This trip reminds me of the Hudson Bay. There were times of turbulence and unrest but near the end it cleared and calmed just like the waves do during freeze up. I met people from across the globe and they forced me to stand in their shoes and understand their view on issues. What I learned during this week is more than any textbook could ever teach me.

Thank you PBI you will never have the least idea of all you have done for me.

Frontiers North Adventures you gave me the opportunity of a life time. Without you I would never have discovered the beauty the Arctic holds and the importance of sharing its radiance to the world. Really it is all because of all of you.

I will follow the misson statement we created, "Inspiring change through passion and awareness" and go where ever it leads me.

Thank you.

My First Day Home

The sound of crunching leaves echoed my presence. I was walking home through a forest preserve from the bus stop. This time though, it didn’t feel the same even though I have walked through it my entire life. After spending more than a week out on the tundra with the most passionate people I have met my perspective changed. I felt different and saw things differently. As I walked I started to twirl on the path and listen to the wind, feeling it blowing my hair and sucking in the purity of it all in. I was one with the Earth. And this time my heart didn’t grow heavy with the fear that Earth won’t be here much longer. I knew deep inside that if a group of people like the ones I met through PBI want change…CHANGE WILL HAPPEN. We can “change our fate”. And I am sure that we will see each other once again it is impossible for our lives not to collide… once again.

“We live off the Earth. She is our Mother and who takes care of you better than your Mother”. –Betty (who has been living from the land as a trapper for over sixty years).

We are one with Mother,
Katie

This poem was inspired by the terrifying beauty the Canadian North holds that I was lucky enough to experience first hand this week. It also speaks upon the issue of how climate change is affecting this unique biome.

Echos from the tundra
By:Katie Zawaly

The alchemists have died and gone

But their need for gold lingers on

It travels through fierce strong winds

That bring the need of penance and sin

Blown patches of flesh and blood

Swirl into the darkest bluest flood

They melt the tresses of the purest white

The wizards laugh in utter delight

It rings from both poles and back

Shaking the harpoons now in sacks

Never able to glimmer in the sun

Because mother is overdone

Trapped in the heat

That we did not care when we did discrete

Against our home planet Earth

That can never ever have rebirth

Unless we see the need for life

And cut the hot air with a knife

Up in the skies that are filled

And maybe we can bring back the chill

This is the song Michael and I wrote and sung the last night with Sean playing the guitar. It is about all the students and instructors who participated in PBI leadership camp 2007. Everyone was laughing so hard you could barley hear the lyrics(being sung by Michael with his aussie rockstar voice and well my voice if you could call it a voice).

Music: Under the Bridge by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers

Titled: Under the Buggy

Sometimes I feel like I’m out in the Arctic
Sometimes I feel like this place is my home
The city I live in
The city of Churchill
Under the buggy
The Arctic biome

Its hard to believe that Astrid is angry
Its hard to believe that Annie is slow
Becky’s dioxins
Cassidy with a TEE
Ronnie is always rearing to go…

I don’t ever want to go back to Winnipeg
Take me on a buggy ride
Please don’t make me beg x2

Conner always takes awesome photos
He should have got one of Katie in drag
Jess hasn’t ever tasted a pudding
Cesar is laughing
Omars on the floor

Beth is chuckling about Michaels impression
Of a grasshopper while playing charades

Stephan and Kaitlyn cleaning the toilets
Sucks to be them cause it flushed in their face

I DON’T EVER WANT TO GO BACK TO WINNIPEG
TAKE ME ON A BUGGY RIDE
PLEASE DON’T MAKE ME BEG x2

Sean and his hot guitar
Charlotte sings along
Stacey and her aussie voice semi American

Emily from Kentucky bounces on the buggy
She’s with Lisa-Joy and her baby boy

They’re with the film crew from Denmark
Frank is there too and his wildlife park...

Yeah yeah yeah ohhhhhhhhhhh yeah... Kathy is there too and Robert and Carolyn cause they’re uber cool. And Captain driving the buggy


October 4 2007
(sorry about the dates being out of order but living in the Arctic with nothing but tundra surrounding you means that internet does not always work…especially with horrendous winds blowing from the Arctic Ocean)

Staying up late at night watching the northern lights out in the middle of the tundra was a completely different experience than the aurora I saw in the town of Churchill. Here north of Churchill with the Hudson Bay only a few meters away from me I saw these lights twirl across the sky. Many on board the tundra buggy lodge said it was the best show they had seen in 10 years. The thick green lines slithered above me and then melted into a shade of violet that only Mother Nature could create. It was then that I realized how round the heavens are. The colors were literally pulled across the globe and above me the sky was a sphere ( I have always viewed it as a flat piece of paper on top of me) . On the prairies the sky is up above you but that night it felt as if I was almost there dancing with the twisting beams (it could have something to do with the high latitude or the magnificence the Arctic sometimes just sometimes shares).

I sat listening to a presentation but my eyes wandered once again to the polar bear lying 100 meters from my bunk house. I saw it slowly rise its head pointing in my direction and walk towards me. Its nose curiously sniffed the air. It then wandered over to us and everyone rushed to the window. I stuck my head outside in the cold damp air with my friend from Denmark, next to me. We laughed over how the bear acted like a movie star, loving the attention, while I practiced my Danish (which was in some cases funnier). Sadly, the sight of seeing polar bears in the wild may disappear because of climate change. The planet Earth lost 1.2 million square kilometers of Arctic sea ice this summer. The loss of highly reflective ice causes more solar energy to be absorbed in the ocean…so the melting rate drastically increases. In turn the polar bear is, a “vulnerable species” nearing endangered status because it lives mostly on ringed seals. The population ranges over thousands of kilometers of ice and every year due to global warming it melts earlier. Without ice the polar bear has no way to hunt seals. They end up swimming until they meet their chilling death.

Outside the town of Churchill beside the plummeting waves in the Hudson Bay something not so grand stands. The past headquarters of polar bear research rests abandon. We stepped inside the dimly lit laboratory, trying to avoid reminisce left over 30 years ago. Beside some new 7-up cans everything was left just as the day they departed. The apparatus they used in their experiments looked horrendous. You could see the pulleys and the containers that the oil was kept before being spilt onto the bears. This study was conducted in order to understand if an oil spill would affect the bears. I mean you would think that it might have been an unnecessary test (and extremely cruel) but the sacrifice of one hopefully will effect many…someday. This one already has by influencing the thickness of the hull in oil tankers that pass through polar bear territory.

One minute we were flying through clouds then suddenly the barren brown tundra came into full view. I peered out my window my head clanging with my Hawaiian friend and we started laughing in excitement. Once outside the plane, the cold air on the runway welcomed us to the sub-arctic. Later, after a long walk I saw the Churchill River. That huge tumbling waterway is the very reason as to why Polar Bears come to Churchill in the first place. Without it the salinity in the Hudson Bay would be constant and all the water would freeze at the same time. The freshwater the river brings causes the water near Churchill to freeze first. The polar bears desperately want to get out on the ice to hunt seals after starving for 8 months and they need ice in order to hunt. So they head to Churchill!

Tonight, the aurora was flashing cascades of green and purple across the black sky. Standing in the middle of a gravel road with the wind biting my face I might have been cold but I never felt so much warmth inside of me before. The passion I had for the planet blossomed while seeing this spectacular sight. Looking up into the pitch blackness after the colors danced away made me realize how little we understand about the Earth . We might know why we have these shows in the sky but we have no idea how many differnt lichens there are on the tundra. We have so much to discover!

“Look Mum, he can swing better than me…he’s even better than Spider Man”, screamed a bright eyed four year old. Her head was arched upwards towards the monkey exhibit at the Assiniboine zoo, totally mesmerized. Her comment directly related to the debate we had minutes earlier; whether animal captivity programs are beneficial to both the creature and to man. Dr. Frank Vigh-larsen from Denmark opened the floor with the negative affects and then handed it over to an Australian instructor who explained the positive outcomes. We discussed the great possibility that if the general public views the animal out of its natural habitat, they may never grasp how it relates to the planet on a whole and how truly amazing its behaviors are in the wild. Many thought that it all came down to the type of enclosure (if it was a cement block or a landscape found in their habitat) and the overall welfare of the animal was the priority, because really what do we gain from a polar bear pacing in cage? Yet, as I discovered this afternoon even when a mammal is in a cage a connection is still made with the observer. Maybe, just maybe, that little girl will remember the powerful arms swinging and realize how very majestic a simple action is and the importance of letting it continue.