Reflections on a season in Antarctica
At first glance, the Antarctic landscape may seem frozen,
In time,
In space,
A vast desert of endless white.
The ice has a way of holding things.
Capturing fleeting pockets of air,
Preserving what might otherwise have passed in an instant.
Yet,
Nothing is in permanence.
The ice is always shifting,
The vista never quite repeats itself.
Each day, the skies wash with colour anew.
The sun moulds the lakes, in form, in texture.
And the bubbles, though seemingly fixed,
begin to transform in place.
Their edges soften, their bodies shift,
Absorbing something of the ice
that embraces them.
Perhaps our lives here mirror this:
Suspended, but not still;
Held, but not captive.
Moved through the moods of the season,
Shaped by wind and light.
My temperament has, at times, reflected the rolling hills,
And my character built and eroded like sastrugi.
I have been lost in endless white,
Only to find colour in fresh snowfall.
In the isolation, I have found connection.
In the stillness, I have moved with more energy than I knew,
And in the starkness, the warmth of connection.
In the quiet passage of this confinement,
I have been gifted with the opportunity to be still,
Still like ice, to reflect.
We may leave this place much as we found it,
Our footprints reclaimed by the tide,
Yet something will have changed,
In a quiet way, in ways unseen.
In both ice and those
who have called it home.
