Count me among those who have never doubted what they would do with their lives. Since high school, I've only ever wanted to write, to explore ideas, to muse on the world. But for many, such certainty is elusive. Ms. Thomson is in this latter camp, those searching for a calling. And though I imagine that this has caused her some private anguish, it has also motivated her to take a journey of a lifetime, a journey which those of us confident of our destinies would never dare to take.
Antarctica On A Plate is an account of one young woman's time as the cook for a months-long expedition hunkered down near the South Pole. Subjected to soul-shivering temperatures which routinely plunge too low for complex organisms to survive, she acts as both narrator and tour guide of both Antarctica and the expeditions dispatched there by the science ministries of various nations. It's easy to imagine the eccentrics chosen for such missions and Ms. Thomson doesn't disappoint us, describing the woman-deprived russians and the stoic Scandinavians with equal good humor. A city girl from Australia, Ms. Thomson could be excused for pouting through her narrative; after all, it's one thing to want an adventure and entirely another to be stuck for months on end in an inhospitable, unforgiving hellhole from which escape is limited to a single plane that can only fly in and out under specific conditions. But her pragmatism does her credit. Oh, there's bitter humor here, like when she relates the exploits with various grumpy toilets and temperamental stoves, but she embraces her whimsical mission with admirable tenacity.
Antarctica is one of the remotest environments in our world, a sheet of largely lifeless ice visited by a couple hundred brave souls each year. Ms. Thomson lived a life in a city of five million souls, with every modern convenience at her fingertips, but she only found herself when surrounded by the desolation of a tundra. There's more than poetry in this; there's wisdom, that sometimes we can only find ourselves when we test ourselves, when we strip away life's conveniences, when we mute its noise, and listen for what remains. For the reader, there are no life-altering revelations here, but there is amazement for the environment and admiration for the woman who wanted enough from life to meet herself at the bottom of the world. (3/5 Stars)
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