From: Haley Smith Kingsland, Stanford University
Haley Smith Kingsland (Photo by Karen Frey)
60° 7’ 155” N, 149° 25’ 532” W, July 24 — The fog lifted as the Healy steamed through Resurrection Bay ahead of schedule Wednesday morning. We pulled into port just before noon, enough time for both scientists and Coast Guard crew to disembark in Seward and readjust to the motionless ground beneath our feet, moving automobiles, fresh salads, the smell of flowers and vegetation, cell phone service, and other civilians!
Wednesday night, Bonnie Light (University of Washington) and I watched the colors of the sunset intersect the moon from the Healy’s helo deck. We spoke about the incredible amount of effort to reach the Arctic, a place so difficult to convey through prose or imagery.
“Sea ice may as well be the moon,” Bonnie said. We were already craving it — and the alternate reality of life aboard a ship — just hours after docking in port.
Among the many other aspects of icebreaking I’ll miss are walruses, polar bears, CTD casts, fresh-baked desserts, steel-toed boots, and 24 hours of sunlight. On top of daily lab work that consumed at least a third of my waking hours at sea, blogging for so many loyal and curious followers has been an honor. I wish I had had more time to tell you even more about our Arctic research and phenomenal Coast Guard hosts! Thank you for reading, commenting, and supporting ICESCAPE 2010!
Hello HALEY,
Just want to let you know how much I have looked forward to this blog each day. It has been a fascinating look into another world, and the photography has been spectacular. I would be very interested in following it even if my son (Elliot Weiss) were not on the ship! Thanks for all your good work.
Kathleen Larisch
I am amazed that this young woman created such a stunning blog on top of her scientific responsibilities. Congratulations!
thanks for post
Haley,
Thanks for your excellent production of this blog. It has been the next best thing to being on board the Healy, educational and has kept me in close contact with my son, Owen Dicks.
Gratefully,
rodger dicks
Haley,
Thank you so much for the time you spent (which probably took away from precious hours of sleep!) on this blog. It has been wonderful being able to read and see where my brother has been all this time. Also, with several classmates studying ice melt, reading about the science being conducted was especially interesting.
Thanks again!
I also just wanted to say “thanks” for the updates and photos which were so interesting. I too am a relative of one of the crew, (one of the coasties) and it was so nice to hear what he was up to everyday and see what he was seeing. Your photos were fantastic and as they were posted I also shared them with all my friends and family who loved them. So “thanks” from them as well. Hope to see your blog again next year ?!
Thank you very much for your positive feedback! Updating this blog from the Arctic was a phenomenal experience, and I’m extremely grateful for your faithful readership. — Haley Kingsland