Seven

My travel expenses to Antarctica were covered by TravelWild, a Seattle area travel operator specializing in adventure cruises. 

I slumped back into my chair, overwhelmed. My seat at the window faced the stern, we were sliding past giant blue glaciers, their cracked faces a wall above the blue black mirror of the Lemaire Channel. I felt oddly sad, all of a sudden, like I might cry, though sad isn’t the right word at all. “What’s the matter?” asked my breakfast companion — she must have seen the shift of emotion on my face, in my body.

“This is the last continent,” I said. “I’ve been to all seven now.

“Charcot was an idiot,” said the doctor.  We walked the icy slopes of Petermann Island. French explorer Charcot anchored on the wrong side of the island — the prevailing winds blew ice into the cove, forcing him to winter over. The other side of the island, where the Plancius — “my” ship —  was anchored while we were ashore, was free and clear. I looked south at Charcot’s cove. A block of blue ice, vaguely reminiscent of a cowboy hat and the size of a modest house was shifting, gradually, towards the shore. The weather was bad that day, it was raining, hard. The island was a worn down slide of algae covered snow and muddy penguin guano, every now and then my boots would punch through the surface into a puddle of icy water. In two hours, I would be back on the ship. I would be wearing slippers and eating butternut squash soup, I would be uploading photos from my camera to my laptop. Charcot would probably have been listening to the ice crunch up against his ship (a sound I know now) and worrying. Charcot survived the winter — he died later in a shipwreck off the coast of Iceland, something I have no plans to do.

Lately, I consider my travels in historical context. It’s not that I am a great explorer, it’s that I like to put the significance of my travels in the context of those brave humans, those madmen — and in some cases women — who went off the map so they could find out what was there. I like to be taken down a notch or twelve when I think I’m doing something special and I like to keep in mind the absolute privilege I have in being able to — can you believe this — take a ship to Antarctica to see penguins and seals and the wild raw places where nature makes lunch out of all of us, should she be so inclined. Iced in with his crew, Charcot probably had hard tack and seal meat while on the other side of the island, I ate steamed rock cod with asparagus, in a delicate mustard sauce followed by a baked fruit tart and coffee with milk and sugar.

I live in modern times, for that I am grateful. Anyone who has the financial means can go to Antarctica, you need not be all that sturdy, even — many travelers to Antarctica are retirees, gripping the handrails as they wander about the halls of the ship, moving carefully up and down the gangplanks. Not all travelers to Antarctica are wealthy, either, — for example, an Australian couple I met told me how they’d saved for years in order to do this adventure, a lifetime ambition. While wealth and agility are certainly advantageous to seeing the world, I have only a relative amount of both — I’m not a grand physical specimen, and as a freelance writer, my finances are, well, let’s just say they show the effects of choosing travel over security.

If, instead of being born to modern times when a bookish, slightly odd female can step foot on all seven continents without raising an eyebrow, I’d been born in, say, the age of exploration, my world would collapse upon me. To complete my travels, I’d require a past life as the child of missionaries or diplomats. Or a father involved in obscure botanical research for some institute, probably British, and later, back in London or Cambridge, there would be presentations in which I was not involved in any way. I am much luckier to be born curious and to a somewhat open globe, a time when the infrastructure exists in such a way that I can stand looking at Charcot’s badly chosen anchorage and a week or so later, sit on my couch in Seattle writing about it.

It was this sense of historical, geographical whiplash that had me gazing into the middle distance. In the collected lives of travelers, my existence, my adventures, are insignificant. I walked a mountain pass in the Himalayas. I rode a bicycle to see the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. I drove a car to Ayers Rock. I took a tour bus to see the temples of Angkor. I boarded a cruise ship to stand on the frozen ground of the seventh continent, Antarctica. I have accomplished so little — probably you know many people who have done exactly what I’ve done. But now, I hold this unique honor of having visited all seven continents. What times we live in that someone like me, with weak upper body strength and perpetually cold hands, can stand on all seven continents!

I travel in the footsteps of all the great explorers. Sitting on the ship, while my coffee got cold, I again imagined the long blue lines of the planet between where I sat and my home back in Seattle. I wrapped the lines the horizontal way, too, around the belt of the planet to Honolulu, Alice Springs, Saigon, Delhi. There are many places in the world I have not been — I would like to see the churches of Ethiopia, I would like to see elephants in the wild. But as I looked out the window at this last place, I imagined the great blue globe stretching away from our tiny ship floating at the bottom of the planet in the icy still water. I could picture the whole great planet in my mind, for just a moment, I thought I could sense the weight of us all, floating in space.

I pushed my toast away, I wasn’t hungry anymore. “I’ve been to all seven continents,” I said. And I looked out the window and tried not to cry.

 


I’m delighted — and honored —  to add a little note here — I won a 2013 Solas Best Travel Writing Award for a very slightly revised version [PDF here] of this story.

26 thoughts on “Seven”

  1. I’m crying for you!

    I have lived your trip, albeit vicariously, along with you — with excitement and enthusiasm over each photo and penguin update.

    Let’s coordinate schedules and get together soon!

    Reply
  2. What a wonderful piece! Got my head swimming, but would definitely suggest you read Maria Graham’s 19th century travel diaries (Gooogle, Wiki & Amazon her). She was the daughter and wife of British ship captains & traveled widely. Her husband died during a trip around the horn in late 1821, so she disembarked in Valparaiso and spent a year here in Chile. She was curious, inquisitive, sensitive, and incredibly ahead of her time in terms of documenting absolutely everything. A fore-mother who, in her own way, helped open the doors for those who followed, like you, to every continent on Earth.
    Congrats on this not-so-easy feat!

    Reply
  3. @Mary Jo… it’s not just you. I’m tearing up as well.

    Amazingly lucky we are to live in a time when we can share thoughts and experiences and beautiful prose so instantly.

    Thank you, Pam.

    Reply
  4. First of all, congratulations on that seventh continent. When we finally visited the Sistine Chapel, after so many years reading about it, thinking about it, and wondering whether its beauty could truly match that of my dreams, there was a glorious sadness in reaching it. You’ve captured that same glorious sadness in achieving a unique position amongst people in this world: a traveler to all seven continents. Perhaps we are not the brave adventurers of Shackleton or others but, at the same time, you are more adventurous than the kids who in another 1000 years, may zip from one continent to the other with the push of a button (or perhaps between planets).

    Reply
    • Oh, I can’t imagine what their travels will be like. They will laugh at our airport antics as they zip out to space and back…

      Thanks for this.

      Reply
  5. “Most vagabonds I know don’t ever want to find the culprit
    That remains the object of their long relentless quest
    The obsession’s in the chasing and not the apprehending,
    The pursuit you see and never the arrest.”

    “A Foreign Affair,” Tom Waits

    I felt vaguely the same after seeing Nikko in Japan, a place I’d wanted to see since I was 8 and finally visited at 40.

    Thank you for this – it’s lovely.

    Reply
  6. Milestones are always hard. I feel the same lump in my throat every time I take a trip and discover a new city, or country or something new about myself.

    Good post, as always.

    Reply
  7. In a sea of crappy narratives I can always count on you to bring beautiful, meaningful writing into the fray, for which I am very glad.

    I have shared your thoughts on travel through a historical lens. It helps to make things that have now become common place and easy seem more meaty, it helps to piece together a thread of narrative that begins before my puny life and so gives validation and credence to it.

    Reply
  8. Magical, Pam.

    And adventure isn’t about extraordinary feats of endurance and heroism against the odds, and frostbite and sunstroke and ticking off countries, yadda yadda.

    It’s about doing anything you find wholly new and challenging, doing it until it’s done, and allowing yourself to really truly *feel* it every step of the way.

    Job done, Pam.

    At least seven times.

    Reply
  9. I just stumbled upon your blog and am truly blown away by this post. Your writing is so eloquent and humbling. Thank you for sharing your experience and congratulations on reaching your Seven. I have a long way to catch up. 🙂

    — Michelle

    Reply
  10. Beautiful, Pam. Love the bittersweet way in which you’ve presented your not-insignificant accomplishment, and very much appreciate the down to earth way in which you’ve acknowledged how fortunate we are.

    Reply
  11. I found this blog because it was designated one of the eleven best travel blogs of the year on Travelmamas.com. I’m so glad I could experience this trip vicariously through your story. Thank you.

    Reply
  12. I’m so happy for you! It’s really encouraging to see good writing rewarded. The thing I love most about your travel writing is that it’s about the experience and the feelings rather than the place itself. And it is always honest. Super stoked to read this post!

    Reply

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