Friday, July 24, 2009

Laura's birthday - July 22, 2009


There was a moment this morning when I woke up to the most unique setting. The sun was shining, mist was coming up from the ground and my lungs, once so sodden with chemicals from the city, felt like they were busting with life. I thought: This is it; this is what the fight was for.
Rewind to a few months ago. I am lying awake at four in the morning, the bleakest, loneliest time, listening to cars come and go, and all that is going through my head is this isn’t fair. What sort of Statistic am I? I’m 16 17 and I live in a world being destroyed by carelessness. I am furious and terrified and everything hurts. I was 16 when I decided I wanted to do my part to fight against climate change. And I had to fight tooth, foot and nail to convince my father it was the right thing to do. He’s very anti-climate change. He believes everything happening to our earth is natural. He told me I was too young to understand how the world worked, and I had to fight him. I fought him, and won.
It was this win that lead me to spend my birthday with amazing people at the Arctic’s edge, volteenering my time to scientific research with an aspect of climate change.
As I jumped out of bed and headed down to breakfast with Anna I figure I’m still at stage one (Everything is new and exciting, you feel terrific).
I stayed at stage one throughout the whole, entire day. Especially when I got a birthday card from Anna, Erica, Claire, Ymkje, Spenser, Chris, Scott, Ben, Leanne, LeeAnn, and Carla. It felt incredible that even though all of us had just met for the first time, everyone could work together and have such a good bond.
Even early in the morning, when I would normally be asleep still, we all functioned well. We had breakfast –awkward silences filled by Ymkje’s stories- and at 7:45am we had our usual briefing where we find out about our jobs for the day ahead. Then after getting ready, and suited up in full gear –waders, bug jackets, boots, bags- we all perked up and ventured though the swarms of mosquitoes to do field work. This time the walk Ben set up for us to do was....very gruelling. So much so we all had to put our energy into each step we took....not. The work load was very easy and mosquitoes were at a minimum today.
It was Leanne who fist spotted the polar bear swimming in the freezing water of Hudson Bay, near our field sight. Polar bears are very fast creatures, and so it came to no surprise that this majestic creature swam in and out of our sight in a give five minutes. It was only a short sighting, but a satisfying one at that. During the day we also saw many tadpoles, fish, and even caught a BCF.
Later on in the day, after dinner, we had a lecture focused on Polar Bears. Did you know that there are less that 1,000 polar bears in the western Hudson Bay population, and that in Canada there are only 15,000 polar bears. It is thought that there are 25,000 polar bears worldwide, yet polar bears are not endangered species?
As, grudgingly, it was my birthday today (I hate my birthday); LeeAnn had baked a fabulous chocolate cake with the best frosting top to celebrate the occasion. My nana would probs dislike me for saying this, but the cake was the most amazing cake I have ever come across. And eating most of the cake –me and Anna going back for seconds- we watched a film before heading off to bed. I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say I can’t wait to see what is in store for tomorrow.

-By Laura.


Happy Birthday Laura! A good celebration with the team.



The group in the dome - "the secret hideout"

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