The Wild I See

Leopard seals ( Hydrurga leptonyx ) are solitary animals that inhabit the pack-ice surrounding Antarctica. They have a fearsome reputation as top predators and eat almost anything from fish to elephant seals. Although they are mainly found in Antarctica, every so often a few venture North to see what the sub-Antarctic islands have on the menu. The other day Chris was doing an elephant seal census from base to Repettos when he came across a juvenile leopard seal sleeping on the cobbles. That evening he radio'd us the news and the next morning Ryan, Maelle and I set off early to catch a glimpse of this incredible creature. When we got to King Penguin Bay we found him sound asleep on a bed of kelp and were all quite stoked that he hadn't changed his spots.

A tranquil pitter patter swirled down from the ceiling and licked at my eardrums. On the window in front of me a hundred or so little droplets cascaded steadily downwards as I watched them with simplicity. I watched how they would sometimes reach out to each other in moments of stillness and upon touching would scurry off with gravity. I watched how as the wind blew, their movements would shift in a jagged synchronicity, catapulting them in unison across the glass. I looked past them and saw the ocean explode into the sky. ‘It’s wild out there’ I thought, turning my eyes on a frigid sea saturated with mountainous swells. I watched as an icy blue crest unfurled an angry lip and crashed into the shallows, turning everything white. The surge launched up the volcanic rock-face of the shore and scattered a vast white blanket over the sky. It lingered, suspended momentarily as if each droplet had wings. Then it fell gently and the droplets returned to a sense of peace and place, filt...

It was a Sunday morning and my gumboot-wedded feet and I were strolling languidly through a landscape carpeted in snow. It stretched all the way up the valley and past the scoria cones where it hugged the majestic peaks of the interior with a delightful frigidity. The air was so crisp and still; a tranquil remnant of the storm’s wake. The only inklings of sound were the distant murmurs of chattering king penguins and the intermittent cries of giant petrels. I thought about how strangely dinosaur-like these petrels sounded and began imagining them as the reptiles from which they descended. I came across a colony and stopped and stared at them like a Japanese tourist; my brain twitching as it tried to unravel the immediate mysteries surrounding the evolution of birds from dinosaurs. Why did dinosaurs suddenly develop feathers? What did they use them for if they couldn’t fly? And how did they even develop feathers in the first place? I thought about this long and hard and eventually ...