Week 9: Tr 21 December 2017, 19:15. Cape Shirreff, Livingston Island, Antarctica
From “Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage” by Alfred Lansing —
“Returning from a hunting trip, Orde-Lees, traveling on skis across the rotting surface of the ice, had just about reached camp when an evil, knoblike head burst out of the water just in front of him. He turned and fled, pushing as hard as he could with his ski poles and shouting for Wild to bring his rifle.
The animal – a sea leopard – sprang out of the water and came after him, bounding across the ice with the peculiar rocking-horse gait of a seal on land. The beast looked like a small dinosaur, with a long, serpentine neck.
After a half-dozen leaps, the sea leopard had almost caught up with Orde-Lees when it unaccountably wheeled and plunged again into the water. By then, Orde-Lees had nearly reached the opposite side of the floe; he was about to cross to safe ice when the sea leopard’s head exploded out of the water directly ahead of him. The animal had tracked his shadow across the ice. It made a savage lunge for Orde-Lees with its mouth open, revealing an enormous array of sawlike teeth. Orde-Lees’ shouts for help rose to screams and he turned and raced away from his attacker.
The animal leaped out of the water again in pursuit just as Wild arrived with his rifle. The sea leopard spotted Wild, and turned to attack him. Wild dropped to one knee and fired again and again at the onrushing beast. It was less than 30 feet away when it finally dropped.”
Now, YOU try placing a ski pole (for scale in a photo – as data for the seal crew) a few feet from a leopard seal the day after reading such a passage. When an adult male Antarctic fur seal wakes up and starts whimpering from your other side, it’s hard to stand your ground and ignore the vision of the awake, charging leopard seal playing through your head. Simple “shhhhs” to the fur seal and tiptoeing on the sand around the leopard seal seem like less than brilliant ideas. Yet you can’t help but feel a little like a badass as you gaze at the enormous head and hidden strength sleeping on the beach in front of you. In time, you let your justified fear of the creature win out as you silently and hastily retrieve your ski pole and retreat to the higher beach before the actual badass awakens.
Yes, books about Antarctica are better read in Antarctica, as the scenes depicted can be much better understood and visualized. Reading is an adventure in itself.
My current read is the above-mentioned book, which is the amazing story of the crew of Shackleton’s would-have-been Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, who – instead of journeying across Antarctica – lost their ship the Endurance to Weddell Sea ice and ended up living in tents while drifting on ice for over 5 months before finally managing to reach land after a wild ride in 3 small boats. Then, in the hopes of reaching help, 6 men traveled over 800 miles across open sea in 1 of the boats. Remarkably, they made it and then hiked across South Georgia Island, an obstacle of land that’s only been crossed by foot twice since. In all the 27 men were on their own, facing the elements for almost 2 years.
It’s impossible to imagine the mental and physical burden of being wet, exhausted, and moderately hungry for so long. As a result, I no longer feel the right to complain about anything.
Henceforth I will remind the crew how easy we have it down here. We may have wet days, but we have buildings to live in and heaters to facilitate drying. We have crab legs, Patagonian lamb, salmon, turkeys, an ice cream maker, and many months’ worth of food; we don’t need to hunt our study animals for food. There’s no shortage of fresh water. Our lives are simple.
I’ll continue to respect leopard seals, though. We’ll always have that in common with the explorers of earlier times.