Never in her wildest childhood dreams did Becki Legatt believe she would come within miles of the North Pole or work beside NASA scientists as they planned the next moon landing. But’s that’s exactly what the 24-year-old has been doing since she graduated from Annandale High School in 2004. "My parents always said, ‘Dream big and go for it.’ I took it literally," she said. To date those dreams have led her all over the world, from tropical Hawaii to the icy waters above northern Russia where "the most brilliant blues and whites you could ever imagine" paint the landscape in a world of perpetual daylight. "There are no sunsets," she said, "but the sun gets close to the horizon, then goes back up, and when the sun glares off the ice, you get these bright pinks. It’s just beautiful." She was interviewed by phone from her home in Fairbanks, Alaska. Legatt’s adventures began as an undergraduate student at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, N.D. pursuing a degree in atmospheric science. During her second year of college she applied for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Hollings Scholarship and "lucked out," she said. As one of 100 students chosen across the nation, she received a scholarship for the remaining two years of school and the opportunity to observe climate changes in Hawaii. The next summer she qualified for an internship at NASA’s Langley Research Center where she worked side-by-side with NASA scientists. But her real interest was global warming. "I started out loving the weather," Legatt said. "But there were these questions in the back of my head. You read about global warming, but I was kind of a skeptic. I wanted to find out what was really going on." So in 2008, when she graduated from UND, she packed everything she owned in her car and headed north to Fairbanks and the International Arctic Research Center. There she rubbed elbows with some of the leading minds on global warming as a research assistant and grad student pursuing her masters in atmospheric science. Her first trip into the Arctic was as one of 24 students from around the world who were selected to participate in a field course to study changes in climate, sea ice and biology. Crash course Stationed at an island village midway between Norway and the North Pole, Legatt and her classmates were given a crash course in Arctic survival. "They gathered us up for Arctic training," she recalled. "They put us in these orange suits that we had to wear anytime we went out on a boat. Then they threw us overboard and we had to get back on the boat." The floating suit kept the students warm for the most part in the frigid water, but their hands and face were still exposed to the elements. Legatt compared it to falling through the ice back home in Minnesota. The next lesson was rifle training. "Because of polar bears, anytime you walked outside the limits of town, you were required to bring a rifle." A pretty good shot thanks to yearly hunting excursions with her dad, she made sure either she or someone else with a steady hand carried the gun when she went out with a group to do field work. "It’s one of those experiences you can tell your grandkids," she said with a laugh. Fortunately she didn’t have to shoot a polar bear. In fact she didn’t even see one until her next outing to the top of the world, which was on board a Russian icebreaker. Selected to be part of an expedition in the Arctic Ocean above northern Russia, she was one of only four graduate students to assist a group of 30 scientists with oceanographic measurements of water from the Atlantic Ocean that may be impacting the changing sea ice cover of the polar ice cap. "It was the opportunity of a lifetime," she said. "I’ll never forget waking up and seeing ice out my window, or walking out on deck and suddenly seeing a polar bear." In the open water for only a few days, the majority of the trip was spent crashing through the ice, which Legatt speculated was about three meters, or close to 10 feet, thick. The ship would motor forward, putting it on top of the ice, and use its own weight to crush through. The resulting and constant banging sound took some getting used to, she said. One day out of that month- long trip, the crew of scientists were allowed to get off the ship and walk on the frozen Arctic Ocean. Polar bears Again polar bears were a concern, so crew members were assigned sentry duties and if an animal was spotted the ship would blare its horn as a warning and everyone would rush back to the safety of the vessel, Legatt said. "You have to watch your back when you’re out there. You’re not at the top of the food chain anymore." But even being so far from home, Legatt hasn’t forgotten where she came from. Besides her parents, she gives credit to Annandale schools’ math and science programs, the "amazing staff and support staff" who "inspired me to push the limits in science." "Even now when I’m sitting in my office doing research and getting frustrated over this long math problem, I think back to Mr. (Ken) Mielke’s class, getting frustrated with a small math problem," Legatt said. "He was always so encouraging to keep going."
