Rhodora and I were up at 4:00AM. At this
point in our lives, we’re a couple of old folks who sleep less and rise early. Add
to that, the ship rocked ungainly at times – rough waves - and the sun had been
up since half past 2:00. She told me one of the things she liked about a cruise
was being taken to another place while you slept. “You wake up and you’re
somewhere else.” Physically, mentally, spiritually.
Our ship travelled over 100 nautical miles
last night. It brought us back to Bransfield Strait, which was not too far from
where we began five days ago. Today’s destination is Deception Island. But
before I take you there, let me tell you how we spent the morning.
For the past two days, we’ve been going up
to the panorama room, the glass-enclosed meeting hall at the deck. This was the
best place to be at this time of the day. You helped yourself with hot coffee,
biscuits and pastries (breakfast wasn’t served till around 730AM), then you sat
by a window and savored the view – ice mountains seemingly without end,
glaciers of all shapes and sizes, creatures big and small, dazzling with their
adaptations, humbling with their will to survive. We’re always a small group here
every morning, but a palpable sense of awe filled the room, an audible gasp
that author Peter Mathiessen intuited as “the gratitude and joy one feels in
the presence of anything so immediate and yet transcendent.”
Rhodora and I could only glance at each other. There was no need to say anything. Antarctica, in its sheer immensity and excruciating purity, had been such an epic experience, it often reduced us to deep silence. To reverence. And, Peter Matthiessen again, to “the whisper of mingled joy and loss that arises in the heart with humble acceptance of the unknown and unknowable …
Read about our trip to the Deception Island in my Antarctica Journal 6 (Part 2).
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