At Sea
In the mid-1920s a lone man lived on Cape Cod, a very different place from the upscale tourist Mecca of today. His name was Henry Beston, and during his time there he penned “The Outermost House,” a masterpiece of natural history writing. In brilliant and evocative prose he writes about watching on winter nights as fishing schooners, last vestiges of the age of sail, move slowly beyond the bar, or come to grief upon it. He recounts tales of storms, the nightly patrols of taciturn coast guardsmen and other hermit-like dwellers on a lonely shore, and of his bearing witness to the comings and goings of constellations and tides during long nights and lazy days of solitude and reflection. And he ponders the dark imperatives that lie behind the migrations of birds and fish, the mysterious “peoples of the sea.”
Through Beston’s pages we share his experiences, and imagine them as they flowed from his pen in the yellow lamplight of the house above the sea. In his most luminous and timeless passage, one recounted and quoted repeatedly since its first publication in 1928, he wrote of the animals with which he shared time and space, of the creatures he considered with the greatest sense of wonder:
“We need another and a wiser, and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Far removed from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and thereby sees a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man alone. In a world far older than our own they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or shall never attain, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren. They are not underlings. They are other nations caught with us in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the Earth.”
Crossing the great empty expanse of the South Atlantic Ocean on our second full day out from South Georgia, reflection, on the first two chapters of the story we were collectively writing, came easily. Such a state of mind was challenged, and perhaps even upset, by the reality of gale force winds hammering our vessel. The waters around Antarctica are the only place on Earth where winds flow freely, unimpeded by any stretch of land. Low pressure cells revolve with unbridled ease and coalescing strength around the great white continent, marshalling power from the ocean. These cells, spinning with tightening speed near their cores, lose some pop on their peripheries. They still, however, generate enough energy over enough degrees of latitude along their long spinning arms to give the roaring forties, the furious fifties, and the screaming sixties their imposing titles.
We had crossed the Antarctic Convergence the previous day, and in so doing had left many breeds of birds behind. New ones were sure to arrive on the scene, but perhaps even they, heeding internal instincts of self preservation, steered well clear of the system in which we now found ourselves center stage. The cell, following a clockwise pattern of rotation, and considering our heading, was driving winds (steady between 70 and 80 knots with gusts over 100 knots) and angry swells against our port quarter. Throughout the day they lashed our vessel with a consistent fury. That said, the National Geographic Explorer, was fairing quite well in the belly of the beast. She rolled some and pitched a bit, but generally slid over the mounting seas with a certain grace of motion. A lesser vessel could have been spun and tossed like a cork in a Jacuzzi.
The restaurant and lounge were effectively well populated for most of the activities and meals. Cautionary announcements were periodically broadcast over the public address system warning against moving about on the outside decks, as they were slick with spray, and our vessel heeled to starboard near a constant 10 degrees. Couple that with an unpredictably mobile platform and you have a great recipe for unsure footing.
The Aspen Institute’s meetings and activity sessions were well underway, movies were shown, and presentations given. Many of us spent time in the lounge sharing pictures and ideas, and reflecting on what had come before.
We had left a wild, remote world hardly given more than a few passing thoughts, if any at all, by humanity at large. For most, Antarctica is just another place on the map, a cold region known to exist but without detail or sense of deepened understanding. But we had shared the glory; we were now part of a fraternity, if you will, bonded by experience and a common fondness for what this special area’s uniquely-adapted wildlife calls seasonal breeding habitat and communal feeding grounds. We had spent as much time with the animals of this distant region as we had with each other, if not more, and perhaps come to view them as other nations caught with us in the net of life and time – fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the Earth.
Perhaps, we now had intuited Henry Beston’s notion of a more mystical concept of the creatures that inhabit this alien realm. For down here this is their world, a harsh and unforgiving world, and we are but passing through. Admiration, at the least, was easy to bestow.
In the mid-1920s a lone man lived on Cape Cod, a very different place from the upscale tourist Mecca of today. His name was Henry Beston, and during his time there he penned “The Outermost House,” a masterpiece of natural history writing. In brilliant and evocative prose he writes about watching on winter nights as fishing schooners, last vestiges of the age of sail, move slowly beyond the bar, or come to grief upon it. He recounts tales of storms, the nightly patrols of taciturn coast guardsmen and other hermit-like dwellers on a lonely shore, and of his bearing witness to the comings and goings of constellations and tides during long nights and lazy days of solitude and reflection. And he ponders the dark imperatives that lie behind the migrations of birds and fish, the mysterious “peoples of the sea.”
Through Beston’s pages we share his experiences, and imagine them as they flowed from his pen in the yellow lamplight of the house above the sea. In his most luminous and timeless passage, one recounted and quoted repeatedly since its first publication in 1928, he wrote of the animals with which he shared time and space, of the creatures he considered with the greatest sense of wonder:
“We need another and a wiser, and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Far removed from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and thereby sees a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man alone. In a world far older than our own they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or shall never attain, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren. They are not underlings. They are other nations caught with us in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the Earth.”
Crossing the great empty expanse of the South Atlantic Ocean on our second full day out from South Georgia, reflection, on the first two chapters of the story we were collectively writing, came easily. Such a state of mind was challenged, and perhaps even upset, by the reality of gale force winds hammering our vessel. The waters around Antarctica are the only place on Earth where winds flow freely, unimpeded by any stretch of land. Low pressure cells revolve with unbridled ease and coalescing strength around the great white continent, marshalling power from the ocean. These cells, spinning with tightening speed near their cores, lose some pop on their peripheries. They still, however, generate enough energy over enough degrees of latitude along their long spinning arms to give the roaring forties, the furious fifties, and the screaming sixties their imposing titles.
We had crossed the Antarctic Convergence the previous day, and in so doing had left many breeds of birds behind. New ones were sure to arrive on the scene, but perhaps even they, heeding internal instincts of self preservation, steered well clear of the system in which we now found ourselves center stage. The cell, following a clockwise pattern of rotation, and considering our heading, was driving winds (steady between 70 and 80 knots with gusts over 100 knots) and angry swells against our port quarter. Throughout the day they lashed our vessel with a consistent fury. That said, the National Geographic Explorer, was fairing quite well in the belly of the beast. She rolled some and pitched a bit, but generally slid over the mounting seas with a certain grace of motion. A lesser vessel could have been spun and tossed like a cork in a Jacuzzi.
The restaurant and lounge were effectively well populated for most of the activities and meals. Cautionary announcements were periodically broadcast over the public address system warning against moving about on the outside decks, as they were slick with spray, and our vessel heeled to starboard near a constant 10 degrees. Couple that with an unpredictably mobile platform and you have a great recipe for unsure footing.
The Aspen Institute’s meetings and activity sessions were well underway, movies were shown, and presentations given. Many of us spent time in the lounge sharing pictures and ideas, and reflecting on what had come before.
We had left a wild, remote world hardly given more than a few passing thoughts, if any at all, by humanity at large. For most, Antarctica is just another place on the map, a cold region known to exist but without detail or sense of deepened understanding. But we had shared the glory; we were now part of a fraternity, if you will, bonded by experience and a common fondness for what this special area’s uniquely-adapted wildlife calls seasonal breeding habitat and communal feeding grounds. We had spent as much time with the animals of this distant region as we had with each other, if not more, and perhaps come to view them as other nations caught with us in the net of life and time – fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the Earth.
Perhaps, we now had intuited Henry Beston’s notion of a more mystical concept of the creatures that inhabit this alien realm. For down here this is their world, a harsh and unforgiving world, and we are but passing through. Admiration, at the least, was easy to bestow.
