Entering the Milford Fiord
We live a life that is a blink of an eye as compared
to the more than 600 million years that passed before our mothers sent us down
the birth canal into the world as we know it.
But we don’t have much cause to think about this fact,
of our temporal insignificance, unless we have a heated argument with someone
who thinks the earth is only 8,000 years old.
Being “Down Under” refreshes the realization of this
geological truth.
It reminds us how we can make a difference while
we’re here as the long train of history teaches that truly small changes over great
expanse of time have a significant impact on sustaining life.
The local Forest Ranger quoted Chief Seattle who
said, “we belong to the earth,” that “we are but one strand within the web [of
life,]” and that “whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.”
Australia was once called New Holland and was joined
with other land masses, New Zealand, and New Caledonia. I surprised a Melbourne traveler, Hank, born
in Holland when I said Australia was called New Holland though it was older
than its original namesake; his parents left New Holland after World War II.
The original land mass, called Gondwana, before
becoming what is now separate, about 80 million years ago, was closer to the
South Pole, encompassing Antarctica, India, Africa and South America, and, over
the millennia, the joined land mass shifted apart.
As I write this, geologists calculate that Australia
is moving northward at the rate of 6 cm. a year. And parts of the original land mass are
submerged and proximately related from beneath the sea.
While the changes are not immediately noticeable,
they are ongoing and inexorable.
We are sailing to New Zealand, the “land of the long
white cloud,” still moving, at 30mm a year northwards.
We cut through the wine dark Tasman sea, traveling some
900 miles east of Australia, a part of the original surface of Gawanda, now below
us, as we cut through the cresting waves.
The smaller bathing pools of formerly quite water on
deck all of a sudden fight their constraining walls with large banging,
splashing crashes of water, prompting delighted screams of “Woooo” and “oh my
God.”
The waves affect the water on our ship, as the
shifting earth below affects the land masses above.
At Christ Church at the North Island of New Zealand
(divided itself into North and South Islands), there was a beautiful church
spire that marked the skyline of this quaint historic town but it was struck
down by an earth quake, at 7.1 on the Richter scale, just a few years past, followed
by another, at 6.1, and still another, at 5.8.
The slow movement of earth’s plates are nevertheless manifest in ways
any lay man can observe and appreciate.
When Captain James Cook first explored the area, in
the 18th century, he was struck by the similarity of the flora and
fauna among these several masses.
No doubt there have been comparative studies like
those that Darwin conducted, in which he found distinguishing differences among
the species, floral and faunal, found on geographically proximate islands, the
Galapagos, off South America.
It’s a modern day tragedy of the ever-shrinking
world that it is suffocating its splendid differences with its impulsive reflex
to homogenize and duplicate the same thing everywhere, building architectural structures,
glass and steel in box like monotony, serving food fast and fat, and providing entertainment
loud and superficial, confounding the senses hungry for difference but confused
because you can hardly tell you’re anywhere else when you travel.
So the challenge is to find what is native, special,
unique, and that has persisted because of respect for and an active effort to
preserve and maintain what was.
There’s this fabulous book, called the Future
Eaters, that speaks of how past incursions of people into this Southern Hemisphere
from Asia and Polynesia to what may be called, Australasia, have consumed
resources and species that are lost for all time that will never be recovered –
faunal turnovers – an inoffensive way to describe extinction.
The aborigines arrived in Australia from Southeast
Asia from 40,000 to 60,000 years ago.
They came on crude craft and empty-handed.
The Moaris (“Mow-rees”) arrived in New Zealand from
Polynesia 800 to 1000 years ago. They
came in fast modern ships, catamarans, and with plants, dogs, rats and more.
What they didn’t despoil, the Europeans who followed
gave them an assist.
It’s hard to find any continent or area of the
planet where we are not now still consuming the future, stealing it from our
progeny and theirs.
But this morning, we watched the first light of the
sun, rising west of the International Date line before the sun rose anywhere
else on the planet, and, looking East, growing at the horizon was the approaching
Fiordland National Park, a fiord carved by a glacier, a part of which still
rests on the crest of the mountain range, in the Milford Sound. It became clear why this land is called “land
of the long white cloud” because the abundant clouds in the morning were so
intertwined with the snow covered peaks, and drifting in the mid distances from
the cliffs, as feathery white tufts, it was easy to see where the name, just
one long white cloud, arose. There waterfalls
the height of the cliffs, and a pine and beech tree canopy, slashes of exposed
rock, and tangled vegetation beneath the canopy. Seals, kayaks, and small ships were in the
waters below our ship. But it was
cold.
For those of you who have traveled by ship, you no
doubt know this fact, that there are parallel ways to experience sailing at sea
to ports of call that you explore with camera and snatches of foreign currency
in hand.
Aboard, you can obsess in a pattern of predatory
retail stalking for objects you really don’t need (another watch, jewelry,
clothing, nick nacks from China), at prices that are not much of a bargain
(think double), all the time giving way to the gluttony of meal and snack
taking at a venue that distributes glorious tasting food at one continuous meal
from 6 AM to 2 AM daily – somewhere on the ship, in fact, wherever you find
yourself.
On the other hand, the media res, you can delight in
sea breezes, historic, sweeping vistas of natural beauty, exercise, rest,
attend concerts and shows, read, write blog/diary entries (like this), and,
yes, eat that really good food if you ration the number of buffet visits and portions – to guard against
the remorse of that weight scale visit on your return home.
Of the last, the omnipresent eating carnival, there
is a temptation and an amusement, in the category of people watching, to be
gazing at those grazing without a brake the endless platters of food and drink
and spirits that fill the corridors of a cruise ship.
Excuse us, gotta go, it’s time to have my cappuccino. (No, not Starbuck’s, not this far west of
Seattle – as best my research has uncovered thus far). Tomorrow we walk the land of New Zealand.
