12/3/2014 11:45:22 AM

Bear Season Comes to a Close

By Kt Miller  

I'm still looking over my shoulder as I walk down the street, watching for polar bears around corners and in between buildings. It becomes ingrained in you when you spend a "bear-season" (as the locals say) in Churchill. Another season on the coast of Western Hudson Bay has come to a close and the last of our staff members made it home Sunday night.

It was an incredible season in up north. Once again we reached thousands (I believe this year it is actually hundreds of thousands!) of classrooms through our Tundra Connections® program and successfully executed a new series of Live Chats with Explore.org! I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that we are able to stream programs with the world's leading polar bear scientists from the middle of nowhere on the tundra! The evolution of technology, along with our own infrastructure, and a handful of passionate, visionary, employees have made the programming we do possible. It is truly amazing. 

I'm always happy to come home after a long season working in Churchill, but this year more than ever I felt nostalgic with my departure. Familiarity breeds fondness and I have become incredibly fond of Churchill. There's something about watching the sea turn from a liquid mass to a navigable platform, where polar bears, Arctic fox, and humans alike are all now able to travel with ease across the frozen landscape. The earth casts an icy spell on everything and the light dwindles, almost never leaving the horizon. And then there's the Frontiers North Adventures family, a diverse and loving group of polar bear enthusiasts from all over the world, who always know how to have a good time. The smell of a Gypsy's pastry, walking laps through the Arctic Trading Company admiring the beautiful northern art, I could go on and on...  And the light, oh the light in the north... it's really something else, especially at this time of year.

One of my last days on the tundra we were fortunate to witness a mother with two COYs (cubs of the year) walking out onto the ice. It was thrilling to know that mom and her two young had made it through the long hard summer and were headed out to find what is likely their first meal in months. Although it is thrilling to see, it's also hard to swallow the fact that the fate of these incredible creatures is in our hands. Next year, if we continue business as usual, mom and two might have a few less days on ice, and a few less the following year, and a few less, and a few less...

We cannot put a fence around the sea ice. Taking action on greenhouse gas emissions is the only option. So I ask you, even though polar bear season is over and the live cameras are not streaming inspiration every day, keep polar bears in your heart and on your mind, and think about your impact on the environment and the little things (and big things) you can do every day to make a difference... for the polar bears, and the entire planet.