The Horizon That Wasn't

The unknown territories of the Arctic and Antarctic have captured the human imagination throughout history, as much as become a scientific measure for encroaching climate change. As the Northern Hemisphere swelters in intense heat, we bring you this month a cooling trio of pieces about perception and the polar lands. First a dispatch from writer Aliaksandr Zherdzeu on visiting the largest iceberg in the world at the time, a giant slab of ice in the South Atlantic ocean that created its own weather, while remaining elusive to the human eye.

An announcement came over the intercom from the bridge. The captain’s voice was even as always – no sense of occasion in it. The message was simple: we would soon be approaching iceberg A23a.

I began to dress – not in a hurry, but methodically. Thermal underwear, trousers, a light jacket that wouldn’t catch the wind. Goggles, balaclava, hood. Every layer deliberate. Over time this had become a ritual.

Once, on the crossing to Svalbard, I went out on deck without eye protection. Ocean wind, a few hours, and my eyes were burned so badly they hurt for a long time after. Not from the cold. The wind. Since then, goggles and hood go on automatically. The body remembers its mistakes better than the mind does.

I took my camera and went up to the top deck in front of the bridge – the best vantage point on the whole ship.

There were already a lot of people up there. Among the familiar faces were those who always arrived first: people who were naturally observant, who felt the need to ask questions. The weather was quiet, overcast. A light chop, almost calm. The horizon – a clean line.

I began scanning the horizon for the iceberg, but couldn’t find what I expected.

Everyone around me was looking for the same thing. We expected to see something defined, rising from the water, bluish, a crystalline shape. Like we see in magazines and documentaries – mountains, castles, enormous towers of ice.

But the horizon was empty.

At some point – I can’t say exactly when – I felt colder. Not because of the wind. There was almost no wind. The temperature had simply changed.

It felt the way it does on a hot day when you open a refrigerator and the cold pours out onto you. Not blowing, pouring.

At first I assumed the sensation was due to my clothing: perhaps I hadn’t dressed warmly enough. I turned back to speak to the people I knew nearby.

Only later did I notice that the horizon had changed. It had lost its sharpness. The sky ahead had turned milky, the clouds dissolved into haze, the boundary between sea and sky had begun to blur. But none of us paid any attention to it.

We were looking directly at the iceberg and didn’t recognise it.

We kept looking for the crystal. We were looking directly at the iceberg and didn’t recognise it.

The change came all at once.