IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE

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 18^th 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.