hunkpapa

of Captain George E. Tyson's "Wonderful Drift on the Ice-Floe":

The route of the Polaris Expedition, during which 19 people were stranded on an ice floe and left to drift for 6 months, from October 1872 to April 1873.

The survivors of the Polaris Expedition, with Tyson on the far left.

This expedition forms the basis of a book I've just read, Afterlands by Steven Heighton. It's based on the actual events, (including information from Tyson's diary and a book he published later), but it's a novel, about how the group slowly falls apart as they struggle to survive, and turn on each other. I think I'll let that review do most of the talking as I could never describe it well enough, but I definitely recommend this book (though I think I'm going to read something a little less bleak next).

I remember the day I first bought something by Heighton (at the Albion Street, Leeds branch of Waterstones, late 1997, I think). I chose it completely at random... It's funny the way tiny random things like that stick in your mind. Why that book in particular? Eh.
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I'm going to a wedding! It's not for a while yet, and I'm not going to the ceremony itself (it's immediate family only), but I'm so happy to be going. Partly because it's a close friend who is getting married, but also because I've never actually been to one before, whether it's the wedding itself or the shindig afterwards. (and I'm never going to have one of my own, so I'm glad I'm going to get to go to at least one).
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awesome snow sculpture
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I often feel that there's so many things to say, but I can just never ever find the words. And to think I once applied for a job as a writer.
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