This was true of other matters: new ideas, new concepts, and new developments about which I knew little or nothing. With music, too, it was the same way the love for it - and I suppose the indefinable need - was also there, but not the will or opportunity to interrupt the routine which most of us come to cherish as existence. There was no end to the books that I was forever promising myself to read but, when it came to reading them, I seemed never to have the time or the patience. As technology progressed, and the Heroic Age became the “Mechanical Age,” more territory was covered with increasing ease, and few polar “firsts” remained. Much of the continent had been explored and mapped, and the pole had been attained through “manual” means (dog sled and skis) and ample struggle. Byrd, Aloneīy 1934, the “Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration” had drawn to a close. And in the hullabaloo the thinking man is driven to ponder where he is being blown and to long desperately for some quiet place where he can reason undisturbed and take inventory.” –Richard E. We are caught up in the winds that blow every which way. “it is something, I believe, that people beset by the complexities of modern life will understand instinctively. Why Byrd Decided to Spend a Season of Solitude at the Bottom of the World Yet while Byrd’s journey was not outward but inward, his expedition to the farthest reaches of solitude covered a significant amount of ground, circumscribing the spirit of man and his place in the universe. Rather, he stayed, by himself, in exactly one place: a tiny shack buried under snow and ice. Rather than involving teams of men, and sweeping treks across land and sea, Byrd didn’t travel with anyone else, or cover any geographic distance at all. While Byrd was one of the most celebrated figures of his time (receiving an unprecedented three ticker tape parades), his fame has slipped beneath that of other polar explorers, perhaps because his adventure was of a strikingly different kind. Byrd spent alone at the bottom of the world in 1934. Most people have also heard of the heroic leadership of Ernest Shackleton, who managed to save the lives of all of his men when their attempt to traverse Antarctica in 1914 went horribly awry.įewer, however, are familiar with another tale of Antarctic adventure, that of the almost five months Rear Admiral Richard E. Many know of the epic race in 1910 between Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott to be the first to reach the South Pole, and the tragic end met by the latter explorer.
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