Thursday, November 9

Theoretically, there are three ways to get to Churchill.  By road is not one of them. It’s a deepwater port, so you can get there by freighter ship if you’re a sailor and Hudson Bay hasn't frozen yet. You once could take the train, a 48-hour trip. But last May, floods washed out huge sections of rail which haven’t been repaired. This is a huge issue in Churchill right now: all food and other goods have to be flown in, so prices have skyrocketed. The only way left, of course, is to fly.

No TSA, no boarding passes, no airport hassle. As Bonnie promised, we walk three steps from bus to charter plane. We’re airborne by about 9:30. It’s mostly clear, which provides a great view of amazing terrain: absolutely flat and full of water. Yesterday one of the guides called Manitoba "Land of 100,000 Lakes" and that must be an understatement.

625 miles north and 2-1/2 hours later, the wind blasts us when we get off the plane. And we thought Winnipeg was cold! We transfer to a bus and drive about 20 minutes out of town to the launch area. There we take about half a dozen steps to the Polar Rover – the last steps on land we will take for the next 3 days. Once out in polar bear country, it’s too dangerous to be on the ground.

We meet Jason, our driver, who introduces us to the Polar Rover. It’s like an extra-wide short school bus, with wheels 5 feet in diameter and 3 feet wide, six-wheel-drive. The only door is in the rear and leads to a large deck with a see-through metal grid floor. Jason explains the rules: While in motion, no one is allowed on the deck or in the bathroom. And we get an important lesson: how to open the windows for better picture-taking.

The Tundra Lodge is the most unique lodging we’ve ever experienced, so we have to explain it. It’s like five railcars, but on big wheels like the Polar Rover. At the beginning and end of each bear season, Polar Rovers haul the cars in and out.

Two cars contain the sleeping accommodations: single rooms about 8' x 4', either lower or upper bunk, with luggage space above or below, respectively. 4 bathrooms with showers and 2 toilet-and-sink rooms are in the middle of the sleepers.

Leave the sleeping car and you walk across about 10 feet of metal-grated deck to the next car, the lounge. Sofas, coffee tables, movable chairs, a couple bookcases, a big TV screen for presentations, a bar at one end, and a toasty gas heater in the middle.

Go across another metal deck (it’s a long way across without your parka!) and you’re in the dining room, with the kitchen at the far end. The walls in both lounge and dining room are solid window from about 3 to 6 feet above the floor – the better for bear viewing. We didn’t go beyond the kitchen, but the last car is utilities and the lodge staff’s rooms.

We’ve been assigned rooms, and our baggage is already there. Nancy’s got an upper bunk in room 2; Dianne and Giselle are in lower bunks in rooms 8 and 19. Everyone gradually drifts to the lounge, where hors d’oeuvres and wine is available. We can still see the snoozing polar bear through the spotting scope, but the sun sets at 4 pm and it’s soon too dark to see him. Dinner is served at 6:30 – the gourmet meal Shane and Shelley cooked is delicious. Eddy and Bonnie serve – a tour guide wears many hats.

All day Eddy has been promising an evening presentation on Polar Bears 101. But as dinner is finishing up, Bonnie and Eddy tell us that the sky is clearing, the geomagnetic storm index is 5 (on a scale of 1 to 9) and there’s a really good chance we’ll get to see the aurora borealis. So Polar Bear 101 is postponed in favor of Aurora Borealis 101. We meet in the lounge and Eddy launches into his presentation. He’s made it past the myths and legends and is just getting into the science when Bonnie interrupts: "It’s starting. It’s looking good. We don’t know how long it will last, so we ought to go watch!" We head to our rooms to don every warm article of clothing we have brought – because the wind chill is -37 C (-35 F) – and head out to the decks.

Aurora borealis! Another bucket list item, but one we didn’t realize we’d get to see. It is both really cool and rather disappointing. Really cool: ribbons stretching across the sky slowly shifting and dancing. Ribbons and curtains and later a corona – a curtain directly overhead. The aurora lasts a long time, hours and hours. Disappointing: unlike all the pictures we’ve ever seen, there is no color. It looks like fog, or clouds. Patterns of light. Later we learn why: The cells that our eyes use to see at night (rods) see only in black and white and shades of gray. Only if the aurora is really strong will it have enough light to be detected by the eye’s cone cells and then show faint color. Cameras, of course, don’t have that limitation. So the photograph Eddy takes of Nancy, Dianne and the aurora shows colors we can’t see. Eddy also creates a time-lapse video of the aurora, with photos taken every 13 seconds for over an hour. In the second half you can see the moonrise.

Why is there no aurora photo of Giselle? She is smarter and realizes she can see it just as well from the warm comfort of her bed. Nancy tries to stay outside as much as possible, figuring this may be her one shot at seeing an aurora borealis in her lifetime and wanting the full-sky experience. But cold feet keep driving her in by the heater to warm up. Bonnie checks her boots and discovers they are damp – the liners need to be removed each night for perspiration to dry. No one told us that when the boots were issued, and they’ve been worn for several days now.

The aurora lasts long into the night, into our sleep. We awaken in the dark and check the sky, and it’s still there.