Kim Brown Seely

The water was blue and the torii gate standing knee deep in it was red. We walked toward it on a sandy path. My sister and I could hear the rustling of the forest to our left and the whispering of the sea to our right. The moment felt ephemeral, yet eternal. Young students in navy-blue sailor uniforms schooled around us, and the scent of pines drifted past, invigorating after the ship’s climate control.

Unlike us, the roads were bendy, with no shoulders,and took their sweet time threading between stone walls and thorn trees. All morning we’d been driving on the left of these narrow, winding roads, as one does in Ireland, muttering (or worse) at occasional oncoming traffic.

Bits of white ice bob around our ship in the dark-blue sea, and every so often an iceberg floats by. It’s 5:30 am aboard National Geographic Resolution, but the sun hasn’t set all night. The vessel, on its inaugural voyage to the Arctic, glides silently up a bright fjord, and I’m up early – too excited to sleep – taking in the beauty while northern fulmars streak past like wingmen.