It’s certainly been said before in these pages, but it bears repeating: one of the great pearls of wisdom of the 20th Century came from that wise philosopher, Yogi Berra, who said “You can see a lot, just by looking.” As we have cruised around the Antarctic Peninsula over the past seven days, we have kept all our senses open, and we have seen and tasted, heard and smelled and felt a great deal. The otherworldly glow of blue ice. The sharp tang of penguin guano. The deep soft sigh of whale breath. The bite of the Antarctic wind. The warmth and spice of glög and much, much more.
To me, the most remarkable thing about all of these moments is that they are each unique and irreplaceable intersections of our lives with the life of the white continent. It’s kind of a “if a tree falls in the forest…” thing. Of course, the penguins and whales and ice and wind have all been here every day of our lives and for countless millennia before. But each time we watched and listened and drank in with our senses this week, we made a unique, never to be repeated connection to the Antarctic world. The instant when we gasped as the 40-ton humpback flung itself out of the sea, the hour we spent watching the sunset glow rise and fade over the icebound peaks of the peninsula, the time we turned just at the right moment to see the hilarious antics of a fuzzy herd of penguin chicks tumbling over each other in pursuit of a lone adult. All of these are ours now, something we can hold in our hearts as long as we live. Certainly experiencing these moments has changed us, enriched us; perhaps, just perhaps, the moments themselves were changed by our experience of them.
Is it important, intrinsically, that we have known these moments in the Antarctic? I think so. There is the simple value of knowing facts, learning new things ourselves, and possibly, increasing the body of scientific knowledge, as when I observed a sea spider feeding on a limpet, a previously unreported prey item for these strange and wonderful animals. But there is another value as well, very different and much more difficult to apprehend clearly. Twice during this trip I was able to film and share with our guests the beautiful sight of feather stars swimming. This isn’t common, I have only seen it on two or three other occasions in 118 dives in Antarctic waters, but the behavior is well documented. What was important in these encounters was not learning or cataloging or recording, but simply being there and being aware, sensing something precious. This is the value of pure experience, of sharing moments of our lives with the ancient, endless life of our world.
