Sunset in the Drake Passage

Antarctica is a land where monolithic ice sculptures flicker in the austral sun as though Brancusi or Henri Moore had bundled themselves in fur-lined parkas and labored tirelessly with chisels and hammers. It is a land where penguins, seals, seabirds and whales engage in a dance of life — each trying to survive in unsurvivable conditions. This is a land with a magical allure, where people hope to grasp what life means at the edge of the world. Wolf, like Shackleton and so many others, could never resist its pull.

It has been 25 years since I last traveled with Wolf to Antarctica. At the time, we were newly married, and I ventured to discover his favorite place on Earth. Now I am going back, possibly less to understand this wild land, and more to understand the wild man who has spent thirty-some years musing over this polar paradise. But first there is the journey…

Today we sail through the Drake Passage with, so far, no hint of the Drake’s often psychotic nature. Instead we drift through a muffled, eerie fog. No ship, no bird, no mammal can be heard — only the grumble of the surf against the ship’s hull. This must be the loneliest place on Earth.