I. Arriving at Scott Polar Research Institute 8 Oct 1992 If you walk into the main library on the second floor of the Scott Polar Research Institute and look down the length of the main room to the far wall, you will see my desk, sitting in a shaft of morning sunshine from the skylight and nestled up against the "Canada" section. Just to the right (where I stack my coat and sweater, owing to a lack of any coat-rack that I can find) is a section on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police- "Policing the Top of World" "To the Arctic With the Mounties" "Policing the Arctic" and so on. Looking up across my deskmate, the view changes. Over his shoulder I see the many blue-and-white volumes of the Alaska Arctic Gas proposal-impact statements, market projections, alternate corridor routes .... The project has been deservedly dead these long years, but the verbiage lives on, nurtured by the spirit of the librarians and archivists who run this place. The library is, indeed, impressive. I haven't probed its depths with any detailed inquiries yet, but just walking around in the three big rooms gives you a strong sense of the scope. In the Alaska section I thumbed through a few books and quickly spotted Lew Freedman's "Real Alaskans"-evidence of currency if nothing else. There are, of course, journals and periodicals without number. The archives are separate from the library and I haven't made an excursion there yet, but we did have one lecture from the archivist on how to use the materials (never lick your fingers when you turn the pages, for example) and he brought along a little show-and-tell. Among them was the sketchbook taken from the body of Edward Wilson when he was discovered dead alongside Scott. The drawings are all in pencil, of course, since any ink available to him at the time would have quickly frozen. On each he has carefully noted the colors in script for later transmutation into the striking watercolors which make such a fine record of the expedition before disaster. I feel very comfortable at the Institute. There are eight of us "M.Phil candidates," including three other Alaskans, a park warden from Canada, a British woman glaciologist, a New Yorker studying Arctic plants and an Aussie looking toward the South Pole rather than the north. We will attend 60 lectures, write a series of essays on assigned topics and finally write a 20,000-word thesis and defend it in front of an institute person and two "outside readers" selected for their expertise in the subject. The city here is magical, filled with magnificent architecture, eccentric people and wondrous opportunities. Last night we heard the choir at King's College sing Evensong; this afternoon we were at St. John's for a recital on the massive, ancient organ there. Tonight we dine at "formal hall" with the Master of Churchill College and the other "advanced students." Many are more accomplished than me, of course, but few are farther "advanced." I feel like the oldest guy in any crowd around here, although actually I am not; in fact, there was an M.Phil in polar studies a couple of years ago who was in his 60s, and the course director says he much prefers people with some experience because kids straight out of college "have so little to give back to the course." Early on Barb and I were grumbling to one another about all the undergrads that seemed to be invading the reading room reserved for grad students. Then we had an assembly of all the new grad students and-you guessed it-all those baby-faced intruders were grad students. Sigh. In general that hasn't been a problem; I think my attitude about it is the only real issue here, so I intend to ignore the fact that everybody else here my age is either a Fellow of the college or a visiting astrophysicist from Nigeria (there really is one). Hell, maybe these kids will think I'm just a remarkably unstuffy professor: "Look, he even sits and eats with the grad students ..." Thankfully, the polar scholars (as distinct from these grad students at our college) are closer to my age, and I'll be spending more of my time with them.