Jonathan Seagull spent the rest of his days alone, but he flew way out beyond the Far Cliffs. His one sorrow was not solitude, it was that the other gulls refused to believe the glory of flight that awaited them; they refused to open their eyes and see.

—Richard Bach

I awoke on 2 December to find a clear fine morning, no wind to mention, and a bright sun beaming down on the snow-capped mountains encircling our camp. I snapped a photograph of Brian walking around outside in just his black long johns and Sorrells, the sunshine reflecting off his weather-beaten, well-tanned face.

Seay Peak is a pyramid-shaped mountain with black dolerite capping its apex. It peered down at us, casting its cold shadow across the horseshoe-shaped embayment where we were camped. Some of the multilayered Aztec Siltstone was visible in its face below the black volcanic rock, although as the front of the mountain formed almost vertical cliff faces it was difficult to reach the interesting fossil-bearing layers by any easy means. So, giving up on that idea, we decided to go for a short reconnaissance trip on the skidoos around the other side of Seay Peak to see if there were any accessible exposures of sedimentary rocks.

With two of us on each Skidoo, we playfully raced each other round to the other side of the mountain. Up the snow-covered slope we went, as far as we could reach before it became too steep for comfort. It was much windier, and colder, on that side of the hill because it faced the open polar plateau. It was soon apparent that no interesting rock layers were exposed here, only masses of black volcanic rock. We returned to

camp, hitched one sledge to each Skidoo, then began making our way towards a little rocky hill just north of Kanak Peak.

The first part of the journey was slow going due to rough sastrugi and moderately strong winds rolling off the Mulock Glacier immediately north of us. However, once we rounded the spur, the rest of the journey became easy. There had been a recent snowfall so the skidoos and sledges glided smoothly over the new snow. The wind then eased off and changed direction, coming around behind us so as to make a thoroughly enjoyable ride to Kanak Peak. I recall getting the skidoos up to record speeds of about 20 kilometers per hour on one leg of this trip. We arrived close to 4:00 P.M., after stopping for a quick lunch somewhere along the way.

Lunch on these sledging trips is usually set aside before we leave and placed in compartments under the seats of the skidoos, which open up like motorcycle seats. Normally we would pack some crackers, cheese, salami, cereal bars, chocolate, nuts, and a thermos of hot orange or lemon drink. One neat trick we learned concerning lunch is to place one of the frozen salamis in the outside large pockets of our overall trousers so that by lunchtime the meat is partially thawed and ready to eat. This gave rise to the common lunchtime catch cry of “Is that a salami in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?”

After reaching the campsite we erected our tents high up on the side of a slope because it was as close as we could get to the sandstone outcrops. In such cases it's just an easy matter of leveling out a small platform in the snow with the shovels to put the tents on. This position gave us a most magnificent view right across the valley to the south, a vista of many small isolated peaks of the Transantarctic Mountains stretching for many hundreds of kilometers, islands of black and cream rock in a sea of virgin white snow.

Later that evening I strolled up onto the rocky outcrops near the camp. They appeared to be of a kind of coarse-grained sandstone composition, probably one of the basal rock layers that contained many kinds of trace fossils, but unlikely to have any fossil fish remains. Nonetheless, I thought to myself that it would be interesting to search for fishes, almost convincing myself that maybe, with intense searching

and wishing hard enough, I could probably still find something of scientific interest. Unfortunately, I did not.

The next morning (3 December) was again clear and sunny with only a slight breeze. Once again I pulled myself up onto the rocky ridge and soon had my head down searching intently for fossils. The others were over on some other part of the hill a fair distance away, so I was alone on my part of the rocky ridge. Suddenly a shadow passed quickly over the rocks, from above, scaring the living daylights out of me. We had not seen another living creature for almost three weeks now, so a moving shadow was a strange event. I looked up and immediately saw a bird, a brown skua gull, hovering delicately in the wind, about three meters away from my face, staring straight at me like I was a curiosity that didn't belong in its domain. I made eye contact with the bird and stood transfixed by its gaze for a few seconds. Then the bird casually drifted off on the winds, across the valley, heading due south.

It reminded me of the story of Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. Maybe, I thought, this bird was enjoying flight for flight's sake and not on a mission to find food or for any other practical reason. I glanced over the valley below and then caught sight of a second bird, very small in the distance, hovering around above our camp. The two of them then just glided off in the direction of the South Pole, further inland, over the mountains, close together.

It is interesting to note that on several occasions the early explorers also mentioned seeing skuas miles from anywhere. On Scott's 1912 trek to the South Pole they sighted a lone skua on the wing a long way inland on the polar plateau, the day before they reached their “Three Degree Depot,” and both Scott and Wilson made comments about it. Frank Wild, on the Main Eastern Journey of Mawson's 1912 expedition, had no hesitation using the skua he sighted as supplementary food. “As tents were being pitched, a skua gull flew down. I snared him with a line, using dog flesh for bait and we had stewed skua for dinner. It tasted excellent. ”

I nicknamed that hill “Skua Ridge” and it stuck for the rest of the trip. My experience of seeing the skua had a profound effect. For me it was a sort of metaphor, which caused me to reflect on our frail human

presence in Antarctica as compared to this small, delicate, warm living thing that was perfectly at home there.

Climbing alone on a rocky ledge

An island of solid rock in a sea of snow

I saw a shadow pass above me,

And jumped, startled by the strangeness

Of another life, here, in this lifeless place

A speck of warmth in time and space

The skua looked down at me

Its brown eye twinkled in the sunlight

Its glare of unconcern bathed me

As it flew away towards the Pole

Nonchalant about my plight

As it carried on its flight.