0.) I spent two and a half hours writing this up. I hope you read it. LOL? If it's full of typos, I don't care!

1.) This is marked "original version" because this version of this song is off of Iter Facere. They took this track and a few others from it and remixed them for Water Sphere---their 'official' debut album, I guess---but this version of Elephant Island is superior, I think, as is most of Iter Facere compared to Water Sphere.

2.) I had the pleasure of seeing Pilotdrift open for The Polyphonic Spree back in 2004 and they were fantastic. They switch instruments a lot and create massive waves of noise. I commented to someone in the crowd, "It's like Radiohead meets shoegaze," and they disagreed with me, saying something far more pretentious than I could ever have mustered all those years ago. The microphone wasn't really working during Dancing Bear and it almost made the song more interesting, struggling to hear the singer lament a disinterested lover.

3.) This song is about the Imperial Tans-Antarctic Expedition. Here's a brief history lesson if you don't want to read the Wikipedia article and just want to know the story as it applies to the song.

In 1913 Ernest Shackleton, who'd previously sailed to cold places, decided to raise the equivalent of 2.2 million dollars in order to finance himself an expedition to the Antarctic so that he and his 30 or so wiley men could traverse the continent all on their own.

Unfortunately in 1915 their ship, the Endurance became trapped in ice. After a near month of fighting to free the ship from the ice, they gave up and prepared to wait for the ship to eventually break free of the ice while setting up for living off the ice. This was February 23rd, 1915.

On October 24th, after spending 8 months living on the ice and sleeping in the ship, the hull was beginning to be crushed by the ice packs. The crew was able to salvage most of what was necessary during the initial collapse of the hull, but photographer Frank Hurley left behind his camera and all the photo plates he had taken. On the 27th Shackleton declared that they would abandon ship,

Over the next week weeks the wreckage stayed afloat and, among other gear saved from the wreck, Hurley salvaged 150 photographic plates out of 550 that he brought.

After attempts to travel to more stable locations proved impossible due to the nature of the ice floes they were on and the surrounding waters, November 1st became the first official day that they were camping on the ice. On the 21st of 1915, the ship finally sunk below the waters.

A month later, on 23 December, Shackleton decided it would be a good time to try to travel to solid land again, but after seven days of back-breaking continuous work the crew had only traversed 7 miles and dealt with it's first instance of upheaval when a carpenter refused to work. Shackleton had them set up camp, again.

By April 1916, they had killed and eaten the dogs they had brought with them (the first set were killed as a result of their excessive need for seal meat which was cutting into the men's allotment, the second set were killed for the same reason but their meat made a great alternative to seal). They begun a hard journey toward Elephant Island aboard the lifeboats they salvaged from the ship, and by April 15th they landed on a strip of land they christened Point Wild.

Unfortunately Point Wild was on a strip of land that was hardly ever frequented by people. They realized in order to be rescued someone would need to notify civilization, so Shackleton with a small crew took of northward to South Georgia on April 24th, 1916. After 16 days of an 800-mile journey in an open boat on rough seas and in horrible conditions, they landed in South Georgia.

After traversing the land for three days straight without rest they came to a whaling station---the first human contact they'd had with anyone outside of the expedition since December 1914.

On May 22, Shackleton attempted to rescue the rest of the crew back on Elephant Island, but an impenetrable barrier of ice had formed that the ship he brought was unable to break through. On June 10, he tried again with a different ship---upon word from London that a suitable ship for breaking through ice wouldn't be available until October---and failed for the same reasons. On July 12, the same thing happened yet again.

On August 25th, Shackleton convinced the Chilean government to lend him a small steam tugboat, and with favorable conditions on their side they arrived at Elephant Island on August 30th and rescued the crew.

In all this time there was only one loss among the 30-man crew of the Endurance, and that was the toes of stowaway Perce Blackborow's left foot, which had become gangrenous due to frostbite and had to be amputated. The crew had survived for three months on Elephant Island with only seal meat, penguin meat, and the hope that Shackleton would rescue them, to live on.

By the end, Shackleton's crew survived with no losses while trapped in the Antarctic for 22 months, over 640 days. (A crew that was sailing around the other side of Antarctica lying supply depots for Shackleton's on-foot journey across the Antarctic lost three men and was beset by a whole other set of issues despite accomplishing their mission, which was futile and useless due to Shackleton's crew never even setting foot on Antarctica itself.) Much of their survival as to do with Shackleton's own relentless optimism, living by the motto: "Never for me the lowered banner, never the last endeavor."

If you're interested in more info about this, there are a series of photos on the American Museum of Natural History website. If you wanna read a brief article that spins Shackleton's form of optimism into a little "self-help" type guide, I found this great article on optimism thanks to Google.

If you've ever read any good books about Shackleton, please recommend them in the comments! I've always been intrigued by this journey (and especially the image of it painted by this song) and should probably read up on it more often. Shackleton and his men should inspire us... so often we are 'trapped in the pack ice' of our lives and could use a little inspiration to keep us alive on it, etc.