My Last Continent: A Novel(7)

We go back to camp, a trio of tents a few yards off the bay. From there we can watch the ships approach and, more important, depart.

Another Zodiac is waiting to take Thom to Palmer. He grabs a few things from his tent and gives my shoulder a squeeze before he leaves. “I’ll buzz you later,” he says. He smiles, and I feel a sudden, sharp loneliness, like an intake of cold air.

I watch the Zodiac retreat around the outer cliffs of the bay, then turn back to our empty camp.



ON AN EVENING like this, with the air sogged with unshed rain and the penguins splashing in a pool of slush nearby, it’s hard to believe that Antarctica is the biggest desert in the world, the driest place on earth. The Dry Valleys have not seen rain for millions of years, and, thanks to the cold, nothing rots or decays. Even up here, on the peninsula, I’ve seen hundred-year-old seal carcasses in perfect condition, and abandoned whaling stations frozen in time. Those who perish in -Antarctica—penguins, seals, explorers—are immortalized, the ice preserving life in the moment of death.

But for all that remains the same, Antarctica is constantly changing. Every year, the continent doubles in size as the ocean freezes around it; the ice shelf shifts; glaciers calve off. Whales once hunted are now protected; krill once ignored are now trawled; land once desolate now sees thousands of tourists a season.

I make myself a cold supper of leftover pasta and think of our return. Back on the Cormorant, Thom and I will be eating well, my solitude will be replaced with lectures and slide shows, and I’ll wish I were here, among the penguins.

I finish eating and clean up. At nearly ten o’clock, it’s bright outside, the sun still hours away from its temporary disappearance. I take a walk, heading up toward the colony that was so heavily trafficked today, the one the man visited before he fell. The penguins are still active, bringing rocks to fortify their nests, feeding their chicks. Some are sitting on eggs; others are returning from the sea to reunite with their mates, greeting one another with a call of recognition, a high-pitched rattling squawk.

I sit down on a rock, about fifteen feet away from the nearest nest, and watch the birds amble up the trail from the water. They appear to be ignoring me, but I know that they aren’t; I know that their heart rates increase when I walk past, that they move faster when I’m around. Thom and I have been studying the two largest penguin colonies here, tracking their numbers and rates of reproduction, to gauge the effects of tourism and human contact. This island is one of the most frequently visited spots in Antarctica, and our data show that the birds have noticed: They’re experiencing stress, lower birth rates, fewer fledging chicks. It’s a strange irony that the hands that feed our research are the same hands that guide the Cormorant here every season, and I’ve often contemplated what will happen when the results of our study are published.

Sometimes when I watch the penguins, I become so mesmerized by the sounds of their purrs and squawks, by the precision of their clumsy waddle, that I forget I have another life, somewhere else—that I rent a cottage in Eugene, that I teach marine biology at the University of Oregon, that I’m thirty--four years old and not yet on a tenure track, that I -haven’t had a real date in three years. I forget that my life now is only as good as my next grant, and that when the money dries up, I’m afraid I will, too.

I first came to Antarctica eight years ago, to study the emperor penguins at McMurdo Station. I’ve returned every season since then, most frequently to these islands on the peninsula. It’ll be years before our Antarctic Penguins Project study is complete, but because Thom’s kids are young, he’ll be taking the next few seasons off. I’m already looking forward to coming back next year.

What I’d like is to return to the Ross Sea, thousands of miles farther south, to the emperors—the only Antarctic birds that breed in winter, right on the ice. Emperors don’t build nests; they live entirely on fast ice and in the water, never setting foot on solid land. I love that, during breeding season, the female lays her egg, scoots it over to the male, and then takes off, traveling a hundred miles across the frozen ocean to open water and swimming away to forage for food. She comes back when she’s fat and ready to feed her chick.

My mother, who has given up on marriage and grandkids for her only daughter, says that this is my problem, that I think like an emperor. I expect a man to sit tight and wait patiently while I disappear across the ice. I don’t build nests.

When the female emperor returns, she uses a signature call to find her partner. When they’re reunited, they move in close and bob their heads toward each other, shoulder to shoulder in an armless hug, raising their beaks in what we call the ecstatic cry. Penguins are romantics. Many mate for life.



IN THE SUMMER, Antarctic sunsets last forever. The sky surrenders to an overnight dusk, a grayish light that dims around midnight. As I prepare to turn in, I hear the splatter of penguins bathing in their slush, the barely perceptible pats of their webbed feet on the rocks.

Inside my tent, I extinguish my lamp and set a flashlight nearby, turning over until I find a comfortable angle. The rocks are ice-cold, the padding under my sleeping bag far too thin. When I finally put my head down, I hear a loud splash—clearly made by something much larger than a penguin.

Feeling suddenly uneasy, I turn on my lamp again. I throw on a jacket, grab my flashlight, and hurry outside, climbing my way down to the rocky beach.