A Measureless Moment

Upon a hilltop on the island of South Georgia

With apologies to Keats, Chapman and Homer.

By Citizen Correspondent Lee Dickman

Date Posted: 02/25/07

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She spared me only a passing glance as I came over the hill. Nor did she stir when I sat beside her, an arms length between us, our gaze resting on the ocean. The orange and white of our cruise ship struck a sharp contrast with the intense blue. In complete amity and contentment, we sat for an immeasurable time, and, like stout Cortez, stared at the Pacific; the waters, far beneath us, stretched unbroken to curl on the eastern shores of New Zealand, eight thousand miles away.

I, like Keats, became, in the stillness, a watcher of the skies. Birds swooped and circled above us; highest of them all, a lone wandering albatross. Wings outstretched and motionless, he rode the airwaves, as he could, without a wing beat, for five hundred miles at a time. We learned much about this regal bird from Mike Harris, the world-renowned ornithologist, in our lectures aboard the ship. The albatross is the heaviest bird on the wing, and has been traced to spend eighty percent of his time in the air, alighting only to rear a single chick on the land where he was born. Individuals mate for life, and for much of the time range wide in search of food. An intricate system in his stomach separates food that he needs for his own energy from that which he carries to bring back to his mate nesting beside me.

We, unlike stout Cortez, looked at each other in a mild surprise, silent upon a hill in Antarctica.

With apologies to Keats, Chapman and Homer.