Pleneau & Petermann Islands
What comes to mind when you think of Antarctica? Is it the penguins? ...the seals? ...perhaps whales? ...maybe the great explorers like Shackleton, Amundsen, or Scott? ...possibly the albatross? ...or the forbidding Drake Passage? Chances are, however, that one of the first images that comes to mind is one of ice and its many guises. There are icebergs, glaciers, growlers, tabulars, bits, and brash; not to mention the pack, fast, grease, pancake, and black ice. Antarctica is a place ruled by the ice in all of its many forms. And to journey to the white continent is to pass through a portal from our familiar world of stone, wood and steel and into a dimension shaped almost entirely by ice. Once here, you cannot help but be amazed and awestruck.
We have spent the better part of the last week here on the Antarctic Peninsula seeing ice at every twist and turn. We’ve pushed through it in Zodiacs, broken it with the Endeavour, walked on it below the circle, and gaped at it hanging from cliffs of Lemaire Channel. Still, its splendor and beauty surprise us anew each day. We’ve marveled at the sheer magnitude of a few of the large tabulars, and lost ourselves in the deep blue radiance of the many growlers drifting through Mother Nature’s sculpture gallery. You would think that by now we would become numb to it all, but much like one of the great masterpieces of Rodin or Michelangelo, there’s always another angle or vantage point from which to appreciate their magnificence. Words cannot express the overwhelming serenity and expansive grandeur of such a place, yet we have all tried through emails, letters, postcards, and conversations. And though our time here in the garden is tantalizingly short, long we will ponder its significance yearning for a return trip through the portals of ice to revel in its wonder once again.
What comes to mind when you think of Antarctica? Is it the penguins? ...the seals? ...perhaps whales? ...maybe the great explorers like Shackleton, Amundsen, or Scott? ...possibly the albatross? ...or the forbidding Drake Passage? Chances are, however, that one of the first images that comes to mind is one of ice and its many guises. There are icebergs, glaciers, growlers, tabulars, bits, and brash; not to mention the pack, fast, grease, pancake, and black ice. Antarctica is a place ruled by the ice in all of its many forms. And to journey to the white continent is to pass through a portal from our familiar world of stone, wood and steel and into a dimension shaped almost entirely by ice. Once here, you cannot help but be amazed and awestruck.
We have spent the better part of the last week here on the Antarctic Peninsula seeing ice at every twist and turn. We’ve pushed through it in Zodiacs, broken it with the Endeavour, walked on it below the circle, and gaped at it hanging from cliffs of Lemaire Channel. Still, its splendor and beauty surprise us anew each day. We’ve marveled at the sheer magnitude of a few of the large tabulars, and lost ourselves in the deep blue radiance of the many growlers drifting through Mother Nature’s sculpture gallery. You would think that by now we would become numb to it all, but much like one of the great masterpieces of Rodin or Michelangelo, there’s always another angle or vantage point from which to appreciate their magnificence. Words cannot express the overwhelming serenity and expansive grandeur of such a place, yet we have all tried through emails, letters, postcards, and conversations. And though our time here in the garden is tantalizingly short, long we will ponder its significance yearning for a return trip through the portals of ice to revel in its wonder once again.
