I became entranced by the idea of following in Rob’s wake ’round the Horn, a place as wild and distant as could be, and a place where I might bask in my love for birds. Cape Horn looms as the northern pillar of Drake Passage and marks the five-hundred-mile strait between Antarctica and South America. The south end is delineated by the Southern Orkney Islands, just off the coast of Antarctica, including Elephant Island where Maj. Ernest Shackleton’s crew was marooned in 1916 after their ship the Endurance was crushed by ice. Luckily for them, Shackleton made his infamous and epic voyage to a whaling station on South Georgia island to secure help. In the strait, the Pacific’s ceaseless west winds push cold southern waters into the Atlantic, where they flow under the warm water pouring south from Brazil. The convergence sweeps nutrients to the surface, feeding plankton, which in turn attract fish and squid; a banquet for the South Atlantic’s seabirds and whales. But the seas here are also the most dangerous on earth. Fomented by the katabatic winds blowing off Antarctica, the winds and seas fuse in a region with low barometric pressures to create a procession of storms that constantly sweep east through the strait. Vast, cream-topped cerulean rollers characterize these waters, which turn a dull, leaden green and heave higher when intense gale-force winds conspire to whip them up. In the southern winter, this dangerous mix escalates dramatically with the addition of blizzards, brash ice, and somnolent icebergs drifting north. One day, when I saw an online advertisement for such a trip, led by an extraordinary birder and at a reasonable rate, I jumped at the opportunity. It would be a twelve-day trip from Buenos Aires, south to the Falklands and the Antarctic Peninsula, and then north past Cape Horn and up the Humboldt Current in the Pacific to Santiago, Chile.

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Suddenly, a buzz moved through the ship, a brown haze was on the horizon, and everyone emerged on deck. We were approaching Cabo de Hornos, the southernmost bluff on an island just south of Tierra del Fuego. It appeared hardly different from the nondescript brown and greenish hills behind it, but as we closed in, one edge resolved itself. Cape Horn’s predominate great gray cliff face with jagged teeth was a bit farther south than all the others. Stretching back northward from the cliff were two sage-green shrub-covered shoulders, each a mile or so in length. It was the first terrestrial plant life we had seen in a week. On the island’s eastern spine was a huge sheet of standing steel, a giant cookie cutout whose inside shape was an albatross in flight. Placed there thirty years ago, the statue honors the “end of the world”; the confluence of the two greatest oceans and the turning point for so many voyages. It is also a monument to the lost lives of a multitude of sailors. Gazing at it, I experienced an upwelling of emotion as I thought about Rob making his way past this place . . . twice. Below the sculpture, Chilean poet Sara Vial’s inscription translates to: I am the albatross that waits for you at the end of the world. I am the forgotten souls of dead mariners who passed Cape Horn from all the oceans of the earth. But they did not die in the furious waves. Today they sail on my wings toward eternity, in the last crack of Antarctic winds.

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At first light the next day, we were on deck and in the midst of the Humboldt Current. This great oceanic flow sweeps cool waters two thousand miles north from Chile to Peru. The resulting upwelling close to the shore makes the coast off Peru one of the most productive marine habitats in the world. The sea was once again a mesmerizing cobalt blue. The storm’s vestigial whitecaps writhed across the ocean’s surface, creating a bold damask effect. We were also wreathed in birds. The pelagics had shifted to a strong Pacific flavor: pink-footed shearwaters instead of the Atlantic’s greater shearwaters, Salvin’s instead of gray-headed albatrosses, royal albatrosses outnumbered wanderers, and the smallish Stejneger’s and Juan Fernandez petrels became increasingly frequent. The entire day was the most wonderful, unbridled, pelagic trip ever. It surpassed my wildest ornithological aspirations as seabird after seabird soared by, many of them new to me. I especially loved the latter two petrels, the Stejneger’s and Juan Fernandez, who zipped and soared among the waves like spitfires. Amidst this flurry of oceanic life, I felt jealous of all of Rob’s time at sea. Cupping my coffee that morning, with the end of our voyage approaching, I paused to appreciate my twelve-day journey in Rob’s wake. I had savored pelagic seabirds from two oceans as well as Drake’s Passage. I had seen eight species of albatross, eighteen different shearwaters and large petrels, three storm-petrels, and five penguins. By an ecologist’s Venn diagram, their niches overlapped but did not exclude. As these phylogenetic relatives sailed over the southern seas, selection pressures from competition, predation, and other factors had endowed each species with its unique plumage, various morphological traits, and habits that significantly differentiated them. I had witnessed a splendid window into our planet’s biodiversity at its subtle best, with all the birds’ variations reflecting millions of years of procreation and selection on our only home; Earth.