After eight months, two cities and two continents, I am back in the lovely French Frigate Shoals, revisiting the lively colonies of breeding black-footed and Laysan albatrosses. It felt like I never left the place. The albatrosses are still doing what they do best: dancing their elaborate and mesmerizing courtship dances, laying and incubating their fist-sized eggs, exploiting the energy of wind and waves to soar across thousands upon thousands of miles in the North Pacific on foraging trips, and keeping me very, very busy.
The bunkhouse is as comfortable as ever - I even got my old room back, though, thanks to a prior volunteer, it is now much more decorative and home-y. The white terns chatter away by day and night on my windowsill, and I had forgotten how nice it is to fall asleep to their sounds, which blend so nicely with the soft sound of the ocean waves lapping against the sea wall just outside my window.
After the first few weeks being battered by heavy storm after heavy storm, the skies have cleared and the nights have been incredible. The depth of the stars here is like nothing I've seen before; even the clear, crisp winter nights in the high desert where I grew up didn't display the stars like this. They are so bright that they really do twinkle (just like the song!), emitting the whole prism of visible light. It is easy to lose yourself in your own thoughts when gazing up at a night sky like that... that is until some brown noddy flies past and poops on your forehead. Then, you remember you are on Tern Island where the ball is always in the birds' court.
We went snorkeling yesterday, and I met some of the other island inhabitants. Two monk seals slowly twirling their bodies in the water below made for a great show. The younger seal was quite curious with the awkward, pasty, some might say floundering, bodies up above, and we stared at each other with equal (i hope) amusement for about 15 minutes, before he slowly twirled away into the darker waters broken up by shafts of light. After staring into the spot where the seal disappeared, my lungs reminded me that I don't have the myoglobin stores of a pinniped, and I choked on some sea water, in a grudging admittance of how very differently built we are from them; but at the same time, we are still similar enough to have recognizable stares of curiosity, interest and wonder. Those 15 minutes, interacting with a curious monk seal, one of a dwindling estimated world population of <2000, is something that will stay with me for the rest of my life.
It is good to be back.
No comments:
Post a Comment