NOTE: “Today” and “tonight” refer to Friday, June 3.
PORT TOWNSEND — Teacher, mariner, artist and explorer Branan Ward of Marrowstone Island will present “My Thirty Years in the Arctic” at 7 tonight.
The lecture will be in Port Townsend City Council chambers at historic City Hall, 540 Water St.
Ward has written about his life in his book, Dimestore Explorer: Adventures of an Impetuous Geographer, and will speak of his travels as part of the Jefferson County Historical Society’s First Friday Lecture.
Admission is free, although donations are welcome to support Jefferson County Historical Society programs.
Ward, 94, a former member of the Royal Geographical Society of London, is a member of the Explorers’ Club of New York and the Adventurers’ Club of Los Angeles.
Ward said that from the time he was young, he knew he was a rolling stone.
Explorer
“I have been an explorer of one kind or another since the first time I ran away from home at age 5,” he said in his Explorers’ Club biography.
Later, while living in the Great Smoky Mountains as a teenager, “I built rowboats in an attempt to row all the way to the Gulf of Mexico,” he continued.
Ward’s thirst for adventure eventually would see him around the world and all the way to the North Pole.
Ward said he was a ship’s electrician in the Merchant Marine — a fleet of ships that carries goods during peacetime and becomes a naval auxiliary during wartime — before joining the U.S. Navy as a submariner during World War II.
1940s travels
In 1945, Ward traveled to Alaska and in 1947 down the Mackenzie River in the Northwest Territories of Canada, the longest river in that country that spills into the Arctic Ocean.
He later lived in Thule, Greenland, located 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle, before the Air Force built a base at that location.
Seeking a higher education, Ward enrolled at the American Academy of Art in Chicago before once again paddling to the Arctic Ocean to study the Coriolis Effect, which is responsible for large-scale weather patterns.
In 1979, Ward joined a party of 10 people who flew to the North Pole, becoming one of a small group of humans who have made the journey.
Ward has since taught anthropology and geography at college and high school levels for more than 30 years.
When not writing about his journeys, Ward paints murals and portraits at his home on Marrowstone Island.
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Reporter Chris McDaniel can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56650, or cmcdaniel@peninsuladailynews.com.
