Lesson 1: It’s Real

My entire life, the accomplishments I’ve achieved, and the dawning realization that even with everything my days have ever been filled with or shaped by, I still get to have a brand new experience. 8,634 days I’ve been alive, and I’m lucky enough to do something entirely new.

I’d never considered it. Not seeing land. Not being anywhere close to land. For a landlocked lady who loves her alpine lakes and midwestern rivers, the ocean on its own is completely anomalous.  

Just the ocean. And one of the most infamously rough routes to sail. The Drake Passage, named for the chart-topping R&B artist (just kidding, it’s named after Francis Drake, the first to sail and document the passage, but not the first to “find it”), is grey—the sky, the sea, all grey. Waves and clouds are mirror images, the only variation in color being the pale greyish water launched off the tops of cresting waves. Outside, all is grey. So are some of the passengers’ faces. 

We see a rainbow: 

The morning dawned. The land was gone. We hadn’t sailed off the edge of the world just yet. Stumbling into this new reality, we searched for the beginning of life- breakfast- and sat in stunned, still silence, spellbound to the sea. And then, the grey began to fade. Soon it was gone. In its place, a massive rainbow elongated in the uninterrupted sky. 

I’ve seen hundreds of rainbows in my life. They’re nostalgic reminders of color, life’s vividities, and magic. One of the only sights that will steal a few seconds of attention from nearly everyone, it’s a captivating, beautiful, natural phenomenon. One of the crew tells us they’re rare and a good omen. Someone else wonders if rainbows are very likely or unlikely in an environment that is nearly always rainy and grey. I wasn’t listening. I was staring at the rainbow. I’ve never seen a rainbow like that before. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say I’ll never see one like it again. I still remember the roll of the ship, the drops of my tea spilling over the edge of my cup, the fork sliding to the other side of the table; reactive events that drew no reaction from me. Fixed on the sky, an image was being planted in my mind’s eye. I hope I never forget it. 

Suddenly, there’s a flash:

A flash of black and white. I think. Is it moving? I know, everything was moving, but this seems different? 

Boom! 

There it is again, like the jack-in-the-box or the mole you whack. Mirroring the squeak of the box’s crank, we squeak a cry out too. In a smug, instinctive act born of 6 years of friendship, Erin and I sprint to find our cameras without saying a single word. I trip over the corner of a bed, and her phone spills off a blanket to the floor, sliding, when a wave rocks us over. The dresser has magnets I struggle and fiddle with (spoiler alert: never to be truly figured out during this voyage), and the safe’s door on the top shelf nearly smacks me in the head when the doors do open to reveal my camera. Leaping over the small chair, through the narrow corners, and avoiding the random objects strewn around the room, we’re back quicker than a 100m distance runner. And ready. Not to run, but to wa(ve)it and see it again…

There! Black, white, curved fins, tail? We both mastered animal identification in preschool, but this is literally a different world. I guess the age-old, “It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Superman!” makes sense now. I don’t know what that thing is! 

And then they crest above the waves.

Dolphins. Three of them. 

But over a day’s sail from the Beagle Channel they call home, there’s even something special in just seeing them at all, somewhere in the open ocean. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why ocean life is so captivating. It’s there- and then gone. One moment, there’s nothing but vast, empty ocean- the next, there’s something remarkable, survival in a way so different from our own. I’ll admit I was bewildered. The old sailor stories of mythic creatures in the deep and cryptic warnings about the haunting magic of the ocean feel more real to me than ever before. The curiosity and the shock, the absolute confusion at the world suddenly not being what it was before. My conditioned understanding of humanity’s illusion of superiority started to shatter in those seconds. 

The instant the dolphins slip beneath the waves for good, there’s only silence. Then the silence is broken by the sounds of elation and awe: having pictures and videos to share; rummaging through piles of papers that are, for the moment, invaluable; decrypting the symbols our Antarctic field guide is trying to teach us; shouting strange phrases at the irritating multiplicity of animals with a similar black-and-white pattern. We don’t know sh*t about dolphins. What little I do know comes (almost exclusively) from the movie about the dolphin with a missing tail. We’re laughing at the absurdity of what we saw, cackling over the unspoken reactions we shared when we first saw them. That moment, when the tip of the black nose broke the surface for the first time… just wow.

From absolutely unbelievable to undeniably real:

Later that day, we tracked down Julia, our expedition staff Marine Mammal Expert. With a life story sentiment shared by nearly all our expedition staff, Julia’s passion outweighed her material accomplishments on the continents. The call of the ocean was too strong, and she’s never looked back. (Also, is the call of the ocean contagious, because I’ve been noticing some new ocean-ish wishes?) I digress, but the point is the passion.

Julia was walking through the Deck 5 lounge, which would later become our favorite place on the ship (and NOT just because of the unlimited free 24/7 coffee and tea, and the bar with a daily $7 cocktail deal). We caught her over the back of our (very comfortable) semi-circle couch by shouting, admittedly, louder than we needed to. She came over, and it all spilled out. Like middle schoolers talking about rumors and gossip, and American presidential candidates during televised debates. Jumping around, speaking over each other, passionate and a little confused. 

For me, I think that’s when the reality of the moment sank in. These are real, dynamic, incredible creatures. They are wild animals. Earlier, we hypothesized they were a type of dolphin called Lagenorhynchus Criciger (and if you skipped over that name because you don’t speak Latin, no offense taken; it took me five minutes to spell that correctly), also known as Hourglass Dolphins. We showed her the pictures and talked about various whale species and their distinctive fins. Some part of us had hoped we were really wrong and they weren’t dolphins- but orcas- and in spite of that truth, the confirmation of correct species identification from Julia was a valuable moment. Hourglass dolphins are still really killer whales. Or fish? (I still don’t know a ton about dolphins, I’m sorry!)

{Editor’s Note: Whale, what do you know, Google has since taught me that Dolphins are marine mammals, part of the Oceanic Dolphin family, info that was easily located when I looked for it on porpoise!}

But the validity and rarity of that first moment, when the tip of the black nose broke the surface for the first time, was multiplied when Julia asked one simple question. “What time was this?” For it was this question that revealed the timestamp of our photos was special, because the entire crew and expedition team were in the midst of their daily meeting. Meaning, the people who spotted the most animals, most accurately, weren’t looking. We were. 

No one else on the ship reported seeing a similar sighting that day, throughout the entire trip and return voyage. For two young adventurers, likely the only humans to see these three dolphins, in that moment on that ship heading to Antarctica at age 24, that’s incredibly special. I’ve dedicated a statue to them in the part of my mind that’s consumed by the forgotten continent at the bottom of the world. They were the first thing that made the trip feel real. 

Antarctica is real. A phrase I know most people respond to with images of huddles of penguins in a blizzard, or sharp cliff drops, sunken ships: the promoted stories of the land. These dolphins, though? They’re mine and Erin’s to share. They’re ours. They are the shift that secures us to the substance of what we’re undertaking. What’s possible. 

The next thought I had, a thought that would come to infect my mind, was, 

“What have I gotten myself into?”

Day 1 on the open ocean: The obliteration of my fallacious pre-trip expectations:

I’ve always been afraid of people without passion, because I know I could never live my life without one. Seeing how much passion the people around us (passengers and crew alike) have for even the smallest, fleeting moments of wonder is electrifying. On a ship with fewer than 150 passengers who’d come from all over the world, there’s one thing that we all truly had in common. A shared sense of “this matters.” I’ll tell you right now, you can’t embark on a trip across the ocean to Antarctica without feeling that it matters. That it’s important. And that kind of bridge and commonality is rare, peacemaking and powerful. 

Expectations are a waste of time. Because in Antarctica, at least how I understood it, the place is the thing. Antarctica itself is the goal. The destination, the achievable. The boot on the shore, the snowglare in your eye, the cold wind on your cheeks. It’s the intertwining of your existence with this alien place. To prove it exists. To be a part of its story. Everything else- the fish, birds, whales, good weather, bad weather, seal or penguin- is extra. Lucky, incredible, and unpromised. 

The only guarantee is in the guarantee to try. No promises, no expectations, because they just won’t compare. A promise isn’t special because it’s made, but because it’s applied. No expectation will ever do Antarctica and its journey justice, because you’re setting out for an expedition that’s never happened before and will never happen again. Especially in a place as changing and dramatic as Antarctica.

If we had been promised or expecting dolphins, it wouldn’t mean as much. It’s the magic, staring out the porthole, the pride in being the only people to see such a thing, and the alchemy of the universe setting up everything for that one moment to occur; this is what really makes that moment valuable for me. A hell of a shock when the unexpected happens anyway. 

And then there’s the bold, unflinching, raw sense of real: