I was thrilled when he granted permission for me to not only visit one of his penguin colonies, but also to spend several nights camping at Cape Royds with his researchers. So, a few days before the turn of the millennium, I dressed in my Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear and carried my sleep kit down to the heliport situated next to the sea ice. I’m frankly terrified in small craft, so when the helicopter coordinator shouted, above the sound of the waiting chopper, "I’m going to load you hot," my anxiety ratcheted up a notch. It meant that I was going to hop onto the gigantic mosquito of a vessel while its propeller whirled. She shouted more instructions, telling me in which outside compartments to stow my bags, which handles never to touch, how to work this thingamajig so that the cargo didn’t unload over the sea ice, and how to operate the complex seat belts, not to mention the helmet with headphones and gizmos for talking. (If you’re in the front seat, you push something with your foot to talk; if you’re in the backseat, you press a button in a handheld apparatus after you’ve plugged yourself in, which first requires finding the plug and the place in which to plug it.) When she gave me the thumbs-up, I trotted to the chopper, in the crouching position you’re supposed to use in order to avoid being decapitated –and I felt like an idiot because, although you are severely told to always do it that way, no one does. I managed to stow my gear in cages hanging on the outside of the chopper, get in, and fasten my seatbelt before we lifted off. All for penguins.

The pilot banked the chopper so that I was nearly parallel to the sea ice, and for a moment, I was sure I would lose my lunch. And then my fear flopped over into exhilaration. It was the first of many forthcoming Most Exciting Moments of My Life. We flew over fat Weddell seals lounging by cracks in the sea ice, Adélie penguins waddling along on very important business, and lots and lots of ice, all against the backdrop of the spectacular Royal Society Range. When I spied a quartet of penguins comically running and tobogganing along the ice, I laughed out loud. All too soon we swirled in for our landing at Cape Royds.

Ainley’s research team, Aptos’ Hannah Nevins and Michelle Hester of Bolinas, greeted me with obvious reserve. They made it clear they were there to work, not to host thrill-seeking artists. As they introduced me to the camp, I kept an eye out for any way I could be of service. There was a small polar hut where the two women cooked and processed data on a solar-powered laptop, and there were three bright yellow Scott tents, one recently set up for me. The toilet facilities were composed of two buckets with lids that sat, as I would, outside the polar hut. All waste, human and otherwise, had to be helicoptered out at intervals, and emptying the urine bucket into the large U-barrel–in strong winds–was one of the tasks I eventually undertook in my effort to gain popularity.

Nevins and Hester were the two hardest-working scientists I met on the ice. After my morning arrival, which apparently had kept them campbound longer than they would have liked, they returned to their duties, which kept them busy from six in the morning until midnight.

So it was very unusual, and only with a great deal of deliberation, that the two women agreed on an excursion later that afternoon. In a separate exercise, Search and Rescue’s Ted Detmar had led a crew on skidoos across the sea ice to the camp at Royds. The crew had been pulling up the flags that marked a safe route because it was getting on in the season, and the ice was deteriorating. Upon his arrival at Royds, Detmar radioed up to the polar hut trying to convince Hester and Nevins to join his crew on a little jaunt out to a large crack in the sea ice where the penguins were foraging.

It was not my place to quote their boss, but Ainley had told me that "another interesting thing we’re seeing this year is that because of the extensive sea ice, the penguins have begun to feed in the tidal cracks rather than walking all the way to the edge of the sea." But I remained quiet while they deliberated and then finally relented.

Before we took off for the crack in the sea ice, Detmar, a history buff, unlocked the hut exploror Ernest Shackleton had used at Cape Royds. For a few reverential moments, I stood before the food stores, crude furniture, and crusty old reindeer-hide sleeping bags that Shackleton and his men used a century ago. When, later in the season, the McMurdo newsletter ran a contest for Antarctic Person of the Century, Shackleton won by a landslide.

Hester, Nevins, and I climbed on the backs of the skidoos like biker chicks, and off we flew across the sea ice until we reached the edge of a giant crack, about fifteen feet across, that split the ice for several miles. Adélie penguins swarmed in the water and on the edges of the ice, diving in and jumping out and, most amazingly, doing a synchronized dance in which large groups arched gracefully out of the water like porpoises, diving and fishing.

Though I’d just stood in Shackleton’s hut not more than a couple of hours ago and I knew his story well, as well as those of all the other Antarctic explorers, it was hard for me to view this continent as harsh. The sky was an ethereal blue, softer than any sky I had ever seen, and the Royal Society Range, though big and rugged, appeared creamy and floating, as if it were a dessert. I was, however, a bit nervous about the sea ice. After all, Detmar was out here to pull up the flags marking a route that was safe no more, and we stood on the very edge of an enormous crack that had recently opened up. Yet I had never felt more strongly that if I had to die to have this moment with the penguins and the sea ice and the Royal Society Range, so be it.

After a couple of days at Cape Royds, following every rule to a T and asking for no special favors, I must have passed the test. I was invited inside the colony to help count the tagged birds. Ainley began tagging chicks in 1996, and had been banding about four hundred of them every year since. Every day, Nevins and Hester walked through the colony, searching for the banded birds, noting where they were and what they were doing. Armed with a pair of binoculars, necessary for reading the band numbers on birds even just a few feet away so as to not disturb them, I crept slowly among the Adélies.

Penguins are most comical. These Adélies sat on their nests made of pebbles, warming their fuzzy brown chicks, which ranged from tennis-ball size to basketball size. The bigger chicks no longer fitted under their parents’ stomachs, but tucked and shoved, trying just the same. The male penguins participate equally in childcare. While one parent warms the nest, the other travels the many miles to forage at the edge of the sea ice–or, this year, at the crack.

Watching the birds make their way to the water was hilarious. They usually traveled in lines, like ants, waddling as fast as they could. Occasionally they dropped to their bellies to toboggan, pushing with their wings, for a few yards. Then up they popped again to use their feet, almost as if they just couldn’t decide which was faster. When they came to small cracks in the ice, they stopped, leaned over, and looked into the water, inspecting for leopard seals, then hopped across and continued on their way.

Meanwhile, the big predatory skuas soared overhead. The skuas, too, were nursing their young, with egg-laden nests all around the penguin colony. A couple of times I walked too close to a nest and was dive-bombed. Picture a very big bird with the curved beak of a meat-eater, long sharp talons, and a nice wide wingspan approaching your face at top speed. More than once, I hit the ground.

The penguins, too, were very wary. As the skuas swooped down over the Adélie colony, all the adult Adélies looked skyward, cawing and swinging their heads in unison as they followed the predators’ flight. Twice I watched a skua snatch a chick right out from under its parent, and fly off with the prey in its talons. Most of the time, the adult penguins successfully pecked and swatted the diving skuas away. According to Nevins, the penguins can do real damage with a briskly wielded wing.

Besides counting tagged chicks, the field researchers gathered many other kinds of data. To determine what the penguins were eating, they "barfed" one each week by giving it water and then holding it upside down until it threw up. Once a week, they weighed the chicks and measured their wings. A couple of the Adélies had "timed depth recorders" attached to their backs. These measured light, time, and depth, data that could give the researchers a sense of what the penguins were doing at sea on their foraging trips. The light sensors, for instance, showed whether the birds were feeding under ice floes or in open water. Ainley says he’s always looking for the "bits and pieces that fill in the story."

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