Polar Bears
On my latest adventure to Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, I became the Cookie Sherpa. This was a Polar Bear trip with an AMAZING night of Northern Lights and some of the coolest human interactions I have had in a long time. I went by myself on this adventure. There were 22 strangers, split up on two tundra rovers. How I became known to the group as the Cookie Sherpa-
We stayed at a lodge out on the tundra. It allowed us to be right in the Polar Bear habitat. Note- we were never allowed to set foot on the ground. Something about safety! The lodge had a chocolate chip cookie jar filled with amazing, soft, three inch diameter cookies. The first night I discovered them and I was told by the kitchen staff that I needed to tell a bear joke to get a cookie. One of my jokes was – what do you call a bear with no teeth? A gummy bear! Another one was -why do panda’s like old movies? Because they are black and white! Two cookies earned! Bad bear jokes had become a theme of the trip by the guides on the day we left Winnipeg. The cookies became a bigger thing. We all loved them and were challenged by the staff to eat the entire jar. Two women had cookies with their eggs for breakfast. Not in them, just on the side. Once I went to get a cookie and someone asked me to grab one for them. As she said thanks, she called me the Cookie Sherpa. And true to being me, I ran with it. On the final mornings breakfast, I slinked over to the cookie jar, which was still 1/3 full. I asked the chef for a plastic bag and drained the cookie jar! When people saw me they either laughed or rolled their eyes. I grabbed my name tag and added Cookie Sherpa to it and hopped on my rover for a final day of Polar bear and wildlife viewing. And then, at strategic times, I pulled out the bag of cookies and offered them to all. Suddenly my rover group understood! I was providing them a cookie sugar fix while bear watching. I would randomly pullout cookies and hand them to people for the next day.
On the final night in Churchill we went to cultural talk. The presenter talked about a woman in town who never wanted anyone to be hungry. She became known as the Cookie Lady. When she died, the town named a park after her. Cookie Lady Park. The morning of the final day we made a stop at the park and…. I pulled out the final cookie from the tundra rover. No one expected it and we all cracked up. We took a group photo with the cookie. I then broke it up into pieces and gave a little bit to everyone and we had one final group “cookie communion” together.
That is how I became the Cookie Sherpa of the Town and Tundra Polar Bear trip. One of my lessons from this is to go with the flow of the jokes, be open and let the fun evolve. It took all of us on the trip to have this much fun. We laughed a ton. When you let things just unfold you never know. When you simply live in the moment, this is what can happen! Even as I finish writing this, I have a smile on my face!
