My Last Continent (2 page)

Last season, when I arrived in Ushuaia, bleary-eyed and dreading our first week on the
Cormorant
before Keller and I would be dropped off at Petermann, I didn't see him until I was on board. Until I felt my duffel being lifted out of my hand, an arm around my waist. He spun me into a bear hug before I got a chance to look at him, then set me down so we could see each other.

“Here we are,” he said.
“Fin del mundo
—
”

“
—
principio de todo,”
I said, finishing the sentence for him as I usually did, repeating the town's motto, lettered in blue on the white wall that borders the colorful buildings of the town and the sharp, snowcapped mountains beyond them.

The end of the world, the beginning of everything
.

Starting a journey to Antarctica doesn't feel right anymore without Keller. In a sudden flurry of emotions, I don't know which to give in to: worry, anger, or simply disappointment.

AS THE WAVES
continue to lose their sting, guests begin to emerge from their cabins, unsteadily navigating the passage
ways. They don their waterproof, insulated, bright red
Cormorant
jackets and make their way topside.

The first few guests on the deck soon grow into a crowd of dozens, and it's not long before I'm surrounded, fielding their questions.
How fast do icebergs melt? Where will that one end up? How big do they get?

“An iceberg the size of Singapore broke off a glacier not too long ago,” I tell them. “But the largest one was even bigger than that, about two hundred miles long.”

“Two hundred miles?” says the guy who'd asked. “That's like the distance from New York to D.C.”

I nod but don't answer, never having been to either place. But I do understand their need to put their surroundings in context—I imagine I'd need to do the same if I were in New York or Washington. I'd need to compare the Washington Monument to the tallest pinnacle iceberg I'd seen, or compare the width of Times Square to one of the crevasses I'd come across on the continent.

But the truth is, right now I'm grateful for their questions. At least when they're talking I don't have to think about anything else, like where Keller is and why I haven't heard from him, or how I can possibly reach a man who rarely answers his cell phone and tends to stay offline for weeks at a time.

“Was that a penguin?” a man asks, blinking as if he's just seen a meteor.

I'd missed it, whatever he'd seen. “Could be,” I tell him. “They feed in this area. Keep your eyes up ahead, off to the side of the boat, and you'll see them. The noise of the ship scares them out of the water.”

I watch as the tourists lean over the railing; I listen to
rapid-­fire sounds from their cameras. How quickly they duck ­behind their viewfinders—in their haste to capture images of the penguins, to gather their mementos, they miss the real beauty in everything there is to see. I have to remind myself of my own first journey south, when I took more photos than I could count, hardly daring to believe I'd have the chance to see any of it again. The penguins' sleek bodies porpoising through the waves, so fast they look like miniature orcas. The way they leap and swim in formation, as if they're in the sky instead of in the water. The way they change direction in the blink of an eye.

Gradually, the cold seeps in, and everyone shuffles inside. My shoulders begin to relax as I lean against the railing. It takes a moment before I realize I'm not alone.

A woman stands about twenty feet away, where the railing curves along the bow, and while she'd been facing the other direction, she's now turning toward me.

“Hi,” she says and walks over. I see her glance at my name tag, and then she holds out her hand. “So you're the penguin expert,” she says. “I'm Kate Archer.”

After a brief pause, I take her hand, lost inside a puffed-up Gore-Tex glove. Her smile curves a half-moon into an otherwise lonely expression, and she seems so happy to meet me that I'm guessing she's traveling alone and hasn't talked to anyone in a while.

“This is amazing,” she says. “I bet you never get sick of this view.”

“No, I never do.”

She points toward a berg in the distance. “How tall is that iceberg?”

“I'd say sixty, eighty feet.” Then I add, “About the size of an eight-story building.”

“Ah,” she says, then falls back into silence.

I know I should be more friendly, engage her in conversation, educate her about the Antarctic, but I already feel as though I've used up my conversation quota for the day. And then I see something ahead—a flash of reflected light, indicating the presence of something I can't possibly be seeing.

I reach into my cargo pants and retrieve my binoculars, and I see I was right: In the distance is a ship, taller than the eight-story iceberg that is nearly hiding it.

I mutter, “What the hell?” and try to adjust my binoculars, wondering if they're fogged up, or broken—or if there's something wrong with my own eyes.

Then I glance over at the woman next to me, trying to remember her name. Kate. “Sorry,” I say. “It's just that I can't believe what I'm seeing.”

“What
are
you seeing?” She leans over the rail, as if that'll help her vision. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“You will,” I say, lowering the binoculars. “Give it a second.”

“I wish I had my husband's binoculars right now. I could probably see straight
through
that iceberg.”

It takes me a second to make the connection. “Is your husband's name Richard?”

“Yes,” she says, looking over at me. “Why?”

“I met him this morning. At breakfast.”

“Then you've seen more of him today than I have.”

There's something strange in her voice, but I'm not sure what it is. I've never been comfortable with the unnatural inti
macy created on these voyages—we're witnesses to crumbling marriages, sibling rivalry, love affairs. Part of the problem, I think, is that, for so many, Antarctica is the trip of a lifetime, and their expectations are so high. They come down here expecting to be changed forever, and often they are, only not in the ways they expect. They get seasick, they aren't used to the close quarters, they learn that it's because of their own bad habits that the oceans are dying. And this all seeps into not only their dream vacation but their relationships, more deeply than they're prepared for.

Just then the ship begins to emerge from behind the iceberg, her bow nosing forward, revealing as she floats onward her many oversize parts: a vast, open-air terrace; a railing encompassing a sundeck and swimming pool; some sort of playing field just beyond. The ship comes slowly into full view, along with hundreds of tiny portholes and dozens of balconies feathered across the port side.

Even Kate looks surprised. “How far away is that boat?” she asks.

“Not far enough.”

“It must be gigantic.”

I nod. “Ten stories high, twelve hundred passengers, four hundred crew. And it has no business being down here.”

“It looks like it made a wrong turn somewhere in the Caribbean. How do you know so much about it?”

“I've been studying the effects of tourism on the penguin colonies,” I say. “I keep up on these things. The
Australis
is a new ship, registered in the Bahamas but probably filled with Americans—a floating theme park, like most of them.”

“You're obviously not a fan.”

“I have no problem with ships like this in the Caribbean or in Europe. But down here—the last thing any of us needs, least of all the penguins, is for that behemoth to dump a small town's worth of people on these islands.”

“Then why is it allowed down here?”

I sigh, staring at the ship, which is moving along the horizon like a pockmarked iceberg. “No one owns these waters. They can do whatever they want.”

“Is it headed south?”

“Looks like it,” I say, then shrug. “The good news is that, most of the time, ships that big just dash across the Drake to give passengers a glimpse of the icebergs and then head back up north. So we probably won't see it again. It's way too big to get into most of the places we visit.”

Kate's still looking at the cruise liner, and I'm heartened to see that she appears as disgusted by it as I am. “It makes even that iceberg look small.”

I let out a wry laugh. “That iceberg is nothing compared to what we're getting into,” I say. “And the
Australis
doesn't have a reinforced hull like we do. That's why I'm betting it will turn around.”

“What if it does come across icebergs?” she asks. “How will it navigate around them?”

“Carefully,” I tell her. “Very carefully.”

FIVE YEARS BEFORE SHIPWRECK

Petermann Island

W
hen I notice one of our gentoo chicks is missing, I flip through our field notebook, find the colony chart, and match nest to nest. According to our records, the chick was two weeks old, but now the rocky nest is empty. I search but find no body, which means its disappearance must have been the work of a predatory skua. When skuas swoop down to snatch chicks or eggs, they leave little behind.

I move away from the colony and sit on a rock to make some notes. That's when I hear it—a distinctly human yelp, and a thick noise that I have only heard once in my life and never forgotten: the sound of bone hitting something solid.

I stand up and see a man lying on the ground, a red-­jacketed tourist from the
Cormorant,
which dropped its anchor in our bay this morning. The ship, making her rounds in the Antarctic peninsula, had left Thom and me here a week earlier, and she'll pick us up in another week, during the last cruise of the season.

Petermann Island is tiny, just over a mile long, once home
to small huts serving an early-twentieth-century French Antarctic expedition. Now we create our own research base, with tents and solar-powered laptops. During the two weeks we're here, the
Cormorant
stops by, weather permitting, to show tourists the birds and our camp, offering a tour of the island and a glimpse of how we researchers live.

The man had fallen hard, landing on his back. When I see a spot of red spreading from the rock under his head into the snow, I start toward him. Fifteen other tourists are within twenty yards, yet no one else seems to notice.

Thom must have seen something; he gets to the man first. And now a woman is scrambling guardedly down the same hill, apparently taking care, despite her hurry, to avoid the same fate.

I turn my attention to the man. His blood is an unwelcome sight, bright and thin amid the ubiquitous dark-pink guano of the penguins, and replete with bacteria, which could be deadly for the birds. I repress an urge to clean it up.

“Deb,” Thom says sharply, glancing up. He'd spent two years in medical school before turning to marine biology, and he looks nervous. By now, four more tourists in their matching red jackets have gathered around us.

I hold out my arms and move forward, forcing the red jackets back a couple of steps. The woman who'd hurried down the hill is trying to see past me. She looks younger than the usual middle-aged passengers who cruise down to Antarctica. “Are you with him?” I ask her. “Where's your guide?”

“No—I don't know,” she stammers. Blond hair trails from under her hat into her eyes, wide with an anxiety I can't place. “He's up there, maybe.” She motions toward the gentoo colony. I glance up. The hill has nearly faded away in the fog.

“Someone needs to find him,” I say. “And we need the doctor from the boat. Who's he traveling with?”

“His wife, I think,” someone answers.

“Get her.”

I kneel next to Thom, who's examining the man's head. If we were anywhere but Antarctica, the injury might not seem as critical. But we are at the bottom of the world, days away from the nearest city, even farther from the nearest trauma center. There's a doctor along on the cruise, and basic medical facilities at Palmer Station, a forty-person U.S. base an hour away by boat—but it's not yet clear whether that will be enough.

The man hasn't moved since he fell. A deep gash on the back of his head has bled through the thick wad of gauze Thom applied. Voices approach—the guide, the wife, the doctor. The man's chest suddenly begins to heave, and Thom quickly reaches out and turns his head so he can vomit into the snow.

The man shudders and tries to sit up, then loses consciousness again. Thom presses fresh gauze to his head and looks up.

“What happened?” the wife cries.

“He slipped,” I tell her.

Susan Beecham, the ship's doctor, is now right behind us, and Thom and I move aside.

“How could this happen?” the wife wails.

I place a hand on her shoulder as crew members arrive with a gurney. “We need to get him to Palmer,” Susan says, her voice low.

Thom helps them load him onto the gurney, and they take him to a Zodiac. I get a plastic bag from our camp, then
return to the scene and begin scooping up the blood- and vomit-covered snow. Because this is one of the last pristine environments in the world, we go to great lengths to protect the animals from anything foreign. Visitors sterilize their boots before setting foot on the island, and again when they depart. No one leaves without everything they came with.

Yet sometimes, like now, it seems pointless. Injuries like this are unusual, but I've seen tourists drop used tissues and gum wrappers on the ground. I want to chase after them, to show them our data, to tell them how much the fate of the penguins has changed as more and more tourists pass through these islands. But I must be patient with this red-jacketed species. I'm grateful for the
Cormorant
's transportation to this remote island, and the tour company's financial support of the
APP
, yet I often feel we earn it more each season, that our work takes a backseat to keeping the tourists happy.

Thom returns and stands over me. “They need me to go to Palmer with them.”

I look up. “Why?”

“The crew is crazed,” he says, “and they need someone to stay with the victim and his wife.”

He doesn't have to explain; I can picture what's happening—Susan on the radio with the dispatcher at Palmer, deckhands preparing to pull anchor, naturalists answering worried passengers' questions, and Glenn trying to coordinate with the galley about the next meal and with the captain about the next destination.

“I guess we're at their mercy.” I inspect the ground to make sure there's nothing left in the snow. Thom doesn't have a choice—we're often asked to fill in for the crew when we're
on the island—but I know what he is really asking me. We've worked together for three years, and I've never spent a night here alone.

I stand up. Because Thom is short and I'm tall, we look each other directly in the eye. “Go ahead. I'll be all right.”

“You sure?”

“I'll keep the radio on, just in case. But yeah, I'll be fine. After all this, I'll enjoy the peace.”

“I'll be back tomorrow,” he says.

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.

I can see a figure in the water, but it's bulky and oddly shaped, not smooth and sleek, like a seal. I shine my flashlight on it and see red.

It's a man, in his cruise-issued parka, submerged in the
water up to his waist. He looks into the glare of my flashlight. I stand there, too stunned to move.

The man turns away, and he takes another step into the water.
He's crazy,
I think.
Why would he go in deeper?
Sometimes the seasick medication that tourists take causes odd and even troubling behavior, but I've never witnessed anything like this.

As I watch him anxiously from the shore, I think of Ernest Shackleton. I think of his choices, the decisions he made to save the lives of his crew. His decision to abandon the
Endurance
in the Weddell Sea, to set out across the frozen water in search of land, to separate his crew from one another, to take a twenty-two-foot rescue boat across eight hundred miles of open sea—had any of these choices backfired, history would have an entirely different memory. In Antarctica, every decision is weighty, every outcome either a tragedy or a miracle.

Now, it seems, my own moment has come. It would be unthinkable to stand here and watch this man drown, but attempting a rescue could be even more dangerous. I'm alone. I'm wearing socks and a light jacket. The water is a few degrees above freezing, and, though I'm strong, this man is big enough to pull me under if he wanted to, or if he panicked.

Perhaps Shackleton only believed he had options. Here, genuine options are few.

I call out to the man, but my words dissolve in the foggy air. I walk toward him, into the bay, and my feet numb within seconds in the icy water. The man is now in up to his chest. By the time I reach him, he's nearly delirious, and he doesn't resist when I grab his arms, pull them over my shoulders, and steer us toward the shore. The water has nearly turned him
into deadweight. Our progress is slow. Once on land, he's near collapse, and I can hardly walk myself. It takes all my strength to help him up the rocks and into Thom's tent.