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.
