Spring Moon of the Southern Cross

38 degrees 1 minute S 55 degrees 26 minutes W

Nearing Buenos Aires, off the coast near Mar del Plata, a family resort area for South Americans

Over a month now we’ve been onboard the Veendam. Going to sleep with the gentle rocking of the ocean and waking up to its expanse has become common place.

Breakfast and lunch happen on the Lido deck while dinner comes to us on white linen tablecloths at our table 31 in the Rotterdam dining room. Since it overlooks the stern, we watch sunset each day over dinner, perhaps catch a cargo ship or another cruise ship in the distance.

If we need something else, we show our room key and it goes on the tab.

Kate seems ready to sail on beyond Rio, the absence of domestic and medical duty allows her to relax in a way she find impossible at home.

I’m finding the lack of stress a bit dull, wanting to gain some traction in the day-to-day. The shore excursion gambit has grown stale and I’ve read through 6 or 7 novels now.

Cruise ships try to account for this kind of drift toward home by having different kinds of things to do: movies, cooking lessons, the casino, shopping, trivia contests, the spa, swimming pools and basketball courts. Neither Kate nor I warm up to these kind of things much.

We’re both introverts and the constant presence of other people drains our energy, requiring time in the cabin or on the deck in our deck chairs away from other passengers.

This is not by way of complaining, just being descriptive.

If we had another month to go, I would start writing stories, perhaps doing some more research into oceanography. I knew this last topic would fascinate me while we were on the ship, but I failed to find a reasonable cost general introduction with good maps of the ocean floor and of the many currents.

Anyhow we’re now three ports from the end of the cruise: Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Rio.

At Rio we will disembark and take a taxi to our Tulip hotel a block from the Ipanema Beach and two nights later board a flight for home.

Spring Moon of the Southern Cross

42 degrees 47 minutes S 56 degrees 8 minutes W 10:30 pm course 006

At last! A clear night. I went upstairs, first to the sky deck, the highest deck on the ship, trying to see the southern sky but the ship’s stacks were in the way. After some shielding with my arm, I could make out a few stars in the south, but only well above the horizon.

I did see Eriadnus, new to me, and Orion. It took me a bit of looking at Orion to notice that it was my old friend, but upside down. Yes, his sword pointed toward the celestial dome rather than the celestial equator. A strange and somewhat disorienting view of him, but also appropriate to the southern hemisphere.

I wandered toward the back of the ship, crossing the empty basketball court and pushing through netting at its rear. There was an area of the ship I had not explored on the next deck below, deck 11. It was an area called the Retreat where outdoor movies get shown on Thursday nights.

It’s big advantage in this instance was a rail at the stern beyond the light pollution of the ship and below and behind the stacks that were in the way up above on the sky deck.

Sure enough, right where my star map said it would be was the southern cross, hung upside down, looking more like a kite than a cross, but clearly there. It thrilled me to see it. This is one of those physical experiences you can have only in the Southern Hemisphere. I’ve read about the Southern Cross all my life and now I’ve seen it.

That was not the only unusual event tonight. Kate’s Uncle Ollie liked the occasional trip to the casino, so she gave me a $20 bill and told me to gamble it in Uncle Ollie’s memory. My thought was to go put it on red on the roulette wheel, one bet, then the ritual is over. But the roulette wheel had not yet started up, so I headed for a game I knew. Blackjack.

In the long ago far away I used to play blackjack every night, five nights a week while waiting to pick up my papers and deliver them on my route. This went on for 8 years. I’ve played a lot of blackjack.

Turns out the casino version is a little different, but not much. I sat down, passed the dealer my $20 and took four five dollar chips from him.

Uncle Ollie rode on my shoulder this evening. I long ago learned the basic rules of blackjack. First rule is, be the dealer. Well, the house has that covered and it’s a big advantage.

Second rule, 17 or more stay. 16 or less, take a hit.

Third rule. Follow rule 2.

If you’re a real whiz with memory and can count cards, you can always beat the house. I’m not a memory whiz, so I stuck to the basics.

About ten minutes into the play I had the guy next to me rubbing my shoulder for a little luck. Twenty minutes later I cashed, went to the pay window and collected $100. We’ll put the money toward some memorial for Uncle Ollie.

Winning at blackjack and seeing the southern cross, a good night.

Spring Moon of the Southern Cross

44 degrees 35 minutes S 56 degrees 24 minutes W heading 009

Back at our own latitude and beyond it a bit, perhaps down by the Iowa border, headed south toward warmer climes; though here, of course, instead we go north. This happened sometime around 3:30 pm Santiago time while Kate and I napped.

We went down close to 56 degrees south, the furthest point being Cape Horn, just 34 degrees from the South Pole. Now, oddly, I’ve been closer to the South Pole than the North.

About five weeks ago I observed that the world ocean is big. Turns out its bigger than that. It is huge and we will sail over a 1,000 nautical miles toward Buenos Aires with no sight of land whatever. No land.

We do this on a bit of artificial land. This ship. We need, absolutely have to have, something to stand on, a place to get upright, without it, we might swim a ways or hang from a long rope dangling, we might float in space, but we will not be human. We will be a weak fish or bird or sloth, not strong enough to save ourselves.

Sometimes, when you least expect it, your ship disappears and leaves you stranded in the deeper ocean of our short lives. That happened to Kate today. An e-mail reached out through satellite and digits, made its way on board here and informed that her Uncle Ollie had died. He was the last of her mother and father’s generation, his death a shock because his illness had come up suddenly.

Since my Aunt Roberta’s death some years ago, I, too, have stood as the older generation in my family and now she does, too. It’s a sobering place to be and takes some time to absorb.

This trip has become a marker not only of Kate’s retirement from medicine, but, too, as her change in the generational order. Eventful for either reason, for both, it becomes a true phase change, from gas to plasma, say.

Spring Moon of the Southern Cross

46 degrees 28 minutes S 56 degrees 42 minutes W course heading 004

Sun light on the ocean gives a brief brilliance to a bit of wave, water lifted up higher than the main body. Quick as a blink or quicker the dash of bright flares, then disappears as wave and ocean become one again.

This is life as I now understand it. We rise up for a moment, a second in the grand clock that ticks away in the heart of the universe, shine with the vitality of consciousness, then subside, absorbed back into the universe which accreted in that one instance to form our distinct, unique Self.

Does this have meaning? Damned if I know.

My guess is that it does, in one sense at least. Our moment affords the vast project that is the movement of matter from creation to eventual extinction or reprocessing (whatever cosmology soothes you most) a chance to reflect, to notice, to be aware of itself. Our brief sunlit moments then may be to the universe as mind is to our body, an epiphenomena unsuspected, unpredicted, but nonetheless appreciated. That may well be all ye need to know.

When we float on the vast world ocean between ports, over deep water, water now 13,500 feet deep, my Self dips down into the collective unconscious with great ease. It may be the womb like sloshing of the ship or it may be deep calling unto deep. Whatever it is, I dream and dream and remember.

Last night my dreams all had a common theme. There were three, one in which I was a new teacher, another in which I developed a vast foundation and a third with knowledge spread out in a quasi-religious setting. The common theme lay in crossing from one domain of knowledge to another, knitting disparate disciplines together, finding the filaments that underlay them all.

In the first, as a new teacher, my principle, an African American woman, looked me over and put me in a building devoted to concrete teaching. Students learned gardening by building tools, sowing and harvesting. They learned mathematics and science by building machines, language by engaging in trade with others who spoke a different language.

In the second I had convinced Mark Dayton to put together a foundation that knitted together philosophy, literature, politics, science and painting, all represented by different patterns of tile on the floor of its huge lobby.

Finally, in the third, Glass Bead Game-like, I was part of a group that had assembled various distinct disciplines in different liturgical styles. One had an emphasis on textiles, colorful and large, hanging from stone walls. Another had altars of stone. Yet another gathered its disciplines and represented them through music. Another through painting.

In this last dream a fire caught the textile chapel on fire and threatened the whole cathedral though it eventually burned itself out since the whole structure was stone.

Today we’re between the Falklands and Buenos Aires, Atlantic as far as the eye can register light on any side, the water deep and the sunlight bright. A good day to relax and read.

We will pass the 45^th degree of longitude today, headed to Buenos Aires’s 38^th. That means we will move out of the Canadian equivalent longitudes and into our own. From that point on we will be heading into warmer and warmer climes.

On Thanksgiving eve we will board a plane in Rio headed for Atlanta, Georgia, then the cold, cold grass of home.

Spring Moon of the Southern Cross

51 degrees 00 minutes S 57 degrees 27 minutes W course 000 degrees, due north

The Falklands are in our rearview and we’re headed due north to Buenos Aires. The next two days are at sea.

Have you ever seen a rockhopper penguin? They’re pretty damned cute. Long feathers, light colored, jut out from over their bright red eyes and, darned if they don’t, they hop from rock to rock. They’re shorter than the Magellanic penguins we saw in Otway Bay, Chile, but their markings are black and white, too.

When they move between rocks in rockhopper mode, they hunch their shoulders forward and look like Dickensian accountants, shoulders stooped by many years working for Scrooge and wild eyebrows to shield their eyes from candle flame too close. Their manner as they hop seems very serious, as if hopping required all their avian skill, as it well might for all I know.

Getting to see them found Kate and me in a Land Rover, well used, with the exhaust pipe up and curved away from the driver’s side window, accompanied by two Albertans and driven by Rod, a twenty-five year resident of the islands.

Rod has done a lot of tour guide type work, but has a certain flexibility that accounts for his residence in these islands. He spent several years in Cairo where he said, “The working Egyptian is just like anybody else. And, if they have just enough money in their pocket for a Coke, they’ll give it you.”

A twelve month contract brought him to the Falklands and he’s never left.

He did clean up work following the Falklands war and, demonstrating flexibility again, met a guy in the Globe Tavern, the local pub, on his way to Antarctica. “I need somebody to cook for my crew,” the guy told Rod. “What kind of cooking?” “Regular stuff.” “I can do that.” Rod ended up in Antarctica for 8 weeks, paid to be there as a cook. When he got back, the guy put a 10,000 pound check in his hand.

Rod drives for Murrell Farms, the owner of the land on which the rockhopper’s nest. A small farm by Falkland standards Rod estimated it at 9,000 acres. They raise sheep for the most part though they have a few head of cattle, too.

The sheepherding occurs on motorbike or 4X4. On the latter they have a small shelf on which sit two cattle dogs. They drive out to the herd, let the dogs out and the dogs return the herd to the shearing spot. “This is,” Rod said, “A lot less work for the dogs than when they used horses. Then, the dogs had to run out and back.”

As you might imagine, a sheep farm does not have well traveled roads, especially since they use 4X4’s and motorbikes, so the one hour ride back to the rookery took us over up and down terrain, some muddy spots and a land filled with small holes and sudden drop offs. Rod and the others in our little safari, three LandRovers, a Mitsubishi SUV and a Ford pickup with the large cab, knew the trail well and we had as comfortable a ride as the conditions permitted.

The rockhopper location itself was not very large, perhaps 300 feet long and thirty feet wide on top of a rocky promontory that overlooked the Atlantic below where the penguin’s mortal enemies, the sealions, live.

Digital cameras along as many photos as you want, so I took a lot. Penguins on eggs. Penguins hugging. Penguins directing traffic. Penguins hunched over, rockhopping. Penguins crying in alarm as juveniles prowled around looking for mates. Penguins standing alone looking out to sea. Penguins watching us watch them.

Oh, and a local note. When I visited the port-a-potty for a quick break, I proudly noted the Made in Minneapolis, Minnesota stamp on it. As it happens, Jon (stepson) went to school at Breck with the folks who have made millions selling just these units. And here they were in the Falklands.

Port Stanley could be in the English countryside. It has the telly booths, public houses, a Thatcher Drive, their own pound notes, a proud post office making a big deal out of Falkland stamps. They drive on the left side of the road and have an English school system with small classes which includes college at Winchester College in England at age 16 and, if the kids do well, university after that. The schools are modern and well maintained.

This is a place it would be fun to come to for vacation, if it weren’t so far from home. In fact, Kate and I have liked Ushuaia and the Falklands well enough to live in either place, although they have the same problem as our third favorite, Hawai’i. Too expensive for travel to see the kids or for the kids to come see us.

The trip after Valparaiso, which began in Puerto Montt, included the Chilean fjords and several glaciers, went on to Punta Areanas, then Tierra del Fuego and Ushuaia, finishing here in the Falklands has been by far my favorite part of the trip. Cooler, for one thing, but also terrain and wildlife that was both exotic, yet somewhat familiar, and an isolation that appeals to both Kate and me.

The next few days return us to Latin America, Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Rio, then home.

Spring Moon of the Southern Cross

51 degrees 40 minutes S 57 degrees 49 minutes W

N.B. The correct analogy, I know, is the season of Beltane on my Celtic calendar, but here I have chosen to go with the meteorological, seasonal descriptor since we’re in a Latin American country. True, there is Galicia and the Latin emphasis on bulls and bull fighting, both Celtic influences; however, in the main the larger influence is Roman Catholicism, but I no longer use Christian liturgical seasons either. So, Spring.

Having said all that I might post Beltane for today only since we have left Latin America behind today by coming to the tiny Falkland Islands (aka Malvinas) and their stoutly British population of some 2,500 souls. Two thirds of the citizenry live in Port Stanley, capitol and our present location, while the remaining 800 plus live in what the locals call the camp.

This is not a distinction without a difference. Among the many differences camp and town see between each other, an important one is that Port Stanley observes daylight savings time and the camp does not. I would be in the camp camp.

These are flat islands 1150 nautical miles from Buenos Aires. Kate and I have signed up for the exclusive, once in a lifetime opportunity, to see the elusive rockhopper penguins. If I counted up the number of once in a lifetimes we’ve done on this trip alone, I’d have to have three or four more go rounds at least.

Once in a lifetime means, in this context anyhow, this costs so much that you’ll probably be able to afford this only once in a lifetime. Besides, just because it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity doesn’t mean it’s worth doing. Visiting the Freshkills landfill in New York would be a once in a lifetime event and I don’t intend to pay anyone to take me there.

We probably won’t see rockhopper penguins (though I confess I have no idea what rockhopper penguins are, but being elusive makes them necessary to see if at all possible. Irony.) again so I suppose this is a true once in a lifetime opportunity for us. I’ll let you know if it was a worthwhile way to spend four hours.

Did I mention yesterday that we returned to the Atlantic once we left the Beagle Channel? We have, and it has been suitably gray and inclement though the Pacific, once we made our way into Peru and the cold waters of the Humboldt Current was gray and chill as well. It seems appropriate to visit a British outpost as our first port once returning to the Pond.

This morning, finally, I feel back to my pre-cold energy level though I hadn’t realized I’d gotten somewhat sluggish. Now I’m ready to hop on that 4X4 and ride out to the rockhoppers and follow them rock by rock if necessary.

Kate’s going along though the ticket says not for folks with back problems. Usually that stuff’s just hype, sort of macho marketing, I hope that’s true in this case.

Spring Moon of the Southern Cross

On feeling my way back home.

In the first instance travel demands surrender. Means, give up the comforts of home, the usual, the way things are done, for some others home, usual, way things are done. Without surrender travel cuts and slices at every moment. Well, I never! We’d not see that at home! Why did he do that?

In the second instance travel requires curiosity. Who knew cacao beans had such a pleasant tasting pulp? How did Panama make the shift from indigenous people to Spaniards to Colombia to the US and then to their own democracy? How do limenos celebrate the New Year? What do the Chilean fjords look like anyhow? Without curiosity there are no new experiences, only the repetition of old ones in different locales.

In the third instance travel invites hope. This visit to the Chan Chan Citadel will be worth the effort and expense. This trip as a whole will repay the cost of it in money with the more useful coin of new experience and changed ideas.

There is, too, wonder. At the arrogance and audacity of the Spanish conquistadors. At the earthquake defying architectural skills of the Inka. At the splendid isolation of Ushuaia. At the glaciers still crashing and booming their way through the Darwin Cordillera. At sitting, finally, at the southernmost point in the Americas.

Perhaps, when we were at our best, there is, as well, love. It will not always come, but here the acceptance, the embrace of the other can loop to the acceptance and the embrace of the other within, that stranger in your own soul who still feels foreign, alien to your Self.

This love recognizes the sad and searing truth that we press down the parts of ourselves we fear, reducing them to fragments of memory, shards of dark feeling and says, wait. There’s more. Whole cultures built on what you reject. Art forms erected from the very things you fear. Places where the dance tune includes even your most minor key melodies. And does a gavotte, or a jig, or the two-step to them.

So then, surrender, curiosity, hope, wonder and love. Travel’s comrades, partners along the way. And welcome.

This is by way of saying that feeling my back home is not home sickness or nostalgia, it is a desire to return to my place altered, made more, fuller, richer. Not too soon though. Just in time.

Spring Moon of the Southern Cross

55 degrees 57 minutes S 67 degrees 9 minutes W heading 272 degrees speed 12 knots

Cape Horn. The fabled Cape Horn. One of the roughest passages on the world ocean. The seas throw up spin drift and an albatross sails the winds, heading west with us.

The Veendam has slowed some and will soon make a turn around the most remote of the islands in the Cape Horn cluster, Cabo De Hornos, Cape Horn.

We are down now to 1.1 knots, almost stopped. The captain just gave a long soliloquy on the Cape, but the speaker here combined with my single hearing ear left most of it garbled. He did point out that the southern tip of Tasmania and parts of South Africa are south of our current position. (Kate heard that much.)

Antarctica lies due south about 1000 kilometers.

The day is clear, the sun shining and just a few clouds in the sky. So this is what it looks like beyond the edge of the Americas. Winds here are 11 at the Beaufort Scale, 60 mph. We will not go around the Cape because the Captain feels the seas would be too upsetting for the passengers.

Oh, well.

Birds do not seem frightened. There are terns and sea gull like birds out here, soaring high and low searching for fish and scraps.

So, as mariners have often done in the history of seafaring around Cape Horn, we have chosen to follow the Drake Passage to the east and leave the Cape to another trip.

Spring Moon of the Southern Cross

54 degrees 48 minutes S 68 degrees 17 minutes W

Ushuaia. The last city in the Americas. The end of the Panamanian Highway. Filled with fin de mundo gift shops, hats, restaurants and a certain pride in being the last. As Sergio, our guide for today, pointed out when we arrived at Lapiata Bay, the southern most point in Tierra del Fuego, “That (indicating a green building shaped like a shipping container) is the last bathroom.” A stock line, I’m sure, but it brought howls of laughter from the bus. We were an easy audience.

As I write this, I’m looking out our cabin, through our floor to ceiling glass doors and ahead of me is a just darkening sky, 9:24 pm, four snow capped peaks of the last remnants of the Andes which disappear into the Atlantic here, and a series of commercial buildings and homes, white with red roofs, all tin. On the only avenue in this town of 50,000 the traffic has its lights on and their lights echo in lights on the dock here.

At the dock with us are the Akademik Sergi Valvov, an all white Russian ice breaker bound for Antarctica, and Ocean Nova, an expedition boat that takes adventure travelers to Antarctica. Ushuaia has 90% of the world’s traffic from the other six continents to Antarctica.

This makes Ushuaia different than you might expect. It has several high end expedition outfitters, a Northface and a Timberland, plus other sources for packs, sleeping bags, tents and hiking boots fit for an Antarctic foray.

It also has several 4 and 5 hotels including a brand new Sheraton, located high up over the city and overlooking the Beagle Channel. It is not yet open in case you were thinking about reservations.

Tonight is Saturday night and I went downtown, a ten minute walk from the pier, to find something to eat and check out the shops and the people.

A few drifter types, back packers whose route had brought them as far as they can go by thumb, wandered around with vague menace, long hair and smoking. Others were young folks who looked like athletic academics perhaps down for a seminar on the Humboldt Current or to take part in a dig in a Yamana midden heap. Clots of teenage girls in tight jeans with cute purses, strolling, watching for watchers. Boys trying to figure out what to do with their presence. And failing. In other words, teenworld anywhere.

Sergi spoke with some feeling about Ushuaia in the winter months when the cloud cover is constant, the nights very long (this is the equivalent latitude of Hudson Bay) and the temperature around or just below freezing. On this latter point it is the moderating effect of the maritime location of Tierra del Fuego, an island, that keeps the temperatures mild. “It is depressing,” he said. And since he had played us for laughs before we laughed. “No, really,” he said, “Our hospital has done studies on mental conditions. Suicides. All up in the winter.” I thought of Iceland.

On June 21^st, the Winter Solstice and the longest night of the year, the Federal and local governments throw a party with bands from Buenos Aires, lots of food and drink. “And we dance until we feel better.”

Ushuaia is the exclamation point to the exclamation mark that is Patagonia. Here civilization peters out. There are a few small settlements, at least one of them is a military base, a few islands, but buses and restaurants and teenagers walking the streets on Saturday night ends here.

This is an inflection point for our trip as well since tomorrow we sail around Cape Horn and head for the Falklands, back north.

On this last I should add. Along the pedestrian way into downtown from the dock there is a sign in Spanish and English. It refers to the Argentinian law which put the Malvinas islands under the province of Tierra del Fuego. In the next paragraph then goes on to say that it must be acknowledged that the Malvinas (aka Falklands) have been illegally occupied by the United Kingdom since 1833. Just to be clear.

Spring Moon of the Southern Cross

54 degrees 54 minutes S 68 degrees 32 minutes W heading 077 NEE

We left Punta Arenas at 8 pm yesterday in the bright sun of late afternoon. The crew had moored us to four floating buoys as well as capstans on the pier. Watching them unburden the ship of its ties to land became interesting as the wind picked up to 60 kph gusts, pressing the bulk of the Veendam against the ropes tethering it and tightening them. The crew created slack on the buoy ropes while a Punta Arenas tug, Atlas, scuttled over to it, backed up and unburdened itself of two crew who hopped on the buoy and lifted the great hawsers free. The Veendam sucked them back up through the water.

As night fell, we sailed south through the Magellan Strait, then into the Cockburn Channel. In the night we entered the channel named after Darwin’s famous voyage, Beagle Channel.

When we got up, snow covered sharp mountain faces behind sloped and green rock with trees. As we went up to the Lido Deck for breakfast, I noticed a glacier coming up on the port side. I moved onto deck 12, then sky deck, a flat circular deck that marks the highest point passengers can go on the Veendam. It offers a platform for taking in scenery on both sides and in front of the ship and therefore is ideal for photography.

Four huge glaciers appeared over the next 40 minutes, somewhat evenly spaced apart. Rivers of ice. Even after the Amalia glacier, this phrase did not come to mind. Until. These. Now the blue ice runs, courses, screams out of the mountains, pushing, out of my way rock I’m moving on, as it heads for the salty waters of the Beagle.

Four of them, in a row, magnificent, wonders of the natural world. These are world shapers, lake makers, river cutters, earth movers, boulder scatterers. The essence of a stream is to flow, of a mountain, mass, of ocean, to fill, of land, to separate, of a glacier, to create. These are ur-entities, those who come before others and their quiet presence belies their power. Glaciers are the strong, silent type writ large.

In all the sailing we’ve done through the Chilean fjords we’ve done I’ve seen only one house. I have a picture of it. It is the most splendidly isolated structure I have ever seen. The only way to get to it is by boat or ship and the closet inhabited area is hours away. A great place to write.

In Ushuaia, our next port, the Museum at the End of the World graces one end of the road that fronts the ocean. It’s an apt name, for this is the largest community of the far southern end of the Americas. There a couple of small outposts of civilization otherwise, but this is a functioning community.

The Chilean fjords and the geography of the archipelago surrounding the Beagle channel make it easy to imagine that if this is not the end of the world you can see it from here. And, you can.

It’s a remarkable feeling to be at the bottom of the map, a sort of geographical weightlessness, as if the burden of land has almost been lifted and we could float free, unbound to land anymore.

This afternoon, at 2 pm, we begin to explore the Beagle channel on a smaller boat.

Sunset here is at 9:14 pm. The winds are 39 mph. We 262 nautical miles from Punta Arenas and with 9.5 nautical miles of Ushuaia. The sun rises at 5:23 am.