Give me a wilderness whose glance no civilization can endure. Life consists with wilderness. The most alive is the wildest."
Henry David Thoreau

It was a pleasant visual shock to wake to the green volcanic hills of Perseverance Harbor on Campbell Island after so long around the ice of Antarctica. The smell of soil intoxicates, as we climb a boardwalk up the side of this drowned out volcanic caldera. Our hope is to observe the hilltop nests of the royal albatross. These huge seabirds reach a wingspan of 9.5 to 11.5 feet, and almost 15,000 nest among clusters of brightly colored Megaherbs. These islands contain many endemic species of plants. Since being discovered in 1810 by Captain Frederick Hasselburg, the island is undergoing a longrunning conservation strategy to eradicate many undesirable vegetation and fauna introduced by ships in the past.

Weather was great for painting as it normally can rain 335 days a year, and gusts of 50 knots on more than 100 days of the year are the norm. The wind is helpful for the birds to take off; however, I can imagine my easel also doing so!

I find a large bush of tussock grass to work behind while studying a nesting couple. In this case I often use zoom photography to study the behavior and shapes of the birds, while working on a watercolor of the landscape. On these slopes, the vegetation takes on yellow and violet hues; the scene will change rapidly in values because of clouds' shadows. I work with a dry brush to suggest texture. It's refreshing to use these colors and experience relief from the blinding, reflecting glare off sea ice. However the complexity
of information is overwhelming, and there's a tendency to overpaint details while the world of ice reduces forms to basic elements.