Where the Earth Meets the Sky

A study of penguins, people and place in Antarctica

By: Louise K Blight

Narrated by: Christine Horne

Antarctica is the coldest, windiest and most inaccessible part of our planet-and now one of the places most troubled by climate change. In this moving narrative, conservation scientist Louise K. Blight recounts her summer studying Ad�lie penguins.
On isolated Ross Island, Louise K. Blight 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 breeding penguins rushing to mate and rear their young.

The researchers 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, Blight conveys the solitude and the endless silence that ultimately allows her to explore the grief that has lingered since the untimely deaths of her father and sister.

A stunning work of natural history, science and polar travelogue, this 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.