Antarctic Suite Summertime

By Rosemary Dunn Moeller

Rosemary Dunn Moeller grew up devouring books by Thor Hyerdahl, Tim Severin, Richard Henry Dana Jr., Herman Melville, and others whose reports of life at sea bested novels and films.

In Northwest Africa, she met her future husband, Lester (a South Dakota farm boy), and when they saw their first wild penguin on a trip to the Galapagos Islands, she knew she simply had to see more wild penguins, so she set her sights on Antarctica.

Once there, she became immersed in the beauty and fragility of the coldest, least populated continent on earth. She saw glaciers, whales, penguins, predators, and cerulean landscapes. She boarded little boats to go ashore to hike, breathed the purest air, and was sprayed by the coldest waters that summertime has to offer.

She also listened to the sounds of the earth rising beneath melting glaciers, waves slapping shores, and icebergs rubbing against the sides of the ship in their own secret rhythms.

Whether youre thinking about making a trip to Antarctica yourself or want to experience the beauty of vast oceans, wandering whales, pelagic birds, and majestic views, youll be thrilled with the adventures in Antarctic Suite Summertime.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jun 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9781480829343

Rosemary Dunn Moeller

Rosemary Dunn Moeller has traveled to all seven continents, but Antarctica provided the most unexpected pleasures. She’s been a Peace Corps volunteer; Fulbright Scholar; a teacher at the university, middle school, high school, and elementary levels; writer; and farmer. She’s also the author of the poetry chapbooks Midnight Picnic in the Fields and the Lift of Wind Across Wings.

Book preview

TURNING THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN

MY CHILDHOOD GLOBE DIFFERED FROM the one I look at now. Mali, where I would live and teach for a year, was French West Africa. Germany was two countries. Alaska and Hawaii were territories with few cities. There was a giant, red mass called the USSR, made up of countries with names I wouldn’t learn for decades. There was also a mass of white at the bottom with no writing on it except Antarctica.

I had storybooks with tales from China and the Middle East. In Children of Foreign Lands, I read stories about and adored pictures of Mayan children living in pre-Columbian simplicity. I treasured a picture book of a Hawaiian boy who had his own catamaran on the warm Pacific Ocean. I wanted to see it all, go everywhere, meet reflections of myself in other lands, and know my way around the world. But that southernmost, permanent ice shield was never in my childhood dreams.

In fourth grade I discovered Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki, and my perspective changed. Islands in the ocean and vast voyages on currents embracing the earth began to attract me. He was my adventuring hero until I read The Brendan Voyage by Tim Severin and got drawn to the colder seas. Then Las Encantadas by Herman Melville changed my life. At that time I was still mostly a land traveler, but I had dreams of sails like angels’ wings. I decided I needed to follow Melville to the Galapagos Islands. Since I had almost completed studying for a teaching degree but still had no money or job, I applied to the Peace Corps and put in for Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia, with the idea I’d find a freighter while on holidays from school to take me to the Galapagos Islands. I was sent to Mali instead to teach English as a foreign language at L’Ecole Normale Superieure in Bamako, in Northwest Africa, since I had minored in French. There my life was greatly improved by my encounter with Lester, a South Dakota farm boy working in an agricultural mechanics program on a state farm in Baguineda. We got married in the village and returned to the vast open farmland of the upper Midwest, where I taught, he farmed, and we raised our three children. We continued to travel a lot by local standards: 4-H and a Fulbright scholarship took me to Japan, while the South Dakota governor’s trade mission took Lester to China. We frequently visited friends in Europe and finally got to the Galapagos Islands, where I saw my first penguin in the wild. That did it. I had to see more penguins.

My husband thought an expedition to Antarctica just to see penguins was a bit much, but I assured him there’d be something of interest for him too. I also convinced him that seasickness medication had come a long way and that he surely could survive three weeks in the roughest seas on earth with the proper attitude. Lester was a saint, as always, and with both of us getting hooked on penguins after seeing blue fairies and yellow-eyed penguins in New Zealand, we went to Antarctica.

Of course, saying we went to Antarctica is like people saying they went to North America after spending three weeks in New York City. But it would count for us. Our dreams of exploration were bubbling back up to the surface. This is how it works when Peace Corps volunteers marry one another. They’ve already done the craziest thing possible, so anything else seems manageable.

So that’s why we went to Antarctica—for the penguins. And this is why I need to write about it—for the fun of it. I’ve read many journals of explorers and adventurers who went to Antarctica. The stories peel the skin off my back. I read about conspicuous consumers who need a separate thrill, so they go off on a crazy junket to the southernmost continent. Their stories annoy me. I have been most impressed by the scientific journalists’ reports of findings and discoveries that have meaning for all our ideas about the earth and its passage through time. These discoveries involve whales, dolphins, giant squid, and albatross—all species with a much older claim to the oceans than we have and even more at stake in how we treat our blue planet.

I love to write. I’ve taught language arts for decades and believe we have the power to affect people’s minds, emotions, and thoughts by sharing our ideas and beliefs about being human among these webs of life we inhabit.

There is little human culture in Antarctica. What culture does exist is recent, mostly violent toward other species, and deadly for many humans. But the continent’s landscapes and seascapes are beautiful and its creatures amazing. Its caretakers are dedicated to saving us all through learning how to care together for this continent. Antarctica needs witnesses. And my truth is that it wasn’t really very challenging for my survival. My husband and I avoid tours and cruises. We don’t like being taken care of or herded about, but here we had no choice. It’s their way or the whale-way. We were fed, bedded, steered around, kept warm and dry and cozy, educated by lecturers, enlightened by expedition leaders who were all experts in their fields, and wined and dined to our satisfaction. We hardly ever had a complaint beyond not spending enough time on landings. Even the Drake Passage wasn’t that bad—though don’t ask Lester.

My story is about how much fun it is to be retired from our careers, yet ready to explore like teens at a new summer camp. Antarctica is not dangerous for people who agree to expert planning and guidance on every step of the journey. Antarctica is the most magical snow globe ever imagined. We went, we saw, and we were conquered by its vivacity.

We started out from Ushuia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. The flight from Buenos Aires was calm and uneventful. We left our luggage at the lovely little wooden terminal and boarded a bus to travel around town a bit and to go out to the national park. It was an interesting ride with a box lunch and bottled water, a bit of hiking here and there, and some great scenery. When the crew got the previous busload boarded and settled in, they telephoned our driver, who then headed back to the docks. On the jetty, a sign proclaimed, No British Pirates Allowed in This Argentinian Port. After three decades, the Falklands War is still a sensitive issue. We were reminded of this enduring anger on the continent of Antarctica by the still-dangerous mined shores of the Falkland Islands and through Argentinian customs agents.

Lester began feeling poorly as soon as we set off and stayed in our room for two days. It wasn’t that rough in the Drake Passage, but it was gray, that color between shadows and obstructed light, where the nose and skin take over from the eyes to feel the air and smell for other living bodies. A blue petrel flitted out of the fog, curving by me as if it knew I was watching but didn’t care. About a foot long with a wingspan of two feet and a white-tipped, square-cut tail, the blue petrel turned its white belly toward the ship then slipped back into the fog as gray as its back.

There was no sun to trace in the sky and no way to identify by eye where we were. There was just grayness. At night, I couldn’t see stars, constellations, or even the moon. Maybe if I’d stayed up later, I would have, but the rocking cradle of the ship put me easily to sleep. The ocean was taking me to a different world than I had even been to before. Trust in the crew and the ship made it all pleasurable. And the fog smelled of the living ocean, fresh linen, and salt.

A1DrakePassage.JPG

A 1 DRAKE PASSAGE

GLOBAL STAIRCASES

WE HADN’T BEEN ON BOARD for very long when I realized a certain problem. The ship had one central staircase with a double set of stairs going halfway up, then a landing, and then a division into