July, 1973.  The Hellespont is the famous strait separating Europe from Asia, where the Black Sea after flowing through the Bosphorus at Istanbul and a widening called Marmara empties into the Aegean Sea of the Mediterranean.  One of the great stories of Greek Mythology is Leander swimming the Hellespont to tryst with Hero, the woman he loved but was forbidden to see.

Thus he swam at night, and she lit a torch for him to swim to.  One night a storm blew out the torch and the strong currents swept Leander onto the rocks to drown. So I first swam the Hellespont at night in 1960 and almost drowned myself (LIFE Magazine, Dec. 12, 1960, pp 91-94).

This was the second time, swimming from Leander’s village site of Abydos on the Asia side to Sestos, Hero’s village site on Europe’s.  Here I am having reached the Sestos shore.

The Hellespont is where the Trojan War was fought, where the Persians crossed to lose against the Greeks at Marathon and Salamis, where Alexander crossed to conquer the Persian Empire.  Lord Byron swam the Hellespont in 1803 to make all the legends and history a part of his life.  I was determined to do the same, twice to make sure. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #100 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Our last Glimpse (#98) was the back panel of the Painted Monastery of Voronet. Here you see a side panel fresco of Adam and Eve tempted by the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

Startlingly, however, the couple is not eating an apple at the serpent’s behest but a hallucinogenic Amanita muscaria mushroom – recognizable as the classic Disney cartoon mushroom with the red cap and white spots. Sounds hard to believe but there it is, 532 years old.  It’s the center panel of a triptych, the left panel has Adam and Eve each grasping an Amanita stalk, the right panel knowing they are naked covering themselves with fig leaves.

In all three panels, the Garden of Eden is an Amanita garden.  This is devotional art by deeply devout Christians over 500 years ago.  What’s going on?   Amanita muscaria is commonly found in the Carpathian forests to this day.  Did the Voronet painters engage in Amanita ceremonies giving them visions they used to paint their churches?  Did those visions make them decide it was Amanita and not an apple that Eve ate?

From time immemorial, people have used hallucinogenic plants to commune with the spirit world.  Researchers have shown that Soma, the god instantiated on earth in the earliest Hindu texts, is Amanita muscaria.  And they’ve made another connection.  Google Amanita muscaria + Santa Claus to find out. Better be sitting down. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #99 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The Painted Monastery of Voronet was built by Romania’s national hero Stefan the Great in 1488.  A UN World Heritage Site, Voronet lies in a remote Carpathian mountain valley in the northeast corner of Romania.  The entire church is covered in brilliantly painted scenes of Christian reverence.

The frescoes, with the famous “Voronet blue” made of crushed lapis lazuli, have withstood over 500 winters of wind, snow, and rain.  The extraordinary back panel of the Last Judgment is renowned as the East’s Sistine Chapel (as in Eastern or Orthodox Christianity).  It’s one of Romania’s many wonders. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #98 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The small black mountain in front of you is a volcano called Tavurvur on the island of New Britain in Papua New Guinea. In 1994, Tavurvur erupted, covering New Britain’s beautiful capital Rabaul in ash.  The entire area is volcanic, including the hot springs where I’m standing to take this picture.  Tavurvur is very much alive and smoking today – starkly beautiful and dangerous.

History can be like this – beautiful and peaceful, then without warning it explodes in violent destruction.  The lesson then is how to overcome, rebuild, and avert its repetition.

It’s an obvious lesson to learn right now, with the destruction of our economy by the Chinese Communists unleashing their virus, and the current attempted theft of the presidency and our entire electoral system by the Democrats.  We must overcome these twin evils, and we must make extremely sure that we never allow such travesties to threaten our country ever again.

You can climb to the rocky rim of Tavurvur to stare down into its smoking caldera.  There’s fabulous scuba-diving along the coral reefs offshore of Rabaul, and upon sunken Japanese battleships from World War II.  It’s a worthwhile experience to come here as you learn the Lesson of Rabaul. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #97 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The Antarctic island of South Georgia is home to a million King penguins, plus countless fur seals, gigantic elephant seals, staggering numbers of seabirds such as albatrosses, amidst a backdrop of towering mountains with massive glaciers spilling off them.

Nothing can prepare you for the incomprehensible size of the penguin rookeries here, densely packed as far as the eye can see (all those white dots on the hills behind are penguins).  Nor for the size of bull elephant seals weighing up to 8,000 pounds, especially when they rise up and crash their chests against each other in mating challenges emitting deafening bellows.  Nor being surrounded by a thousand fur seals unafraid of you.  The density of wildlife combined with the magnificent beauty of the island is completely overwhelming.

Here also is the abandoned whaling station of Grytviken where the heroic explorer Ernest Shackleton is buried.  You can only get here by expedition cruise ship.  South Georgia is one of the great experiences on our planet. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #96 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

April, 2003.  On my 21^st expedition to 90 North, the geographic North Pole, I took my son Jackson. He was nine, but handled it like a trooper. And no wonder – it was his third time!  The first was when he was just six, following his brother Brandon whom I had taken to the Pole back in 1990.

We landed our ski-equipped Twin Otter on the sea ice – and as it’s featureless with the ice slowly moving on the Arctic Ocean surface, nothing stays there for long.  So if you want a physical candy-stripe North Pole, you have to bring your own!  It is so indescribable to actually be on the very top of our planet that it has to be experienced to be understood.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #95 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

This is my wife Rebel relaxing with a native of Antarctica while on a visit to the Palmer Science Station there.  Getting up close and personal with Antarctic wildlife is so easy as they have no fear of us at all, be they seals, elephant seals, or penguins.

Better not get too close to male elephant seals in domination combat, however, as they can weigh up to 7,000 pounds.  And steer clear of full grown leopard seals, which are apex predators weighing over 1,000 pounds.  No worries, though, for Rebel with this young fellow.  Experiencing Antarctica is always a memorable adventure. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #94 photo ©Jack Wheeler)