The zodiac scrapes against pebbles the size of gull eggs—smooth basalt and volcanic rock worn round by Weddell Sea currents. You step onto Snow Hill's northern fringe in near-total silence, the kind that exists only where human presence is measured in hours per decade, not days per year. Behind you, tabular icebergs the dimensions of city blocks calve with distant thunder; ahead, the pebble beach slopes into a colony of emperor penguins, their calls puncturing the stillness like oboes tuning in an empty concert hall.
“One of the planet's only pebble beaches where emperor penguin breeding colonies outnumber annual human visitors by thousands to one.”
Wide white-sand beach with footprints
This is not a beach for sunbathing or tide-pooling. The stones beneath your boots belong to a shoreline locked in ice nine months annually, accessible only during the brief Antarctic summer when leads—fractures in the sea ice—permit expedition ships passage. Your expedition leader checks the weather radar constantly; conditions here shift from passable to perilous in under an hour. Katabatic winds descend from the interior ice sheet without warning, and what appears as open water can freeze solid overnight.
You photograph the penguins with gloved fingers, then pocket your camera against the wind chill. The pebbles click and shift with the tide—a rhythm unchanged since before humans conceived of beaches as destinations. On Snow Hill's northern shore, you are not a tourist. You are a witness to a world that has never required, and will never require, your presence to exist in flawless indifference.
