Exploring the wilderness of the Arctic and Sub-Arctic

Exploring the wilderness of the Arctic and SubArctic

Nigel Bidgood and David Griffiths report on an educational programme run by Wycombe Abbey School Changzhou, China

Wycombe Abbey School in Changzhou, China is a relatively new international independent boarding school. Since 2015 it has grown from 100 pupils to the present 1300, mostly Chinese, pupils. It is one of a new generation of international schools modelled on the very best of the UK independent school system. It is holistic in nature with academic excellence, very much, as the central spine of the education on offer. One of the educational tenets of the school is to create opportunities for pupils to take part in outdoor educational challenges and to learn in this ‘beyond the classroom’ educational environment. With this in mind, the school operates the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (at Silver and Gold Levels), The John Muir Award and an ambitious programme of wilderness expeditions to Arctic and SubArctic locations.

This latter, Borealis Expedition Programme, at Wycombe Abbey School Changzhou is set within an academic society with the opportunity for sixth formers to take part in three-week-long mountain backpacking expeditions at its epicentre. The accent is very much on a challenging outdoor experience, but intrinsic to this is the opportunity for young participants to learn about the geology, landscapes, natural history, culture, history and geopolitical relevancy in today’s world of these northern recesses of our planet.

Education in China does not standardly involve outdoor education in any developed way. The Borealis Expedition Programme is intended to build on the more local expeditions featuring the Duke of Edinburgh’s and John Muir Awards. The accent is firmly on living and travelling in a wilderness environment for an extended period of two weeks, being totally self-sufficient as regards equipment, food and wildcamping, and concentrating on interacting together directly with no recourse whatsoever to social media. This creates not only a special human environment but also one in which the environment acts as a stimulus, as well as a vehicle, for a great deal of learning opportunities and experiences. The fact that such opportunities are all-too-rare in Chinese education makes them even more important, and indeed special.

A series of objectives are always identified for each expedition comprising educational challenges that are both physical and academic in nature. The pupils are then fully involved in seeking to accomplish these objectives, whether they be mountain and backpacking objectives or scientific and developmental educational ones. After each venture, all the group members are fully involved in

Education in China does not standardly involve outdoor education in any developed way.

the production of a published ‘Expedition Report Book’ in which all the expedition logistics, achievements and learning objectives are chronicled in the words of all those who have taken part.

The need to have multi-layered planning in place, and not to be afraid to change one’s plans due to variations in local conditions, proves a sobering and quite testing experience for the young people to come to terms with. This is not surprising given the well-ordered and predictable nature of the lives that they have temporarily left behind. There is a great deal of debate and negativity today about the nature of risk with regard to young people. Indeed, it has become increasingly difficult to run expeditions of this sort in the current climate of blame and an increasingly litigious society. Surely it is not a matter of seeking to avoid risk, however, as this is not really possible – and indeed trying to do so may encourage young people to seek their own exposure to risks, some of which can be far more dangerous and life-threatening.

Educationally, it is a matter of teaching young people how to assess and manage risk – something that should be intrinsic to growing up and maturing. Adventure, after all, is all about ‘acceptable risk’ and it is the development and expression of judgement that is intrinsic in all of this. There is no doubt that these experiences will have changed the way in which the young people who took part in these expeditions to these unique lands will now view the world around them. This, really, is the very essence of education.

Although trips such as this contain their highs and their lows, the opportunity to spend an extended amount of time totally self-sufficient, camped out under serene arctic skies in perpetual daylight, is both life-enhancing and life-affirming. For young people who are taken well out of their comfort zone physically and mentally, particularly in terms of a complete loss of all the social media technology that both enriches and bedevils their lives, it is a formative experience. The lives of young people today are harder than formerly in many ways, with increased academic expectations, challenges,

competition and social pressures. Stress indicators such as eating disorders and reliance on addictive substances seem to be increasingly rife and more extreme in form. Education needs to promote the development of self-esteem and emotional resilience such that wellbeing becomes a central part of every young person’s life experience, and indeed expectation. Extended wilderness trips such as these can play a significant part in ensuring that life and education are more balanced, healthy and ultimately rewarding as a journey through which young people must negotiate.

The hypothesis of ‘global climatic instability/global warming’ is very evident at such high latitudes. Over recent years in arctic and sub-arctic regions the huge changes have been given a real enhanced impetus since the summer of 2007, when the multi-year arctic sea ice almost all fully melted, for the first time in recorded history. The summers are often now characterised by huge amounts of late winter/ spring snowfall leading to mountains that are far whiter in appearance than is normal for the summer months, and providing some challenging but interesting ascent conditions. Once again, the unpredictable nature of today’s climate was brought home to us in an exaggerated way that is so pronounced in these northern latitudes.

Our journeys and ascents, although hugely enjoyable, were tinged with a dash of sadness as we were all left wondering just how long these sorts of experiences will be possible in this superb terrain due to the changes continually being affected by the climatic oscillations extant at present. The young people who experienced this landscape for the first time are now well aware of this.

The Borealis Expedition Programme is centred in the northern vastnesses of the planet, and the first phase of expeditions have concentrated on that part of North-west Iceland known locally as the Vestfirđir, that stretches clawlike towards the looming presence of East Greenland, a mere two hundred kilometres across the arctic ocean of the Denmark Straits. The Vestfirđir peninsulas of Iceland represent a superb area for expeditions and, within them, the remote Hornstrandir and Nörđurstrandir areas, upon whose shores the frigid waters of the Arctic Ocean lap, have formed our destination for the first initial phase of three expeditions. To reach this beautiful fjord-land country we charter boats to cross the majestic protected inland fjords of Ísafjarđardjúp and Jökulfirđir, and out into the slightly more forbidding waters of the Arctic Ocean. Accessing remote expedition wilderness areas by boat is always a magnificent way to embark on such a venture, and landing by zodiac inflatable always brings huge smiles to the faces of all participants.

The Hornstrandir/Nörđurstrandir area has a documented history starting from the 870-930 AD so-called ‘Age of Settlement’ in Iceland. It is recorded towards the end of this era as the first home of that colourfully troublesome Viking ‘Erik the Red’. This was a mere arctic circle way-station for Erik’s journey towards the eventual colonisation of Greenland (and the all-too-brief colonisation of North America five hundred years prior to Columbus) and one that he quickly vacated as he pursued his lust for more fertile land and political power in tenth century Iceland. As we backpacked past the majestic spine of cliffs jutting out at Drangaskörđ like a ‘lower jaw’ northwards into the Arctic Ocean near Drangar, Erik’s first Icelandic home, we could empathise with his wish to find a home more in touch with the mainstream of Icelandic society.

For the following millennium, Hornstrandir was the home of a farming and seabird-based community much like the well-publicised Scottish version of St Kilda. Eventually, just like St Kilda, the area was abandoned in the 1950’s as the worsening weather and sheer isolation made relocation south into the less remote areas of the Vestfirđir more attractive. It was sobering for us to experience the weather patterns of this area and to realise that our visits were firmly centred in the barely six-week long summers of these latitudes.

The winters must have been extremely long indeed, with life, for a largely pastoral community, dominated by sustained periods spent indoors. The pack-ice that is so often visible northwards (even in summer) is known in the Icelandic annals as ‘the ancient foe of the land’. It must have brought unwelcome visitors in the shape of wandering polar bears, as well as attendant freezing conditions that totally destroyed any possibility of using the one means of transport available in this area, the sea, for months on end. This must have accentuated the isolation in a way that is virtually impossible to imagine or emulate today. It is little wonder that people gave up and moved south. Perhaps it is only surprising that they lasted until comparatively as recently as the 1950’s before doing so.

It would seem to be a fitting and auspicious time to give Chinese pupils the opportunity to visit areas of the

Arctic, given China’s burgeoning interest in the region. China has actively sought to become a sort of ex efficio observer member of the 8-member state Arctic Council. It is seeking to overcome its lack of an immediate arctic coastline (as possessed by the 8 member states) by such projects as offering to construct a new harbour and several extended runways in Greenland, by providing the capital for and collaboration with scientists at the new ‘Aurora’ Arctic Research Station in North Iceland, and by financing its own two new state-of-the-art icebreakers for service in the ‘Great Northern Sea Route’ atop of Russia.

There has never been a better time to introduce some of China’s best young minds to this unique and threatened northern world and, to judge from the pupils’ responses to the seminar that we delivered on ‘Arctic Geopolitics’ in the tiny remote Icelandic settlement of Nörđurfjörđur at the end of last summer’s expedition, they would readily concur with this statement. The expedition experience is one which involves the young participants wholeheartedly, allows them to gain educationally from the experience, and ensures that, as the venture progresses and ultimately is completed, the accruing of knowledge and experience not only continues but escalates. This equates very closely with the value of education per se and is something that we passionately believe is enhanced by such experiences as those gained outside the formalised classroom environment. That is, after all, why the Borealis Expedition Programme was set up at Wycombe Abbey School Changzhou in China, and why we remain so committed to its continuation.

Nigel C Bidgood is Borealis Expedition Organizer and Chief Expedition Leader.

David Griffiths is Headmaster of Wycombe Abbey School Changzhou, China and Assistant Expedition Leader.

Email: ncbidgood@aol.com