Salisbury Plain, Prion Island & Prince Olav Harbor, Island of South Georgia
We standby only a few hundred meters off-shore at Salisbury Plain, waiting, watching, saucer-eyed and finger-frozen, cameras in gloved hands, our feet on the bow of the National Geographic Endeavour while to port a crescent moon lies on her back a few degrees above the horizon, and to starboard sunrise warms the mountains; the improbable peaks shaped by a thousand storms but now clear, as if for the first time in weeks showing themselves, knifing the sky, the dawn light descending their icy ramparts onto foothills and farther down onto a vast king penguin beach. A metropolis of monarchs, the countless elegant birds crowded between a booming surf on their seaward side and massive southern elephant seals on their landward side, not such an imposing gauntlet and they run it - or walk it - by single file, and we, the lucky observers, make images and testimonials the only way we know how, by f-stop and exposure, shared moment and quiet reflection, entries in our journals, our words and photos helping to assuage the sad news that the high surf will prevent us from landing safely among the penguins. Yet the disadvantage comes with an advantage as the same wind that built the surf on Salisbury Plain benefits us on Prion Island, a short distance away, where wandering albatrosses, giant petrels, brown skuas and the most elegant fliers of all, light-mantled sooty albatrosses, harness the air to flaunt their aerial supremacy, the skuas strafing us as we stand on a boardwalk, the petrels pirouetting on a wing, and the light-mantled sooties flying in courtship, two birds aloft in perfect formation, banking together as if one were the other’s shadow; dancers, and we with the best seats in the theater, standing by, watching, waiting, cameras in hand, touched ever so finely by gratitude and wonder.
We standby only a few hundred meters off-shore at Salisbury Plain, waiting, watching, saucer-eyed and finger-frozen, cameras in gloved hands, our feet on the bow of the National Geographic Endeavour while to port a crescent moon lies on her back a few degrees above the horizon, and to starboard sunrise warms the mountains; the improbable peaks shaped by a thousand storms but now clear, as if for the first time in weeks showing themselves, knifing the sky, the dawn light descending their icy ramparts onto foothills and farther down onto a vast king penguin beach. A metropolis of monarchs, the countless elegant birds crowded between a booming surf on their seaward side and massive southern elephant seals on their landward side, not such an imposing gauntlet and they run it - or walk it - by single file, and we, the lucky observers, make images and testimonials the only way we know how, by f-stop and exposure, shared moment and quiet reflection, entries in our journals, our words and photos helping to assuage the sad news that the high surf will prevent us from landing safely among the penguins. Yet the disadvantage comes with an advantage as the same wind that built the surf on Salisbury Plain benefits us on Prion Island, a short distance away, where wandering albatrosses, giant petrels, brown skuas and the most elegant fliers of all, light-mantled sooty albatrosses, harness the air to flaunt their aerial supremacy, the skuas strafing us as we stand on a boardwalk, the petrels pirouetting on a wing, and the light-mantled sooties flying in courtship, two birds aloft in perfect formation, banking together as if one were the other’s shadow; dancers, and we with the best seats in the theater, standing by, watching, waiting, cameras in hand, touched ever so finely by gratitude and wonder.
