Where the Earth Meets the Sky

A stunning work of natural history, science and polar travelogue, Where the Earth Meets the Sky chronicles one woman's journey to study penguins in Antarctica, the most isolated place on the planet. Antarctica is a land of extremes. It is the coldest, windiest and most inaccessible part of our planet—and now one of the places most affected by climate change. In this moving and personal narrative, conservation biologist Louise K. Blight recounts her summer studying Adélie penguins with one of the world’s great Antarctic scientists. On isolated Ross Island, from which legendary explorers Sir Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott attempted to reach the South Pole, Louise 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 tens of thousands of breeding penguins rushing to mate and rear their young. Surrounded by hostile weather and the hypnotic splendor of Antarctica’s landscape, Louise and David 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, the narrative poetically conveys the isolation and the endless silence that ultimately allows her to explore the grief that has lingered since the untimely deaths of her father and sister. Blending polar travelogue, science and natural history, Where the Earth Meets the Sky 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.