“Why don’t you spend some time getting the lay of the land?” I suggest. “You could visit Scott’s hut—it’s a nice walk from here.”
“Already tried,” he says. “It’s closed for renovations. Indefinitely, they told me. What are they doing in there, anyway? Adding indoor plumbing? Central heating?”
I can’t help but smile.
“I promise I won’t get in your way,” he says.
I glance toward the MEC building, then back at Keller. “Have you been trained on the snowmobiles?”
He shakes his head. “Not yet.”
Which means if he comes along, he’ll need to ride with me. There’s just enough room for two on the Ski-Doo, and I don’t carry many supplies for day trips: a counter, field notebook, water, pee bottle and plastic bags, and a survival kit, all tucked into a compartment of the snowmobile.
“I’m not on a schedule,” I warn him. “I can’t drive you all the way back here so you can be on time for your shift.”
He grins. “You scientists. No respect for the workingman.”
I give him a look, but he’s still smiling. “What’re they going to do, fire me?”
“Probably.”
He only shrugs. “Look, I may not know a lot about penguins yet,” he says, “but I could be a great assistant.”
I’m not sure I need an assistant, but I consider it anyway. There’s a lot of data to collect, and he could be helpful—as long as I don’t have to spend my time picking up after him or fixing his mistakes. At least he knows about the colony, which is something. A decade earlier, a gigantic iceberg calved off the Ross Ice Shelf and blocked the penguins’ access to the ocean, their only source of food. They had to find a new path, which was more than twice as long. None of the chicks survived that season, and most of the adults starved. Once a fairly healthy colony, with thousands of breeding pairs, it had to start over—but it’s been recovering, growing slowly, and thanks to our five-year grant from the NSF, someone from the Antarctic Penguins Project travels down here to do the annual census. This year, it’s me.
“I guess I could use an extra hand,” I say. Keller’s smile is so genuine I can’t resist smiling back.
It’s a clear day, with lucent vanilla ice sandwiched between blue ocean and bluer sky. When we arrive at the colony, I set about my work, instructing Keller to either stay put and watch or follow my footsteps exactly so as not to disturb the molting birds.
“It’s called a catastrophic molt for a reason,” I tell him. Unlike most other birds, penguins molt their feathers all at once, rather than shed them gradually. The emperors’ molt happens over a month, a physically exhausting feat that uses up all their energy. The penguins, fattened up in preparation, look as though they’ve gotten bad haircuts, their brownish feathers sloughing off in a patchwork of fluff, the beautiful, sleek new feathers coming in underneath.
“Don’t do anything to cause them to move,” I say. “They need every bit of energy they’ve got.”
Keller nods and follows me, just as slowly and carefully as I’ve instructed. In addition to counting the birds—a job made easier by the fact that they’re molting and standing still—I slip quietly among them to inspect carcasses on the ground. The dead are mostly chicks, killed by starvation or skuas—the mean-beaked predators that feed off penguin eggs and dead chicks—but this means that at least the adults are making it back out to the ocean to feed.
It isn’t until later that afternoon, when I press my hand into an ache in my back, that Keller suggests we take a break. “You haven’t stopped once,” he says.
I look at my watch—it’s been five hours since we left the station. And it occurs to me that Keller hasn’t stopped either; he hasn’t gotten cold or tired or hungry.
“I always lose track of time out here,” I say, almost to myself.
He swings his slim backpack off his shoulder. “I brought lunch.”
“You go ahead,” I say.
“You forgot to bring food, didn’t you?”
“I don’t usually eat when I’m in the field.”
“I have enough for both of us,” he says. “Sit down.”
He shakes out a small, waterproof blanket, and we settle down about thirty yards away from the birds. I don’t bother looking at Keller’s food—vegans become accustomed to not sharing meals. It can be rare even to meet garden-variety vegetarians down here.
But Keller’s pack is filled with fruit and bread, with containers of leftover rice and beans and salad. “Seriously?” I ask.
“Rabbit food, I know,” he says, as if he’s had to defend his food a hundred times before. “It’s all I’ve got. Take it or leave it.”