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HALFWAY
TO NOWHERE
The
Story of Expedition: North America
by
Robert
Lewis Knecht
PROLOGUE
If you were to ask me today what it was like searching for a sunken
whaling ship, in an 18-foot Searay, in the Arctic Ocean, I might tell you
that it was like chasing a ghost.
But that was only part of the experience.
It was my first expedition. I
had spent the last nine years on the island of Key Largo, about an
hours’ drive south of Miami. And
now I was medical officer and photojournalist on the O.R.C.A. (Ocean
Research Center of the Arctic) Project's 1988 expedition.
Our goal was to locate and raise Orca, a majestic, 167-foot three-masted steam whaler that had sunk in September of 1897 after
becoming trapped in Arctic pack ice 60 miles west of Point Barrow, Alaska.
By the third week, I had settled in.
Life in a tent on a remote Arctic beach had become second nature.
And that's when my life began to change in significant ways.
Late one evening the crew and I prepared the Searay to head back to
shore after another fruitless day of searching.
High altitude clouds obscured the setting sun as dusk turned the
seascape to shades of gray. We
began carefully piloting our small craft through the leads, open sections
of water between pieces of pack ice.
This required one person at the helm, and other up on the bow
giving directions. Silently,
imperceptibly, the ice moved. Some
sections were a quarter of a mile in diameter, others, the size of a
compact car. Miniature
landscapes: mesas, mountain ranges, peaks and valleys; austere blue-green
creatures of the pale light. That’s
when the changes began to happen (although it would be 1996 before I would
begin to discover that).
Over my shoulder a plaintive call echoed across the silent,
ice-laden water. It was the
sound of bowhead whales surfacing for air, descendants of the ill-fated
whales Orca had hunted over 100 years ago.
I turned. Far off,
through the leads, they came into view; three of them, their black heads
breaking the surface. A dark
geyser of air preceded submergence as they gracefully worked their way
through the ice. I felt as
though I were an accidental observer looking out across the centuries.
The day's problems and disappointments vanished in the presence of
such magnificence. It was as
if a piece of the past had been torn off and sent drifting into the
present.
Later that night, about 1:30 a.m., I was standing at the edge of
the water sipping a cup of hot chocolate, when the clouds moved aside as
if some unseen hand had opened the curtains on heaven.
At the Top of the World, ice crystals reflected the midnight sun
and danced across the sky like the tendrils of creation; the finger
paintings of the Inuit. There, and then not there, like an otherworldly game of
hide-and-seek. For a moment,
I felt as though I had been lifted up and out of my body and was drifting
through the lights.
The bowhead, then the Aurora Borealis, never had any experiences
brought me so far, so fast. In
an instant I knew that my life would never be the same again.
For a moment, my other life, back in Key Largo, ceased to exist. It was only a distant memory.
That night, on that Arctic beach, I left a part of my soul.
And I knew someday I would return . . . .
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