It is no understatement to say that COVID-19 has had a significant impact on our lives. Even from the New Zealand perspective, having personally not had to diagnose or treat a single case, the lockdown in March 2020 and ongoing changes related to our elimination strategy have greatly altered the day to day of my life. At the time of lockdown I had been working my way through images from our January 2020 expedition and had started posting blogs to document the trip.
COVID-19 switched this off overnight. Not because it had to (lockdown would have been a good opportunity to process images) but because I needed it to. For me editing and processing images is a crucial aspect of maximising the pleasure of the journey. Trips south are no holiday. Long rough days mean rest and sleep are traded for opportunities for experience. The discipline of sacrificing 30 minutes of sleep at day’s end for a journal entry was a struggle that only became harder with every day of accumulated fatigue. Being able to relive the moments while working with images is the reward and I wasn’t prepared to have this reward tainted by the upheaval in our work and home lives caused by COVID-19.
This saw me completely shelve the project and distract myself with my backyard bird hide. Subsequent local trips celebrating the end of lockdown and more recent macro adventures have kept pushing the Subantarctics back in the priority list but with the recent possibility of another expedition at the end of this year I have now spent some disciplined time with my images, rejoicing at the memories that in some cases were quite deeply buried. It had been a challenging trip for many reasons but now this distance is sufficient to enjoy it all with little tainting the memories and in fact fully appreciating the conflicted emotions of the time.
I am happy to call Campbell Island my favourite island in the world. It is wild, hard to get to and has tussock and albatrosses. What’s not to love about it? The wind and stinging rain is a small price to pay to experience the unique beauty. The climb up the Col Lyall boardwalk to the magnificent megaherb gardens is full of anticipation. If you’re near the front of the group (I never am) there is the chance of a Snipe and there are always huge Southern Royal Albatross nesting nearby. Cresting the summit of the walk and looking over, usually into the teeth of a gale, toward Dent Island is “refreshing”.
Retracing the trip is a little sad and an analogy for our journey through life after a certain age, with more to look back on than to look forward to. The Beeman Hill Light-mantled Albatross are the poignant pinnacle that distill the essence of this experience. There is something special about Light-mantled Albatross. They seem impossibly beautiful and graceful for a creature evolved to master an extreme environment. Moving works of art with a backing track to match.
The boardwalk traverses a little dip before rising back to the base of Beeman Hill where it sidles around the flank before dropping back through the dracophyllum to the shore. Late in the day, after a morning of feeding, the Light-mantled Albatross pairs are often wheeling in synchronised flight with their haunting cries. The pull to stop and admire this spectacle is irresistible and you need to allow time for it. It is always a juggle of “how long can I stay and still make it back for the last Zodiac?” and “will there be a sealion blocking the path that will delay the return journey?”
On my previous visit I had not been able to do justice to this spectacle so this time I headed down a little early on my own. My reward was a stunning display and plenty of opportunity to photograph the birds, culminating in one flying right over me, seemingly almost within touching distance. This was my reminder that I had to leave to make it back to the ship. I moved on down the boardwalk, Light-mantled Albatross calls falling from the crags above me and thoughts of “will I ever be here to witness this spectacle again?” lurking in the back of my mind. The memory of the moment is a precious possession. A unique and singular experience it contrasts to my first moving memory of Light-mantled Albatross shared with Edin on the Southern shore of Enderby Island in 2016. Processing theses images has taken me right back to this magic moment -it has been worth the wait.
Reliving this experience in processing the images has been well worth the wait.
Photos with Nikon D500 and Nikkor 500mm f5.6PF lens
