When we were young, we would stare at the world map and all those distant, mystical names: Cape of Good Hope, Tierra del Fuego, Fjord Milford Sound... And we thought that one day, we would follow in the footsteps of great explorers and discover something, name something, put our stamp on the map...
And then, it turned out:
Explorer is not a viable profession
Even if it was, everything has been discovered and named
So our dreams died a quick death. We got real jobs, something with a "paycheck".
Well, as it turns out, we were wrong.
There are still white spots in the world — literally. We're talking about Antarctica.
For example, lying off its coast is Livingston Island. One of its mountains, Canetti Peak, wasn't named until 2005.
That's right: somewhere in the South Shetland Islands there is a mountain named for a Jewish Nobel-winning author. (We gotta applaud the Bulgarians for going with Canetti: sure, he was born in Bulgaria, but moved to Britain as a child, wrote in German, lived in Austria and Switzerland... We guess the pickings were slim for Bulgaria. Anyway...)
The choice is clear. Goodbye, real job. Goodbye, "paycheck". Hello, fur-laced parka. Hello, southbound sea liner. Hello, icy cold winds. Hello, frigid islands. Hello, nameless lands.
Vonnegut Peak has a nice ring to it, no?
