My Last Continent (17 page)

ONE DAY BEFORE SHIPWRECK

South of the Antarctic Circle
(66°33
'
S)

I
t's not uncommon in Antarctica to see what does not exist—to see the mountains levitate in the distance, to see the rising towers of a city on the horizon. When the sea is colder than the air, a layer forms that creates a polar mirage. The more layers, the more refracted the light: Mountains are born from the sea; cliffs turn into castles. Such mirages usually last only moments, until the air layers mix, and then they disappear.

These illusions can be dangerous—they often caused explorers to miscalculate distances—or simply embarrassing, leading the explorers to identify land that was not actually there. In the middle of the nineteenth century, Captain Sir James Clark Ross discovered a mountain range he named the Parry Mountains, about twenty-five miles from his position east of Ross Island—but there were, in fact, no mountains there at all; what he'd seen was a reflection of another mountain range, more than three hundred miles away.

Such visions have a name—
fata morgana
—and I feel as though I'm seeing a mirage right now: a large, multilayered building rising from the sea, moving along the horizon. I'm on the foredeck, braced against a biting headwind, and I'm hoping that this is only a trick of the eyes. It's normal to see a fata morgana just before a storm or change in the weather.

But this mirage doesn't waver or blur; it doesn't disappear. Heart thudding, I raise my binoculars to confirm what is even more bizarre than a fata morgana, and all too real—the
Australis,
about half a nautical mile away, headed in our direction. Headed south.

I run up to the bridge. Glenn is standing next to Captain Wylander, who's speaking into the radio.

“What the hell is that ship doing down here?” I ask.

“That's what we're trying to figure out.”

The captain hands the radio to Glenn, who barks a warning to the ship. “Lack of advance notification is in violation of
IAATO
protocol.”

“They're making a run for the Gullet, aren't they?”

“They won't make it that far.”

I leave the bridge and return to the deck, raising my binoculars, as if I might see Keller on board. I look for an orange crew jacket, but it's freezing cold, and hardly anyone's outside—only a scattering of passengers among the
Australis
's five decks, with no idea what their captain is risking. They are already fading in the mist and the sleet that is beginning to slicken the deck under my boots.

I peer through the fog at the stiffening ice. Just yesterday Glenn had been planning our own run for the Gullet, the scenic but narrow strip of water that cuts between Adelaide
Island and the continent. Few tourist vessels ever make it that far, and given the changing weather and the amount of ice forming, Glenn had decided to turn around. Unlike whoever's at the helm of the
Australis,
Glenn is far too careful to attempt anything tricky unless conditions are just right. And so we are headed north again as the
Australis
is heading south.

The sea is incredibly icy even here, with bergy bits clanging against the hull. Passengers always freak out when they hear the metallic thud of ice—I'll spend most of my day reassuring skittish passengers that the
Cormorant
has a reinforced hull, that it'll take a lot more than a few growlers to sink it. If only I could say the same about the
Australis
,
which is not built to navigate the icy conditions she's headed into.

In the hundred years since the
Titanic
sank, ship design and construction have improved drastically; it's not a stretch to assure passengers that today's cruises are safe. Yet the one thing that hasn't changed is human nature—ego and folly and hubris and whatever outcomes these may bring—and every ship is only as safe as her captain and crew and the choices they make.

I listen to the smaller pieces of slushy ice rub against the steel like a wire brush; the familiar, uneven rhythm normally relaxes me. I lean on the railing, eyes still on the
Australis
. I'd like to think I'd have known the ship was this far south, that I'd have felt Keller's proximity somehow. More than ever, I need to talk to him. But as I'm heading up to the communications room, Glenn radios.

“We're doing an ice landing,” he tells me. “Be ready to scout in five.”

I LOWER THE
gangway onto a wide plain of fast ice. The captain has nudged the
Cormorant
into a frozen expanse of ocean, and, despite the cloudy afternoon, the ice burns with white light. Another unforgettable experience for the tourists: a chance to walk on water.

Several inches of fresh powder cover the ice, and Thom, Nigel, and I walk out onto the frozen sea, testing its stability with ski poles, posting flags to mark boundaries the tourists won't be allowed to walk beyond. Within half an hour, we are escorting passengers directly from the boat onto the ice.

Ice landings are my favorite types of excursions—no Zodiacs, no penguins, just three feet of solid ice that, because they're walking on the ocean, the passengers celebrate. A man flops down to make a snow angel. Snowball fights erupt.

I scan the area, and when I glimpse a figure about a hundred yards away, past one of the boundary flags, I think I'm seeing things again. Who would venture past what we've determined to be safe?

I know the answer even before I raise my binoculars to my eyes.

She's several yards past the flag by now, and no one else seems to have noticed. I walk briskly toward her, trying to seem as casual as possible. I'm hoping she's just overlooked the flag and will realize her mistake and turn back. But Kate keeps going.

Once I'm past the flag, I shout her name. If she hears me over the wind, she doesn't respond.

I pick up my pace, and my boots slide on the ice that's just below the thin layer of snow. In front of me, the pearly surface
of the ice and the blanched sky meet and blur into one.
Don't fall,
I tell myself.
Don't fall.

I'm sweating under my parka and all the layers beneath, and I'm breathless from the cold and from calling out to Kate. Finally, about twenty feet away from her, I start to run. I catch up and grab her by the wrist.

She turns, the expression on her face unreadable. I hold fast to her wrist as I try to catch my breath.

“What's with the disappearing act?” I sputter out.

“I just wanted a few minutes away from everyone. I don't like being around people all the time.”

“Then you shouldn't have taken a cruise. Let's go.”

“I'm not ready yet.”

“This is not up to you, Kate. We haven't checked this ice for safety. Come on.”

Before I know what's happening, she yanks her arm away and starts running—away from me and the
Cormorant
—and I glance back toward the ship. The naturalists are busy with other passengers, and so I turn and follow Kate. I don't know what sort of suicidal mission she's on, but I do know I can't let her go any farther. She is slipping and stumbling, and when I get close enough to catch her again, I reach out—and this time both of us lose our balance and tumble to the ice.

I break my fall, landing hard on all fours, feeling the searing bend of my wrists, the sharp pain in my knees. My sunglasses fall off, and I turn over and lower myself to the ice, lying there faceup, closing my eyes for a moment against the blinding white of the sky.

When I open them again, Kate is sitting next to me, wincing and brushing snow off her parka.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” I ask her.

I'm surprised to see tears in her eyes when she faces me. “I'm pregnant,” she whispers.

I nod but say nothing.

“I've been trying to figure out how I feel about it,” she says. “How to be happy, how to be ready. I just can't.”

“You will,” I assure her.

“How can you say that?”

An enormous pop fills the air around us, and she looks at me in dismay. “What's that?”

“The ice,” I say.

“It's breaking?”

“More like breathing,” I say. “It makes a lot of noise. Doesn't mean we're falling in just yet. Still, we need to go.”

“I'm so sorry,” she says, though she's making no move to get up. “I wasn't trying to—” She sighs. “I just needed a little space to think, that's all.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

For a moment it almost seems natural to tell her, to have someone to talk to about this. But all I can say is: “Yes. I do.”

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

I
t 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, their 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.