10.19.08
Posted in media, stories at 11:37 pm by rachel
Since May, The Boston Globe has been publishing an amazing photo blog. Since I found out about it a few months ago, it’s rapidly become one of my favorite RSS feeds. In their own words:
The Big Picture is intended to highlight high-quality, amazing imagery - with a focus on current events, lesser-known stories and, well, just about anything that comes across the wire that looks really interesting.
Recent topics have ranged from the Special Olympics to Sapphire mines in Madagascar to the first ever Formula One race held at night.
Check it out: The Big Picture
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12.01.07
Posted in stories at 10:05 pm by rachel
To inaugurate this blog, I feel like should write something about myself. But that would be boring. I’d rather tell you a story.
When I was 13, I went on an overnight winter camping trip to Snoqualmie Pass in Washington State. This trip traditionally involved cross-country skiing to the campsite and then spending the night in tents. To my friend Eliana and me, though, this was incredibly stupid.
Why would anyone sleep in a cold tent when you could build a warm, cozy igloo?
Not that either of us had ever built an igloo before, or even seen one built. Or talked to anyone who’d built one, or even seen one in person. But that didn’t deter us: we were two smart kids, and more importantly, we had the internet. In the week leading up to the trip, we read dozens of web sites about igloos. We learned that a single burning candle could raise the temperature inside an igloo by 15 degrees Fahrenheit every hour. We reasoned that two humans would emit much more heat than a candle. Especially two humans that are all sweaty from building an igloo. It’s going to be a sauna in there, we thought. Maybe we should pack t-shirts!
I printed off several sets off igloo-building instructions, and even laminated them. We borrowed an ice saw. We were all set.
On the day of the trip, we set out a few hours ahead of the group to start construction. Pretty soon it became clear that as knowledgeable as we were about igloo-building, thanks to the internet, we were going to have some problems.
We lacked the physical strength necessary to deal with ice. Specifically, it’s really hard to saw through ice. It’s even harder to carry large blocks of ice. Have you ever carried a big bag of ice to a party? Imagine something like that, but way bigger and way harder to get a grip on. Also, imagine you’re a 13 year old computer geek whose worst subject has always been P.E.
In short, we were totally screwed.
The rest of the group arrived around 5pm and started setting up their (wimpy, freezing-cold… my god, did they really set that up in 15 minutes?) tents. After a while, we sucked it up and asked for help. Pretty soon the igloo was nearly complete. I stood inside and supported the last few blocks of ice from below while Eliana and a few of the adults present tried to wedge them together so that they would support each other (I’d spent quite some time doing geometry in preparation for this moment). It worked! The keystone was in, and we had a roof! The smaller kids started packing snow into the cracks between blocks.
“Um, guys? I’m kinda stuck. Can we build the door now?” I yelled. Eliana and I started digging a tunnel - first down, then towards each other (to block the wind, you see. The classic cartoon igloo with the above ground tunnel is really a pretty poor design - or so said the geocities page I’d found using AltaVista.) Success! I saw light on the other side. Then my shovel collided with a large tree root.
Eliana, ever resourceful, grabbed our saw and reached down into the tunnel with it, hacking blindly at the inconvenient root. After a while, though, she stuck her head down the tunnel and yelled “I don’t think this is working.”
I concurred. We started again on the other side of the igloo, where Eliana swore there were zero nearby trees. This time, the tunnel worked! I crawled out and took a look at the beautiful (and by now, pitch black) sky.
The others had already eaten and many had gone to bed. I was really looking forward to my instant ramen, and was about to go in search of a stove when an adult came over to check out our igloo… and stood directly on top of our tunnel, which promptly collapsed. We starred at the igloo in silence. The adult, guilt stricken and profusely apologetic, offered us space in his tent. We declined. We’d spent more than 7 hours on this igloo, this superior shelter, our internet-powered masterwork - and we were damn well going to sleep in it.
The floor was slanted. There was a hefty draft coming in through the hole we’d punched in the wall (dig a third tunnel? No thanks!) The diameter of the igloo ended up being slightly less than 5 feet - insufficient. Also, the igloo was raining icy water all over us.
We were so cold we were afraid to go to sleep. But we’d done it. And when it was over, we just had one entity to curse and thank for our “character-building” winter wilderness experience: that endless dumping-ground of knowledge, the internet.
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