In “On the Border,” which appears in the Fall 2009 issue of
The Georgia Review, BL writes about his preference for exploring the world’s physical edges rather than its cultural centers. The setting for the piece is Antarctica’s Weddell Sea during a few days in the austral winter of 1992. BL was aboard the
Nathaniel B. Palmer at the time, an ice-breaking research vessel and the first ship to enter the Weddell Sea in winter since Sir Ernest Shackleton’s
Endurance was crushed there in 1915. (BL wrote an essay about the entire voyage, called “Offshore,” for the Winter 1994 issue of
Orion magazine.) The essay also includes a brief description of a visit BL made to Banda Aceh in northern Sumatra in the wake of the 2005 Boxing Day tsunami.
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