Deception Island & Trinity Island, South Shetlands
We learn in fragments. Pieces of the puzzle are added bit by bit until the whole is understood. Sometimes we must search for the parts ourselves. Sometimes whole sections are doled out by a benevolent soul.
Antarctica is a fine teacher. She reveals herself to us in measured doses. Curtains of fog hang on the seas rising only when we approach land. If fog is not the drape then big wet snowflakes are.
Deception Island, a donut on the chart, popped out from behind the sheers at breakfast time. Neptune was aided by Aeolus in guarding the entrance gate. Winds churned the waters into a frenzy and slashed at our side as we navigated the narrow channel into Port Foster, the center of the cauldron. Like a pressure cooker out of control the ancient shield volcano blew its top thousands of years ago. Sea flowed into the resultant bowl where many a sailor, sealer and whaler have hidden from the storm. There was no shelter today. White caps littered the surface of the sea and kept us far from shore.
Trinity Island was undetectable, completely, until we had traversed its entire length. But a Zodiac was the port key to visibility. Mikkelsen Harbor, ringed by groaning, growling glaciers, embraces a tiny islet that bears no name. Upon its rounded rocky knolls, ground down by rivers of ice not long ago, gentoo penguins gently called to rotund chicks meandering from their nests. Fur seals snarled half-heartedly and then fell back to sleep or took a wild toboggan ride down a snowy slope. A Weddell seal snored on a frosty bed and skuas cruised from hillock to hillock distressing one and all. Jumbled on the shore remnants of the past told a story all their own. Whale bones clustered together, the leavings of man. Cobbles clinked at the water's edge as the waves came and went. Fragment by fragment, the island will be carried to the sea.
The shutters closed again. Whiteness surrounds us until this land decides to share another morsel, another glimpse of the essence of itself.
We learn in fragments. Pieces of the puzzle are added bit by bit until the whole is understood. Sometimes we must search for the parts ourselves. Sometimes whole sections are doled out by a benevolent soul.
Antarctica is a fine teacher. She reveals herself to us in measured doses. Curtains of fog hang on the seas rising only when we approach land. If fog is not the drape then big wet snowflakes are.
Deception Island, a donut on the chart, popped out from behind the sheers at breakfast time. Neptune was aided by Aeolus in guarding the entrance gate. Winds churned the waters into a frenzy and slashed at our side as we navigated the narrow channel into Port Foster, the center of the cauldron. Like a pressure cooker out of control the ancient shield volcano blew its top thousands of years ago. Sea flowed into the resultant bowl where many a sailor, sealer and whaler have hidden from the storm. There was no shelter today. White caps littered the surface of the sea and kept us far from shore.
Trinity Island was undetectable, completely, until we had traversed its entire length. But a Zodiac was the port key to visibility. Mikkelsen Harbor, ringed by groaning, growling glaciers, embraces a tiny islet that bears no name. Upon its rounded rocky knolls, ground down by rivers of ice not long ago, gentoo penguins gently called to rotund chicks meandering from their nests. Fur seals snarled half-heartedly and then fell back to sleep or took a wild toboggan ride down a snowy slope. A Weddell seal snored on a frosty bed and skuas cruised from hillock to hillock distressing one and all. Jumbled on the shore remnants of the past told a story all their own. Whale bones clustered together, the leavings of man. Cobbles clinked at the water's edge as the waves came and went. Fragment by fragment, the island will be carried to the sea.
The shutters closed again. Whiteness surrounds us until this land decides to share another morsel, another glimpse of the essence of itself.
