12 July 2018 I'm going to Alaska!

My name is Allyson, and I do research and development for new exhibits at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) in Portland, Oregon. In August, I'll be heading to two Alaska Native villages, Nikolai and Telida, to do research with permafrost scientists and community members. More on that later – what I want you to know right now is that I'm pretty sure I get to ride in a bush plane. I played it cool when I got the news (I'm a professional), but this is a lifelong ambition of mine, so if you want to hear my voice at its highest pitch, wait until I post the video.

My face holding a fossil. Imagine an airplane.

This actually isn't my first field expedition in Alaska, because for the past few years I've been working on the team for Under the Arctic: Digging Into Permafrost, a traveling exhibition about permafrost, how it's thawing due to climate change, and how that impacts everyone (not just Alaskans, but also you and me). When I started working on the exhibit, I couldn't tell you what permafrost is. Now I'm genuinely obsessed with it, and my goal with this journal is to drag you into that obsession with me. I'm going to be talking about climate change, but I'll also do my best to leave you hopeful – not by sugar-coating anything, but by giving you information about what's happening and what you can do. Does climate change feel abstract to you? Does it feel overwhelming, like the problem is too big to do anything about? If this journal can do anything, I hope it addresses these emotions. I grapple with them in my work, and they are the primary reason I applied for this PolarTREC expedition, so I'm going to lay it all out for you and hope we come out the other side wiser than we are today.

In my next post I'm going to give some permafrost 101 so you know what the heck I'm talking about, but until then, I'll leave you with some pretty pictures I took on the Yukon last summer. I can't wait to get back to this state.

View from the village of Ruby, Alaska. Midnight sun on the Yukon River. This is what 1am looks like in late June. I was watching the sun rise and set at the same time. Still hyper. #midnightsun Dr. Santosh Panda, one of the researchers I'll be shadowing, watches a storm roll in over the Yukon River.

Until next time,

Allyson