When the exploration boat cuts through the iron gray waves of the South Atlantic, the remote island of New Island in the Falkland Islands slowly reveals its rugged contours in the sea breeze. There are no trees or villages here, but there is a wild theater of life hidden, performing the magnificent epic of reproduction and survival.

Between the cliffs, jumping penguins climb and jump with golden eyebrows and feathers, their wet flippers pedaling the slippery rock walls. They may roll off if they are not careful, but they can always flap their wings and stand up again. At the end of the breeding season, the "leap of faith" of young birds is the coming of age ceremony for heading to the ocean. They close their eyes and leap down a cliff several meters high, falling into the piercing waves. At the moment, their dormant swimming instinct suddenly awakens. When their little heads protrude from the water, they embark on a lifelong journey to the ocean. On the gentle slope, the isolated Macaroni penguin stands alone, with its iconic golden "bangs" intact in the strong wind. It does not participate in the noise of jumping penguins or blend into the albatross population, guarding a meadow and bare rock with a solitary and proud posture, as if writing its own unique poem of life.

Under the long sky, albatrosses spread their wingspan of nearly three meters and soar in the wind. They are masters of flying in the Southern Ocean, knowing how to ally with the wind, soaring and hovering on the rising air currents, and breaking through the sky with the force of diving. They can fly for thousands of kilometers without flapping their wings once. In the nest on the cliff, fluffy young birds have to wait for nearly three hundred days and nights, accumulating strength through the feeding of their parents back and forth across the ocean, until their wings are full, before they can tremblingly leap out of the nest and complete their first flapping of wings in life. At the top of the steep cliff, blue eyed cormorants watch over the sea and sky with their deep blue eyes. They are messengers connecting the sea and land. At dawn, they form teams and fly towards the sea, their agile figures sweeping over the waves and diving 30 meters deep to hunt for fish and shrimp; At dusk, he returned with a full load and accurately landed on the cliff nest, feeding the food in his crop to the hungry young birds.

On the island where the wind howls, life interprets cycles and perseverance in various forms: penguin parents take turns searching for food in the deep sea, and when they return, they accurately identify each other and their chicks among thousands of their own kind with their unique chirping sounds; Albatross partners have upheld their decades long commitment to loyalty, flying back to the same cliff every year on time to continue their love story; The seemingly ruthless plundering of gulls is actually a law that maintains ecological balance. They take away the weakest individuals in the population, allowing stronger life to continue. The low wooden houses stationed in the hinterland of the island are the heart of this wilderness. The administrators shuttle day after day between the tundra and cliffs, monitoring the population of wild animals, recording meteorological data, measuring every inch of land with their footsteps, and using data to protect the creatures of this island.

If you want to make a pilgrimage to this ultimate wilderness, you need to board a professional exploration ship and land in the southern hemisphere during the summer. Here, humans are just humble visitors and must strictly follow ecological principles: maintain a distance of at least five meters from wild animals and not disturb their survival rhythm; Only walk along the marked path, avoiding trampling on fragile tundra vegetation; Not leaving a piece of garbage, nor taking away a single stone or feather. Only by maintaining distance and observing silently can we understand the most authentic power of life.

When the ship sailed away, the new island shrank into green dots on the horizon, and the penguin figures leaping into the waves and the albatross wings cutting through the sky had already been engraved in the depths of the soul. The wind of the Southern Ocean still howls in my ears, and in the sound of the waves, echoes the never-ending hymn of life in this wilderness.Editor/BIa你Wenjun