Many years ago, I went on a journey to Newfoundland.

The whole trip was a saga, from my decision to go alone, the burnout I was experiencing at the time, my drive up the East Coast, my night on an unheated waterbed on Campobello Island in September, the Moose Warnings I experienced even before embarking on the ferry from Nova Scotia, the poor choices of hotels that I made as a young woman traveling alone, the unique quality of the light on the water that my humble photography could not capture, the lack of vegetarian food, the vegetable gardens neatly tended on the shoulder of the TransCanada Highway miles from human habitation, the music, the people, the fjord, the wonderful ranger at L’Anse Aux Meadows, and the first snow of winter that started to fall as I boarded the ferry back to the mainland.

One night, I stayed in a bed and breakfast run by the wife of the former provincial premiere. At breakfast – blueberry pancakes – her son dropped by. He worked in construction, roofing, I believe. And he had the most incredible eyes.

They struck me as the eyes of someone who spends their time outdoors, staring at the horizon. You see them sometimes in sailors or cowboys, people who don’t spend their time narrowing their vision to a screen. Who grew up scanning the sky, measuring the clouds, telling time by the sun.

It was as if the room was too small for his gaze, that his sight always extended beyond the walls of the house, even as he discussed everyday things with his mother.

Many years after this, I had the opportunity to take a trip I had wanted to take since 3rd grade. It was the right time for me to go and I had the perfect excuse. I started to put plans in motion. My husband couldn’t understand why I wanted to go on this trip, when we could go to Paris or Disneyworld or Hawaii for far less money. Why we couldn’t do this outrageous and preposterous trip a year later. I told him I didn’t know if I’d be alive a year later if I didn’t go.

I was pretty burnt out and not in the mood for procrastination.

So we went. Two week trip, with two days in Buenos Aires, two days on the open ocean, 8 days amongst the islands of the Antarctic peninsula – that little bit that sticks up like a thumb from the clenched fist of the mainland – two days back on the open ocean, another day in BA, then home. 24-hour sunlight.

When you have endless day, the light takes on a different quality throughout the day. One evening, after watching a pod of humpbacks bubble feed on either side of the ship for what felt like hours, we watched the sky turn the water silver, then copper, then gold as the sun rotated around the horizon.

I took a lot of pictures and my husband, the photographer, took some really magnificent photos. (He modestly says that Antarctica is like photographing a beautiful woman: you’re unable to take a bad photo. But, while mine are special because they are what I saw, when I put them next to his, I know this is untrue.) Penguins, icebergs, whales, orca, seals, mountains, volcanoes, the sky, the ocean, albatross, clouds, rain, sun, snow, the light…

When I returned from Antarctica, New York looked completely different. As I stood on the corner of Park and 34th, instead of buses, I saw whales, instead of delivery bikes, I saw seals, instead of pedestrians, I saw penguins. The buildings were mountains, the medians icebergs.

I wonder now what people who passed me saw when they looked at my eyes.

The memories were so strong that they could overcome me in meetings, suddenly transporting me away from conference rooms and cubicles to zodiacs and bubble-feeding.

For years, my husband – now converted – and I have talked about going back. But now it has become a thing that influencers do, one more adventure to garner clicks and likes and advertising revenue. People go on huge 4000-passenger ships, luckily too big to enter the best bays, and unable to disgorge their entire gluttonous passenger-list onto the shore. If you feel compelled to go, go small, and pay the price of admission by crossing the Drake Passage.

The world is a wide place with many beautiful places in it.

…For I have seen the winged Albatross.