Nat Hab’s mission is Conservation by way of Exploration: defending our planet by inspiring vacationers, supporting native communities and boldly influencing the complete journey business. What started as a fledgling one-man operation has grow to be a world chief in conservation journey. We owe our success to our various workforce of workplace and area employees, Expedition Leaders and friends.
We additionally owe gratitude to the intrepid explorers and conservationists of the previous who paved the way in which for our international journeys. These people had been pioneers of their fields, taking dangers and overcoming adversity to find new lands, shield wildlife and protect cultural heritage. From the first Black man to achieve the North Pole to the primary lady to guide an Arctic expedition, these adventurers blazed a path in order that vacationers as we speak can expertise the identical awe-inspiring pure magnificence for generations to come back.
At our properties like Base Camp Greenland and Alaska Bear Camp, we honor our humble beginnings by proudly displaying the names of those that have helped us navigate the land we traverse.
Get to know a few of the girls we have a good time and get impressed by all they’ve achieved!
Alaska Bear Camp
Observe within the footsteps of Alaskan frontierswomen and conservationists to expertise an unparalleled immersion in pristine brown bear habitat from our fly-in camp in Lake Clark Nationwide Park. Constructed on the positioning of a historic homestead on the ancestral lands of the Dena’ina individuals, Alaska Bear Camp occupies a non-public inholding surrounded by 4 million acres of protected wilderness.
© Courtroom Whelan
A nameplate graces the door of every considered one of our deluxe tent cabins. There’s one devoted to pilot Celia Hunter, who protected the Yukon River from the Rampart Dam; Margaret Murie, the “Grandmother of the Conservation Motion”; and Ada Blackjack, the only survivor of the Wrangel Island Expedition.
Learn on to find Alaska Bear Camp’s different honorees!
Rozie Bressler
Born to Russian immigrant mother and father in Brooklyn, Rosalind “Rozie” Bressler spent her childhood studying worldwide mysteries that includes the far-off lands she yearned to go to someday. As a 16-year-old pupil at Smith Faculty, Rozie spent hours within the library, burning by way of Fodor’s guidebooks. Within the mid-Nineteen Sixties, Rozie relinquished her instructing profession to boost her unruly sons, Ken and Nat Hab Founder Ben.
Rozie mentally escaped a few of their shenanigans by studying Europe on $5 a Day and dreaming of unique journeys. When the boys obtained bored, Rozie shuffled them exterior to discover the wooded gulley exterior their New Jersey dwelling.
Within the Nineteen Sixties, Rozie and her husband, Marty, spent weekends marching in Washington, protesting the Vietnam Battle and championing civil rights. In her pursuit of gender and race equality, Rozie turned an legal professional.
Between her League of Girls Voters conferences and her position as Company Councilwoman for the town of Newark, Rozie led her household on cross-country highway journeys and worldwide escapades. She introduced them from museum to museum and park to park to satiate her love of historical past, nature and tradition. Rozie collected journey experiences as others collected souvenirs, and she or he handed this ardour for exploration on to her sons.
Within the late Nineteen Eighties, Rozie developed a mind tumor, which hindered her eyesight, so she left her job and joined Ben’s fledgling journey firm, performing bookkeeping duties and “organizing the mayhem,” as Ben likes to say. Collectively, they visited the Galapagos Islands, Africa, the Arctic and the Yukon.
Good, variety and unyielding in her pursuit of justice, Rozie influenced the creation of Pure Habitat Adventures and impressed our women-only adventures program, Girls’s Journeys.
Christine Sisco
Christine Sisco was Nat Hab’s very first worker. She was working as a journey agent in New Jersey when she responded to a “Assist Needed” commercial by Founder and President Ben Bressler. When Ben determined to relocate his firm to the foot of the Rocky Mountains in Boulder, Colorado, Christine got here too. She invited her husband on numerous early Nat Hab journeys and enthusiastically shared photographs and tales of their adventures with their kids. Quickly sufficient, the children had been tagging alongside to the Bahamas, Hawaii, Costa Rica, the Grand Canyon and all over the place in between.
Guided by an impartial spirit, Christine all the time paved her personal path and inspired others to do the identical. Her lust for all times created some unbelievable journey recollections, like when she flipped her kayak in Africa’s Zambezi River, adopted her husband by way of an underground tunnel to observe elephants drink from a waterhole, and cruised across the Galapagos Islands with Ben and his mother and father.
Christine’s legacy perseveres with the assistance of her daughter Katrina, who adopted in her mom’s footsteps and moved West to work for Nat Hab. As a member of the Alaska Operations workforce, Katrina takes care of journey particulars, making certain a gratifying journey for friends. Katrina has visited greater than 20 international locations, together with Canada with Nat Hab on a Churchill polar bear expedition, Brazil’s Pantanal and Tanzania to see the Nice Migration. Christine handed in 2014, however her reminiscence lives on by way of household and mates who admired her adventurous, vivacious, eclectic and selfless nature.
Margaret E. Murie
Endearingly known as “Mardy,” Margaret E. Murie, hailed because the “Grandmother of the Conservation Motion,” died peacefully on October 19, 2003, at 101, leaving an inspiring legacy in her wake.
In 1924, she turned the primary lady to graduate from the College of Alaska. After she married biologist Olaus Murie, the couple launched into many years of scientific explorations from a 500-mile caribou analysis expedition by dogsled to a river journey with their toddler son strapped to their canoe.
Mardy and Olaus Murie
After touring within the Brooks Vary above the Arctic Circle in the summertime of 1956, Mardy and Olaus campaigned to make the realm a wildlife reserve. 4 years later, President Dwight D. Eisenhower designated 8 million acres because the Arctic Nationwide Wildlife Refuge; President Jimmy Carter greater than doubled the protected space in 1980.
Mardy continued her advocacy work after her husband died in 1963. She returned to Alaska to survey potential wilderness areas for the Nationwide Park Service and labored on the Alaska Nationwide Curiosity Lands Conservation Act that President Carter signed in 1980. That laws put aside greater than 100 million acres of land in Alaska and upgraded Lake Clark Nationwide Monument to Nationwide Park standing.
In her congressional testimony in regards to the Alaska Lands Act, Mardy passionately relayed:
“I’m testifying as an emotional lady, and I wish to ask you, gents, what’s fallacious with emotion? Magnificence is a useful resource in and of itself. Alaska have to be allowed to be Alaska; that’s her biggest economic system. I hope america of America shouldn’t be so wealthy that she will afford to let these wildernesses cross by or so poor she can’t afford to maintain them.”
Ada Delutuk Blackjack
Ada Delutuk Blackjack was born in 1898 within the Iñupiat village of Spruce Creek, in what was then referred to as the District of Alaska. She was raised in a Methodist missionary faculty, the place she realized to learn, write, prepare dinner and stitch. At 16, she married Jack Blackjack and gave beginning to 3 kids. Solely her son Bennett survived previous infancy. Nonetheless, he suffered from persistent tuberculosis. Jack abused Ada all through their marriage, and after 5 years, he deserted her.
After Jack left, Ada walked greater than 40 miles from Spruce Creek to Nome, carrying her ailing son a lot of the method. She positioned him in an orphanage and sought employment as a seamstress to make sufficient cash to look after him once more someday.
The Wrangel Island expedition celebration. Entrance row left to proper: Allan Crawford, Ada Blackjack, Milton Galle and Victoria (the kitten born on the ship). Again row left to proper: Fred Maurer and Lorne Knight. Picture courtesy of “The Journey of Wrangel Island” by Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Public Area
In 1921, famed explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson went to Nome in search of English-speaking Alaska Natives for his expedition to settle Wrangel, a distant island within the Chukchi Sea north of Siberia. Stefansson supplied $50 per thirty days, and Ada, determined for monetary safety, volunteered. Regardless of orchestrating the mission, Stefansson didn’t accompany the expedition celebration. As a substitute, he recruited a crew of American and Canadian males to solidify a declare on his behalf.
Ada was joined by Allan Crawford, Milton Galle, Fred Maurer and Lorne Knight, making her the one Inupiaq and the one lady current. The ship efficiently dropped the group off at Wrangel Island, initiating the stalwart for diplomacy. Ada rapidly turned the expedition’s scapegoat, and the boys bullied and berated her incessantly. Homesick and alone, she discovered solace in her diary and the corporate of the ship’s kitten, Victoria (Vic for brief).
In January 1923, after an anticipated reduction ship failed to achieve them, Crawford, Maurer and Galle took the group’s remaining sled canines throughout the ocean ice to search for assist. The lads had been by no means heard from once more. Again on the camp, Ada had to supply and look after Knight, who had a extreme case of scurvy. She taught herself to catch foxes in traps, shoot birds out of the sky and defend towards polar bears. In June, Knight succumbed to his sickness, making Ada the only survivor of the Wrangel Island expedition celebration.
Resolute in her mission to see her son once more, Ada eked out a dwelling within the unforgiving arctic panorama till August 20, when she noticed the ship of Harold Noice and acquired asylum among the many crew of the Donaldson. Ada reunited with Bennett and introduced him to Seattle, the place his tuberculosis was cured. She finally returned to Alaska, the place she died on Might 29, 1983, on the age of 85. Ada is buried in Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery, the place her grave plaque reads: “The Heroine of Wrangel Island.”
Celia Hunter
Celia Hunter was a pilot and adventurer turned conservationist. She protected Arctic communities from proposed experimental nuclear blasts, saved the Yukon River from the large Rampart Dam, based the Alaska Conservation Basis and have become the primary feminine president of The Wilderness Society.
Born right into a Quaker household on January 3, 1919, on the foothills of the Cascade Vary in Washington, Hunter’s household taught her to respect nature and its stewards. Quickly after her 21st birthday, Hunter flew the coop and joined the Girls Air Drive Service Pilots (WASPS) program in 1943.
Celia Hunter and Jim Case, Camp Denali Alaska, August 1957 © Equipment Case
There, she met Ginny Hill Wooden, and the 2 conspired to fly to Alaska regardless of the army’s restrictions towards girls transporting plane. They struck a cope with a pilot who wanted planes delivered to Fairbanks, and after 27 days of weathering winter storms, the ladies arrived in Alaska and made a house.
Whereas Hunter was initially pushed by a way of journey greater than a way of objective, her love of Alaska quickly became a need to reserve it. In 1960, she turned a founding member of the Alaskan Conservation Society, a bunch that garnered public help for what’s now the Arctic Nationwide Wildlife Refuge. Hunter additionally fought to cross the Alaska Nationwide Curiosity Lands Conservation Act, which protects thousands and thousands of acres as federal wilderness areas.
Celia Hunter handed away at 82 on December 1, 2001. She spent her closing days writing letters to senators, persuading them to oppose oil drilling within the Arctic Nationwide Wildlife Refuge.
Dr. Frederica de Laguna
Dr. Frederica “Freddy” de Laguna helped open the fields of archaeology and anthropology to girls through the early twentieth century. She accomplished her doctoral research at Columbia College in 1933 and secured funding from the College of Pennsylvania Museum for 2 excavation initiatives in Cook dinner Inlet. Over 25 years, Dr. de Laguna led 5 expeditions to Cook dinner Inlet and Prince William Sound, some funded by revenue from her sequence of thriller novels.
Through the Nineteen Thirties and Nineteen Forties, Dr. de Laguna carried out surveys of Tuxedni and Chinitna Bays, which at the moment are a part of Lake Clark Nationwide Park. These surveys marked a few of the earliest archaeological research carried out within the Cook dinner Inlet area, offering worthwhile insights into the chronological timeline of coastal cultures.
Dr. de Laguna once more made historical past in 1938 by instructing the first-ever archaeology course at Bryn Mawr Faculty. Nonetheless, she briefly interrupted her educational profession in 1942 to serve within the WAVES (Girls Accepted for Voluntary Service) throughout World Battle II. As a testomony to her groundbreaking contributions, Dr. de Laguna turned the Vice President of the Society of American Archaeology from 1949 to 1950, and she or he was among the many first girls elected to the Nationwide Academy of Sciences in 1986.
Video: Discovering Residence in Alaska—A Nat Hab Information Story
Meet Caprice Stoner, supervisor of Nat Hab’s Alaska Bear Camp since 2006. Discover out what retains this Tennessee native (and grandmother of 5!) coming again every year, drawn by the pull of the Alaskan wilderness, the surprise of coastal brown bears, and her ardour for sharing it with our friends.
Base Camp Greenland
Situated simply south of the Arctic Circle, Base Camp Greenland overlooks a protected bay off Sermilik Fjord the place icebergs, spawned by large glaciers, glitter within the late sundown gentle. Whales and seals frequent the fjord, and miniature wildflowers and cotton grass dot the tundra. Nothing compares to East Greenland for an epic Arctic expedition, with a chance to witness dramatic shifts on the entrance traces of a quickly altering local weather—and there’s no extra inspiring technique to expertise it than from the consolation of our wilderness Base Camp!
Every of our deluxe tent cabins is devoted to an individual who has made essential contributions to the exploration and conservation of the Arctic. We proudly honor girls like Louise Arnar Boyd, the primary lady to fly over the North Pole; Inuit explorer Navarana; and LGBTQ+ activist Gerda Vilholm, who passionately contributed to the expansion of Tasiilaq.
Learn on to find Base Camp Greenland’s different honorees!
Tasiilaq, Greenland. Photographed by Nat Hab traveler © James Moyer
Louise Arnar Boyd
Born in 1887 to a rich California gold miner, Louise Arnar Boyd spent a lot of her childhood fantasizing about polar exploration from contained in the partitions of her household’s mansion. Like her mom, Boyd turned a socialite and philanthropist, lively in neighborhood work. Nonetheless, she yearned for journey and, thus, lived vicariously by way of her hero, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who, in 1906, tried to finish the primary sea voyage by way of the Northwest Passage.
At 32, Boyd misplaced her total household however inherited a fortune. She took the cash and invested it in following her goals North. Her first foray was aboard a vacationer cruise to the Arctic, then a leisurely journey to Franz Josef Land, considered one of Earth’s most distant and unforgiving areas. In 1926, Boyd employed her personal ship and crew, changing into the primary lady to guide an expedition to the polar seas. In 1928, when her hero, Amundsen, disappeared at sea, Boyd participated within the 10-week rescue mission.
All through the Nineteen Thirties, Boyd partnered with the American Geographical Society and arranged, financed and led six maritime expeditions to East Greenland, Franz Josef Land, Jan Mayen Land and Spitsbergen. She pioneered cutting-edge expertise, together with photogrammetric tools, to conduct exploratory surveys. Boyd additionally made the primary deep-water recording, which helped her uncover a glacier in Greenland.
In 1938, Boyd was awarded a medal from the American Geographical Society and later turned the primary lady to be elected to their council. Boyd returned to the Arctic one final time in 1955, when she chartered an airplane and have become the primary lady to fly over the North Pole.
Boyd died in 1972, two days earlier than her eighty fifth birthday, and her ashes had been scattered within the Arctic Ocean. Her legacy lives on by way of her images, which proceed to encourage and inform individuals in regards to the magnificence and fragility of the Arctic area. Her reminiscence can be preserved in a fjord in East Greenland known as “Louise Boyd Land” and on considered one of our tent cabins at Base Camp Greenland.
Navarana Mequpaluk
Greenland’s Navarana Fjord (mapped through the Danish Peary Land Expedition of 1947–1950) is a testomony to an Inuit Greenlandic lady explorer named Navarana, who died on the age of 23, simply earlier than becoming a member of the Fifth Thule Expedition together with her husband, Peter Freuchen. Her loss of life was attributable to the Spanish Influenza, which ravaged Greenland’s Indigenous populations within the early Nineteen Twenties.
Navarana with husband Peter Freuchen © Courtesy of Danish Arctic Institute
Navarana began life as Mequpaluk, which suggests “little feather,” earlier than selecting to name herself Navarana after her wedding ceremony day. The title Navarana comes from naverar, which suggests “to commerce” or “to borrow.” A extra poetic translation means “One Who Alternates Between Events.” Historically, the Inuit had many names, and altering one’s title was symbolic of marking a turning level within the individual’s life.
Navarana skilled heartbreak and famine at a younger age; she misplaced all meals safety and her brother to the pandemic. She met Danish explorers Knud Rasmussen and Peter Freuchen in 1910 whereas establishing the Thule Buying and selling Station. Freuchen assumed Navarana was poor and hungry, so he gave her a chunk of bread. Navarana sewed him a pair of gloves to thank him, and the 2 turned mates.
Practically a 12 months later, when Navarana was simply 13, the 2 married and launched into a whirlwind of expeditions collectively. “On a sled, a Thule lady is nearly as good as a person. She arranges the canines, she swings the whip expertly, and she or he helps to pack and safe the load. Her cheer lights up the darkness!” Freuchen detailed in his Ebook of the Eskimos.
The pair had two kids, a boy named Mequsaq Avataq Igimaqssusuktoranguapaluk and a lady named Pipaluk Jette Tukuminguaq Kasaluk Palika Hager, who turned a author. When Navarana handed, Freuchen buried her himself, because the church refused to carry out the ceremony for somebody not baptized. Her spirit was reincarnated on the large display screen in 1934 when the world was launched to ‘The Marriage ceremony of Palo.’ Written by none aside from Knud Rasmussen, the movie instructed the story of a gorgeous Inuit lady named Navarana, who was on the heart of a love triangle.
Gerda Vilholm
Gerda Vilholm was born and raised in Denmark in 1944. She moved to Narsarsuaq in 1968 and settled in Tasiilaq, the place she rapidly turned an upstanding member of the neighborhood. Gerda was a Trans lady and a passionate crusader who needed the very best for her city. Starting in 2008, she ran for all native political elections however was by no means elected. “Her front room has offered area for a lot of political conferences,” stated Democrat County council member Justus Hansen, who regarded her as one of the vital vital supporters in his political profession.
Gerda was a jack of all trades. She tried her hand as an electrician and a blacksmith’s apprentice, spoke each East and West Greenlandic, helped manage neighborhood chess tournaments and raised funds for a city swimming pool. In 1989, Gerda opened a bookshop known as Neriusaaq, which suggests rainbow, as a tribute to the LGBTQ+ neighborhood. There, residents and guests may share tales over ice cream and occasional.
In 2010, Gerda created an internet site known as Sukagaut to tell residents about native initiatives and occasions. At 73 years of age, Gerda served as a chairperson and board member of Greenland’s most distinguished enterprise group, Grønlands Erhverv (Greenland Enterprise Affiliation). She handed away later that 12 months in 2017.
The condolences on her Fb wall testify to her constructive presence within the Tasiilaq neighborhood. “Gerda, who has taught me many issues in an organization, has a beautiful persona and is lively in our beautiful metropolis, identified for its old school ice cream! You may have a particular place in my life,” wrote Gerda’s former worker, Iddimanngiiu Jensen Bianco. Gerda’s contributions to Tasiilaq are particularly cherished by our Nat Hab area employees and vacationers who frequent her store on each considered one of our journeys.
Girls’s Journeys
At Nat Hab, we all know that empowered girls are highly effective brokers of change for individuals and the planet. In our pursuit of a female-forward future, we launched Girls’s Journeys, an journey sequence solely for feminine vacationers. Our expeditions facilitate inspiring encounters in Earth’s wildest locations amid the consolation and camaraderie of an all-women group. Along with Alaska Bear Camp and Base Camp Greenland, Nat Hab presents Girls’s Journeys throughout the globe, together with in Canada, Iceland, Mexico, Costa Rica and South Africa.
Uncover the tenderness of belugas, the energy of elephants and the fierceness of wolves. Let the matriarchs of our wild world nurture your creativity, compassion and sense of surprise. Go to native communities and witness how women-led grassroots actions safe sustainable futures, discover kinship among the many world’s wildest girls and foster friendships that endure lengthy after your journey ends. Observe within the footsteps of Nat Hab’s trailblazing Expedition Leaders, be taught the histories of ladies explorers and listen to the tales of heroines by Indigenous elders. Discover energy in vulnerability and let nature empower you to be your most radiant and resilient self!
Go to our Girls’s Journeys web page to be taught extra!
© Mark Jordahl
