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Water Trail by Freddie Wilkinson. As the river wound through farm country and the smell of manure filled the air, the effects of the summer's drought became obvious. Water levels plunged, and river bottom rocks covered in slippery algai were exposed to foot and canoe alike. Just before the border with Canada, I said farewell to Francis and then quit the river myself. After several weeks at home, I thought I would return to the NFCA refreshed, ready to take on the last

three hundred some miles that awaited me in Maine. But the trail's final miles hold hurdles that have been doubled paddlers for centuries. One morning in the summer of eighteen fifty seven, Joe Polis set out across the Mud Pond Carrie, a nearly two mile stretch of land connecting mainz Umbazukous Lake to Mud Pond. A guide from the Panabscat nation, Polis was leading the row and his friend ed Hor

As immortalized in the main woods. At some point, Polis, hauling the group's canoe, hustled ahead while the pair of Americans dawdled through the forest guideless. The Roe and hor missed a turn and soon found themselves wandering a maze of overgrown logging roads. After reaching Mud Pond, Polis, guessing at what must have happened, doubled back and saved the men from an uncomfortable night lost in the woods. The

Mud Pond Carrie is no less humbling today. It's far too narrow for portage wheels, so I had to relay my equipment in two loads, turning almost two miles in two more than five. It was a theme of the main stretch of the NFCT, which took me two trips to complete. On my second, frustrated and a little desperate, I enlisted the company of someone with as intimate a knowledge of these waters as there is. Jason Pardia is a river guide and elected Panobscot Council member. He is

also Polus's great grandnephew. As I set out on the a Lagosh River with Pardia, I found he would rather talk about currents than his ancestors. I'm related to a bunch of cool Panobscots, but I always feel weird telling their stories, he said. I don't mind being recognized for my skills, but I don't want to be out there being that guy. Yet, for Pardia, reading rivers has always been second nature. I didn't realize how much I knew til I started guiding, and other people just didn't see

the things that I saw. Mardia and I were joined by James Eric Francis Senior, the Panobscot historian, and river guides Jennifer Neptune and Ryan Ranco Kelly, also members of the Panobscot nation. Where many times faced removal and disconnection from their lands and waters, the Panobscot have held on to their place along their namesake river and continued their legacy of canoe guiding. Water is freedom. Neptune said, we weren't removed, we were just pushed onto the islands. In

our river as our territory shrunk down. But in a way it was perfect because it allowed us that freedom to still have our culture, to get in a canoe and take off. That's what our people did. We just took off that summer. The Alagasha's water table had been reduced to a trickle by the month's long drought, and in shallow water a paddle loses its efficiency. To compensate, the river people of the Northeast use long spruce poles

to guide themselves through skinny water. Poling makes upstream travel vastly more efficient, a necessary scale for a community that had to think in terms of round trip canoe journeys, not simply downstream travel. Soon after we started down the river, Pardia stowed his paddle, picked up a fourteen foot spruce pole, skinned free of bark and fitted with a copper end cap, stood up and began easing his canoe around rocks and strainers,

downed trees that can be assert us to boaters. It's the original stand up paddle board, he said, with a chuckle. We later portage around Olagash Falls and the landscape started to change once again. The frisky brook trout disappeared, the spruce thinned, and then quite suddenly there was a paved road running alongside the river, the first we had seen in one hundred miles. As we pushed on, the Allagash unceremoniously emptied us into the Saint John River that night.

Finally it rained the next morning, with Pardia Francis Signior and Neptune bowing out due to the weather. Rank O'Kelly and I put down an extra cup of coffee before departing for my final day on the water. The end of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail can feel strangely abrupt, for all the effort one puts in to get there. We glided down riffles of swift water, the current rushing

us against great gravel bars. Then we round, did a corner and spy the Friendship Bridge between Maine and Quebec, and just beyond at the boat ramp at Fort Kent, the eastern terminus of the trail. I might have missed the cobblestone landing altogether if not for our friends standing in the rain waiting for us to complete our journey. The cumulative fatigue from days spent canoeing against gravity and hauling my boat and gear sometimes for miles, had taken

its toll most evenings. I fell asleep shortly after nightfall, and I'd come to savor peanut butter by the spoonful direct from the jar. At some point during my many trips that summer, I had begun to think of the trail not as a series of twists and turns one might expect from a river, but a series of steps, some long and smooth, some short and steep, but always either rising or falling, fighting the current upstream or flowing

down hill. Our path on the NFC Tee followed the water, and the water flowed according to the shape of the land. As the row wrote in the main Woods, wherever there is a channel for water, there is a road for the canoe. On the beach, Rank O'Kelly and I paused for a couple of quick photos, then pulled our canoe ashore and drained the rain water from its belly. We slashed up the muddy track past the old Fort Kent blockhouse to the parking lot beyond, carrying our canoe together.

Paddling the Northern Forest. Two plus decades ago, a group of paddlers and hikers hatched a bold plan to create the Appalachian Trail of canoeing. Backed by federal grants, they mapped the seven hundred forty mile Northern Forest Canoe Trail, which runs from New York to Maine. Inspired by waterways long used by indigenous communities for trade, the route flows through small towns and rugged back country. Next unbeatable beetles, These resilient, soil dwelling flesh eaters might have a few

things to teach humans. The American bur burying beetle is much like an underground undertaker, typically feasting on small rodents and birds. North America's largest carrion eating beetles usually work in pairs to sniff out a carcass, remove its fur or feathers, tunnel under it to draw it into the dirt, and coat it in oral and anal secretions, preserving the

meal for later. In January, scientists reported something else surprising about the nocturnal insects, which have received protections under the Endangered Species Act since nineteen eighty nine. They're strangely resilient to insecticides called neo nononicotinoids. Despite appearing near death after exposure, many bounced back within twenty four hours, suggesting a remarkable

ability to detox. The team of researchers suspects that exposure to bacteria and fungi of decaying animals keeps the beetles hearty. They're now studying the beetles and their secretions for potential human benefits, ranging from new antibiotics to food preservatives. This article by Kelsey Noahkowski. Next holp Penguins push the limits of their capabilities by Renee eversol Oh my god, this

thing's going to die. That was the thought running through the mind of wildlife filmmaker Bertie Gregory when he saw the first juvenile Emperor penguin jump off a fifty foot cliff. The bird plummeted downwards, split into the frigid Southern Ocean. After a few suspendful seconds, it bobbed to the surface and then swam off toward the horizon. The National Geographic Explorer couldn't believe it. What came next was even more shocking.

More penguins from the crowd of several hundred huddled at the edge of the towering ice shelf, plunged one by one into the sea. There was a moment when it was just raining penguins off this cliff, says Gregory, who captured rare footage of the event with a drone camera in Antarctica's at Kabay last year while filming Secrets of the Penguins, a new national geographic documentary series. It was

one of the most extraordinary things I've ever seen. Some did graceful swan dives, others slipped and tumbled headlong into the waves. Miraculously, nearly all survived the leap. Normally, young penguins jump only a couple of feet from floating sea ice into the water when they fledge, says Michel LaRue, a conservation biologist at the University of cantab in Christchurch,

New Zealand. The cliff diving chicks that Gregory observed may have been raised on the permanent ice shelf and likely took a wrong turn finding themselves in a tricky location for a water entry, while simultaneously motivated by hunger and an ocean brimming with fish beckoning below. The scene was the true demonstration of the penguin's fortitude. These fascinating birds have evolved over millions of years to survive on the coldest, windiest,

driest continent on Earth. Across these pages, their exceptional adaptations and specialized behaviors that make them uniquely equipped for this desolate environment are on full display. Many of their most incredible traits can be seen during nesting season, which runs through the most challenging time of year. Female emperor penguins lay a single pear shaped egg early in the Antarctic winter, when temperatures can dip to minus fifty fifty degrees fahrenheit

and winds can reach a hurricane. Needing to replenish their energy reserves, they quickly shuffle the eggs to their mates to assume caretaking while they trek out to the ocean to feed. Male emperor penguins spend the next two months incubating the eggs, balanced atop their webbed feet and shielded from the cold by a flap of the penguins abdominal skin that forms a pocket or rude pouch. The soon to be fathers will go nearly four months without food,

losing roughly half their weight. During breeding season, eggs typically hatch by August, just as the females are returning to provide their young with a first meal. Then the chicks will be fed and warmed by their parents over the next five months. By mid December, as the Antarctic summer approaches, the chicks have started to shed their fluffy down for waterproof plumage. Soon they leave their colony and find food on their own. Juveniles like those Gregory film take a

literal leap of faith into the sea. It is a pivotal moment when they begin their life in the ocean, where they'll spend an average of five years before returning to breed. Scientists do not think the cliff jumping incident was directly related to climate change, but at least one expert speculates that warming temperatures may force more emperors to breed on permanent ice shelves instead of sea ice, increasing the chances of juvenile's fledging from tall heights. This incident

underscores a stark reality under some climate scenarios. Scientists predict eighty percent of Antarctica's emperor penguin colonies will disappear by the turn of the century. But LaRue remains hopeful about the emperor's ability to adapt, and she considers the recent high dive a testament to the penguin's hardiness. They're incredibly resilient. She says. They have been around for millions of years.

They've seen lots of different changes in their environment. It's a question of how rapidly they're able to deal with the changes that are happening and how far they can be pushed, call her id. Emperor penguins can distinguished by their vocalizations. Each bird has a unique call that allows mates and chicks to recognize one another amid the noise of a bustling colony. Identifying their chicks whistles parents trumpet

back until they find one another. Tuxedo torpedoes in the ocean, Emperor penguins can dive deeper than any other species, reaching depths of more than sixteen hundred feet. They also can remain submerged for over twenty minutes hard landing. When it's time for the penguins to return to the sea ice, they release air bubbles from their feathers. This reduces drag and allows them to accelerate out of the water. The icy impact can knock the wind out of them, sometimes

producing a squeak. Cold brood, dense overlapping feathers, and a thick layer of insulating body fat shield. Emperor penguins from the biting and arctic cold. To defend against the extreme conditions while incubating eggs, hundreds of males huddle tightly together, slip and slide on land where their wabbling slows them down and for penguins often resort to tobogganing, sliding on

their bellies while pushing with their flippers and feet. This efficient mode of transport allows them to cover vast distances across the icy expanse as they travel to and from the sea. How penguins superpowers really work specialized wings. Unlike flying birds, penguins create a strong thrust on both upstroke and downstroke. The chest muscle lifting the wing is more developed hips for swimming, penguins hip bones are elongated compared

with flying birds. The sleek shape allows their muscles to pull back their feet like rudders from sky to sea. Around sixty million years ago, prehistoric flying birds evolved into today's remarkable penguins. The seabird's anatomy adapted to support an amazing dexterity for swimming so they could flourish in the ocean. Rigid flippers. Penguin's inflexible joints are optimized for the force of swimming. In contrast, flying birds wings bend at the

elbow and wrist for agile flying compact bones. When penguins traded flying for swimming, their bones evolved from hollow to very dense, helping withstand the stress of moving through water. Underwater vision. Compared with humans, penguins have flatter corneas and rounded lenses, which assist their ability to see above and below water. Salt filters, law large glands above their eyes help excrete excess salt from prey through their nostrils. S

shaped neck. The neck retracts during diving, keeping the birds shape streamlined anti frostbite veins. Blood vessels in penguin's wings, especially close to their shoulders, exchange heat between the arteries and veins. Constricted blood vessels lower feathers to the body and insulate ice proof feathers. Penguins feathers have barbs and tiny hooks that break up accumulating ice. These features also allow penguins to easily shed water by keeping it in

droplet form. Water result water repellant feathers. Penguins have a eurobigial gland that continuously secretes oil. The birds spread it to waterproof their feathers so they stay warm thermal grit. Some penguin species prosper in cold climates, while others do well in warmer environments. It all comes down to specially adaptations by habitat that help penguins maintain their optimal internal

body temperature two sets of feathers. Once a year, most penguins lose and replace all their feathers in a process called molting, but Galopagus penguins can molt twice a year posture. Galopicus penguins are the only species to live on the equator. To combat the heat, they spread their wings and hunch over, shading their feet and other exposed skin. Molting phase. When holding onto new and old feathers, penguins can't hunt, so they lose almost half their body weight. Pre molt phase.

This is a time of weight gain. Some species add a third to their body mass. They also grow new feathers heat release spots. Living in warmer climates, Humboldt and Galopicus penguins adapted to have bare patches on their faces to help regulate their temperature. Remarkable voice calls thanks to separated sets of vocal tissues in the shrings. King penguins create a noise on two frequency bands, which is crucial

for helping them identify each other in loud colonies. One of a kind coloring ten species, including those in the crested group, have a yellow pigment that is produced by an internal chemical process and signals good health, helping them attract mates. Breeding mastery. When it's time to settle down, these birds have interesting ways to signal their interest in courtship and whence they nest and raise young, They have useful trades to care for them. All these features help

secure a future for the species. Four second naps. Chin straps take thousands of power naps a day to avoid egg predation and protect themselves against aggression from peers. They still get a total of eleven hours of sleep. Unique belly designs. African penguins rely on distinctive dot patterns on their bellies to recognize lifelong partners and colony members. Chin straps use rock piles to protect their eggs and chicks

against getting wet from melting snow. Sensitive beaks, a newly discovered bill tip organ found in some penguin species, is made up of pits filled with touch sensitive receptors and likely helps with foraging and courtship. Next Secrets of the penguins, there are evolutionary marbles that survive some of the most

inhospitable conditions on our planet. Now researchers are discovering new explanations for why, and finding that the incredible penguin has allowed to teach us about resilience in an ever changing world. Paw Penguins embrace their urge to explore by Hannah Nordhaus. When Pablo Poppy Borboro Glue first visited a remote stretch of shoreline along the eastern coast of Patagonia in two thousand and eight, the National Geographic Explorer was surprised to

find penguins making a home there. The Argentine biologist was responding to a call from a nearby rancher who had seen several of the flightless birds in his proper. When he arrived, Booglue found trash, broken glass, abandoned cars, and burned out camphires on the ground. The place was a disaster, he recalls. It was full of garbage amid the squalor. However, under bushes and in small cave like burrows, he discovered

something astonishing twelve Magellanic penguins living among the debris. Each sea bird was about one and a half feet tall, with a distinctive white band encircling its eyes and neck. While Magellanic penguins are known to breed in and around South America on rocky sandy beaches before migrating each winter to the open oceans as far north as Brazil and Peru, the nearest established colony was located more than eighty miles south.

Yet these intrepid travelers had arrived and coupled up, a sign that they were breeding on a beach teeming with hazards. Borbooglue worked quickly assessing the condition of the colony and freeing one bird that was entangled in plastic, and began the law longer process of painstakingly cleaning and securing the area. The emerging colony not only survived, but raised chicks returning

the next spring. Scientists have various theories as to why a so called founder group like this ventures beyond familiar nesting grounds. But for borbo Glue, who went on to create the Global Penguin Society, an international conservation group, the new colony exemplifies the adaptability and resilience of all eighteen penguin species, which inhabit some of nature's harshest environments, even as they continue to face new challenges in our changing world.

They are so brave and determined, he says of penguins as a whole, They're amazing. Penguins are indeed amazing creatures. They're comical, waddle, tuxedo like appearance and endearing parental instincts make them quintessential conservation icons. But these same characteristics also point to some of the ways they've evolved to confront extreme conditions with remarkable adaptability and grit. The first penguins appeared roughly sixty million years ago on what is now

New Zealand. Some scientists believe the absence of natural predators allowed the birds to evolve away from flight and toward more agility in the ocean. Over time, they developed ample sources of fat and a dense, impermeable layer of feathers to withstrand the cold, stunted wings serving as flippers to propel them under water with stunning speed and efficiency, and

distinctive black and white feather patterns to confuse predators. Early penguins rode the currents across oceans, adapting to the new places where they landed. Emperor and a daily penguins, for instance, settled in the unforgiving climate of Antarctica, and they have a thicker layer of body fat, scale like feathers, and claw like feet, especially suited to gain traction on the ice. Galapagus penguins ended up on a chain of islands off the coast of Ecuador, becoming the only species found at

the equator. They now have smaller frames and thinner layers of plumage, which serve them well in the warmer climate. Historically, Magellanic penguins lived on islands off the coast of South America, but after sheep ranchers eradicated mainland predators such as pumas

and foxes, the birds established colonies there too. Penguins vote with their feats, as National Geographic Explorer D. Boorsma, a renowned penguin expert at the University of Washington, they go where the food is, but no matter how far they roam, many of the animals now face the same issues. About half the world's penguins are threatened with extinction, and last year the African penguin became the first to be classified as critically endangered. Today, the threats come from sea and

land alike. In the ocean, penguins must run a gauntlet of oil spills, algal blooms, fishing nets, and plastic pollution. While warming waters and overfishing deplete their prey on penguins mate and raise their chicks, they encounter hazards ranging from declining Antarctic sea ice to coastal development and introduced or

resurgent predators. Over the past century, as penguin numbers faltered, the global conservation community and individual nations moved to safeguard the birds, banning egg harvesting and creating protected areas, allowing embattled populations a chance at continued survival. In the years since, conservationists like Borbora, Glue and Bourisma have lobbied to create more protected areas for nesting and regulate shipping routes to

reduce penguin's potential exposure to oil spills. One startling finding among scientists is that penguins are no longer evolving as fast, limiting their ability to keep pace with the world around them. A recent study showed the penguins now have the slowest evolutionary rates of all birds. Still, some appear adept at leveraging their best trade and behaviors to continue pressing into

new territory. Researchers have discovered that Emperor penguin colonies relocate when sea ice in one area is no longer reliable,

and satellite imagery recently revealed previously unknown colonies in Antarctica. Meanwhile, king penguins, smaller cousins to the emperors, are in decline in Antarctica but growing in the sub Antarctic region, rebounding after decades of being harvested for oil, and gentoos closely related to a dailies are following available food as the southern ocean worms and sea ice clears, allowing them to move more easily and hunt and nest in new areas

of the Antarctic peninsula. We're seeing new colonies established further and further south, says Gemma Glucos, a researcher with the Cornell Labor Lab of Ornithology. The handful of magellanic penguins that once popped up on the trash strewn beach in Patagonia appear to have inspired others to settle in the colony as Borborig. Glue worked with landowners and the local government to create a thirty five thousand acre wildlife refuge. More and more penguins arrived each year. Over eight thousand

penguins now nest here. Its growth has been remarkable. He says, it shows that nature can thrive if given a chance. How penguins spread out from the icy shores of Antarctica to the warm coasts of Wicklopagus Islands, Penguins have shown an exceptional ability to breed in surprising places. Their secret they are superbly a climatate, acclimated to the marine cold, living feeding and breeding near branching currents that flow out of the southern Ocean. The eighteen species are uniquely adapted

to their particular habitat Penguins on thin ice. Several penguins species depend on the annual cycle of freezing and thawing sea ice to breed successfully. But over the past thirty years Scienti subtract changes in ice coverage and concentration. The steepest decline has been along the western coast of the antark Peninsula, forcing chin strap, gentou and emperor penguins to

work even harder to survive most endangered. For the past five years, African penguins have been in a steep decline because of warming waters and competition for prey with commercial fissures. Penguin Paradise. More than four point five million King Gentou, macaroni and Southern rock hopper penguins breed here. Emperors can swim at a sustained seven miles an hour. One traveled over twenty one hundred miles to the shores of southern

Australia last year. The first penguins originated some sixty million years ago in what is today New Zealand. For more than sixty million years, penguins have been driven to reach beyond their boundaries. Today, they continue to surface in unlikely places. This concludes National Geographic Magazine for to Day, your reader, Husband Marshall, thank you for listening, Keep on listening and have a great day.