Treading Humbly by Hans van Heukelum
Polar places – spaces of unearthly beauty – magnificent in their majesty and of superlative dimensions, threatening in their wilderness yet nurturing the spirit in overwhelming silence as heard only in deserts.Contrasts are everywhere, yet nowhere as apparent as found at the ends of the earth – it’s almost a love-hate relationship. One moment the sights are calm and awesome, and you drink it in as if racked by thirst; the next a blizzard appears with the chill factor rising fast and searing the marrow in your bones. Yet it is these very opposites that offer the vulnerability which one might hate yet need, to get in touch with your onion core! It’s nature’s opera at its purest and best.
It has been a very humbling experience over the last 14 years that I have been so privileged to visit these raw and rugged places, and introduce them to others so that investments of the mind can be made.
What amazes me over and over again in both Antarctica and the Arctic regions is in spite of the harshness of terrain and low temperatures, there is life and in great abundance – it’s both fragile, like the poppies and saxifrage flowers of Spitsbergen, and tenacious, like Emperor penguins hatching out eggs at -35ºC in winter – unbelievable!
I suppose it’s the desert experience bordering on the monastic that attracts me to keep revisiting and replenish my inner being.
A few, amongst many of my favourites, are South Georgia and Greenland. A sub-Antarctic island, South Georgia is one of the most beautiful and amazing islands in the world – wildlife in abundance with some rookeries of King penguins estimated at 35 000 pairs and thousands of Wandering Albatross, the world’s largest sea bird. How good to see nature in its richness of colours, health and profusion. This is the island that Ernest Shackleton, an explorer with immense leadership skills, loved so much and where he is buried with a rugged granite headstone.
Greenland, the world’s largest island, with an icecap 2 kms thick, resting on a granite base, is a very beautiful place. The world’s largest national park on the northwest coast covers an area greater than France and the UK combined! The east coast is a place of rare, wilderness beauty indented with an interconnecting fjord system. Here Scoresbysund fjord, with a length of 320 kms, is the world’s longest; a small community of Inuits live at its mouth and still practise age-old traditions.
As custodians of the earth we need to be globally aware – the ravages of global warming are only fully evident in polar places, hence the need to witness this. We are upset that a piece of plastic mars the pristineness of deserts, but we should react equally to the filth that clogs our rivers, mountains and beautiful landscapes – surely as we wash our whole bodies we should manicure the earth!
The expeditions I have been blessed to experience have always been aboard small vessels of 48 passengers. Environmentally, these are the correct ones to use in this fragile wonderland. With fewer crowds around, it allows one to absorb fully the positive energy of silence and nature’s overwhelming presence. When nature is in command you travel with your mind and walk very humbly.
