They say home is where the heart is. After a long day of travel and one week of immense change, I’m home again. And yet I’m not, because a piece of my heart is still on the chilly plains of the tundra. The Arctic is a place that penetrates your very soul. The bears and the open land leave an imprint on your heart that cannot be erased. When you first witness a wild polar bear, that vast expanse of white and muscle and archaic strength, your heart thunders. You can hear your pulse. The rest of the world disappears, and you are alone with the bear. I’ve been told that that feeling never goes away – that each bear sighting feels exactly like the first. It is an indescribable feeling, like you can fly but you never want to move. It breaks my heart to think that my future children might never have the chance to feel that rush, to see that sight.

This is the blunt truth: the world is warming. The Arctic is warming. Sea ice that has existed for centuries is melting at an appalling rate. Winters in the Arctic are shorter. The ice needed so desperately for the bears’ survival is freezing later and melting earlier. An Inuit man on the plane to Winnipeg yesterday could remember when the ice came in late August. Today, it is mid-October, and still the bears wait. They wait to change their fast to feast, and they wait and they wait and they wait. This is the cruel truth: polar bears will not survive our lifetime if we do not take actions to save them.

So I’m asking you, pleading with you, to help. I am just a single person, and I cannot save them alone. Turn of your computer. Unplug your phone charger. Turn off the lights. Turn down the thermostat by one degree. Plant a tree, and buy recycled products. Visit www.thermo-stat.org to find out how you can reduce your carbon footprint. These actions are simple, but with enough repetition, you can help to save the life of a starving bear.

I have never felt as tiny as I did standing beneath the northern lights, with a polar bear asleep in the kelp a hundred yards away. The wind shrieked, and the full moon shone down on us. Yet I have never felt more connected with the world. This week has taught me more than I can say. I have gained insight and experience. I have developed the courage to help save the polar bear. If I could share only one thing with you that I have learned this week, it is this. Amid all the dismal tidings, hope burns brightly. We are the hope. This is my world, your world, and the polar bears’ world. Let’s keep it that way.

I used to think that I had experienced the world. I used to think that I shared a deep connection with nature. I was so naïve.

Today we met Parker, Betty and Jim, three trappers. They came bearing furs and stories that would alter my perceptions in a single afternoon. They spoke to us of their experiences working the land. Trapping is one way they make a living, how they support and feed themselves, but it's also a way of life. The depth to which they know the land and the animals they trap astounds me. They know when to stop hunting females or when to cease hunting a species for a year or two in order to sustain a population. The respect they hold for the animals they trap is equal to, if not greater than, the reverence for animals that we "urban animal lovers" have.

I used to believe that trapping was a terrible thing. Now, I’m not so sure that it is all that awful. Trapping is a way of life, one which you simply cannot fathom in the city. As I listed to Betty tell about her life tending a trap line, as she told us that the wolf was her favorite animal and that the tiny town of Churchill made her claustrophobic, I realized just how much I still have to learn and how much I still have to experience.

Betty told us about how much nature means to her. “I wish you could feel what I feel,” she said, “when I walk through the woods. You are not alone there. The whole place is alive.” And that is the simple truth: this whole place is alive. The whole world is alive. And we have been presented with the challenge of keeping it that way. It is a task I accept gladly. How about you?

We woke up this morning to the call of “Polar bear! Polar bear! I’m not kidding, you guys! It’s a polar bear!” We rushed outside, hair wet from four-minute showers and still sporting pajamas, to find a young male bear wandering around next to the lodge. I wish you could have seen the enormity of the bear. His paws alone were enough to remind us all of the animal’s sheer power. He stayed near us for most of the morning, napping in the brush as we ate breakfast. He’s still here, sleeping a little ways off in the distance.

The people on this trip impress me. We’re an eclectic set, to be sure. We gathered from all corners of the continent, from Toronto to San Diego. In four short, inconceivable days we have been transformed from strangers to family. The sense of community we have built here in our little camp is baronial. We are isolated, it seems, from the outside world entirely (except for our blogs of course). We have learned to depend on one another for food and for company. A common place and a common cause have cemented us together in a way I never expected. I have shared experiences with this group that I will never forget, and so our bond can never be broken. We have laughed until we cried and cried until we have no choice but to laugh. A tiny camp in the Arctic wilderness has suddenly become a home.

Today has brought us many more incredible experiences, from the bear to seeing the tundra soaked in sunshine to a sunset I will not soon forget. The bear is in action again, and heading towards camp, so I’m signing off. Stay tuned for more Arctic adventures.

We spent the afternoon on the buggy, searching for polar bears. We were lucky enough to encounter the same mother and two cubs (called M C Squared by some) we had viewed yesterday. The behavior of the bears was incredible to watch, so different from what I’ve ever seen in captivity. The cubs were curious again, ogling us and the buggy. They played with each other, wrestling and nudging. The mother stood protectively by as we snapped picture after picture. At one point the mother stood up on her hind legs, an action our buggy driver says is rarely seen from a female. Her size was emphasized and really put the polar bears’ power into prospective. (Their jaws can deliver 900 pounds of pressure per square inch, roughly the same as driving a car over an apple.)

In fact, the behaviors of all the animals we have seen are vastly different from anything I’ve ever witnessed in zoos. The snowy owl we spotted last night and the bald eagle seen today soared, and no walls or fences contained them. The bears wandered and played against an endless backdrop of rocks and ponds. The Arctic hares hid themselves away in the willow, and the Arctic fox that wandered around camp most of the morning stalked and chased after the snow buntings. There is nothing quite like seeing an animal in its natural habitat to make you appreciate the wild world we live in.

The past two days have been an adventure, to say the least. I arrived at Winnipeg around two yesterday, and the action hasn’t stopped since. Last night after dinner we listened to a presentation by Robert Taylor, a photographer and naturalist who shoots the tundra’s beauty. His pictures inspired all of us, and you could feel the room come to life as we took in the images we hoped to soon see for ourselves. I went to bed with images of polar bears, sunrises, and snow still in my head, thinking that five AM couldn’t come soon enough.

I boarded the plane for Churchill in the dark, saying goodbye to the last big city I would see for a week, anxious for what would lie ahead. There was so much to take in, including the polar bear holding facility D-20, Gypsy’s, and the Parks Canada Interpretive Center. We also saw the abandoned laboratory of Dr. Watts, also known as L-50. This is the place where Dr. Watts once led three polar bears through a solution of oil and water to see how oil would affect the bears’ fur. When ingested, the oil proved fatal. The wind was howling and the rain was falling as we approached the building, a flock of blue, shivering parkas. Inside, L-50 was dank and eerie, and the building held a chill that went deeper than the cold outside. Broken glass littered the floor, and abandoned equipment stood as silent reminders of the events that had transpired there. It is an image that will haunt me forever.

L-50 presented a question that is not easily answered. Is the killing of three polar bears worth the potential protection of an entire population? The outcome of Dr. Watts’ experiment laid the groundwork for the laws that govern oil ships in the area and prevent oil spills from potentially killing dozens of bears and other wildlife species. Yet the man was run out of town for his cruelty, in a time and place when hunting bears was not only expected, but encouraged. If I’ve learned one thing today (and I’ve learned many things), it’s that the big questions, like the one above, have no clear answers. Mostly, there’s only grey area, and we must do the best we can to respect and understand all sides of the issue.

As our trek continued into the town itself, I was stopped in my tracks by my first sight of Hudson Bay. The water held so much power, as wave after silver wave beat against the rocks. The view stole my breath, and my heart skipped. In that one moment, the world shifted, and all that I had seen previously fell into place. The enormity of this week, this opportunity, hit me head on. How many seventeen-year-olds can say that they’ve traveled the Arctic?

And finally, the highlight of all highlights. We saw five bears today. The first two were spotted from the bus, at least a hundred yards away from us. We all flocked to windows, cameras flashing. Later, after we had boarded the Tundra Buggy, we had our second bear sighting, a family group consisting of young mother and two cubs of the year (COYS). The cubs were adorable, rolling around and playing with one another. They were also curious, coming right up to our buggy. It was the female, though, that truly impressed me. She watched over her cubs with a kind of protective grace I had never witnessed before, and she moved with a strength that is beyond words. I know these bears are powerful, the top of the food chain, hands down, but to see that power firsthand… I think Robert Buchanan conveyed it perfectly last night when he said, “Polar bears are mother nature’s greatest creation. I love all animals, but she did something extra special when she made them.”

Tonight, we sit in the Tundra Buggy Lodge, stationed in the Churchill Wildlife Management area. The weather had switched from rain to snow to hail and finally to an odd combination of all. It’s cold, and it is beautiful. I’ve never been in a place that had this kind of subtle, wild pulchritude. I’m officially in love with the tundra.