The Rarest of the Rare: Vanishing Animals, Timeless Worlds by Diane Ackerman

Author:Diane Ackerman [Ackerman, Diane]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780307763358
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-07-13T04:00:00+00:00

When the light starts to fail at day’s end, we reluctantly pack up to leave. Soon the cliffs will be full of nesting shadows, and climbing back up to the land of humans will be too difficult. We must go, but we would prefer to stay, camped out at the edge of this natural stage, watching albatrosses coast among the Gothic spires of rock. Being close to albatrosses is an experience somewhere between the spiritual and the sexual. As their whinnying cries fill the air behind us, we hoist our burdens and start the long climb.

When we return to camp, we find the government team is back and busy with dinner, so we unpack and take seats around the low table. We laugh when we see the banquet being spread before us; expeditions usually mean canned goods and stale bread. Tonight there is pepper steak, rice, barbecued fish, freshly prepared sushi, and fresh vegetables. Then the cook brings round a platter of cooked limpets. A delicacy, they are dense and gristly, reminding me of the inside of a horse’s hoof—including the stones. Mandarin oranges and beer and strong Japanese spirits follow. Overhead, five bird constellations watch us in silence—the Crane, the Swan, the Phoenix, the Peacock, the Eagle—from their stone-cold aviary among the stars. Peering into the well of night, my gaze tumbles toward deep space, and back in time, toward the first feathery tantrums of the universe. My craft is so small, I think, and the ocean is so wide. Exhausted, at last, from the long day’s rigors, everyone wanders into the bunker, crawls into a sleeping bag, and waits with eyes closed for the generator out back to run down, so that the lightbulb inside the bunker will fade for the night.

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