The Penguin returns, disasters and why you shouldn't pitch your tent on ice

The Penguin writes:

Since my return onto the sea-ice at the end of March, I have allowed MG to dominate this blog. Initially I was ill-disposed to inflict more of the same, the quotidian routine of a penguin's life in which one year is so very much like any other, a year in which the cycle of sex, egg, hardship is endlessly repeated throughout the years. We do not even bother to prepare a little show for the chicks and the newbies anymore, not since Cozy left in that first year of my little blog and disaster struck. Cozy has not returned and I must assume that, in the intervening years, he has succumbed to that great leveller, death, or that he is now so very far away, New Zealand perhaps, that he no longer feels the need, or the desire, to make one last, long trip to see his friends, or what remains of them.

The very worst of the winter now seems to have passed us by and it has been possible to catch up on MG's sterling efforts these past few days and peruse a few of those other inanities and co-incidences which make up the world-wide-web; Fricka is not due back for another three or four weeks and there remains only the hope, not the certainty, of her return. As each successive year rolls along its merry path, I find myself increasingly less, not more, hopeful that we will raise another chick, In many ways, I find myself more in tune with Cozy, less comfortable with the prospect of another winter here in this bleak desolation and, perhaps, should I live to see another summer, I too may not return next year. I am becoming old and perhaps this is something that every penguin must face, although Havelock never seemed to, that eventually the languor overcomes the desire, the urge, to breed and we merely let ourselves quietly slip away; one long, last, slow journey into the ever-beckoning dark of night, into oblivion.

However, this is really rather gloomy, not what I should be writing about. Where is the biting wit, the trenchant humour, the coruscating barbs of old; where is the joie de vivre of the penguin's existence, the life blood of our desire to succeed? When it came, it came from an entirely unexpected quarter today; a gift from God, although, as I am sure you will know by now, He does not exist and is merely a figment of the wildest imaginations of men. (It has to be men, no woman would be foolish enough to put her very existence in the hands of a male figurehead, albeit one that is supposedly omnipotent. All-powerful or no, He would surely fail when the going became tough!) However, it was indeed fortuitous; another day and I would have missed it and the joy, more Schadenfreude really, would have gone a-begging.

Once I got into my stride, around April 2008, I found it easy to mock, ridicule, even despise the actions of human beings. How, in your over-weening superiority complexes, you seldom paused to consider the repercussions of your actions, the damage that they might do; you believe that you are supremely adaptable, no situation is beyond your grasp. Penguins, on the other hand, know what we have become adapted for, adapted to, know our limitations, have an intimate knowledge of how far we may 'push the envelope' and this gives us, our collective egocentricity notwithstanding, a certain humility; a certain modesty in the face of the overwhelming power of Mother Nature.

As a result I read with glee the tale of the stranded Canadian tourists whose 'camp site' wandered off into the Arctic Ocean recently. The researchers here, for all of the newbies' stupidity, have some experienced members in the station; people who understand that disaster can strike at a moment's notice near the poles, where conditions are so extreme. They have become even more careful now that the effects of climate change appear to be more manifest with every passing year. So what do these tourists do? They pitch their tents on a patch of sea-ice which is in the first stages of breaking away from the main body ice, although to be fair, ten hunters who should have known better, were caught up in the same debacle. It does make you wonder about the supposed wisdom of the human race, that you would willingly go on an expedition so fraught with possible danger, the Arctic is so much more prone to break up and melt than the ice sheet down here, that it is surely an accident, merely biding its time. A little like the tourist 'on safari' in Africa, who decides to leave the safety of the Land Rover 'to get a better look at that pride of lions.'

I genuinely hope that the members of the party are rescued without mishap, the weather is too dire apparently to attempt it at the time of writing, but it occasions nonetheless an inner glow to my demeanour today; despite the chill here, there is a definite warmth to my surroundings here in the rookery.