We’ve all heard that Antarctica is beautiful, that it is icy, and that it is melting fast. All these things are true. But it was not until I traveled there myself, as part of a family trip, that I really started to understand the immensity and complexity of each of these statements.

As the coldest, windiest, highest, driest, and most remote continent, Antarctica shimmers with a stark beauty that is unlike anything I had ever experienced. Huge mountains tower above the coastline, blanketed with ice sheets that glow in the summer sun. From the ice fields, sweeping glaciers pour down the flanks of the mountains, meeting the sea in a tumult of restless ice. Icebergs spawned at these violent junctions drift slowly across the surface of the water, spreading out to the horizon. Seen from the level of a kayak, this scenery is so vast that at times it appears to dwarf all life—especially me, the little paddler. It is awe-inspiring and overwhelming at the same time.

5:20 am, Paradise Harbor, Antarctica

But as stark as it sometimes seems, Antarctica is also incredibly vibrant. The ocean, which can look vast and empty when you stare out across it, is absolutely teeming with life when you look down into the water. Right from our kayaks, we saw tiny krill wriggling around in swarms, we watched penguins dart through the water under our boat, we caught our breath as whales suddenly surfaced right next to us, and we felt a little jolt of adrenaline as we drifted by a toothy leopard seal on an ice floe.

And on land, where penguins, seals, and seabirds have turned the few ice-free spots into bustling colonies, it is almost impossible not to see wildlife. The sheer numbers are staggering—we visited some colonies of hundreds of thousands of penguins—but the individual interactions are perhaps even more fascinating. If you sit down and stay quiet, you will see penguins feeding their chicks, seals sparring over prime beach locations, scavenging skuas stealing penguin eggs, and if you are lucky, a penguin might come nibble your pants or whack you with a flipper as he waddles by. (Also, chances are, your boots will probably be covered in penguin poop by the end of this excursion.)

Adelie Penguins at Brown Bluff, Antarctica

Creatures from all levels of the food chain are readily visible here, which sets the Antarctic apart from most ecosystems (where top predators are rarely seen). Because of this, it is relatively easy for a visitor to understand the basics of the Antarctic ecosystem, to visualize the cycles and interactions that keep all the different species in a dynamic balance with each other and with their habitat. And from a visitor’s perspective, it all seems to be working relatively well—penguins toddle around just like they should, icebergs drift around just like we imagined they would, and our own presence is so small and carefully controlled that visitors have almost no direct impact.

But in the end it is impossible to avoid the deeper truth: even a well functioning ecosystem hangs in an extremely delicate balance. Without belaboring the point, I’ll just say it is abundantly clear that even small changes in temperature and ice cover have enormous impacts on the breeding and feeding habits of Antarctic wildlife. This is particularly true because virtually all of the wildlife is concentrated at the edges of the continent, where the most dramatic warming will occur. Walking by the occasional dead penguin or seal on the beach, it is clear that these animals walk (or swim) the razor-thin line between survival and death, and it is hard not to wonder about where these population trends are headed. By the same token, it’s hard to look at a half-mile long iceberg without wondering about the state of the ice shelf it came from and thinking about the several meters of sea level rise that scientists are predicting by the end of the century, as Antarctica’s ice melts away.

To me, the fact that Antarctica is still so nearly pristine makes it even more heartbreaking that we are letting it all go up in smoke. After just one short visit, I cannot claim to have any personal experience of the pace of climate change in Antarctica. But I do have a greater appreciation for the delicacy of the balance, the colossal scale of the coming changes, and the scale of the action that will be required of us in order to meet this global challenge.

Myself with my parents and sister, Foyn Harbor, Antarctica

All photos copyright Whitney Leonard and family