At Sea
In our wake, South Georgia, one of the northern-most outposts of the Southern Ocean, almost temperate, certainly exotic and beautiful, with more glaciers, mountain tops, king penguins, fur and elephant seals than any place you can imagine, but in the mind, perhaps it is not too far from home, still a lot of green, enough for reindeer to graze.
Now our bow skims across an unfamiliar sea; we are heading southward. The water is different here, thicker, whiter, no, not like an aging couch potato, no, this twenty million-something year-old is keen and lively. The sky is different too, at times it reaches down and its clouds cover our feet. There are still the birds though, all around us.
This morning, an iceberg the size of a country, right there, through the window, over the rail. It has a name A22A. It is twenty five years old, spent most of its life stranded, aground, surrounded by fast ice in the winter, slapped by imprudent waves in the summer. Then it broke free, just a few years ago. We have seen her before, last year, tabular, all huge cliffs with giant caves and cracks reaching up to a vast, flat summit.
Lots of birds here, on the leeward side, on a smooth, protected sea. There is a current coming from under A22A pushing very tiny creatures up to the surface, attracting the birds. It took hours to cruise past her. Yes, beautiful, yet forbidding, almost unnatural, someplace far from home.
In our wake, South Georgia, one of the northern-most outposts of the Southern Ocean, almost temperate, certainly exotic and beautiful, with more glaciers, mountain tops, king penguins, fur and elephant seals than any place you can imagine, but in the mind, perhaps it is not too far from home, still a lot of green, enough for reindeer to graze.
Now our bow skims across an unfamiliar sea; we are heading southward. The water is different here, thicker, whiter, no, not like an aging couch potato, no, this twenty million-something year-old is keen and lively. The sky is different too, at times it reaches down and its clouds cover our feet. There are still the birds though, all around us.
This morning, an iceberg the size of a country, right there, through the window, over the rail. It has a name A22A. It is twenty five years old, spent most of its life stranded, aground, surrounded by fast ice in the winter, slapped by imprudent waves in the summer. Then it broke free, just a few years ago. We have seen her before, last year, tabular, all huge cliffs with giant caves and cracks reaching up to a vast, flat summit.
Lots of birds here, on the leeward side, on a smooth, protected sea. There is a current coming from under A22A pushing very tiny creatures up to the surface, attracting the birds. It took hours to cruise past her. Yes, beautiful, yet forbidding, almost unnatural, someplace far from home.
