Paradise, Recovered

To you, standing at the edge of the ice,

Welcome to the Storm Post Office. This letter is posted from Antarctica, March 1991, as the short summer winds down and the sun sinks a little lower along the ridge each day. The envelope is tough ice-white paper, its ocean-blue slab-serif title swept into an italic tail as if by a gale. A navy contour map traces the coast; ochre supply labels sit between silver engravings of ice; and in one corner a camp window glows copper.

A poet who lost one paradise in a very long poem wrote a shorter one to win it back, and its opening sentence ends like this: “…and Eden raised in the waste Wilderness.” — John Milton, Paradise Regained (1671)

An Eden does not have to be large. A lamp, a stove and a kettle just coming to the boil will do. Come in and warm your hands; write slowly, and the snow will keep it for you.

May your kettle stay warm

Storm Post Office

March 1991 · Antarctica