geographic desire

Rebecca F.

I have a problem called geographic desire. That isn't a clinical term - I made it up - but it describes this implacable desire I have to go to the geographic limits of places: the ends of long roads to nowhere, the borders of states and countries, those outlying places of the world, the extremes.

I have been reading about Antartica lately because that is one of the points on which my geographic desire is focused, and I was thinking about Antartica as I snowshoed in the Tetons yesterday. I don't think that Antartica would solve any problems of geographic desire because a map always provides another obsession - Spitzbergen or Tonga or Yreka, California -- it doesn't really matter. Desires like these only grow the more they are fed, a prospect that can be either frightening or titillating, depending on your perspective.

Me, I find the prospect of the public bathrooms at McMurdo Station titillating to the extreme.