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| Satellite photo of Antarctica |
Inhaling pure oxygen after a long hard climb up a steep and icy slope in
Antarctica, I look down at our ship as a sailboat drifts by and kayaks glide in
the glacial waters below.
Imagining myself alone on this frozen planet, I realize how American explorer Admiral Richard Byrd felt when he wrote: “This is the way the world will look to the last man when it dies.”
Picturing the
scene as my last view of a world about to be lost, I am struck by the silence.
In this world of ice and snow, all is deceptively still, even as the vast ice
sheet that is the Antarctic Peninsula I stand on keeps on moving.
