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Lessons From the Land of Ice
The first question is usually “why?” Well, here’s why.
I’ll admit it. It’s crazy.
Two college COVID campus survivors saddled with student debt and 2025’s failing job market… and they choose to spend all their money on a trip to… Antarctica?
Look, I understand it sounds insane. It probably was. But we are people striving for life experiences. For adventure. I’ve spent enough time on the internet and in classrooms, watching and learning from others, lived college life, made thousands of memories, and am immensely proud of my accomplishments.
But y’all, it was so hard. It was so much work. We wanted to do something funner than that. To celebrate our freedom, if you will.
My passport partner was Erin, a KC-based nurse. We share a mutual love of spending the money on experiences, not things. Our conversation about the trip began with the mutual discovery of the scale and… realness of the Antarctica travel industry.
The curiosity for the forgotten continent at the bottom of the world won out, and suddenly I was going to explore it. We were just drawn to it. The pulls are magnetic (ha ha get it, poles are magnetic!) and the stories are legendary.
Forget the small splurges of life; this is something big. It is something to be proud of and an incredibly rare and privileged experience. We spent over two years saving, pennies upon pennies in piggy banks, pinching the belt even tighter through layoffs and heartbreaks, unexpectedly expensive bills, and the exorbitant post-COVID student interest rates. But we made it happen.
That was the first thing I learned.
Journal Entries
Lesson 1: It’s Real
“I’ve never woken up and not seen land before,”
8,634 days I’ve been alive, and I’m lucky enough to get 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 us.
Lesson 2: You are small, the world is bigger
I know it was cold
– it’s Antarctica-
But I don’t remember noticing it.The water is calm and dark. Icebergs dot the sea like the stars dot the night sky. There’s a strange peace and sense of comfort from the sea, just something, being, and being what it’s meant to be.
So, this is Antarctica.
Photography Portfolio
If you see nothing else, let it be these few photos
Not to brag, but I won FIRST PLACE popular vote on our ship for the glacier picture in the landscape category. My prize? A lens cloth!!
The Western Peninsula Landscape
The Western Peninsula’s Inhabitants
(and temporarily… us)
