This gift of a breathtaking final morning sunrise run encapsulates my feelings about the journey I undertook this summer. Rugged beauty of the unknown, the remote, and a powerful nod to nature. It's exactly what I didn't know I was missing.
Lessons Learned
Coming home after being 4000+ miles away was quite a journey. I was fortunate to sit next to a delightfully precocious 12 year old girl on my last leg home, and she was so interested in what I had just experienced. I realized just how much I promoted science in that short conversation, and was able to highlight her thinking to prove that indeed, she did have a scientific mind. She just didn't know it. What a great lesson for me about how we have to capture students' minds and tweak their misgivings about "not being good at science". Problem-solving. That's the crux of it, and we all do it, every single day.
Problem-solving happened upon landing, with knowledge that my mom had gone to the ER in Ohio the same night I'd left Anchorage. After 24 hours with my son, I turned around and drove 10 hours north to spend the next 8 days with Mom as she regained strength after emergency surgery and a slew of infections. Lesson there? Be flexible and require specific answers from those who are in charge of your health.
Fast forward to today. Alexis, my research lead extraordinaire, and I have been in continued communication. I felt like I was part of a family during my time in Savoonga, and I couldn't have asked for a better team. Fieldwork is intense, unpredictable, and an emotional rollercoaster of joy, frustration, confusion, disappointment, patience, and battling the elements. There are no quick answers, and the persistence of my teammates struck me as extraordinary. To know that someone is monitoring nest productivity, from emptiness to bird to egg to chick, is pure evidence of stamina. But to learn via email that many of the chicks, and even the adults (auklets) died after I'd left, was stunning and stirred a surprisingly deep sadness within me. I hadn't realized how invested I'd become in the success of the nests, even though I was present for only part of the season. Lesson learned? Intensity embeds emotions into the heart, even when you don't realize it.
I'd also felt the frustrations of not retrieving the amount of loggers desired, and understood how difficult it was to "control" animal behavior. Simply put, you can't. And even though murres might nest on the same 7" cliff ledge year after year after year, it doesn't mean they have to lay an egg there. Which means they don't need to be tied to that ledge, which in turn means we can't tell what's happening with them and why that lack of breeding is occurring. Lesson learned? Research raises more questions than it answers sometimes. Go with it, be flexible and revisit what you do know. It's also key to remember what you do accomplish because it can be way too easy to focus on what's missing or the data you "didn't get".
With the emotional ride of the season and the research, teamwork is critical. People who support, encourage, and welcome you into their circles are priceless. There is no room for pride in fieldwork, and you simply must be ready to do any task required in order to support each other. Lesson learned? Fieldwork is both humbling and empowering all at once.
The other people that should be involved are the locals, with their unique knowledge and insights of the land, patterns of weather and animals, and traditions that can make or break a research expedition. Listening to firsthand stories about the changes the Siberian Yupik have been facing in recent years should be required for policymakers across our country. Climate change is here. It's real, and it has already changed habits, livelihoods, and future sustainability options for many people. They are still Americans, which I think many have forgotten. Lesson learned? People matter, and it's a darn good idea to triangulate 2-3 opinions, perspectives or pieces of knowledge when making decisions.
What's happening now
Alexis and I are brainstorming projects to use with students, and hope to have a unit that teachers can use and tweak for their own contexts this fall. It's such a gift to work with someone like her – how many times I wish I could just mind-meld! I have also been invited to present at a local chapter of the Audubon Society and a Lunch 'n' Learn at the NC Zoo, both of which are very new contexts for me, and a bit intimidating knowing there will be experts galore in my audiences. What buoys me, though, is the knowledge that this experience was a tremendous learning spike for me, and I feel exponentially more equipped to talk about climate change from a firsthand point of view. This expedition has also become, importantly, incredible impetus for me to continue researching both seabirds and the Yupik way of life in this time of climate change.
Next Steps
Next steps? Continue to find ways to get my students outside and away from computers. Continue to communicate with Alexis as she gets results from the loggers, bird "puke" (yes, it's the preferred term!), and feather analyses of the dead birds, which will then allow her to draw more thorough conclusions about the impacts of sea ice extent on the non-breeding ecology of seabirds. I will follow along and continue to ask questions, which she so graciously and patiently answers so I can explain it in my own terms to students and those who are interested. In other words, this partnership is not over yet! We have work to do!
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