Sunday with the Penguins

I just spent my Sunday with the Penguins. After reading a couple of scientific books I wanted a little more light reading, so I got a book from the library with lots of beautiful pictures and just the basic information. I read all through it yesterday and enjoyed myself. I learned some new things about penguins, and was reminded of many other things. I'm beginning to understand them a lot better, and now I can actually remember a few facts.

I'm also reading about Scott now, Ranulph Fiennes book about the "Race to the Pole". Fiennes isn't as hard on Scott as some others are. He has a different kind of understanding maybe, because he's been there and he has first-hand knowledge of the terrain.

I never really know what to think of Scott, he is so full of contradictions. He was a naval officer, a man who rapidly made a career for himself, and he did get a lot right. But in the end he got things wrong. I don't know if he simply made too many mistakes, or if he just got unlucky.

I'm actually a chaotic reader at the moment. I'm also in the middle of "Cherry", Sarah Wheeler's biography of Apsley Cherry-Garrard, and I'm reading David Campbell's "The Crystal Desert". Campbell's book is pretty broad, it has history, geology. ecology and biology, and all told in a way that isn't too hard to read.

Panorama

Spending a weekend telling people about albatrosses made me realise again just how special they are and just how rapidly numbers are going down. Being stuck in an office most of the time sometimes makes the world down south seem so far away and almost unreal, but if I get to go back down south again I know it will be the other way round. Then that will be my real world and what goes on here will seem unreal.

The ocean isn't my natural habitat, I guess, I am to a great extent a city girl. But having crossed the ocean once, I can definitely imagine doing it again. The pace is so different, there is a lot you cannot do, and that gives you great freedom. There is a strange sense of confinement too, but at the same time a sense of immense space. I remember standing on the deck of our sailing ship, looking all around, and getting this panoramic sense. On all sides you could see the horizon touch the sea, and there was nothing in there. Just the sea as far as you can see. And right in the middle my ship, my universe for the moment.

Forever South

When I think about the South Pole and Antarctica a lot of images come to mind. Some are things I have seen for myself, the icebergs and the blue, the penguins, the humpback whales and the killer whales, but some are things I have read about or have seen on films or photographs. The more you read and see about the continent, the more there seems to be. There definitely is something mythical about the place, and once you get drawn into it it is hard to walk away again.

A few years ago I talked to a co-worker who was very interested in penguins. She knew much about them, and that made me realize that I knew very little about them. I didn't even really know there were such different species. To see penguins you have to travel a long way and I didn't really think I was ever going to do that. To travel to the Falkland Islands to see penguins was such a remote idea that it never
even entered my mind. It was almost like planning a holiday on the moon. I still haven't visited the Falkland Islands, though that is now a real possibility for me, and I've already been closer than I ever thought I would be. And to tell the truth, I was even further away than the Falkland Islands. I've seen seven species of penguin in the wild, in their own environment, and that was very special. It really was amazing. (thank you, Richard)

But there is so much more out there. I had never thought I would end up on a sailing ship, somewhere in the Southern Ocean, just a few metres away from a group of curious humpback whales, I never thought I would get to smell them, and to almost get close enough to touch them. And I never thought I would get to see albatrosses gliding over the ocean, such a beautiful sight. And just a couple of years ago I hadn't even heard of Wilson's Storm Petrel, now one of my favourite birds. So small and so tough. It can survive above that immense ocean, and it is such a tiny bird.