Day began with a patchwork view of our world and before the day was done our crazy quilt contained snow falling on glaciers, sun on mountain tops and miniscule flowers in bloom. Any moment could stand alone or its many elements overlap to form one scene. Collectively the fragments of the time without a sunset will envelop us as we slumber and dream.
We crossed the circle just after breakfast. Fingers traced our path on the radar screen finding the dotted line that signaled when the milestone had been met. Charcoal skies stretched across the narrow passage ahead where shapes and forms in whites and blues dotted the sea. Arched and fluted, short or tall, monolithic icebergs, tiny bergy-bits and flat-topped pack ice marched by in an endless parade of individuality. Like doves of peace, pure white snow petrels with ebony eyes and beaks flitted from one ice castle to another.
Cradled in the crook of the Arrowsmith Peninsula on the Antarctic continent, tiny Blaiklock Island stands, protected from the winds and waves of broader straits opening to the sea. Rounded granite boulders rest on angular fine-grained slabs, the latter fractured and sharp by millennia of freezing and thaws. Patterns of minerals coalesce into designs within each rock and these in turn randomly organize themselves into figures of their own. And plant life smothers it all! Lichens paint each pebble with orange, white, black or pale green. Carpets of verdant moss host nesting south polar skuas. Here we found ourselves on hands and knees examining the tiny flowers of Colobanthus quitensis, a pearlwort and the seeds of grass (Deschampsia antarctica). The only two flowering plant species found on the entire continent of Antarctica had established themselves at our southernmost landing site, their tiny garden completing the final image of the day.
