{"id":113,"date":"2007-10-02T23:05:49","date_gmt":"2007-10-02T23:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/archive.capefarewell.com\/voyage5\/2007\/10\/02\/arrival\/"},"modified":"2007-10-05T11:38:30","modified_gmt":"2007-10-05T11:38:30","slug":"arrival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.capefarewell.com\/voyage5\/2007\/10\/arrival\/","title":{"rendered":"Arrival"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[photopress:BJ_welcome_to_greenland_1.jpg,full,pp_image]<\/p>\n<p>Representative quote of the day (which today will lead the post, as it&#8217;s the most welcome quote of the trip):<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Ladies and Gentlemen, we have Greenland.&#8221; &#8211;Barbara, at 6:15am (Norweigan time), to Vicky and Ben, who then behaved a bit silly for that time of night.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve arrived. Greenland, first appearing through the early twilight, rising from the horizon and looking a little too ambiguous (cloudlike, thin, atmospheric, imagined) to get hopes immediately up . (Mental process: &#8220;Could that be? No.too big, too white, must be a cloud.Looks a damn lot like mountains.Should I ask Barbara? Don&#8217;t want to sound dumb. Looks a lot like<br \/>\nland. Can&#8217;t be, no way, mind playing tricks. Big clouds that look just like mountains. That must be it. Yeah, that&#8217;s it. But damn that looks like land. Don&#8217;t be dumb.&#8221; And so on.)<\/p>\n<p>Eight days across the Greenland Sea, sixteen watches up topside, twenty-four meals served at varying angled degrees from the horizontal, a bundle of bad nights&#8217; sleep, plenty a sing-a-long, many a turbulent tummy, and altogether too may slips, falls, and bruises.<\/p>\n<p>And every ache and pain, each sleepless night and every breakfast lost has been completely worth it. At risk of seeming like I&#8217;m mailing it in, I can&#8217;t offer much by way of words about this place. Not yet. There&#8217;s too much: too big, too emotional, too abstract, too pristine, too majestic.<\/p>\n<p>Suffice to say, spirits are lifted, and we lifted many a spirit in celebration (and relief), after a long day of general arctic (land)-induced merriment: circling floating cathedrals of ice recently calved from nearby glaciers; touching down on land for an (at first wobbly) walk up and along a coastal ridge, the elevation giving a bit of perspective to the fjord; some snow fights; and, yes, to top it off, a late night gift of the Northern Lights. All is very, very good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[photopress:BJ_welcome_to_greenland_1.jpg,full,pp_image] Representative quote of the day (which today will lead the post, as it&#8217;s the most welcome quote of the trip): &#8220;Ladies and Gentlemen, we have Greenland.&#8221; &#8211;Barbara, at 6:15am (Norweigan time), to Vicky and Ben, who then behaved a bit silly for that time of night. We&#8217;ve arrived. Greenland, first appearing through the early [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[],"geo":{"latitude":69.8000031,"longitude":-23.25,"description":null},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.capefarewell.com\/voyage5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.capefarewell.com\/voyage5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.capefarewell.com\/voyage5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.capefarewell.com\/voyage5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.capefarewell.com\/voyage5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.capefarewell.com\/voyage5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.capefarewell.com\/voyage5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.capefarewell.com\/voyage5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.capefarewell.com\/voyage5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}