Antarctica 02: Every Time You Turn Around

by Shane L. Larson

[Photo: M. B. Larson]

We are homeward bound from Antarctica, back in the travel pipeline, back in the bustle of everyday human life.

As the sights, and sounds, and silence, and color, and light filter around my mind’s eye, I begin to contemplate what to tell people who ask me about the journey I am now concluding.

How was it? What was it like? What did you see? What was your favorite thing? How do you feel?

I suspect there is no adequate way to capture true and authentic answers to any of those questions. Antarctica is a vast, ethereal place, unlike any other on the planet. Pictures and movies will never capture the expanse, the majesty, the grandeur, the mind- and spirit-altering experience of literally every moment you spend there.

Antarctica is unique, and would fail to move only the most brittle and wretched of spirits. I was there, immersed in only one small corner of a BIG place for only five days. In such a short time, I did everything I could to let the experience in and penetrate as deeply as possible. It is a transformative encounter. Every single moment you turn around there isn’t just more, there is new, there is heart-stoppingly different, there is something Antarctica is saying that no-where else on Earth can. 

You try to capture it through a camera lens.

You give up and just stare.

You try to describe it with the best words you have.

You give up, and just shrug, nodding knowingly at the person next to you who also failed to find adequate words.

You try with all your might to describe Antarctica, and its just not… enough. It’s not enough to use something as simple as words, or as inadequate as pictures. It makes you deeply contemplative, especially when you are immersed in it, and those contemplations beg to be expressed, however jumbled they may be when given voice.

But I will try. I have to try. Because Antarctica blew me away.

Every time I turned around.

[Photo: S. Larson]

The first day we were there, everyone would ask, “How are you doing?” And I would say, “I can’t stop smiling!” That was true. But then I’d look out a window, or turn around on deck, or be struck by the silence. I’d encounter Antarctica anew, different than just moments before, and it overwhelms me. It just spills out, bursts out more than just a smile, more than joy and fun and laughter. A deep pleasure of the spirit, a profound awe at the grandeur of this planet, a shift in the center you never knew you had. 

I think the best word to describe how I felt is “ebullient.” It was — it is — just wrong to contain such a swell of joy and not let it out.

Of course, the most frustrating thing about this is I want to be able to say and show something about the voyage that  somehow adequately captures this. I want to capture it and remember everything.

But I can’t photograph everything.

I can’t capture every detail.

I can’t describe it all.

I can’t remember it all.

Because Antarctica simply blows you away.

Every single time you turn around.

So I did what I could to capture, to record, to write what I saw and felt there. For the next few posts I’ll try to share some of that here. To inspire you, to give you a taste of what it was like. But mostly, I think, to remember.

It will be enough. It has to be enough. Because Antarctica deserves for me to try. It gave me everything I asked for. And because should I be so lucky to return, Antarctica will start all over with me again, like a clean slate, teaching me something new.

Every single time I turn around.

[Photo: M. B. Larson]

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This post is the first in a short series to document a journey I made to Antarctica with Lindblad Expeditions and National Geographic in the late days of January 2020. The other posts in this series are:

Antarctica 01: Daydreams

Antarctica 02: Every Time You Turn Around (this post)