"What does not appear there but is equally present, somehow, is Antarctica.
Antarctica of permanent daylight come summer and permanent night during the
season when the sea ice grows. Antarctica, that no human being had ever seen
just over two hundred years ago. Antarctica, the continent where only eleven
people have been born. Antarctica of glacial uncertainty. Antarctica, humming
9,093 miles south of my home in Providence, now acutely felt. Antarctica, and,
more specifically, the policies that shape it, place their icy hands around my
present and tell me how to act. Wait, they say, one full year."
Elizabeth Rush writes of a journey toward motherhood in an age of glacial
loss.
