Stanley, East Falkland
Our bow rose and fell, gliding over the waves and into the troughs. Occasionally the synchronicity was lost and we caught the crest instead sending a roaring wall of water across the deck and against the windows of the bridge. Pintado petrels surfed in the air currents dashing back and forth in front of the bow as if to dare the waves to wet them. Behind us the tentacles of the sun reached out from behind the clouds like an octopus hidden in a dark crevasse tentatively seeking a solid object to focus its attention on. The illuminating arms brushed over the darkness of the sea turning the foam to diamonds and the deep to obsidian. Albatross delight in a day like today where the wind blows strong and steady. Inside our safe cocoon our movements were no where near as graceful but we too found pleasure watching the action at the interface between air and water.
We really must be sailors now, for terra firma found us stumbling. But only for a moment or two until minds could be instructed not to compensate for a moving deck when standing on something quite solid. Protected from the ocean swells by embracing arms of rock, the town of Stanley stands.
Fragments of ships, once grand and mighty now lie within the harbour. Each is a reminder of brave men and women who set out to face the southern seas but found their journeys ending upon the rocks of these isolated islands. If one squints hard enough the grandeur of the Lady Elizabeth is still evident. If the imagination is not strong enough a tiny museum nestled near the edge of town manages to capture the essence of the history of civilization here at 51 degrees south latitude.
As in countries much, much larger, conflicts came and went but reminders of eleven weeks in 1982 are still in evidence. Fences ring the land with warnings of dangerous mines. Hikers set out with maps not of trails but of regions safe to set a foot upon. Tumbledown Mountain sounds like a pile of eroded stones and that it is. Great angular blocks of eroded quartzite are painted with lichens gray and orange. Fern fronds tickle their edges and green balsam bog grows in mounds like chickenpox. Where soil has covered the whitish rock, sharp-leaved Astelia carpets the path, blooming now in early spring. Tumbledown could also be a name that warns of dangerous cliffs, ones where man or livestock might take a deadly fall. There are steep drops where one can stand and look to the valley below where strange “stone runs” pattern the land, a result of periglacial freezing thousands of years ago. Or Tumbledown Mountain might evoke the memories of a battle waged not so very long ago. We climbed to the highest pinnacle today, past remnants of the past and present and stood beside a cross. At its foot wreaths of poppies lay, a thank-you to those who fought there on Liberation Day (June 14, 1982). The wind blew, crisp and cold. We drank of its freshness, a sweetness mingled with the smell of burning peat. Here was the essence of the Falklands; wind, open spaces and a determination to protect the future of the country.
Our bow rose and fell, gliding over the waves and into the troughs. Occasionally the synchronicity was lost and we caught the crest instead sending a roaring wall of water across the deck and against the windows of the bridge. Pintado petrels surfed in the air currents dashing back and forth in front of the bow as if to dare the waves to wet them. Behind us the tentacles of the sun reached out from behind the clouds like an octopus hidden in a dark crevasse tentatively seeking a solid object to focus its attention on. The illuminating arms brushed over the darkness of the sea turning the foam to diamonds and the deep to obsidian. Albatross delight in a day like today where the wind blows strong and steady. Inside our safe cocoon our movements were no where near as graceful but we too found pleasure watching the action at the interface between air and water.
We really must be sailors now, for terra firma found us stumbling. But only for a moment or two until minds could be instructed not to compensate for a moving deck when standing on something quite solid. Protected from the ocean swells by embracing arms of rock, the town of Stanley stands.
Fragments of ships, once grand and mighty now lie within the harbour. Each is a reminder of brave men and women who set out to face the southern seas but found their journeys ending upon the rocks of these isolated islands. If one squints hard enough the grandeur of the Lady Elizabeth is still evident. If the imagination is not strong enough a tiny museum nestled near the edge of town manages to capture the essence of the history of civilization here at 51 degrees south latitude.
As in countries much, much larger, conflicts came and went but reminders of eleven weeks in 1982 are still in evidence. Fences ring the land with warnings of dangerous mines. Hikers set out with maps not of trails but of regions safe to set a foot upon. Tumbledown Mountain sounds like a pile of eroded stones and that it is. Great angular blocks of eroded quartzite are painted with lichens gray and orange. Fern fronds tickle their edges and green balsam bog grows in mounds like chickenpox. Where soil has covered the whitish rock, sharp-leaved Astelia carpets the path, blooming now in early spring. Tumbledown could also be a name that warns of dangerous cliffs, ones where man or livestock might take a deadly fall. There are steep drops where one can stand and look to the valley below where strange “stone runs” pattern the land, a result of periglacial freezing thousands of years ago. Or Tumbledown Mountain might evoke the memories of a battle waged not so very long ago. We climbed to the highest pinnacle today, past remnants of the past and present and stood beside a cross. At its foot wreaths of poppies lay, a thank-you to those who fought there on Liberation Day (June 14, 1982). The wind blew, crisp and cold. We drank of its freshness, a sweetness mingled with the smell of burning peat. Here was the essence of the Falklands; wind, open spaces and a determination to protect the future of the country.
