I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately over why I like Antarctica so much. I have yet to be able to explain it. Maybe it’s because it’s such a strange thing to love, a continent. I guess I just love the adventure that goes along with it, you know? The fact that it was the last continent explored, the last left unsettled (at least permanently, or left unsettled by all but the scientists)…and it was called “Terra Incognita” for quite sometime.

It’s got a romantic sense about it (“romantic” as in the period, not the lovey-dovey kind): wilderness left untouched by man for centuries, then explored by a few daring men at the turn of the century. Then, left again until about 40 years later when science finally found interest and the means to further explore it.

I like the extremeness of it. I’ve always been a bit of a climatology geek (blame my dad for that one) and extreme climates have always interested me. Antarctica = extreme climate = Claudia happy…well, you get the picture. Plus I like ice.

Glaciers. I love glaciers. I guess I have a thing for the massive towers of floating ice, especially when they’ve been carved and shaped by the wind. How pretty.

Antarctica is a resource, and I’m not talking about energy or oil or any of that crap. I mean it’s a resource for us in regards to the earth’s past. It’s like a photo album of the world arranged in chronological order with the most recent pictures in front. The further we explore and the more we’re able to dig and bring up core samples, the further we can flip back in this photo album and get shots of what the world was like. And hey—how cool is that?

I don’t know. I guess I just like it. It’s hard to explain why. Yeah, all those reasons above count, but there’s more to it.

And I just realized I kind of copied Matt’s idea of trying to explain why one likes their hobby (or, in my case, continent). Sorry, Matt. I’m a dork.