Now the fun really begins . . . .

(Yes, we are still in Antarctica. But if you are willing to read to the end of the blog, there will be a surprise for you. No cheating.)

Our first landing was on one of the Falkland Islands. Bleeker Island. Silly me, I’d thought we might go into the town of Stanley and walk around, maybe meet a Falklander or eat some Falkland food. I’d even read up on the currency to make sure they took U.S. dollars. (the official currency of the Falklands is the euro, in case anyone reading this gets on Jeopardy).

Well, I am here to tell you that if penguins 

and fur seals 

had any restaurants or souvenir stalls open, they were not on our side of Bleeker Island.  So I did not have a chance to use my newfound currency knowledge.  Nor did I have a chance to use any currency for the next week, as we never really saw another human being, unless you count the sheep farmer who kindly ferried a few of the more infirm passengers several miles across one section of the island  

no, this is not the farmer, just an indication of the distance. the blue pants belong to my sister nina. the rest of the body on top of the pants also belongs to my sister nina.

so they could climb up to a rockhopper colony.

  Now I’m not saying this guy didn’t count as a human, but I didn’t talk to him, so he doesn’t figure in my tally of mammals.

So, no souvenirs.  Unless you count the pink and white cowrie shell, the penguin bone, and the skua feathers I somehow found in my pockets upon returning.

Oh, come on, it was the Falklands.  And we didn’t get the lecture about not taking or leaving anything any place we stopped until after we left the Falkland Islands.  I’m sure of that.  Well, pretty sure.

Anyway, we saw Magellan penguins in their underground burrows.  

 We saw our first skuas, 

and I actually got a picture of a fledgling, 

which I was later told was quite rare.  We saw Gentoo penguins

 that we wouldn’t see again until we hit the Antarctic Peninsula, quite a different climate from the Falklands.  We saw a huge colony of blue-eyed cormorants.

And on our afternoon stop we pulled up onto a rocky beach and walked several miles to a series of steep rock outcroppings.  When we climbed to the top of those we were rewarded with a rookery of rock hopper penguins.

rockhoppers have to go down a steep rocky cliff(hence the name) and come back with a belly full  of fish for their chicks. so you can't get in their way, because they don't have the extra energy needed to walk around you.

And standing there in the middle of the rock hoppers on top of a large boulder was the only macaroni penguin we would see the entire trip.

Even though macaroni penguins are some of the most prolific in Antarctica, this guy, totally out of his element among the rock hoppers, was it for our sightings.

Not a bad first day of excursions from Le Boreal.

And for those of you who read (or at least skimmed) down this far, congratulations!

You’re the first to know that I finally heard from my publisher and my 'tween novel Coyote Summer will be out in 7 to 10 days. 

 And (shameless self-promotion) check out my ever changing and improving website www.margosolod.com for updates and the best ways to get Coyote Summer into your library or school district.

Antarctica in depth (bad pun intended . . .)

Those of you with no interest in Antarctica, please bear with me. I will alert you when there is a subject change and you can begin to follow along again.

I open the cover of my Antarctica Journal and flip past a few pages of images scissored from the brochure and glued in by my wife Deborah.  They meant nothing to me when I first opened the Journal at my home in Virginia.  Now I can see myself on that zodiac raft,

I am actually in the other zodiac taking this picture

 imagine myself taking a picture of the ship back-dropped by a glacier.

On the next page she has glued the official clothing checklist.  Those same clothes, carefully checked off the list at home, now lie clean but battered at the bottom of my office closet.  Most of them I will never wear again.  Perhaps someday I’ll let them go, but not yet.

admit it, i'm stunning.

Pages of baggage claims, receipts, ticket stubs; and then on the next page the small cardboard folder containing a plastic card.  It is the key to my room, my on board charge card, my ID, my expedition pass.  But it does more than that.  It opens the door to twenty-one days I will never forget, a time I can relive in memory for the rest of my life.  I run my finger over the red dot which proclaims I am a member of the Endurance group.  The Discovery group has green dots.  We are named after Shackleton’s ships.  We are explorers.

I have taped the ships itinerary and newsletter at the beginning of each day’s entries.  The first thing that catches my eye as I look at the handout for Wednesday, January 8 is the notation in the upper right-hand corner.  Sunrise: 4:43.  Sunset: 21:29.

I flip past the itinerary to the first couple of pages I have written.  Oddly enough, the first entries are all about my inability to get coffee at five in the morning, and the fact that there is no reliable Internet.

Sometimes I amaze myself.  How incredibly privileged I am to be on a journey like this, and these are my first comments.  Soon I will learn how to work the coffee machine behind the bar on deck three, aided by a few of my fellow early morning caffeine seekers.  And I will learn that the Internet, far from being unreliable, is in fact, damn near nonexistent.  As is the ability, promised to me by Verizon when I bought a new phone specifically for this trip, to text. 

I am essentially cut off from any world but this,

except in case of emergency or by lucky chance for a moment or two.  I am immersed in the now, as I was when I traveled alone twenty-five years ago, crossing and re-crossing North America in my truck, no cell phone, no internet.  How quickly we forget.

My first morning’s coffee is interrupted by a sound which will soon become very familiar, but which will never lose its ability to excite me.  The soft, sweet Brazilian accented sound of our expedition leader Susana’s voice: “This is Susana from the bridge.  I have checked out our first landing site 

and it is, I’m afraid, too rough.  However, we have another plan A, and the captain is going to raise anchor and move to another spot on the island.  This will take about a half an hour, and as soon as we drop anchor I will be going ashore with the expedition staff to check out our landing.  Please enjoy your breakfast and I will be in touch with you soon.”

This is the only time in our entire trip we will not be able to make the expected landing.  As Susanna has remarked and will repeat many times during the voyage, there is never a plan B if plan A is not possible.  There’s always another plan A.  She may be right, for I am never disappointed in any of the carefully planned landings that we make during this trip.

(stay tuned. more to follow in the days ahead.)

The rumors are true…

I have (albeit somewhat reluctantly) returned from Antarctica.

And it was absolutely everything that I had hoped for, and much more.

I’ve rediscovered some surprising things about myself, things I had forgotten in these years I’ve not been able to travel like I used to years ago, months alone in the truck, crisscrossing the continent, sleeping in campgrounds, cheap motel rooms, the side of the road.  Belatedly, I remember now how I could forgo any real contact as long as I could speak to a stranger, a waitress, a campground clerk, or turn on the distraction of the weather channel.  This was in those years before cell phones and Internet, when you could truly lose yourself away from friends and family.

It’s been a long time since I traveled that way.  In the interim, advances in technology have made it near impossible to stay out of contact, and I too have changed, unable now to simply jump into a vehicle and take off for months at a time.

We boarded the ship 

at Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego

 and set sail for the Falkland Islands.  But to my surprise, we did not dock at Stanley or any other town.  In fact, we never docked the entire trip, instead dropping anchor in bays, off islands with Penguin rookeries,

fur seal breeding grounds,

elephant seal molting wallows.

And for days at a time, we were at sea, with no land in sight. 

No tv, and a patchy, sporadic internet that let you connect after an hour of failed attempts, only to kick you off moments later.

Just the ship and the water and the sky. 

A surprisingly emotional experience. Although I was traveling with two friends and one hundred and seventy-eight strangers, I was cut off from the world.  What did this mean?  It meant I was out of control.  Completely.  And that was a feeling I had three weeks to understand, to come to grips with, and finally, to embrace.

My trip to Antarctica was an amazing journey both internally and externally.  I saw wildlife I never thought I would see, set foot in places I had only read and dreamed about. 

But Antarctica was more than a continent at the end of the world for me.  It was more than the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.  It was an intimate, daily reminder of how much and how little I have grown and changed.  Antarctica was a teacher, a guide.  This trip was a precarious passage through broken ice flows that threatened to freeze me,

over mountains I had forgotten I needed to conquer.  I was constantly in awe, and I will forever be grateful.

Thank you Antarctica, my long anticipated friend and now constant companion.

Leavings . . .

I am leaving for Antarctica in less than a week.

Last night I learned that an acquaintance of mine, someone I very recently re-met after thirty years, lies dying.  And although I did not know her that well, she was dear to many who are dear to me.

I’m thinking about what this means. 

To regain someone, and then to lose them again, all in the course of a few months.

She is my age.  She was my age.  

Now they wait for her son to make the decision, when to let her go.

And what has this to do with Antarctica?  What has this to do with me?

Everything and nothing.  Nothing and yet everything.

As most of you know, due to complications from Lyme Disease my body is failing me slowly. Like Shackleton’s ship caught in the inexorable crush of ice tightening around its hull,  I can choose to stand outside myself and watch, wait for the inevitable as my world closes in and movement becomes more and more difficult until I too am stationary and waiting.

Or, I can move while I can, walk when I cannot run, attempt what seems impossible.  I can grab every opportunity that comes by and hang on tight for the ride, adapting my grip as necessary.  I can choose action, no matter how painful, over the relative ease of simply staying put and waiting.

L. was my age.  And now that is the oldest she will ever be.  I do not know if she wanted to go to Antarctica.  But I know she did not want to go easily.

Nothing is ever really easy. 

I will see you in Antarctica. 

Click here to Reply or Forward

I know you haven't heard from me lately . . .

But I really do have a good reason. I haven't told many people before now as I was afraid something might happen and my chance would disappear. But so far nothing has.

I am traveling to Antarctica in a month.

This is not the start of a poem, nor is it a metaphor, except perhaps in that Antarctica is itself, in many ways, a metaphor for me.  It is the apogee, the peak, the very top (or in a literal sense bottom) of my bucket list.  It was in my bucket before I knew there was such a thing as a bucket list, and I could take everything else out, leave Antarctica, and be satisfied.

Anyone who has ever seen my bookshelves knows of my long fascination with the poles. I'm not one who has ever been overly concerned with facts and dates, yet I can recite the names of  polar explorers north and south, how far each of them got, whether they went in pairs or in groups, with ponies, dogs or man-pulled sledges.  I know how and where they died, or, if they survived, what their reception was upon their return.  I can close my eyes and see the outlines of their ships.

And now I too will be traveling in their footsteps, if only in the most minor of ways.  I'll be sailing on a ship not much bigger than the Endurance, although far better built and equipped.  I will pass by Elephant Island where the crew was stranded for four months, left behind by Shackelton  in his successful attempt to reach and cross South Georgia island again to find a ship capable of rescuing his remaining men. Four tries later the rescue was successful, yet with all that neither he nor the crew ever  touched any part of the Antarctic coast.

Unlike Shackleton’s endurance attempt; weather permitting, I will set foot on the continent of Antarctica.  I will see Shackelton and Scott's last huts, almost completely preserved by the Antarctic's intense dry cold.  

I will see the remains of sledges, tatters of tents, abandoned supply caches.  I will do all this in the Antarctic summer, dressed in proper survival gear, led by knowledgeable expedition guides.  There will be a warm, dry, well-stocked boat waiting for my return.

I will not be Scott, Shackleton, or Admunson; I will not ski, sled, or walk towards the pole.  I am not an explorer, or even an adventurer.  But I will look upon the same landscapes they looked upon; gaze at that vast white expanse of ice and snow.

 I will see fur seals and Emperor Penguins, walrus and sea lions, and for one brief moment I will touch the same reality.  

And that will be enough.

For once . . .

I listened to reason. Sort of. 

A few posts ago I published my revised bio for grown-ups.  (I once had a girlfriend who informed me that I would never be a grown-up because real grown-ups referred to themselves as adults.  Well, there you have it.)  

Anyway, what I was supposed to be writing was a longer, more complete bio than the one on the back of the book, one that could be handed out by teachers as part of a downloadable package.  (Assuming, of course, that there were teachers who wanted to use the book in their classroom.)

So I did-

Hi.

My name is Margo and I was born in a small town in East Tennessee.  When I was growing up I loved animals and we always had dogs and cats in the house.  I even had a horse named Lady who lived on a farm about a half-mile away and I would walk over there and catch her in the field by rattling a can of dried corn.  Then I would put a halter on her and walk her over to the barn and saddle her so I could ride her.

  

She was so big I had to climb up on the fence rail to put the saddle on her and her back was so wide my legs stuck out almost straight.

When I was thirteen I started to work in my aunt’s pet shop.  I trained a monkey to walk on a halter and wear diapers.  Monkeys don’t care where they poop so you can’t house train them, but they won’t poop in their diapers.  I used to take the monkey to schools where she would sit on my shoulder and I would talk to the kids about animals.  

Once I brought the monkey home but my mother wouldn’t let it in the house.  She said she had to draw the line somewhere.

(this is a lot like the line she drew)

After high school and college I worked at a lot of jobs.  For a while I designed lights in the theater.

That was fun.  I traveled around the country for years.

Then I moved to an island and learned how to cook.  I lived on the island for fifteen years and ran and inn and restaurant with my sister.  That’s where I got the inspiration for Jessie’s island.  I started out with the real island     

but it wasn’t big enough so I had to add cliffs on one end and a lighthouse on the other, and make it wider and put more roads in.  Then of course it wasn’t the same island anymore so I had to come up with a new name.  There isn’t any real Bayberry island but there’s this island that looks a lot like it and that’s where l lived.

The End