The Southwest Antarctic Peninsula
The shape of silence is a glassy surfaced sea where a gallery of sculpted ice forms drift, their motion imperceptible. Spires reach skyward. Arches frame the sky. Textured façades coax the mind to feel the cold and silky smoothness where ice becomes water and water turns to ice. We stand above or move between them awestruck by the creativity of nature’s art, its magnificence magnified by mirrored reflections. The world today was a limitless gallery from Pléneau Island to Paradise Bay.
The sound of silence is music for our souls. Charcoal zenoliths pocked the grooved granodioritic rocks upon which we rested to absorb the symphonic sounds. Red pointed beaks reached skyward while white throats pumped out a trumpeting greeting sent from one gentoo colony to the next; their tail feathers brushed a swishing percussive beat to accompany their waddling gait. Tiny chicks peeped quietly with bell-like quality, a sound barely perceptible but arresting to the ear. Far below where Weddell seals lazed on a remnant raft of annual ice, the pattering of multiple feet splashed against the water. Wings whistled as flocks of blue-eyed shags lifted in unison and circled, their numbers replicated in the obsidian deep. Gunshot cracks from glacial faces echoed from mountainsides. Our tread and those of penguin feet squished in the softening snow revealing red and green algae hidden within.
Our trail now is pointed north to the Drake Passage where time will be found to contemplate. Our hearts are filled with the joy of wild and little known realms filled with beauty and life.
The shape of silence is a glassy surfaced sea where a gallery of sculpted ice forms drift, their motion imperceptible. Spires reach skyward. Arches frame the sky. Textured façades coax the mind to feel the cold and silky smoothness where ice becomes water and water turns to ice. We stand above or move between them awestruck by the creativity of nature’s art, its magnificence magnified by mirrored reflections. The world today was a limitless gallery from Pléneau Island to Paradise Bay.
The sound of silence is music for our souls. Charcoal zenoliths pocked the grooved granodioritic rocks upon which we rested to absorb the symphonic sounds. Red pointed beaks reached skyward while white throats pumped out a trumpeting greeting sent from one gentoo colony to the next; their tail feathers brushed a swishing percussive beat to accompany their waddling gait. Tiny chicks peeped quietly with bell-like quality, a sound barely perceptible but arresting to the ear. Far below where Weddell seals lazed on a remnant raft of annual ice, the pattering of multiple feet splashed against the water. Wings whistled as flocks of blue-eyed shags lifted in unison and circled, their numbers replicated in the obsidian deep. Gunshot cracks from glacial faces echoed from mountainsides. Our tread and those of penguin feet squished in the softening snow revealing red and green algae hidden within.
Our trail now is pointed north to the Drake Passage where time will be found to contemplate. Our hearts are filled with the joy of wild and little known realms filled with beauty and life.
