Today is sunny and I decided to walk a little down the coast from my sit spot. Last week, I went snorkeling here in the channel. It was too cold to really enjoy it if I’m being honest, but it was cool to see what’s under the water. Kelp forests, urchins, starfish, sponges, crabs. On the beach now, I think of this community, so intertwined living among the kelp. The kelp is called cachiyuyo in Argentina, the same species they have in California and Alaska. The balance of the forest is delicate, too much urchin herbivory and the habitat is gone. For now, it’s healthy and beautiful here. Further down the beach, I reach the cemetery that’s next to the coast. November 1st is All Saints’ Day, and the cemetery is filled with people and fresh flowers, remembering people who recently passed. Community means a lot of things today on the beach. 

In an hour, I am leaving on a boat to spend 10 days in Antarctica. My class had a group discussion recently about the effects of our time here, our goals as environmental students, and our privilege to come to study here and in Antarctica. Most people living in Ushuaia don’t ever get the chance to travel to Antarctica, and we’re going as tourists. It’s pretty ironic that we want to protect somewhere, so we’re going to pollute the area just to see it. My flight to Ushuaia was calculated to be 3.04 metric tons of CO2 on carbonfootprint.com. I don’t think this is something that I can offset, realistically. Flying less and developing green transportation becomes even more important when you think about numbers like this.