Legacy

During the two months that I spent in Antarctica I thought a lot about how our planet is changing.

How we are changing our planet.

How I hope future generations will remember mine...

...and what I want to leave as the memory of my life.

Searching for Bones

We wander across hills of dust searching for bones. The forests are gone, the wood turned to stone. Leaves, as faint as ghosts, glimmer in the rocks. Remnants of seashells crushed into the dirt crackle beneath our boots. Above us blue sky; below us brown earth, and mystery.

What turned a forest into sand and rock?

What stole the last sloth and sealed the last butterfly in amber?

Who am I to a being so ancient that my life lasts no longer than a beat of her heart? When did the child begin to believe she owned the earth? Somewhere between the sun god and the logic of science, I have lost my place. This land that was rock, then forest, then ice, now dust, whispers away my worries.

Her fingers slip past my layers of fleece and wool and wrap themselves around my neck, slide down my back. “My belly is fire,” she says, “and I can hold my breath forever.”

I laugh, and my companions turn to see if I have discovered mammal bones amongst the seashells and shark teeth. I shake my head, and they turn back into the hills. I stick my fingers into her flesh. “Don’t let me change you.” I press my lips to her skin and let my tears fill the holes I made in her. ““I can’t hold my breath that long.”

Who will step on the bones of my children 10 thousand million years from now? Who will wonder where they went, and why?

Now the lady laughs and lifts her wings, disappearing like a butterfly in stone.

I look back on the people I met while traveling the Antarctic regions, and today seems like a good day to reflect on what made them special. Life is so short, and one of the things that stands out about these people is that they aren’t afraid to live.

I mean to say that I admire people who follow their dreams, no matter how impossible they seem. They are people of Reasons Why, not people of Reasons Why Not.

They are connected—to each other, to the earth, to exploring.

They do what they do because they want to, not because they have to.

Here’s to all the dreamers, the believers,

the passionate, the lovers of life.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Melting

Like a fleet of ghost ships sailing north, the ice travels with the wind. I seek comfort in believing these broken bits of ice are children that the glacier has nudged out of her nest. Will I never learn to distinguish a mineral from humanity again?

They rise two and three stories out of the water and dwarf our manmade vessel. How deep they stretch beneath the sea we cannot know, and our ship’s crew gives them wide berth. They are mighty, and ignorant of their power, oblivious to their fate.

Enchanted by wind and current, they press northward. They lift their sails to the sun with the confidence of those who do not know that they are sailing into death. Each caress diminishes their days. How long before they have become so much a part of the seas they travel, that they are invisible to human eyes?

I want to wrap them in my arms and tell them “Stop!”

But they would only laugh at me, because I cannot grasp that I too am melting.