And at what feels like long last, we have reached the skirts of Antarctica.
There is no describing Antarctica, not really; it’s a place that defies finding words even for the best of us. Everything here is clearer, crisper – here we are the interlopers, we are the visitors, we are the ones that do not belong. The air is cold enough that it seems to almost burn your lungs at the same time that it completely clears out your head and leaves you incapable of…thinking anything except how vast the world around you really is.
And the…silence. You can hear the thrum of the engines of course, and there will always be a certain amount of noise whenever there are people gathered in any kind of group. But over all, the world feels…tranquil. The ship moves very slowly through this space, so you can actually hear the lap of the waves against the bottom of the ice.
The last time I was here I had a pocket camera and I was totally ill prepared. I didn’t see a single animal. This time, I have an SLR with a (granted relatively short) telephoto lense. This time, I’m as ready as I can be.
But the truth is, you don’t know where to point your lense in the first place. Do you look at the towering glaciers? The mountains? The fields of pink – yes pink – snow? Or at the leopard seal that’s just waking up sleepy eyed from its nap on an iceberg sliding past the edge of the ship.
Where do you even start?
There is ice here that has been untouched by anyone for thousands of years. The ghosts of abandoned research station still dot the coastlines, frozen in time as though their residents are somehow going to return for their gear all these years later.
The white lady holds many many secrets in her cold heart, and I doubt we will ever know all of them.
A ship like ours does not reach her heart, we don’t even get as far as the Antarctic Circle, but we should count ourselves blessed to even be able to glide along her edges.