Horizon is an autobiographical reflection on many years of travel and research, in Antarctica and in more than seventy countries. Some of these travels I financed myself, others I sought grants for or received fellowships to fund. I made several trips on assignment for magazines, and with others I was simply invited to come along. The details, and my expressions of gratitude for those who assisted me over the years, are included in the Acknowledgments.
Most of the journeys described here I made in my forties and fifties. I traveled to the Galápagos Islands, however, and to Australia and Antarctica, on several occasions and at different points in my life. The least complicated way to chronicle these experiences, it seemed, was simply to tell the story, not to try to explain any juxtapositions in time. It might help to know, however, that when I traveled to Cape Foulweather in order to encounter the winter storm I was forty-nine; that I was in my early forties and had just published a book about the North American far north, Arctic Dreams, when I flew into the archeological camp on Skraeling Island; and that I was fifty-four when I made the trip to Graves Nunataks in the Transantarctic Mountains.
As Horizon is meant to be an autobiographical work, I should emphasize that there was a long learning curve inherent in all this sojourning. I’ve not tried to be explicit about what was learned (or unlearned) or when, in part because it hasn’t always been clear to me what changes might have occurred. The young man visiting the archeological site on Skraeling Island is the same fellow who at the end of the book encounters a stranger on the road to Port Famine, but also not.