CYCLE OF FIRE
Stephen J. Pyne
Cycle of Fire is a suite of books that collectively narrate the story of how fire and humanity have interacted to shape the Earth. “Cycle” is an apt description of how fire functions in the natural world. Yet “cycle” also bears a mythic connotation: a set of sagas that tell the life of a culture hero. Here that role belongs to fire. Ranging across all continents and over thousands of years, the Cycle shows Earth to be a fire planet in which carbon-based terrestrial life and an oxygen-rich atmosphere have combined to make combustion both elemental and inevitable. Equally, the Cycle reveals humans as fire creatures, alternately dependent upon and threatened by their monopoly over combustion. Fire’s possession began humanity’s great dialogue with the Earth. Cycle of Fire tells, for the first time, that epic story.
World Fire: The Culture of Fire on Earth
Vestal Fire: An Environmental History, Told through Fire, of Europe and Europe’s Encounter with the World
Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire
Burning Bush: A Fire History of Australia
The Ice: A Journey to Antarctica
Cycle of Fire is part of Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books, published by the University of Washington Press under the general editorship of William Cronon. A complete list of Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books appears at the end of this book.
THE ICE
A Journey to Antarctica
STEPHEN J. PYNE
With a Foreword by William Cronon and a New Preface by the Author
University of Washington Press Seattle and London
The Ice: A Journey to Antarctica by Stephen J. Pyne has been published with the assistance of a grant from the Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books Endowment, established by the Weyerhaeuser Company Foundation, members of the Weyerhaeuser family, and Janet and Jack Creighton.
Originally published in 1986 by the University of Iowa Press
Copyright © 1986 by the University of Iowa
Reprinted by arrangement with the author
Paperback edition published by the University of Washington Press in 1998
Foreword and Preface to the University of Washington Press paperback edition copyright © 1998 by the University of Washington Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pyne, Stephen J., 1949–
The ice : a journey to Antarctica / Stephen J. Pyne : with a foreword by William Cronon and a new preface by the author. — Pbk. ed.
p. cm. — (Cycle of fire)
Originally published: Iowa City : University of Iowa Press, 1986. Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-295-97678-0 (alk. paper)
1. Antarctica—Discovery and exploration. I. Title. II. Series. III. Series: Pyne, Stephen J., 1949– Cycle of fire.
| G860.P96 1998 | 97-45053 |
| 919.8′904—dc21 | CIP |
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984. ∞
“The End of the World” by Archibald MacLeish, from New and Collected Poems 1917–1976, copyright © 1976 by Archibald MacLeish, is reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Co.
To Sonja,
who saw the future where I
saw only the past
Contents
Foreword
A Fireless Land
William Cronon
Readers can certainly be forgiven for wondering what a book entitled The Ice, about the great frozen continent of Antarctica, is doing in a series of books devoted to the history of fire. The book’s author, Stephen J. Pyne, has made his scholarly reputation by tracing, book by book and continent by continent, the role of fire in shaping the natural and human past of this planet. The result is Cycle of Fire, a suite of books which the University of Washington Press takes great pride in publishing as part of our Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books series. Pyne has succeeded like no historian before him in helping readers see the full sweep of human history through the fiery lens of a planet whose carbon-based organic chemistry and oxygenated atmosphere make combustion an almost inevitable accompaniment of life on every continent but one … Antarctica. How, then, did this fireless place become part of Cycle of Fire?
There are several possible answers to this question. The first is more or less biographical. After completing what appeared at that time to be his magnum