Antarctica

It's been a while since I've returned from Antarctica and I still can't fathom having been there. It's like going to another planet. I've never been to another planet, but I imagine this is the closest I'll ever get to one. Ironically, being in Antarctica is probably the closest I'll ever feel to Earth. The experience has fostered images of absolutes. Vast landscape, infinitesimal human. Our dire threat to nature, and the delicate polar ecology. Navigating the treacherous Drake Passage, our small boat at the mercy of fifty foot waves. Life, death. The list goes on. It's humbling. It's a place where the miniscule and the monumental are mutually epic. People ask me, "Why go to Antarctica?". There are many reasons. Some of which I have yet to discover. I went to Antarctica because soon it will be a very different place. In the past few years, ice shelves as massive as countries have broken off the continent and are melting into the ocean. Death and Beauty. Antarctica is dying. Such an unlikely and complex place. I had to go, absorb, and tell a story.