The world according to...

It’s been just over six weeks since I came back from Churchill and the time has just flown by. Work has been crazy busy and one minute it’s Monday, the next it’s Sunday night again. I’d be lying though if I said I couldn’t have made time to write about my trip if I’d really wanted to.  The truth being that I simply haven’t known exactly what to say. Writing up my experience on other adventures has been relatively easy - I’ve had very clear thoughts about how to summarise everything. This time though I was just left with a real calmness that has been hard to put into words.

Here though, is my attempt:

The Study Centre and the learning course

The course was put together by Tiffanie at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre in Churchill, Manitoba.  It was called the Lords of the Arctic learning vacation and takes place twice a year during the 4 - 6 weeks that the bears congregate around Churchill waiting for the sea ice to form on the Hudson Bay so they can finally go out and hunt their favourite food - the ringed seal.  The trip consisted of some touristy things - taking a helicopter flight over the tundra and going dog mushing through the woods. But more importantly for the researcher, Dr Jane Waterman, it was about using the photos we took of the bears to map whisker patterns and identify individuals to monitor populations.

My group

The people on my trip totally rocked and I’ve made some good friends. There were couples, friends, families and individuals from Australia, the UK, Canada and the US. Not only did we had a good laugh but it was good to meet people with similar interests and were equally as interested in the wildlife, the environment and learning about stuff as me.  Most had been on some pretty epic adventures too so it was good to get ideas for the future!

The bears

The bears were AMAZING! When I was researching the trip I had hoped to see about 10 - 15 bears if I was lucky. In reality though I was blown away by the fact I saw closer to 100 over the week. I’d timed it perfectly to arrive just as the weather was changing, albeit later than has been the norm and what’s ideal for the bears. It meant that compared to the weeks beforehand, there were plenty of mums and yearlings and even mums with older cubs around.  Out on Cape Churchill, there were also plenty of larger males waiting in day beds for the sea ice to form. I got to observe bears sparring from the helicopter and even saw a mum teaching her two cubs how to hunt on the ice!!  I learnt after coming home that only two days after my trip ended, the sea ice had formed in full and another group saw a maximum of 8 bears for their whole trip!

The other wildlife was awesome too - arctic foxes, arctic hare, gyrfalcon and ptarmigan. Watching their behaviour out on the tundra was just as good as watching the bears and I got some good shots of them over the week.

The town and people

This is probably the hardest topic to sum up. I met a lot of really friendly people, but I also met others who were very distant and who seemed like it would take a lifetime to get to know and to try to get past the superficial stuff.

There was also some more controversial undercurrents too. I guess to some extent, as with any place similar in size, there is a bit of small town politics. We also found out about the issues that come when people live alongside the bears - trying to dispose of rubbish without attracting bears, the affects of a possible road to be able to drive to Churchill (as opposed to a less than convenient 48 hour train ride or a plane journey) and some of the negative effects of tourism. 

None of this would have put me off going had I have known beforehand, and I certainly don’t regret taking part in the activities I did - in fact on the whole tourism has helped the bears a lot (e.g. tourists don’t like seeing bears eating at the dump so it got closed down). But it all certainly made me think in a way that other trips haven’t always been so obvious with - maybe that’s why they call it a learning vacation ;)

The experience

Churchill and it’s people and landscape is definitely no common place. It’s not the kind of place that you can visit and then easily forget. Our instructor, Rupert, went so far as to say that ‘the time spent in Churchill can change people’. The landscape, the northern sky, the wildlife, the cold, barren environment and of course, the serene silence on the windswept tundra gives you a glimpse into a world that’s so different from the hustle and bustle that most people live in day to day. It was certainly a shock to the system to go from observing a lifestyle, for both man and animal, so reliant on the weather to survive to heading back to the traffic on the roads, to busy days and to things that, quite simply, don’t really matter. I miss the simplicity of things.

I have fantastic memories of the time I spent in Churchill - both intellectual and emotional. My photos help to remember the great experience and I’ll continue to be in awe of the polar bears and the arctic ecosystem for a long time to come.