“What strange fate that we should suffer such fear and doubt over such a small thing, such a little thing.”
Boromir, The Fellowship of the Ring, JRR Tolkien
I imagine that when fat kids go to one of those American concentration camps, by the end of their summer, having shared their secret stash of double-choc-peanut butter-cookie dough-cake-burgers, with cheese. And bacon. Once they've been sharing them with one another, they feel quite glum when they have to go back to the real world.
In a comfortable bubble with like-minded, like-bodied people, they've hibernated away from the awfulness of their blubbery real lives. Though they may have changed little physically, inside something is different – perhaps, for the first time, they know what it's like to be truly happy.
And so saying goodbye to it all must feel like the onset of some terrible tragedy.
And so saying goodbye to it all must feel like the onset of some terrible tragedy.
Who knows what fat kids really think (other than: “SCRAN! I WANT MORE SCRAN!”), but the above applies to most right-minded folk as they wake up for their final day in Antarctica. It feels somewhere between being caught doing something illegal and knowing you have to face the consequences, and the grinding certainty of an imminent break-up.
And no one – not a soul – likes it.
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
Anyway, Whaler's Bay - the part of the island that in which we dock - is ugly as hell, but pretty excellent for photographs and, in an odd way, sums up our moods quite accurately. We settle down to trudge around, weaving past the odd chin-strap penguin, snapping remnants of this and that, thoroughly depressed with the world.
By now, the infuriating, untethered kids have tested everyone's patience to the maximum. Their frolicking in the snow brings no joy and I surely speak for every soul on the boat by saying we wish they would break something – an arm, a leg maybe – and go away.
Instead, people walk away from them, towards the end of the beach. As always seems to be the case, Wee Mo and I hang around a bit longer to take pictures, though unusually we're saying little, unexcited, functional.
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
But then I look along the beach to where the others are walking. They are slowly scaling Neptune's Bellows, the gates to the island, but up beyond them, higher than anyone has climbed, I see something glinting. Something small, something precious and something seemingly unnoticed by anyone else.
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
I gather up the husk of Wee Mo and, although she can't yet see this shimmering thing, we start heading towards the slopes. Past bleached whale bones and wrecked ships and up through the black sand. Up we climb, up and up, past the others, to a big rock on the edge of this huge volcano.
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
And still Wee Mo sees nothing. Instead she settles down to take a picture, while I go to the glinting thing.
I move the black sand with my foot and see that it is a ring.
I move the black sand with my foot and see that it is a ring.
There seems only one thing to do – I pick it up, remove my hat, my shades and my gloves and move back towards her. I take a deep breath, move again... And nearly shit myself when she gets up to line up a picture of some lichen a couple of yards away.
I follow, again steady myself, drop to one knee, place the shiny thing in front of the lens and open my mouth.
A question comes out.
She says “Yes.”
We cry, and when we descend, back into the belly of the volcano, we are engaged.
A question comes out.
She says “Yes.”
We cry, and when we descend, back into the belly of the volcano, we are engaged.
The ring almost fits, too.
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
Our first date was in Rome; we spent my birthday camping in Oman; we spent Wee Mo's trekking through Petra in Jordan; we have visited five continents together and 20 countries. We've swum with great white sharks; we've tracked tigers through jungle; we've been taught how to cook in Italy, South Africa, Thailand and Cambodia; we've seen Everest; we've learned ancient Sri Lankan martial arts; we've eaten at some of the world's best restaurants in Singapore; we've eaten boiled mystery veg and sticky rice in Laos; we shat away a year of our lives in an over-priced apartment with no natural daylight, working for utter bastards in Dubai; and now we're spending another year making up for it by seeing as much of the world as our budgets and bodies will allow. We did it in less than two years (alarmingly we also did the majority of it for free) and we've done it all together, so something about getting engaged on the rim of a volcano in Antarctica seems fairly, well, natural.
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| Photo: Wee Mo |
To wipe the smile off my face, I decide to join a few other brave/stupid souls by having a celebratory dip in the sea, which hasn't been warmed in the slightest. Wee Mo abstains, instead giving her swimwear to Cristina, a female member of crew who's just joined the boat and must go through this as an initiation. If I wasn't so blinded by love, I'd be inclined to suggest that perhaps this was done out of cowardice rather than charity.
But I am, so I won't.
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| Not me. |