February-ing

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So, February was full of dust and pestilence. We were all sick and the sickness went on and on...

But Feb was also full of walking, specifically walking amidst the slabs of white marble in the Southwood Lands, and immersing myself in my great-grandfather's 1913-1914 Antarctic journal.

I tried to commit to more walking, in all weather. I silvered my eyelashes more than a few times. And when I wasn't doing that, I was stealing an hour here, ninety minutes there, to read and transcribe, to read and think, on the contents of my g-grandfather's journal.

My grandfather was 42 when he died in 1914 on South Georgia. I'm almost 42 now, a hundred years later, reading his impressions on the landscape, on the weather, on the Frigate Birds and the King Penguins and the Leopard Seals. I kind of like that synergy, even while I try to talk back to it, to counter his adventure with my domesticity.