My Antarctica is a dream. Time and time again, when I gaze at her, I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I blink, I shake my head, I pinch myself but no matter what I do she’s still there – even when I return home, she’s always with me. I feel like I’m dreaming when I’m with her; I dream of her when I’m away from her.

My Antarctica is transcendent. Her lyrical beauty is so powerful that is gets hard to breathe as she fills me up with wonder.

My Antarctica is purity incarnate. Every second of every day she’s washed clean by the kisses of clouds and the caress of waves. As she melts she shares herself with the world, infusing us all with her cool clear waters.

My Antarctica is intimate. She quietly whispers her secrets in tiny little details. Once I begin to learn her language I hunger for more and more. She never stops surprising me.

My Antarctica is mercurial. One moment she’s snowing, the next she’s thick fog, the next she’s blazing sun, and the next she’s gale force winds. Her many moods are so varied that they inevitably awaken the hidden corners of my soul.

My Antarctica is a shapeshifter. Between years, days, and even moments she constantly metamorphoses as I drift through around and past her. She’s never the same twice.

My Antarctica is luminescent. Over her the sun passes by every angle, through every state of weather, taking on every color, always reflected by water and snow. Sometimes the days last months or disappear altogether for the same amount of time.

My Antarctica is sublime. First she stuns me with unimaginable beauty and then she overwhelms me with terrifying contrasts.

My Antarctica is extreme. She’s the coldest, iciest, windiest, highest, driest continent on our planet.

My Antarctica is remote. She’s the most isolated continent. She’s the last to be discovered. When I go there I get away from it all and return to something within myself.

My Antarctica is ferocious. Ringed by the roughest seas in the world, she blows winds up to 200 mph and cools temperatures down as low as 130° below zero.

My Antarctica is wild. She’s a crystal desert almost devoid of life but ringed by oceans teeming with life. Home to so many wild things she’s the wildest thing of all.

My Antarctica is echoes. The bird calls the whale answers. The wind blows the sea curls. The sky thunders the glacier shudders. The ice cracks the tsunami rushes. The mountain crumbles the ice preserves its shape. The cloud descends and when it lifts nothing is the same.

My Antarctica is aquatic. She’s water constantly changing her states. Her clouds coalesce into snow packs into ice melts into water evaporates into clouds again … and again … and again.

My Antarctica is connected. Her cold meltwaters drive the ocean currents that change the world’s weather. There is no place on our planet that is unaffected by her.

My Antarctica is immense. She shows me how vast she is and that our world is wider still. She makes me feel so small and yet connected to everything.

My Antarctica is space. She has big shared spaces for so many things including my body; she has little private spaces for so many thoughts and feelings including the ones I wasn’t previously aware of; she’s all of those elusive distances and the gaps in between them.

My Antarctica is liminal. She’s a place where I find myself always at the boundary between what’s above the surface and what’s below the surface – physically, mentally, and emotionally. At first I’m dazzled by what’s visible, but once I get a glimpse of what is usually invisible, I’m always surprised by how much more is lurking underneath and inside.

My Antarctica is mysterious. She shows only a tiny fraction of herself and hides the rest under ice, which contains wonders like lakes the size of seas.  I can’t help wondering what else slumbers in her depths.

My Antarctica is a puzzle. I never see her in her entirety, I only see her in fragments, that once assembled suggest both a larger whole and many missing pieces.

For all the images I’ve made of her and all the words I’ve spoken and written about her, the full depths of her transcendent mysteries continue to captivate me. I can’t wait to return.

I feel a profound sense of gratitude for having been able to visit her so many times.

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