The scale of all things
“Is there a word to describe when the landscape makes you feel incredibly small?” asked Eefje while standing in front of the glacier in Neko Harbour.
Surely there must be one, but the beauty of traveling on a ship with no Internet means we will both keep wondering and focus on that feeling instead of trying to pin a word to it and move on.
The said feeling comes quite easily in Antarctica. Even after I’ve sailed here multiple times, it’s still there and it’s not getting dimmer.
It’s hard to put a scale on anything here. Mountain chains might look very average in size until you learn how far they are. Chunks of ice always hide most of their mass under the waterline and it sometimes goes so deep you can’t see the bottom, even in very clear water.
It’s the scale of efforts for every living thing down here to survive. Like the little chinstrap penguins who put themselves through a steep ascent to put their nest at the top of a mountain. Or the whales that still migrate here to feed despite the damage done by whalers more than a hundred years ago, in the name of illuminating the streets of the industrialized world.
It’s the scale of our small but sturdy ship next to the cliffs of Lemaire Channel. Although very comfortable for this trip’s 59 souls, our floating home is actually rather little when we compare it with the other ships on the docks of Ushuaia, when we’re moored next to these sea-going cities. I do wonder if the Antarctica landscape viewed from the 9th deck of one of those giant cruise ships makes you feel less incredibly small… because if so, I’ll pass.
