Where the Earth Meets the Sky

A stunning work of natural history, science, and polar travelogue, Where the Earth Meets the Sky is a chronicle of one conservation scientist's time in Antarctica, the most isolated place on the planet. Antarctica is the coldest, windiest and most inaccessible part of our planet-and now one of the places most troubled by climate change. In this moving narrative, conservation scientist Louise K. Blight recounts her summer studying Adelie penguins. On isolated Ross Island, Louise K. Blight and pioneering penguin biologist David Ainley document how the region's penguins are being affected by the world's largest-ever iceberg. The iceberg's impact is geological in scope and life-changing for the breeding penguins rushing to mate and rear their young. The researchers record details of penguin courtship, incubation, and chick-rearing against a backdrop of the mental and emotional impacts of extreme weather, ongoing isolation and twenty-four hours of daylight. Interwoven with stories of early explorers and modern-day Antarcticans, Blight conveys the solitude and the endless silence that ultimately allows her to explore the grief that has lingered since the untimely deaths of her father and sister. A stunning work of natural history, science and polar travelogue, this is a story about a female scientist navigating Antarctica's extreme conditions and quirky human subculture. It is a story about how the world's most unforgiving environment has shaped the psyches of Antarctica's human visitors, past and present-and how nature can heal the human soul.