During our first day on the water I leaned over the edge of the bowsprit as we sailed away from the rocky shoreline of Knife River. With the boat behind me there was only water and sunshine to be seen and I felt like the women carved into the bows of old wooden ships who were forever smiling into an endless horizon. It was exhilarating. This experience has been full of moments like that and we have had tons of great conversations about climate change, heaps of delicious food and some pretty incredible sails.
I grew up on a manmade lake in Nebraska. It was a sanctuary amid the endless corn and soybean fields of the Great Plains and I fell in love with being on water. My childhood was spent skiing, playing water tag and a whole lotta pontooning. My love affair with Lake Superior began when I started studying at Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin. When it came to choosing a college I knew I wanted to be somewhere close to water and I chose to be on the shore of the biggest lake in the world.
I graduated in December 2019 with a degree in Natural Resources and Biology. One of the biggest takeaways I have from my education is that caring for the environment is useless without caring for the people who depend on it and building resilient and compassionate communities who live in tandem with the natural world. Mark and Katya have created Sea Change Expeditions to do just that, to raise awareness of what we are doing to our planet and what we can do to make a difference.
I have been dreaming of this Sea Change trip since I first heard of it from Katelyn Nimsgern, a fellow Northlander who had been on Sea Change in 2018. This trip is much more than I had hoped it would be- lack of showers and all! Cheers to another week and a half aboard the Amicus 2!
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