this book is what came out of that? THIS book is the culmination of the hundred life changing experiences she had? I don't know, I kind of expected more somehow.
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