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Cold Comfort ON TH ICE: An Intimate Portrait of Life at McMurdo Station, Antarctica. By Gretchen Legler. Milkweed Editions. 195 pp. $15.95
WHEN WRITER GRETCHEN Legler decides it's time to thaw her frozen heart, she heads to the coldest place on the planet. Courtesy of the National Science Foundation Artists and Writers Program, Legler travels from the Far North-the creative writing department at the University of Alaska-to the Far South-McMurdo Station, located at the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf, "nearly at the bottom of the world." Her ostensible goal in visiting McMurdo, whose population ranges from 150 to 1,000-plus, is "to talk to the people who dwelled and worked in Antarctica, to find out about their lives, and to listen to them tell their stories about themselves and this icy place." But like...