When natural historian Sir David Attenborough first set foot in the arctic wilderness, he was silenced by the almost unprecedented scale of it, he says. “I though of the space, I suppose, and loneliness, and insignificance,” he adds, and pauses for a moment to collect his thoughts. “It’s a corny response, but it is what it is.
Its most striking characteristic, the veteran broadcaster says, is its disregard for the fragility of the human beings who set out to explore it.
“You know that you’re there under, not duress, but you know you’re there and it’s of no consequence to that world whether you survive or you don’t,” he says.