There’s a sound to Antarctica, even when it seems like there shouldn’t be.
Before I went, I imagined the continent as a place of pure silence—nothing but wind and white. And there is silence, but it’s layered. Antarctica doesn’t give up its sounds easily. You have to slow down and let your ears adjust the way your eyes do when stepping into the dark. Only then do you begin to notice the subtle music of the Seventh Continent.
One of my favorite things we did—something that stuck with me more than anything else—was simply… being still. Taking a moment of silence. It wasn’t part of the itinerary. No one handed us a brochure about “mindful listening in Antarctica.” It just sort of happened.
The first time, we were standing at Neko Harbour, surrounded by jagged peaks, glaciers, and an endless stretch of snow. Someone suggested we take two minutes to be completely quiet—to just listen. So we did.
Two minutes was not enough.
We did it again later, this time for three minutes. Then again after that. Each time, we tried to be more intentional. To shut off our cameras, stop shifting around in the snow, and just be there.
But silence in a group is hard. Even when people mean well, you’ll still hear the occasional click of a camera shutter or the soft crunch crunch crunch of boots shifting in place. At one point, a Zodiac zipped past in the distance, engine humming like a lawnmower through the otherwise quiet bay. It sounded so out of place, like city noise interrupting a dream.
Still, even with those interruptions, something shifted during those pauses. Once the human noise faded—or at least blended into the background—we could finally hear Antarctica.
Penguins called out in their odd, honking chatter. Some waddled past us, completely unimpressed with our stillness. In the distance, we heard a deep, echoing crack, followed by a rumble—the unmistakable sound of a glacier calving. It felt both distant and close, like thunder rolling across a frozen sky. Sometimes, you’d hear nothing at all… but even that had weight to it.
But the most powerful moment came later, out on the water.
We were in a Zodiac, just ten of us, floating far from the shore. Our guide cut the engine, and suddenly, everything stilled. The boat rocked gently, the air was icy on our cheeks, and we took another moment. No one said a word. A collective agreement to be silent, to hold space.
We didn’t time it. Maybe two minutes passed. Maybe five. No one wanted to break the spell.
In that silence, I heard things I hadn’t noticed before—the gentle lap of water against the rubber of the Zodiac, the quiet plink of melting ice dropping into the sea, the rustle of a seabird’s wings as it flew overhead. Every now and then, a penguin would chirp from a nearby island, and it would quietly echo across the water, making the whole place feel bigger and emptier all at once.
And then there were moments where there was nothing. No sound at all.
I don’t mean quiet—I mean nothing. No voices, no engines, no wind, no wildlife. Just… stillness. And in that moment, you feel like you’ve left the world. Like you’re standing on the edge of something sacred and ancient and unbothered by human existence.
People always ask me what Antarctica looked like. They want to know about the icebergs, the wildlife, the blue of the glaciers. But what I remember most vividly is what it sounded like.
Antarctica isn’t silent. It’s just quiet in a way that asks you to match it. It’s not going to shout for your attention—you have to meet it halfway. You have to stop moving, stop talking, and just listen.
I went to the end of the Earth and found the kind of silence that fills you up instead of emptying you out. The kind that stays with you long after the trip ends. Even now, when things get loud—inside or out—I find myself closing my eyes and drifting back to that Zodiac, floating in a sea of silence, surrounded by ice and breath and time.
That’s the sound of Antarctica.
What an awesome experience 😊