It's also snowing failrly heavily right now. The wind seems pretty strong and the snow is flying by as near to horizontally as it can get.
Our lecture schedule for the day is pretty light (ony two), so I should have some time to relax and take it easy. If we're lucky, we may see Ross Island by bed time.
We were told by Lars-Eric that we would be reaching McMurdo Sound tomorrow morning around 8:00am. He also said that we'd be getting into viewing range of the Ross Ice Shelf by about 2am, and he recommended staying up to watch for it. He said we'd be in sight of Mt. Terror and Mt. Erebus by about 4 or 5am. Grandma and I are considering sleeping in our clothes tonight and standing guard, taking some naps this afternoon and evening to get ready for it. It will certainly be one of the more exciting events of this long cruise to the Ross Sea.
I spent an hour or so today sitting in the Charleston Club watching the sea. The waves are higher now than they were this morning, probably back up to the 7-10 foot range that we had during part of the Antarctic Peninsula. It's a wild sea, with dark, frigid water and pure white spray, rolling and swelling like something alive, and uncontrollable. My thoughts were centered around the nature of time asnd events, using the sea as a metaphor, like so many authors that I've read have done. Some philoophies hold that events are ordered and predictable without the interference of humanity or other sentient life. That sentient life somehow transcends the natural order and creates a chaos that sends ripples throughout the world, whether we want to or not. Other philosophies hold that the world is by nature chaotic, and that sentient beings create order from the chaos, but grasping the probabilities and forcing a singularity to form, which creates the events as they occur, distilling them from all of the possibilities.
Watching the sea, I feel the latter philosophy much more keenly. The sea is by nature wild and unpredictable, moving out of control of any orderly force and seemingly independent of anything else. Our ship cuts through that chaos, and creates a brief order, cutting through the waves and forming a gap that we live in. When we pass, we leave behind a noticable wake: the result of the event of our passing.
Some people may argue that the best way to live one's life is to observe the chaos, to try to seek a path through it that is optimal for their existance, and to follow that path. Go with the flow, and don't battle the sea. Use our senses and our perceptions to mold ourselves to the best form to fit the existing situation, and flow with the waves. Minimize the wake by minimizing the force we use to pass through the waves.
Others argue that the way to go is to choose a path, and follow it regardless of the intervening chaos. Mold the environment to fit our idea of what is right, and challenge the chaos with force. A huge wake is the sign of a passing force: an indicator of existance. It is necessary to create a change in order to prove existance.
By cutting through the chaos of the sea and creating a more ordered wake, we limit the possibilities to a single reality: the one that we choose out of all of the potentials. A perceptive and effective person is one who can view the potentials and choose the ones that give rise to the order of choice.
But if we follow that metaphor, we see that the order created in the form of the ship's wake is temporary transcient. It quickly reverts back to the chaos of the sea, and after a time, there is no longer any sign of the ship's passing. How can we prove our existance over the stretch of time?
One option would be to claim futility: that no matter what we do, we are motes, incapable of making any lasting impression on the world around us. That we must find a way to be satisfied with this fact.
Another possibility would be to try to create a permanent obstacle in the flow of time; to build a mountain that stands rooted at the bottom of the sea and protrudes upward to the surface, where it remains permanently changing the chaos and creating a point of solidity on the surface of the water.
But, again following the metaphor, even a mountain will be eroded in time by the sea, which is more permanent because of its fluidity. Unless it is constantly replenished by volcanic building, or pushed up from below by the pressure of colliding plates (representing supernatural forces to my mind, since no human could possibly be capable of such feats forever), it will ultimately crumble and be lost again. No physical monument could possibly survive.
So, what is left? The only way to create a change in the sea that lasts forever, is to become a part of the sea: to transform oneself into water and waves and foam and spray and even wind. Become a part of the system, not opposed to it, but integral to it. This is the way to achieve immortality. We can't preserve ourselves permanently in the same form we now have. But if we allow ourselves to change, to become something else, we can do it. And by adding something of ourselves to the water, we leave a chemical change that will last forever, subtle, but there nonetheless. If we can create a change in the composition of the substance of the water, like adding a new property or a different chemical, that change will last forever.
The analogy that I see in life is doing something that changes the way people live. Or, even more powerfully, changing the way nature operates. Humanity in general has already done this to some extent, though whether the changes are permanent or not is a matter of debate, and it's not certain which is preferable. I feel that changing life is sufficient for my existence, since I'm not so sure that I care about any meaning to my life if humanity and its descendents disappear.
This probably seems pretty trite as I write it, but I can assure you that hundreds of examples of each of these alternatives and analogies, taken from books and movies and stories and my own personal experiences, pass through my mind while watching the water. I could write forever on this one topic, but that wouldn't really be meaningful to me. Suffice it to say that watching the water outside gives one a profound sense of the seriousness of life, and the impermanence of it as well. It is almost hypnotic, allowing us to think about those questions that we all have, and wander in our thoughts without resistance.
Another item of interest that gets the mind going is the presense of the petrels, winging along beside the ship, seemingly racing with it or accompanying it on its passage. These birds, mostly black with white slashes along the tops of their wings and spackled white on the fringes, don't bother to flap their wings for the most part. They leave them extended, and simply wing their way along, only a couple of feet above the right water. They fly at breakneck speed along the wave valleys, and smoothly rise with the waves avoiding the tops just barely, then swooping back inot the next valley. It amazes me that they have such control over their flight that they can match the waves so closely without crashing into the water or slowing down. They are beautiful examples of the minimalist approach to life mentioned early on above. They seem a part of the water and the wind, not separate from it at all. I almost expect to see one flow into water and disappear into a wave, then reform on the other side, blurring in and out of solidity like the sea spray.
The captain's report says that we are currently 74S 177W. We're 358 nautical miles from McMurdo, which we should reach around 10am tomorrow. The sea temperature is currently 32F, with the air temperature varying from 28 to 34F. The waves are 6-8 feet.