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Currents, canoes and driftwood stitch Pikelot into memory
A dot that has altered fate In the western Pacific, between the better-known names of Micronesia, there is a scrap of coral so small that many maps barely dignify it with a mark. Pikelot lies in the Caroline Islands, part of the Federated States of Micronesia, and belongs to the state of Yap. It is…
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An Antarctic crossroads of exploration and wildlife, Petermann Island endures
Not every Antarctic island announces itself with scale. Some emerge instead as a compact disturbance in a world of ice and water: a low, dark mass off the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, edged by snow, ringed by drifting brash, and made suddenly conspicuous by life. Petermann Island lies in the Wilhelm Archipelago, just…
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Cartographers and seabirds collide on Joinville Island
Few places look so decisively removed from ordinary human scale. Off the northeastern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, beyond the cluttered ice and broken water of the Antarctic Sound, Joinville Island lies in a zone where maps stop feeling abstract and start reading like weather reports. It is the largest island of the Joinville Island…
