Keeping it on Ice

There are times when it is hard to think of what is and is not important in the world. With the discovery of whiskey left in a cabin in the Antarctic from explorer Ernest Shackleton's failed attempt to reach the South Pole in 1909, we can see exactly how mixed reactions can be when a curious blend (cough) of history and modern thought come about.

A New Zealand team, restoring a hut left by Shackleton in the wake of his endeavors, found a few crates of the alcohol under the floorboards as they worked. It is expected that the whiskey has survived well, and whiskey historians (whiskey historians?) believe the find dramatic, as the original recipe for that particular formula has been lost. But all this fails to answer a few interesting questions.

First of all, why on Earth are we rehabilitating a post from a trek to the wilds of Antarctica? Who is going to see it? What's the point? It's a shack on a glacier, for crying out loud. Though it is interesting that such a hovel has even stood the test of time, given the extreme conditions it presumably survived, what else is important about it?

On a further note, the clash of eras brings up what is surely a significant cultural difference. Alcohol was thought important enough to be taken along on a trip into the void a hundred years ago. Who would ever think it necessary to take spirits on a major expedition today? One has to somehow admire the Shackleton folks for their dedication to a true human value, while at the same time scratching their heads at why those folks felt it critical to carry along whiskey when they certainly had more critical needs at the time.

Then we have the question of international law. There are treaties in place which make it impossible to remove anything from the wilderness of the seventh continent. They can't bring the stuff home. Yet it isn't as though the whiskey is native to Antarctica. It was brought in from the outside, but cannot be taken out. How schizophrenic have we become that we can't remove what wasn't supposed to be there in the first place?

These are just a few things to ponder as we sip on our two fingers of Jameson's tonight. Neat, just as God intended. At least Irish know what to do with whiskey.