Residing – or rather should I say, to avoid the appearance of contravening USA immigration laws – vacationing as we do for about half the year in Florida, we do not normally confine our conversation to either the Arctic or Antarctic regions of the globe. However the improbable alliance of both Florida and the polar regions recently arose during casual communication with my erstwhile physician.

My erstwhile physician is an inveterate traveler. I never know from one week to the other where I am about to discover him, whether in an airport lounge in Abu Dhabi, on a mountain trail in Switzerland, watching a Tennis Open match in Australia, lounging on a Greek Island, in remote Viet Nam or on an African Safari. He resides – meaning, he lives, as in “Where is your home?” – in Canada but he owns two other places in Florida. Thus it was not entirely unusual that he should have commented, as he did the other day, upon the seeming absence of referrals by me in my blogs to that characteristic element of Florida; namely, the palm tree.

The palm tree is right up there with sunshine, oranges and alligators when it comes to identifying Florida.

In fact, most of Florida’s palm trees have been imported from other places like South America and Asia. For instance, while most people may attribute the coconut palm tree to Florida, this is not part of its original history.

When sunbathing in Buttonwood Bay on Key Largo I routinely admire the palm trees surrounding the pool by which I am prolonged. If we’re fortunate to have a sea breeze the fronds of the palm trees create a portrait-style appearance which instantly bespeaks the subtropical atmosphere. Though I hesitate to contradict the assertion of my erstwhile physician that I have not mentioned palm trees in my blogs, my quick search of references thereto reveals that I have indeed done so on numerous occasions (85 to be exact). In fairness, my allusions have been parenthetic on most occasions, perhaps not easily distinguished among the other verbiage.

Nonetheless – whatever the proper estimation of the crime – the more significant detail for purposes of this narrative is that in the same breath as my erstwhile physician and I were discussing the matter of palm trees, I jokingly referred to his upcoming sojourn to one of the polar regions (which I mistakenly thought was Antarctica rather than the Arctic).  In the process of doing so, I deepened my error and ignorance by laughingly suggesting that among the penguins in Antartica he wasn’t likely to generate much interest in the absence of palm trees either literally or otherwise.

Well, you see what a hole I had dug for myself!  My erstwhile physician immediately corrected me by saying he was scheduled to go to the Arctic Circle not Antarctica. But more significantly (and more discreditably to me) there are no penguins in the Arctic Circle, only in Antarctica and possibly some nearby areas in the Southern Hemisphere. This astonishing intelligence does however have a foundation in rationale.

“Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity.”
– Greek philosopher Democritus

First, penguins apparently originated in the warmer areas of the Southern Hemisphere but later moved for evolutionary purposes further south to Antarctica.  Second – and related to the previous fact – they are an easy target for prey such as abounds in the Arctic Circle (wolves and polar bears for example).

Penguins survive on fish that they catch in the ocean. The problem with the North pole is that its smack dab in the middle of a giant iceberg. There is no water in the north pole for them to hunt because the ice is so thick.

In 1936, a Norwegian polar explorer named Lars Christensen saw the potential for an Arctic penguin population. He plucked nine king penguins from South Georgia’s beaches and sent them north aboard the SS Neptune. They were settled on the Lofoten islands, where they would be safe from foxes and other land predators. Over the next decade, other species’ of penguin, including macaroni penguins, were also introduced. Their existence in the Arctic was short-lived, and the last time they were spotted was in 1949. No one is sure where they went or whether they managed to reproduce, but for a short time, a beautiful island in the Arctic played host to a small population of penguins.

Learning this information has done little to amplify my social instincts with those at the southern pole.  And to be perfectly frank it hasn’t enlarged my interest in traveling to the Arctic Circle.  The last time I was there I slept in a Norwegian Fjord (because we were traveling in the summer and we proposed to wait until the sun went down to book a hotel).  The sun doesn’t go down in the Arctic in the summer!  And interestingly there may be no fjords in the Arctic Circle (because of the prerequisite for water).

In physical geography, a fjord or fiord is a long, narrow inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created by a glacier. Fjords exist on the coasts of Antarctica, British Columbia, Chile, Denmark, Egypt, Germany, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Montenegro, Iceland, Ireland, Kamchatka, the Kerguelen Islands, Labrador, Newfoundland, New Zealand, Norway, Novaya Zemlya, Nunavut, Quebec, the Patagonia region of Argentina and Chile, Russia, South Georgia Island, Tasmania, Scotland and Washington state.Norway’s coastline is estimated to be 29,000 km (18,000 mi) long with its nearly 1,200 fjords, but only 2,500 km (1,600 mi) long excluding the fjords.