She shakes her head. “Everyone thinks when you get married, you have kids. There’s something wrong with you if you don’t want them.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you.”
She gives me a wry smile. “You may think that, but, with all due respect, you’re more of a freak of nature than I am. No partner, no kids, living in Antarctica half the year.”
I can’t help but like her a little bit more. “It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks.”
I hear agitated garble from my radio, and I pause to listen. It’s Glenn, calling us back to the ship.
“Ice conditions are deteriorating,” he snaps. “We need to get out of here. Now.”
I’ve hardly noticed that the wind has picked up, that the snow covering this sheet of ice is blowing past us, revealing slick, fickle ice underneath.
I look up and see that, in the distance, the other naturalists are just beyond the boundary flags and spaced evenly apart. I don’t see any of the other passengers; Glenn must have called everyone back to the ship.
I scramble to my feet and hold out a hand to Kate. “Come on, let’s go,” I say, trying to keep my voice even, patient.
As we begin walking forward, toward the flags, I keep my eyes down, looking for fissures, though I know all too well they won’t be visible until it’s too late. We hear a thundering crack—more vibration than noise—and I grab on to Kate’s arm again as I lower myself to my knees, tugging her with me.
A section of rope lands in front of us. I look up and see Nigel and Amy just ahead.
“The ice is no longer stable,” I say to Kate, leaning forward to retrieve the rope. “Just to be safe, we’ll need to spread out our weight until we get to a better spot.”
I tie the rope around Kate’s middle, high, just under her breasts. “We have to lie flat and crawl, but Nigel will be tugging you in a bit, too. Lie as flat as you can.”
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to cause all this trouble.”
“We need to hurry,” I tell her, then lie down flat in the snow, to show her how it’s done. “Propel yourself forward with your elbows and knees. When Nigel says it’s okay, you can stand. I’ll be right behind you. Go on.”
She flattens her own body on the ice and begins to inch forward, slowly and awkwardly, looking up every so often as if using the naturalists as landmarks.
When she reaches Nigel, he backs himself into safe territory, then helps her to her feet. Amy holds her arm as we walk quickly back to the ship, as if Kate might take off running again.
In the mudroom, Glenn is waiting.
He fixes his eyes on Kate, with an expression that reminds me of the way he’d looked at Keller that day last season, after our disastrous onboard lecture.
“The safety of the passengers on this ship is my first priority,” Glenn says.
“I know—” Kate begins.
“I don’t believe you do, Ms. Archer,” Glenn says. “Your actions today have put yourself and our crew in danger. And I don’t need to remind you of the actions of your husband on Deception Island.”
Kate’s looking downward, and Glenn continues. “Five years ago, a woman who reminds me a lot of you decided she wanted a close-up of a seal sleeping on the fast ice. She walked past the flags, and two crew members went after her. One fell through the ice and nearly drowned. Is this something you want on your conscience?”
Kate raises her head to meet his unsparing gaze. She shakes her head.
“You’ve risked the lives not only of the crew but of every passenger on this vessel,” Glenn tells her. “Ice conditions down here can change in minutes, and our captain needs to be ready to respond. He can’t be waiting on rogue passengers who are running around on the ice.”
“I understand.”
“Good,” Glenn says. “Because if you step out of line once more, I’m turning this ship around and taking you back to Argentina. You can be sure your fellow passengers won’t be pleased with the change in itinerary.”
Kate nods and stares down at her feet. Glenn gives her a withering glare before he walks out, his footsteps echoing back from the passageway.
Kate turns to me, her face flushed deep red, and I can tell she is the sort of person who’s never gotten herself into trouble, until now. I also know that Glenn dramatized his story; the crew member had only sprained a wrist.
“He means business,” I say to Kate. “Be good, okay? You and Richard both.”
She nods again and turns to go. I watch the way she moves—the same way I do these days, protective of the middle of her body. It’s only been a few days since everything’s changed, since I thought I could avoid the messes of being human, of being a woman, by immersing myself in work.
I press the fingers of my right hand into my left, feeling around for my ring, hidden under my glove. I’d never told Keller the story of the bird it had belonged to, and suddenly I’m glad. So much about the penguins—about his own past—is about loss, and maybe it’s better that we don’t think about the precariousness of life, the way a piece of metal can be wrapped around a living being in one moment, removed from a body in the next.
FIFTEEN YEARS BEFORE SHIPWRECK
Punta Tombo, Argentina
It amazes me how quickly my first week in Punta Tombo has turned into a month. It’s already mid-November, springtime in Argentina, and in three weeks I’ll travel home to complete the third year of my Ph.D. program in conservation biology.
In only my second season at Punta Tombo, I feel like a regular as I continue laying down stakes and surveying penguins at the largest Magellanic colony in the world. This time, I’ve also graduated from the trailer next to the researchers’ house to a bunk inside with five other graduate students. Things are otherwise the same—the long journey, the once-a-week showers, the meals of instant soup. While I enjoy being among fellow researchers—late-night talks over glasses of Malbec, shared discoveries in this brand-new world—I also miss the trailer, with the rattle of never-ending wind and the brays of the resident penguin underneath, still waiting for his mate to show up.
Last season, my second year of graduate school and my first visit here, was the first time I’d ever seen a penguin. The pingüino, as the locals call him, was on the dirt road near the researchers’ building. By then I’d read a lot about the seventeen species of penguins, but nothing compared to seeing the little black-and-white body crossing the road a few yards away. I could see his Magellanic characteristics—black with a white belly, a band of white that starts above each eye and goes all the way around the head, meeting under the chin. Another band of black surrounding the belly in a U shape. A black bill and a bit of pink skin around the eyes. He walked past in the dusk, with a penguin’s usual sense of purpose—his head held high and his flippers out—and he paid little attention to us, a carful of jet-lagged scientists, as he disappeared from the road into the drab landscape, amid the tawny dirt and the bushes of myriad shades of green.
Most of the penguins here are accustomed to people and commotion. The land on which this colony resides had been donated by a local family to the province of Chubut for preservation—but also for tourism. In addition to the family’s estancia—their private ranch—and the researchers’ quarters, the penguins live amid a tourist center with a shop and restaurant, as well as public bathrooms and a parking lot.
The researchers’ house comes alive shortly after dawn—coffee brewing, doors opening and closing, cereal spoons clinking against the sides of bowls. I wear tan cargo pants and three layers of brown and green shirts; the government requires us to blend in with the colors of the land. I also strap on kneepads because we spend much of our time kneeling, peering into bushes and burrows as we count the birds. I tuck a water bottle and granola bar into my day pack, and I head out with Christina, the postdoc I’m teamed up with. We trek among the penguins, sheep, guanacos, and European hares, the
ir shadows long in the early-morning light.
I’m carrying the gancho—a long piece of rebar with a hook at the end—which we guide gently under the penguins’ breasts, lifting them slightly off the ground, peeking beneath to see if they’re incubating eggs. When we find an active nest with a banded bird, we use the hook to draw him or her out of the nest.
When I discover a banded female in a burrow, I wish we could leave her alone. The penguin is huddled in the nest with her partner, and when they see me peering in, they tilt their heads first one way and then the other, almost all the way around, back and forth in a constant, anxious motion. I lean in far enough to read the numbers on the band, then call out the digits to Christina, who checks the log. As it turns out, it’s been five years since we’ve seen this penguin, so we’ll need to check her out. I let Christina draw her from the nest with the gancho, then I slide the straps of the handheld scale around the bird and hold the scale up and away from my body. Christina jots down the bird’s weight, four kilos, in our notebook, then reaches over and takes the scale from my hands. “I’ll lower her down,” she says, “if you can hold her?”
I hold the penguin firmly by her neck, gripping her between my knees. With my fingerless gloves I can feel her soft, dense feathers, and I cover her eyes with my half-gloved hand to soothe her as Christina measures the bill’s length and width and then the feet, reading aloud the numbers on the caliper as she writes them in her notebook. When she’s done, I turn the penguin toward the nest and let her go; she scrambles back into her burrow, and I breathe a quiet sigh of relief.
We continue working the colony under a cloud-studded, teal-blue sky, among the dust and scrubby bushes—the lycium and uña de gato, the jume and molle, and the quilembai. We pass a penguin pair napping just outside their nest, lying together belly down, the female’s bill resting on her mate’s back. A mile or so farther on, we see a dead penguin, a male, lying amid small pebbles and short, bright green grass just a few feet from his nest, a burrow under a quilembai bush.
I look over toward the burrow. The penguin’s mate is sitting at the opening of the nest, her eyes on her mate’s body. I don’t see any eggs, so they’d just coupled up. Eventually she’ll have to leave, returning next season to try again. Magellanics are remarkably loyal to their nest sites—even if a nest is compromised, a bird won’t abandon it. We’ve seen nests trampled by tourists; the penguins rebuild. We’ve seen burrows collapse after heavy rains; the penguins dig themselves out. We’ve seen birds scurry toward their nests as tourists crowd around them to take photographs; we’ve seen them try to cross the road to their nests as cars fly past. Sometimes they make it; sometimes they don’t.
And this is what Christina and I encounter when we make our way back to the research and tourist center—a penguin lying in the road, a tour bus just ahead, its driver talking animatedly in Spanish. My Spanish is limited, but it’s clear what happened: The penguin was trying to return to her nest, and she got hit. I kneel down next to the bird. I notice the tag on her left wing, and I pull a small pair of pliers from my cargo pants and pry it off. Later, when I look her up, I’ll learn that she’s fifteen years old, that we’ve been following her for a decade, that she’s raised nine generations of chicks on our watch. I’ll make the last recording about this bird in our field notes; I’ll write her death certificate.
I look around until I find what I think must be her nest—inside is a single male, lying on two eggs. They may hatch if he doesn’t abandon them, but even if they do, the chicks won’t survive.
After dinner that night, I head out for a walk. The sun is setting, the evening sky turning violet. A thin, watery stripe of blue brushes the landscape where sky meets water, and the low, rolling hills are bathed in lavender light. I head up a slope from which I can see the ocean, and the brays of the penguins shatter the silence.
In the distance I see the lights of a fishing boat, a boat that no doubt will dump oil-laced ballast and catch penguins in its nets. The colony here has declined nearly 20 percent in the last decade, and we’re killing them in big ways and small—by the thousands and one by one—their predators no longer fellow creatures or acts of nature but those at the helms of boats and buses.
Back at the station, I slip into the supply room and find a tent. Gathering my sleeping bag under one arm and using my flashlight to avoid stepping too close to the penguin burrows, I venture past the lights of the house, over a small hill, and down into a hollow, walking until everything ceases to exist but me and the penguins. I fall asleep with the wind shaking the tent, and I wake to the serenade of penguins reuniting nearby—sounds of love and hope and optimism, spoken in a language that science will never be able to decipher, yet one I feel as though I can understand.
ONCE EVERY FEW weeks, a small group makes the two-hour journey to Trelew for supplies, and my turn comes up for the next run. As we traverse the dirt road, I look out the window and think of what I’ve decided—how, by giving up on my Ph.D., I’m leaving the birds with one fewer scientist to help save them.
Yet I can’t ignore the nagging feeling that geographically I’ve only gotten halfway to where I really want to be. And I know that I can be easily replaced, that I can find work elsewhere, that penguins everywhere need saving.
Months earlier, back home in Seattle, I’d heard about an organization called the Antarctic Penguins Project; only a few years old, it had just gotten some serious funding, and its mission had piqued my interest—the organization collaborates with naturalists from all over the world, with all different backgrounds. Their researchers don’t all have doctorates, aren’t all affiliated with universities. It seemed like a place that might be a good fit for the rogue scientist I was on the verge of becoming.
Once in town, I arrange to meet the group later, then duck into a farmacia to buy a few things and find a phone. I use my credit card to place a call to the States. When a harried female voice barks out, “Antarctic Penguins Project,” I introduce myself.
IT’S MY LAST week at Tombo, and as eager as I am to make my way down to the Antarctic, I’m finding it hard to say good-bye to these birds, who have taught me so much.
The day before I leave for Trelew to begin the journey back, I walk to the tip of the peninsula, out past the research station and tourist center, over sand dunes studded with tufts of pampas grass. I stop at the spot where the point extends into the sea, a bridge of lava and tide pools, light-green water breaking against black rock, penguins floating in whitewash and coming ashore on a curve of black sand.
As I watch where penguins leap from the surf, I think of the bag we have back at the research station—a canvas sack filled with penguin tags sent to us by fishing boats—the tags of all the penguins that died in their nets, or birds they found dead in the water or on shore. I touch the tag in my pocket, the one I took off the bird who was killed on the road, one of so many.
Finally I turn away from the water, from the waves rattling with yet-undiscovered penguin tags, and head toward the station, resisting the urge to look back.
HOURS BEFORE SHIPWRECK
North of the Antarctic Circle
(66°33'S)
Brash, pack, slush, rotten, black, pancake, frazil, grease, fast—there are so many words for the different types of ice conditions in Antarctica, so many ways for a ship to find herself in trouble. And now, as the Cormorant continues north through loose brash, I wonder about the conditions farther south, where the Australis is. At the first sign of stormy weather, Glenn had gotten us out of there, just as the Australis had been venturing in.
It would be less dangerous if the sea farther south were simply impenetrable—but I know that if it looks navigable, a pressured captain trying to please an overzealous cruise director might take a chance. The Australis can pass through the harmless frazil and grease ice—the beginnings of the freezing process—and she can sift her way through the pancake ice: the round, flat formations that float close to
gether in the early stage of creating compact sea ice. Yet when the salt begins to seep from the ice into the ocean below, when the wind shoves the pack together, when the hummocks and ridges grow taller and taller, the ice becomes more and more difficult to maneuver. As the ice solidifies and sticks together, the terrain becomes more like ground than like sea, and eventually it becomes impossible to turn back.
Our passengers, thanks to our hasty retreat from the sea ice after the landing, are both fascinated and worried—and full of questions and misperceptions at happy hour in the lounge. One passenger refers to the Cormorant as an icebreaker, and I correct him.
“A true icebreaker not only has to have a strengthened hull,” I say, “but also has to have the right shape and enough power to drive the bow up onto the ice. What breaks the ice isn’t just the hull but the weight of the boat.”
“So why don’t we use an icebreaker?” the passenger says.
“They’re very expensive,” I say. “And they don’t usually have stabilizers, like we do, so you can imagine how much more seasick you’d be. We’d never take passengers into ice conditions thick enough to require an icebreaker anyway.”
I glance at my watch. It’s almost time for dinner, so I excuse myself and steal my way to the satellite phone in the business center. When I’m connected to Keller’s quarters, I offer up a silent plea for him to be there.
I hear his voice and nearly drop the phone with relief. “Keller, it’s me.” Before he can say anything else, I blurt out, “There’s something I need to tell you. I didn’t have time on Deception Island.”
“I know,” he says. “I didn’t mean to pressure you with that ring. I know marriage wasn’t ever in your plan, and I—”
“It’s not that,” I say, talking quickly, aware, as ever, that we never have enough time. “I really didn’t want to tell you this on the phone.” I take a breath and stutter it out. “I’m—I’m pregnant.”
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