Deception Island
Take the color from your world. Don’t bleach it out but convert it to shades of black and white. There will be objects that are very black, black as obsidian, absorbing all the light. There will be white, white as the purest chalk. Add tiny drops of black ink, a little at a time, until your mind can imagine every shade of gray between. Your palette is now prepared to paint Deception Island. It is not that there is no color here, for there is. Splotches of red or green appear just frequently enough to excite the senses.
The sky was as wild and ragged as the sea as we cruised along the outer edges of this island. “Acrobatic air” whipped the white horses riding the crests of the waves and snatched wispy fragments from the bottom of clouds. It was a “bluster day” in every way. Chinstrap penguins porpoised ahead like “little pilot boats” escorting us through a narrow passage into the drowned volcanic crater. Ten thousand years ago a festering boil beneath the earth’s crust exploded, spewing ash and magma from the depths below and a mountain was born. Emptied of its molten core, the land collapsed and the island became a bowl, a vessel to hold the sea. Even within this hidden harbor the wind continued to blow. Fresh snow outlined every eroding rivulet in the soft dark ashy soil and drew patterns on every slope. Glacial tongues bore horizontal bands preserved from recent recurring eruptions (1967, 1969, 1970). Spain and Argentina seemed to have tossed red Monopoly game hotels randomly on the shore, so dwarfed by the scale of the hills were their bases.
Steam rose from the sands at Pendulum Cove and the wind continued to blow. Gentoo penguins paused in their passage, crimson beaks flashing, to stare at the goings on in an improvised pool. Flame-colored coats were tossed away. Bathing suit clad bodies flushed as they faced the elements. Fortunately the pool was warm for the wind chill was minus seven degrees (Fahrenheit)!
Whaler’s Bay was calmer and the shuttle to shore quite brief for the Captain placed our bow only twenty feet from the beach! Layers of history intertwine here, revealing the eras in fragmentary remains. Planks for wooden casks cluster on a broad outwash plain, waiting for a generation of whalers who forever absent will remain. Their waterboats too sit high and dry among scattered cetacean bones partially buried by the coarse sand. Giant tanks list dangerously filled with only echoes of the past. Whalers gave way to scientists and they then abandoned too, driven back to Britain when this restless caldera roared, raining hot ash upon their heads and sending a mud flow through their back door. Kelp gulls now raise their young on rusting boiler tops. Skuas bathe in fresh water pools. Tucked in sheltered places, hiding from the wind, colorful lichen gardens grow.
Soon Deception faded away, lost behind our stern as we headed to the east. Nestled within Charcot Bay, a bite in the western peninsula, a special place called to the ship. In the evening light Lindblad Cove embraced us like an uncle welcoming his family home to celebrate wilderness and the holiday season.
Take the color from your world. Don’t bleach it out but convert it to shades of black and white. There will be objects that are very black, black as obsidian, absorbing all the light. There will be white, white as the purest chalk. Add tiny drops of black ink, a little at a time, until your mind can imagine every shade of gray between. Your palette is now prepared to paint Deception Island. It is not that there is no color here, for there is. Splotches of red or green appear just frequently enough to excite the senses.
The sky was as wild and ragged as the sea as we cruised along the outer edges of this island. “Acrobatic air” whipped the white horses riding the crests of the waves and snatched wispy fragments from the bottom of clouds. It was a “bluster day” in every way. Chinstrap penguins porpoised ahead like “little pilot boats” escorting us through a narrow passage into the drowned volcanic crater. Ten thousand years ago a festering boil beneath the earth’s crust exploded, spewing ash and magma from the depths below and a mountain was born. Emptied of its molten core, the land collapsed and the island became a bowl, a vessel to hold the sea. Even within this hidden harbor the wind continued to blow. Fresh snow outlined every eroding rivulet in the soft dark ashy soil and drew patterns on every slope. Glacial tongues bore horizontal bands preserved from recent recurring eruptions (1967, 1969, 1970). Spain and Argentina seemed to have tossed red Monopoly game hotels randomly on the shore, so dwarfed by the scale of the hills were their bases.
Steam rose from the sands at Pendulum Cove and the wind continued to blow. Gentoo penguins paused in their passage, crimson beaks flashing, to stare at the goings on in an improvised pool. Flame-colored coats were tossed away. Bathing suit clad bodies flushed as they faced the elements. Fortunately the pool was warm for the wind chill was minus seven degrees (Fahrenheit)!
Whaler’s Bay was calmer and the shuttle to shore quite brief for the Captain placed our bow only twenty feet from the beach! Layers of history intertwine here, revealing the eras in fragmentary remains. Planks for wooden casks cluster on a broad outwash plain, waiting for a generation of whalers who forever absent will remain. Their waterboats too sit high and dry among scattered cetacean bones partially buried by the coarse sand. Giant tanks list dangerously filled with only echoes of the past. Whalers gave way to scientists and they then abandoned too, driven back to Britain when this restless caldera roared, raining hot ash upon their heads and sending a mud flow through their back door. Kelp gulls now raise their young on rusting boiler tops. Skuas bathe in fresh water pools. Tucked in sheltered places, hiding from the wind, colorful lichen gardens grow.
Soon Deception faded away, lost behind our stern as we headed to the east. Nestled within Charcot Bay, a bite in the western peninsula, a special place called to the ship. In the evening light Lindblad Cove embraced us like an uncle welcoming his family home to celebrate wilderness and the holiday season.
