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Real people share real stories of their dialogue with Nature. Hear how it feels to talk with animals, birds and landscape. Share the magic of cross species communication.
Created by award winning Nature writer and poet Estelle Phillips.
Instagram @estelle_writer44
TikTok @EstellePhillips
Ella Hibbert is known as Ella in the Arctic because she is undertaking a voyage that should not be possible, the first ever solo circumnavigation of the Arctic Circle. She is traveling 10,000 miles of sea to show the impact of climate change in the Arctic. I was incredibly lucky to have time with Ella before she set sail again. Her experience with nature at sea is beautiful and unique. The detail with which she conveys her communion with the natural world is amazing.
Estelle Phillips:I'm honored and thrilled to bring you this podcast. It's full of waves, seals, whales and polar bears. You're gonna love it.
Ella Hibbert:My name is Ella Hibbert, and I'm an Arctic explorer and sailor. Currently attempting the first single handed circumnavigation of the Arctic Ocean to raise awareness for how, the climate impact is affecting the Arctic in its future. Last summer, I made it halfway around the circumnavigation, becoming the first British woman to do the Northwest Passage solo. And I go back to the Arctic to Alaska in a month to bring the boat home through the second half of the circumnavigation.
Estelle Phillips:You say it like that, and it sounds so kind of normal, but it's really epic.
Ella Hibbert:Yeah? Yeah. Well, I I struggle slightly because I think because I set off wanting to do the full circumnavigation in a single season. I feel like last year's achievements for me, at a personal level, are slightly overshadowed by the fact that I didn't finish the whole thing. So, yes, it was cool and a massive achievement, but for me, I just wanna get back and go and finish what I started, and then I'll I'll celebrate at the end.
Ella Hibbert:Or not, because the whole record shouldn't be possible in the first place and won't be something to celebrate. But for personal achievement, I just wanna go and finish what I started.
Estelle Phillips:You're going back in a month. Mhmm. Right?
Ella Hibbert:Yeah. Yeah. Four week countdown. Yeah. For me, it's about it's about being at sea.
Ella Hibbert:One of my favorite times in any passage that I do is the first day where you lose sight of land, and you're out in the water with nothing but water all around. And that's something that I can't wait to experience again.
Estelle Phillips:Can you try and describe that, please?
Ella Hibbert:I think it just I don't know what I don't know what it is that it does to me, but it makes me feel like I'm a tiny little blip of nothing in the middle of the ocean, and that helps put everything else in my life in perspective. And it's just a sense of, like, utter freedom that I don't get anywhere else in in what I do on my day to day. So I just love it because it makes me feel almost like I'm going home in a weird way. I feel more comfortable out there in those moments than I do here.
Estelle Phillips:But what are you looking to to receive that feeling of homeliness?
Ella Hibbert:How do how do I describe it if you've never experienced it? I think a moment like that you feel so of at one with your surroundings, with nature in a way that you depend on it and you can't control it and you live in it and it just takes you back to the most simple form of being a human being. Being out in nature, surrounded by it, engulfed by it, is all you can see in any direction. And that for me is such a comfortable experience that I call it home because it takes away everything that you can that you don't have control over. And just leaves you to be at one with the boat and the water and that's yeah.
Ella Hibbert:That's just where I I love to be.
Estelle Phillips:Are you steering the boat when this Are you?
Ella Hibbert:Yeah. Yeah. You don't you don't have to be steering all the time. So we've got an autopilot, and then we've got a hydro vein, which is similar but doesn't use electrics, which is purely mechanical. And you can leave that steering the boat if the wind's consistent enough, or personally, I like to hand steer just because it helps me stay connected with what I'm doing.
Ella Hibbert:But obviously when I'm sleeping, I have to leave one of the other instruments sailing the boat for me.
Estelle Phillips:You're experiencing this feeling of homeliness, yeah, on your own in the sea. And what are you absorbing? What are you looking at and taking in that makes you feel like that?
Ella Hibbert:Gosh, all of it. The water and the sky and the wildlife. More than anything, the water. I could just sit and watch the water for hours. But just the scenery or suppose like thereof, there's nothing but blue water and blue skies in every direction.
Ella Hibbert:Yeah. Just those moments of of calm and quiet or not. The ocean has a way of not being calm and quiet when you want it to be. Yeah. Just the nature and the wildlife and and the water, really.
Estelle Phillips:So what is the water doing?
Ella Hibbert:Gosh, just the way the noises that it makes on the boat as the boat rises and falls with it. It makes you feel like you're in it even though you're on it, if that makes So a lot of people when they come back to shore struggle to walk on solid ground again because you get so engulfed in your environment out there. But just the way it moves, the noises that the wind makes over the water or through the rigging of the boat and the way the boat moves with that and you move with the boat, it makes you feel interconnected to the whole scene around you.
Estelle Phillips:Oh, because the boat's moving with the shape of the water Yeah. And you're moving with the shape of the boat Yeah. Shape of
Ella Hibbert:Yeah. Like that.
Estelle Phillips:Yeah. Yeah. And then what about the noises of the wind on the water? Yeah. It's What are you hearing?
Ella Hibbert:You get everything from sort of clanging of the the rigging against the mast. You can hear the wind whistling through the rigging. The way that it creates spray over the water and you can hear the foam and the crests of the waves sort of break and spray.
Estelle Phillips:What? The wind?
Ella Hibbert:Yeah. The wind is what creates the the surface of the water to roll up and generates those sort of noises that you hear coming off the surface. Yeah.
Estelle Phillips:Mhmm. Yeah. Those. Mhmm. What is the nature?
Ella Hibbert:The well, gosh, the wildlife in the Arctic is out of this world.
Estelle Phillips:But say, you know, when you're saying that first day Yeah. How far do you get in that first day? The nature presumably changes.
Ella Hibbert:Yeah. What do you mean?
Estelle Phillips:So that feeling of homeliness when you're when you can't see anyone else. Yeah. What what is the nature at that first moment of hominess? Is it birds or do you see any fish or
Ella Hibbert:Yeah. I mean, not even. Sometimes you don't I don't have to see any animals in nature for to to have that moment of that experience. But the Yeah. The first the first bits of nature you'll start to see at those moments are are birds or whales or dolphins.
Ella Hibbert:Those tend to be the first ones. Really? Yeah.
Estelle Phillips:Wow.
Ella Hibbert:Yeah. I mean, sailing from the first day that I sailed into the Arctic Ocean last summer, the first animal I saw within the Arctic was an orca. The surf is right up behind the back of the boat and the blue air out of its bow hole. And then you get the Arctic terns and the puffins and stuff like that. And then then it was whales, humpback whales and dolphins and whales broaching, clean out the water and So that's when you know you've you've made it far enough away from land.
Estelle Phillips:Are they coming for you, the orcas and the whales? Are they coming to see you?
Ella Hibbert:I like to think so sometimes, if anything, just to make myself feel better. There was one particular moment coming around Southern Greenland where I was riding down these massive waves, five meter waves, surfing with them. And I looked behind me to look at one of these waves to judge the height of it, and there was a whole pod of pilot whales doing the same surf on the same wave as me coming down the wave with the boat. And I like to think they came and said hello. They were probably just chasing whatever they were chasing for their food going the same way.
Ella Hibbert:But it feels like they are. And the seals, the seals in the Northwest Passage, I was fortunate enough to see a a seal almost daily. I found myself getting upset if I hadn't seen a seal yet because they'd always come out and said hello. And then if there wasn't one, was like, why are my friends not here today? But they did always come back.
Estelle Phillips:Do you talk to them?
Ella Hibbert:Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Quietly, because if you talk too loudly, it scares them off.
Ella Hibbert:But I just whisper at them. So, yeah, they come and have a look at the boat. And for some of those seals, like maybe the juvenile ones, I could be the only human being they've ever seen in their life in a moment like that, you know. So it's it's always special, no matter how many of them you see.
Estelle Phillips:Can you see them responding to the sound of your voice and to
Ella Hibbert:Yeah. Yeah. If I if if they start approaching the boat and they get a little bit close and I say something, sometimes you see with the heads above the water, they'll just sort of look at you and then pop underwater again because they're not quite sure what they're hearing. But some of them get more confident than others. But they're yeah.
Ella Hibbert:Yeah. I just love them. I've seen little heads pop up and wave at them as they go past.
Estelle Phillips:I'm sure they notice.
Ella Hibbert:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Think so.
Estelle Phillips:I talk to deer when I'm out walking.
Ella Hibbert:Oh, really?
Estelle Phillips:Yeah. The same thing. Yeah. The same ones.
Ella Hibbert:You don't find they get skittish? At first. Yeah.
Estelle Phillips:But they've got good hearing too.
Ella Hibbert:Yeah. They get used to it after a while. Yeah.
Estelle Phillips:They know you. That you can get to know these these people, these animals.
Ella Hibbert:Yeah. I love that.
Estelle Phillips:Yeah. That's a really wonderful explanation. How long do you tend to be on your own for?
Ella Hibbert:Last summer, it was four and a half months. So I saw people during that time, other boats in the same anchorages or harbours. But for actually living on the boat from end to end, it was four and a half months.
Estelle Phillips:I'm trying to understand how long you are on your own for
Ella Hibbert:Longest I went entirely without seeing another human being was was just over three weeks, The witch was spent sailing from Northern Iceland all the way around to Southwest Greenland. And that was the passage where I saw the most number of whales and dolphins. So I think I held onto them more tightly knowing that I hadn't seen people. But I also I talked to the boat, like, she's a person half the time as well. You just find a way to connect with whatever's around you because I think I think that's human nature.
Ella Hibbert:And I'm fortunate enough that it was in a place where the animals that I could do that were some that people might never get a chance to see. You know, whether that was beluga whales or narwhals or or polar bears. Mhmm. It was just out of this world. It wasn't like a, I don't know, like a cat down the street.
Ella Hibbert:Yeah. Yeah. I think you hold on to those interactions more tightly the longer you are from other people.
Estelle Phillips:But do you think you get better at them?
Ella Hibbert:Yeah. Possibly. Possibly. I don't know whether there's anything I can do in in the actual sailing of the boat to encourage wildlife to be interested or not. But I think I get better at living in the moment with them.
Ella Hibbert:Yeah. I get better you know, when you're sailing somewhere like the Arctic, you're constantly on a time crunch to get where you've got to go next before the next storm or the next ice, or make sure you don't get stuck in the ice over winter. So you've got this perpetual ticking clock of I've got to make x amount of progress per day. There were days when I would just forget about that and stop the boat and enjoy those interactions and moments around me for as long as the wildlife would let it happen. I think you become better at living in the moment with it.
Estelle Phillips:I think that as well. Yeah. And there's a lot a lot of other people who have been in perhaps not necessarily at sea but in other very immersive natural environments say the same thing. Mean is it possible do you think that when you're sort of like getting better that you're becoming more in tune?
Ella Hibbert:Yeah, think so. And I think you'd have to you'd have to try quite hard to not become more in tune, if you see what I mean. It is a naturally intuitive thing for us to be curious about the environment and the wildlife around us. The more that nature responds to you positively, the more you seek out those engagements and interactions and enjoy them. So I think that tends to lead someone to change their behaviors into a way that encourages better interaction.
Ella Hibbert:But at the end of the day, they are, you know, wild animals with minds of their own. And and I think the key the key point I've come to realize is just to enjoy each of those interactions for as long as they'll allow it, and then move on with gratitude that I had that interaction in the first place. Mhmm. You know?
Estelle Phillips:It's really fantastic. Mhmm. Thanks. Yeah. Is, isn't it?
Ella Hibbert:It is. It is. It's otherwise well, I've actually gone and got every animal that I saw in the Arctic tattooed on me. Oh. As my memorabilia for each of those encounters.
Estelle Phillips:So Wow.
Ella Hibbert:Yeah. Yeah. It's not something I'll forget in a hurry. That's for sure. I carry it with me everywhere I go now.
Ella Hibbert:So, yeah, I love it.
Estelle Phillips:So after you've seen an animal and you've had a, this is like what I would call a chat with them, how does it stay with you? Because it obviously does because otherwise you wouldn't have the tattoos.
Ella Hibbert:Yeah. I think emotionally, I think it does something to you. You've heard me talk about my encounter with my first polar bear Yeah. That I saw. And locking eyes with an animal that you are one of the very few privileged people on the planet to ever see.
Ella Hibbert:But doing it in such a personal way where there wasn't 2,000 people on a cruise ship taking pictures of him with their cameras, it was just me and him alone in a bay in Western Canada. I think it has given me sort of an imprint in my mind of a moment that I'll never forget. And that changes me in the way that I live day to day because I know that well, a, know that it was thanks to me that I got myself there. But also thanks to the sponsors and the funders and the family and the friends that supported that whole journey that helped make that one moment happen. And without the community that I've got at home, I wouldn't have had those experiences with the wildlife or or the communities in in the Arctic.
Ella Hibbert:So, you know, it's it's something that I can reflect upon and keep, I guess, gratitude for. So I walk through every day a lot more grateful for every moment of every day than I would have done without the encounters I've had in the Arctic.
Estelle Phillips:Perhaps it'd be good to describe for the podcast, because I've heard how that moment arrived.
Ella Hibbert:Yeah. But if you could
Estelle Phillips:can you just explain how you came to be there?
Ella Hibbert:Yeah. Absolutely. So I'd I'd just left a place called Pond Inlet, which is the first settlement on the eastern edge of the Northwest Passage. And I'd sailed for about two days through sleet and snow and freezing temperatures, finally found this bay that I could pull into to anchor, which is a place called Teo Bay. And when you approach it, you've got cliffs one side and a big hill on the other, so you can't see the anchorage behind.
Ella Hibbert:And I saw this walking figure on the top of a cliff out the corner of my eye, but I was so focused on getting through the entranceway that I hadn't really paid attention. And it wasn't until I rounded the cliff and came in to drop the anchor that what had been that bear on the cliff had actually walked his way down to the beach. And we stood on the beach that I was trying to anchor off of. And we had this sort of Mexican standoff between me and this bear where I wasn't sure whether I should drop the anchor because they do swim and they do come out looking for food and stuff like that. And I needed to sleep, I couldn't be on bear watch 20.
Ella Hibbert:And he was obviously stood on the beach wondering if I was edible. And I was sitting on the boat wondering if he was hungry. And we both just sort of stood and sat at each other, and I managed to snap a few pictures of him and a couple of videos, but the interaction lasted so long that after a while I just put the camera down and just stood there and watched him watch me. And my god, they are so much bigger than you'd ever realise. And it was just this moment, eventually, he sort of took a big sigh and wandered off and I figured I'd probably be alright for sleep because he obviously wasn't too interested.
Ella Hibbert:But it just magic. Just stood there just in awe of him, really. Him or her. I don't know. Male or female bearer, didn't ask.
Ella Hibbert:But, yeah. Yeah. It was outstanding. It was the first of three bears that I saw in total, but the one that I had the longest to the moment with.
Estelle Phillips:You were communicating?
Ella Hibbert:Yeah. Possibly. I certainly was hoping to send off sort of good vibes, don't eat me vibes to him. And I think in our own way, yeah, I think there's there's I don't know, I'd like to think there's language that's shared in moments like those. Whether I believe that from the bottom of my heart or not, I'm not sure because, you know, it's a it's a wild creature that we'll never fully understand.
Ella Hibbert:But I will live the rest of my life believing that we had a moment and, you know
Estelle Phillips:Oh, I'm certain
Ella Hibbert:that you did. Yeah.
Estelle Phillips:Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely certain of it because otherwise you wouldn't have been so affected by
Ella Hibbert:it. Yeah.
Estelle Phillips:Yeah?
Ella Hibbert:Yeah. What I mean is for for there to have been sort of a double ended interaction. I don't know whether I'll have had his impact as big of an impact on the bear as he did on me, but that's it's kind of irrelevant to to my life and how I'm gonna lead forward from it. But everything that I'm trying to do with this second over the Arctic is raise awareness for the Arctic and how quickly animals like the bears are losing their environment. Seeing one like that in that moment that we shared just made it feel I was fulfilling what I was trying to do.
Ella Hibbert:So I'm grateful for him to have given me that reminder of why I was out there in the snow, the cold, in the ice, in the fog, it was quite miserable conditions for a lot of the trip. But that one perfect moment with him was was worth it.
Estelle Phillips:That was quite a profound affirmation of what you're doing. Absolutely.
Ella Hibbert:Maybe he didn't eat me because he knew I was trying to help. We'll never know. No. Yeah.
Estelle Phillips:I can't imagine that he left you unaffected.
Ella Hibbert:No. God, no. Not at all. No. Very heavily affected by that interaction amongst others, but that one in particular.
Estelle Phillips:Yeah. For sure. When you go back to that encounter or meeting perhaps, meeting, what is it that you remember about that meeting with that polar bear?
Ella Hibbert:To be honest, for me it's just his face looking back at me. It doesn't matter that I was being snowed on and it was cold and miserable and it didn't matter that that my fingers were as pink as that water bottle over there because it because you just forget all of that in a moment that you share. It just it it felt intense. And I remember the intensity of his eye contact more than I remember what the boat was doing or how cold it was or hungry or tired. None of that really mattered in that moment.
Ella Hibbert:Yeah, I remember looking at him and him looking at me. Yeah. Above all else, for sure.
Estelle Phillips:That's absolutely fantastic, Ella.
Ella Hibbert:Thank you.
Estelle Phillips:Thank you so much for talking to me about this because I appreciate that. It's a really rare opportunity to speak to someone like you who's in that environment and good luck.
Ella Hibbert:Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. You're welcome.
Estelle Phillips:Subscribe to Nature Talks With Humans for more true stories of people communicating with animals, birds, and landscape. Follow me on Instagram at Estelle underscore writer forty four and TikTok at Estelle Phillips. Bye.