Who doesn’t love a good story? Especially when it involves beating the odds and overcoming insurmountable obstacles – it’s the stuff of which heroes and epics are made.
Who doesn’t love a good story? Especially when it involves beating the odds and overcoming insurmountable obstacles – it’s the stuff of which heroes and epics are made.
Well, we have a good story to tell – one that involves AAPG, a member who happens to write for the EXPLORER, and the continent of Antarctica.
In December 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton and a crew of 27 set sail for Antarctica. Their objective was to cross that continent from coast to coast – but when their ship became a prisoner of ice they were forced to walk.
For five months they marched through the most uninhabitable place on earth. Then they traveled this world’s most dangerous ocean in lifeboats before returning to civilization and ultimately rescuing their remaining crewmembers. Not a single man was lost in this amazing story.
In honor of this feat, a team – called Elysium (elysiumepic.org) – has been formed to visually document Antarctica along the same path Shackleton’s expedition took. (In Greek mythology Elysium is a portion of the underworld where the souls of the herioc and virtuous resides.)
So, what does this have to do with AAPG?
AAPG member Susan Eaton, a Calgary-based correspondent for the EXPLORER, has been invited to the party.
Eaton is one of two geoscientists on a crew of 57 explorers from 18 countries, and she will be posting to a blog as the team journeys from Antarctica and South Georgia. AAPG also will be following her blog on petroleumgeology.org – a Web site designed by the AAPG Public Outreach Committee for the public.
Eaton also has arranged with a school in Canada to share her work directly with their 11th and 12th grade students.
She’ll blog, send photos and speak with them throughout the expedition with the hope of illustrating, in Eaton’s words “that science is ‘cool,’ that science is fun, that women participate in science and that exploration and discovery is still possible in the 21st century.”
Eaton’s blog expands this site with yet another opportunity to “learn about the source, from the source” as it happens.
By the time you are reading this Eaton may be nearing the end of her journey. But her blog should continue beyond that.
It will be a good story.
Good browsing!