Shifting Ice
Celia Hallan

Antarctica changes your mind about ice. In Michigan, ice is at best cubed and at worst a dangerous addition to the roads. In Antarctica, ice is beautiful. And ice makes you feel small. Our Zodiac stayed far enough away from the iceberg that we could see its entire 400-foot length, cracked, towering, and shot through with rich blue like a sapphire crown. It dwarfed the humpback whale swimming in front of it. Silence pressed in from the frozen landscape. Except the whale, everything seemed poised to never move again.

"I have been leading expeditions here for eight years," said our guide. "Every year, it is here." "Unglaublich," whispered Herbert. Incredible.

As we floated, a smaller iceberg nearby flipped without warning. A crack and rumble from the distance told us a glacier had calved. Even for ice suspended in freezing saltwater or crawling by millimeters for thousands of years, shifts occur in a second. Global change occurs in every field. Every day we hear globalization, economic changes, new technologies, and wars and natural disasters rearranging lives. Antarctica, however, impressed on me that the global changes dominating our news overlie fundamental shifts in the planet's natural systems – systems so integrated into our lives that we ignore them out of habit.

Even as climate change and other environmental challenges gain more international recognition, more immediate economic and security changes tend to command the attention of individuals and leaders alike. Ignoring environmental concerns is easy, comforting, and dangerous.

Antarctica's existence as a preserve for peaceful international science, wilderness protection, and tourism offers a unique representation of the values of global society. Growing up a conservationist and an outdoorswoman, I knew that wilderness depends on people valuing the principles of cooperation and aesthetics, and I found true wonder in the natural world.

Antarctica reflects those principles and provides that wonder on a scale unlike any other place I have been. This makes the systemic changes silently occurring in our largest natural laboratory concerning collectively and personally. Collectively, it shows that our impact on the planet's systems extend to the places we made it our goal to protect. Personally, it makes me recognize the emotional strength needed to build a career in environmental protection.

Students of ecology, oceanography, natural resource management, and any other field directly connected to the earth face the real prospect of spending their working lives studying the degradation of the systems and creatures they love. Watching the seeming permanence of the crown iceberg while witnesses proof of shifting ice touched on a familiar conflict in my mind. How can I subsume the genuine fear and sadness that comes from seeing the natural world's fragility to my academic drive to understand it? What will it mean if I build a career around lessening human impact on the environment but cannot stop drastic changes to the places I love? And how could Antarctica help me reconcile those conflicting thoughts?

Part of the answer came from studying the history of Antarctica itself. The professors who led the program study geology and paleontology – both sciences that, to put it mildly, take the long view of life. With Professor Gottfried, we learned to spy evidence of the tectonic shifting and folding that produced the Antarctic landscape. With Professor Fordyce, we traced the fossil record of the penguins we saw everywhere back to their towering ancestors of tens of millions of years ago. That mindset taught me to recognize the dynamic forces that have always influences natural systems and that will continue their influence in tandem with the actions of humans.

We have the responsibility to be good stewards of the planet, but we will never be the sole driving force of life. Taking a long view of natural systems today runs the risk of obscuring the real impacts that humans have on the earth. Understating the threats of rapid extinctions, deforestation, pollution, and countless others increases our vulnerability and heightens my anxiety.

Yet in Antarctica taught me to balance the long and short views. Every day on the boat, we practiced feeling awe at the natural spectacles around us while speaking frankly about their changes. We photographed glaciers while hearing facts about their speed of recession. We laughed at penguins stealing pebbles from each other's nests while learning how much the colony had shrunk. There was an open recognition between all passengers and crew members of a collective joy in knowing our surrounding had a place on Earth, collective understanding of their impermanence, and collective sadness at their loss. I saw that beauty and wonder still exist in changed systems and will exist into the future. Frankly addressing the overlapping facts and feelings gives more comfort and produced more drive to action than panicking at their contradictions.

Another part of the answer came from meeting Herbert Koenig. Our study abroad group shared an expedition ship with roughly 50 other tourists from around the world. Most were retired couples, some were families. But Herbert had come alone. A retired German chemical engineer, he had recently decided to travel again after the death of his wife. He spoke English poorly. He bonded with our group immediately. During the first Drake Passage crossing, when seasickness forced me to lie in the ship's lounge for hours on end, Herbert sat with us and showed us pictures from his trip to Cambodia, give us life advice like "spend your time loving what you do," talked about his family's battles with cancer, and promised that exploring Antarctica would be "Nicht zu fassen" – unbelievable.

During our landings he wandered off so frequently that our expedition leaders made a joke over who would go collect him next. Every evening saw him standing on ship's bow silently absorbing the horizon. From him, I learned that you can spend your entire life acknowledging pain in the world and still live, as he would say, in "scheu" – awe – of every part. The human connections we make remain a constant part of travel as the world changes. Just like the crown iceberg, the world and its challenges are beautiful. And the world and its challenges can make you feel small. Herbert showed me that we can decide to recognize the good and bad, the stable and shifting, the growth and degradation as part of what gives us human experiences. We can choose adventure in the face of loss.

Speaking with Herbert, confronting instability with the expedition leaders, and learning deep history with my professors showed me a new way to balance the fear and sadness I feel when confronted with changes to the natural world that I love. I used to believe that studying and working to protect the environment should be enough to erase the negative emotions. But now I believe that those emotions cannot and should not be erased. Feeling them does not erase the wonder found in the wilderness, the fascination that comes from understanding the systems that shape our lives, or the comfort we take from each other. The degradation of the global environment is a tragedy and danger we must not ignore. But neither should we ignore the genuine joy of travelling, learning, and just being alive.

Ultimately, Antarctica taught me to listen to the lessons of the natural world and the people who explore it. Love the world we have. Work for the world we want. Hold connections to our natural systems and our fellow explorers equally close in our minds and our hearts. And as the global environment changes, draw strength from knowing that somewhere, unglaublich icebergs exist, stable in beauty and constantly in motion.