Local Explorer Milbry C. Polk
Gives Women Explorers Wings
World travel for Palisadian Milbry C. Polk began at a young age as she journeyed through Greece, Turkey, Persia, Pakistan and Japan. In 1979, Milbry led a camel expedition across Egypt retracing the route of Alexander the Great. Most recently, she joined a scientific exploration through the Arctic and participated in a conference of native peoples in Greenland.
Her daily passion for the last ten years, however, has been the search for remarkable women explorers and scientists. She looks for women whose life work has been to increase our scientific understanding of the earth by way of exploring new territories and/or through research missions. Milbry is the co-founder of Wings World Quest (WWQ), an organization whose mission is to celebrate and support extraordinary women explorers and to promote scientific exploration, education, conservation and communication in order to motivate and inspire future generations. The WWQ website, www.wingsworldquest.org, is rich with information. Recently, Milbry has expanded its educational aspect by creating an international database on women explorers.
Each year, she combs the earth for women who will be awarded WWQ awards in the fields of Earth, Air and Space, Sea, Humanity, Courage and Field Research. The award provides the winners funding to continue their research, as well as much-needed public exposure and opportunities to create educational programming. In six years, she has bestowed this honor on dozens of truly remarkable and inspirational women.
This year’s awards will honor explorers and scientists working in the Polar Regions, in recognition of International Polar Year. This Sixth Annual Award ceremony was held on March 6, at 6:00 p.m. at Cipriani’s in Manhattan.
On March 7, Blindsight, a documentary about 2005 WWQ winner Sabriye Tenberken, opened at the IFC Film Center in New York City. Blindsight chronicles the remarkable journey of Sabriye, blind since age 12, who organizes and leads a trek of a group of blind Tibetan teenagers to the top of Mount Everest.
In January, Milbry published her novel The Quest, inspired by the paintings by California artist Cynthia James, which tells the story of what happens when a young woman, lead by a series of paintings, follows a mysterious one-hundred-year old trail through ice caves, ruined temples, and crumbling convents in South America.