January 4, 2023

When I was little, my siblings and I (much like other children our age) were determined to make it past bedtime and welcome the New Year each December 31. And each New Year’s Eve, my parents sat in awe and amazement as we stayed awake through the clock striking midnight, and paraded us around the house with pots and pans!

This was, of course, before I knew that my parents had set the clocks back three hours. We were heralding the New Year at 9 pm.

This past Saturday, I had the opportunity to celebrate early once again, as folks young and old cheered and played homemade noisemakers during the annual Noon Year’s Eve countdown at the Museum of Life and Science.

The New Year brings in a feeling of hope and rejuvenation. We invited guests to add their hopes for the New Year onto our Wishing Tree and saw quite a variety, from the classic million dollars, to getting “in a Pokemon club” or the simple wish for “a cow,” complete with a drawing!

There was also one wish that particularly resonated with me: “I hope that everybody enjoyed 2022… and that, in the future, there’s flying cars.”

I, too, hope everyone had an enjoyable 2022, and there’s no time like New Year’s Eve to reflect on the year past. For the Museum, 2022 saw us welcome two new red wolves (Niko and Oak) to our facilities, host our first Pride Month event, and facilitate Durham’s first Youth Climate Summit. We were humbled by the community’s support of the 2022 Bond Referendum and thrilled by Little Bear’s ongoing progress. But it was also a year of many goodbyes. Some goodbyes were exciting, like Eno and Ellerbe moving on to their next home as part of the Red Wolf Species Survival Plan, but many were just goodbyes.

As our Director of Animal Care Sherry wrote earlier this year, sometimes it feels like the goodbyes outweigh the hellos. It’s important to take notice of the good, to say it out loud and share it, to cheer and make noise, and to find excitement and renewal in each other. There is always more good to come.

To all our friends who celebrated with us, and to you, reading this, we wish you happiness in the New Year… and a future with flying cars!