On the penguin march through life.

In the midst of a very hot summer I saw a very cool movie, "The March of the Penguins." I had heard it was unique in its charm, humor and emotion. Also, because I had traveled to Antarctica just months earlier, I wanted a chance to revisit the experience.

Besides that, when it is 100 degrees outside, watching snow and ice for a couple of hours sounds like a great idea. And it was, but the movie isn't just about penguins, it is about love and sacrifice, and I saw much of our work in it.

The movie is more stuffed with metaphors than a penguin after a two-week eating frenzy. There is something about penguins that captures our imagination. Perhaps it is because they remind us of ourselves with their little penguin tuxedos and their loopy, comical gait. In fact, the movie opens with a long shot of a line of something walking across the ice. Is it a row of people?

No, it is a line of emperor penguins beginning their trek across the ice of the South Pole from their feeding area in the ocean to their breeding grounds 70 miles inland. It is a march they will repeat several times during the course of the winter. And there is nothing more daunting than the Antarctic winter--70 degrees below zero and winds of 100 miles an hour. It makes snow days look rather pedestrian.

Emperor penguins must fill their bellies with food for they go months between meals. They return to the breeding grounds, where they were born, to mate, lay eggs and raise their babies. It is hard to imagine a more difficult place or time for this. It is the most inhospitable part of a vacant and savage continent and they carry this out in winter.

Collaborative Behavior

As I watched them conduct their mission I naturally thought of us and our work. We have chosen a role that is difficult and dangerous and some would say foolish. Yet, like the emperor penguins, we see to our responsibilities and do what must be done to allow the next generation to have its chance.

One of the powerful lessons from the movie is the fact that those who fall behind or seek to go it alone fail to survive. They disappear into the frozen landscape. It is only through collaborative behavior between the males and females, and ultimately among the males themselves, that survival is possible among penguins; it is the male who tends to the egg and the hatchling while the female goes back to the ocean for food.

As the winter storms roar around them, the males must huddle together, each taking a turn on the outside where the wind blows strongest, and then later a turn in the middle of the scrum where there is the most protection from the cold. Adult males must constantly balance their eggs on the feet, tucked under their bellies for warmth. Eventually the female will return with food for the chick, allowing the male to go back to the ocean to feed.

One of the things I found most interesting about all this is that only the penguins that are bringing forth the next generation participate in this. The others stay happily at sea, eating and living an easier life. It seems to me that the humans who choose to look after the young face the same kind of daunting challenge. In many ways, I think the times we are in now are our own version of a winter of extremes. But after winter comes spring and life moves forward.

All this led me to remember my own penguin adventures in Antarctica. I spent hours when we were ashore watching them. Two moments stand out. The first involved a lone penguin making his way back to the nest. I imagined him as a school superintendent. He hopped off a rock right into the middle of a major mud puddle. Oh the memories that brought back! As a superintendent, I had stepped in the mud many a time myself. What to do? What to do?

He was already up to his little penguin bottom in mud so he chose to move forward, slopping through the mud, still trying to get home. Just as when we get stuck, we have only one choice. We're already dirty. We may as well move forward and complete the journey. Finally he got near the nest only to be sent packing by the spouse who set off a horrendous squawk of "penguinese" that must have meant, "You don't think you are going to track all over my nice nest with those muddy feet, do you?" My boy stopped for a few seconds, shrugged and turned away. The lesson here is that sometimes you can't even go home again even after a hard day in the mud--or perhaps the message is you shouldn't take your mud home with you.

Fundamental Decisions

The other moment came watching a line of hundreds of penguins marching along the shore in single file. The first penguin in line came to a large rock. He hopped up on the rock and stopped, and the whole line stopped behind him. He was deciding whether he should dive. For the sea is home to the krill, which is the major source of food for the penguin, but it is also where the leopard seals live, and penguins are the major source of food to the leopard seal.

So really the leader was making a life or death decision. Food? Leopard seals? Leopard seals? Food? What to do? While he debated, none of the other penguins broke ranks. They waited for the leader to decide the next move.

He paused for at least five minutes and finally dived off the rock and into the water. And after him came each penguin in turn, following his lead and moving toward life. The roles we play can have tremendous implications--not just for ourselves but for those who follow our lead. We must pause and think, be willing to risk the mud or the leopard seals, but ultimately we must make a choice that allows life to move forward. We are all on a penguin march toward our possibilities, moving through the cold night so that we can find the spring.

Paul Houston is AASA executive director. E-mail: [e-mail]