Ugh.

Sick, sick, sick as a dog...

Exit Alaska (in body only), Enter Regional Rock Star Month

Wrangell Mountains Center, writer’s workshop, McCarthy, Alaska, August 2009

I believe that concludes the Alaska writing for the time being, though I confess I have a year-long Alaska-focused project brewing in the back of my mind. It could start as early as summer 2010 or perhaps as late as summer 2011. Trust that I’ll post the announcement of said idea when it’s ready for the real world. It’s big, it’s bold, and it’s completely fucking cool and crazy. In other words, it’s perfect.

Meantime, I have updated my website with some exciting events taking place this month, also known as Regional Rock Star Month, as Shane and I have 2 lectures and book signings and I’m heading off to another writing residency in a few weeks.

Tonight’s post, then, shall be a series of links:

My book is officially for sale online! Your support is appreciated. Go to: http://katey.schultz.googlepages.com/lostcrossings

Website updates: http://katey.schultz.googlepages.com

Wrangell Mountains Center in McCarthy, Alaska: www.wrangells.org

Mark your calendars, all are welcome:
Saturday, September 5th, book signing and exhibition at Crimson Laurel Gallery in Bakersville, NC for Lost Crossings. Learn more at: www.crimsonlaurelgallery.com.

September 11-12 Carolina Mountains Literary Festival in Burnsville, NC – a weekend of fun, education, connections, and sharing. Shane and I will do Lost Crossings signings and presentations on Friday at 1:45pm and Saturday at 2:30pm. Additionally, I have been asked to be on a “new author’s panel” on Saturday at 10am. Learn more at: www.cmlitfest.com.

Catch Up - Days 20-24 Hiking One Mile in Alaska

8/18-22 Days 20-24
My remaining days in Alaska were spent traveling – a full day’s drive from McCarthy to Anchorage, a half day flight from Anchorage to Seattle, then a full days’ flight from Seattle to Asheville, and the next day a drive home to Fork Mountain.

For new readers, the following post references 8/3 Day 5 of the Alaska trip, whereby flying over mountains for 1000 miles inspired me to decipher what it’s like to hike a mile in Alaska, generally speaking. That post included a lengthy cultural definition of the term “wilderness.”

Hiking One Mile in Alaska

There are those who visit Alaska and will never get enough. Others see it once and don’t feel called to return. But hike a mile in Alaska and a sliver of this state’s vastness will open up like a great chasm before you. And like a chasm, this mile will seem at once daunting and enticing, implausible and attainable. This is why I have come to believe that hiking a mile in Alaska is a paradox.

Paradox #1
To hike safely, you must frequently look up to scan the slopes for bears, but if you look up while traipsing across the muskeg, balancing on the tundra, or bushwhacking through the willow, you will likely lose your footing and fall down. See it now: Your face smooshed into a pile of caribou scat, a forty-five pound pack pressing you into the earth, and not an inch of trail in either direction.

Paradox #2
More than half of this nation’s federally designated “wilderness” lands are in Alaska, yet you cannot go more than two hours without hearing a plane. (Note: One in every 60 Alaskan males is a certified bush pilot.)

Paradox #3
You may backpack in the alpine desert and be rained upon for fifteen consecutive hours per day for four consecutive days. You may not understand how such an ecosystem can be classified as a desert until you tumble onto a boulder and cut your hands on lichen that is so dry it slices like icy sandpaper.

Paradox #4
You can go anywhere on public lands in Alaska but many areas contain pockets of mining claims held by a sensitive land owner, in which case tradition still holds that you may be shot at any time.

Paradox #5
It’s best to stay away from large game, but following game trails and camping in bear nap spots may at times be your best options for moving and sleeping.

Paradox #6
You can hike back the same way you came but it will always be different.

Perhaps the perfect coda to this mile will be like the coda to my four-day backpacking trip in the Talkeetnas:

It’s mid-afternoon on the last day of our trip. We only know this by where the sun is in the sky, a sun—mind you—that we haven’t seen directly for the entirety of our trip. Our packs are light, there is a cumulative bounce in each step we take, and we’re heading down the old mining road out the far end of the Craigie Creek Valley. After miles of bushwhacking and bouldering, this old road is a blessing. Memory tells me we’re about three miles from the car, which is why when Michael and I glimpse a bulky blue Ford Explorer smack in the middle of the beat-to-shit mining road, we’re a bit surprised.

“We can’t be there already,” I say. I’m not ready to leave. Not the valley, not the tundra, not the berries, not any of it.

Michael stops in his tracks and suppresses laughter. I look closer and see a heavyset man in camo clothing standing with his back to us. He is leaning into the driver’s side door, pressing into the seat in an odd fashion. He fiddles with something, takes a step back, and turns away from the door revealing the pale, full-moon ass of a woman who is positioned over the driver’s seat just so, her feet barely touching the ground, jeans tangled around her ankles.

“Oh, Jesus,” I say, and it is worse than a car wreck, really, this backcountry banging, because you don’t want to look at it but there’s something that makes you keep looking and so you do. In fact, the whole of Craigie Creek Valley seems to be cheering them on: marmots whistling in the high rocks, mosquitos buzzing a choral ode, the creek gurgling and pushing over rocks, beavers thwapping their fat tails like cymbals against the glassy surface of the water, all of them coming together to cheer on this tiny exhibit of human wilderness.

The man fiddles with himself, then turns back to the woman for another round. “This is going to take all day,” I say. Then I shout: “Hey! HEY! We’re HERE! Just passing through!”

One quick slap on the ass, a few indecipherable curses, then the woman shimmies across the driver’s seat into the back of the vehicle. I turn to Michael for an explanation.

“Is that a particularly Alaskan tradition?” I say.

“I suppose,” he chuckles. And I suppose there is something, not in the act itself, but in the spirit of the act that captures what Alaska is all about. A man and a woman get a notion to go do something—something a little wild, a little off the beaten path. Never mind the daylight, the time of year, the location, even the possibility of humiliation or failure. A man and a woman get a notion to do something and damnit, they just go and do it.

Catch Up - Day 19

8/17 Day 19

As promised, today’s post is an excerpt from the personal essay I worked on all week in McCarth, Alaska at the Wrangell Mountains Center. I can’t put the whole thing up here because it is only a draft and I’d like to submit it one day. While I struggled with the validity of this topic, I was encouraged by Scott Russell Sanders, who gave me the following advice: First, “Never underestimate the power of a well-told story to inspire others to consider their own stories.” Second, “Every essay you write doesn’t have to be the one that changes the world.” Relieving pressure, this advice helped me get to a draft of the essay that I think at least broaches a subject pertinent to a larger context. You be the judge…

What’s in a Name? [excerpt]

I am writing this because I do not own my last name, though by every document proving my existence, the name “Schultz” owns me. It follows me like a shadow, Schultz. One heavy syllable the sound of a rubber mallet striking brick. The name came from the ancestor that has no lore: Lewis Schultz, my paternal grandfather, a man who held me once before he died.

As Americans, we have contrary impulses to both claim a heritage that is exotic—tales of triumph and emigration, perseverance in the face of injustice; and a heritage that is fresh—a clean slate of Manifest Destiny and new culture. Schultz represents the part of me that is the least. One-thirty-second, to be exact. How cumbersome to dawn a German last name with no personal associations beyond stereotypes. Think German, think rigid, controlling. Think German, think uber hard worker. Think German women, think broad backs and shoulders, bellies like loaves of bread, ruddy cheeks, rose bloom lips. It’s no wonder that growing up, more attention was allotted to the quarter-sized Irish and Sicilian slices of my genetic pie. Family names like Nyhan and Saia, Markley and Russo sound more unique and wordly, rich in culture and tradition.

I have only met my Irish great grandfather through a story passed down over the years. My relatives say he fought his way around the world. They say he jumped ship. They say he was enslaved. They say he went by his own volition. They say he hardly said a word.

In one version, his mother scrubs pots in the sink when the British Navy comes knocking at the door. “You,” they point to Daniel, “come with us.”…[Irish story continues]

… As for the Sicilian in me, this much I know: That it started in Catania Province at the base of Mt. Edna. That my paternal great grandparents buried three children before they left. News of one more pregnancy sent my great grandfather, Aggrapino Saia, northward to Palermo. He boarded the S.S. Italia and arrived at Ellis Island fifteen days later. His wife Angela arrived three months following and gave birth to the first of six children on U.S. soil…[Sicilian story continues]

… What compelled me to keep my German ancestry at arm’s length? The fact that in both World Wars, the U.S. fought against the Germans? That even today the word “German” is often associated with the word “Nazi”? Perhaps it was something more personal. My father always told me that though Lewis Schultz only held me once, he loved me wholly as his grandchild. How could I possibly return such devotion? If I didn’t know the source of my last name, could I ever fully know myself?

The only part of my German heritage that made its way down to me is a mini Daily Register calendar printed by the Methodist Church and worn in my grandfather’s breast pocket 365 days a year. I remember finding it in my father’s desk one afternoon. I had been sent to look for something—binoculars, perhaps—and rifled through the ordinarily private drawers with the bliss of permission…When I finally opened the pages of my grandfather’s Daily Register, I saw that it was dated 1979, the same year he died and I was born…[German story w/ quotes from Daily Register continues]

… From the Irish, I would grow up a fair-skinned fighter. From the Sicilian, I had my appetite and perseverance. And from the German, enough lore to fill every page of Lewis Schultz’s Daily Register. Lewis Schultz who had the courage to plan ahead in the face of his own death. Lewis Schultz who played chess with pen pals all over the country, mailing his moves one postcard at a time. Lewis Schultz who cheated with strawberry ice cream. Schultz who held long discussions with ministers of many faiths. Schultz who attended “family night at Johnnie’s.” Schultz, my grandfather, who had he lived long enough, might have walked with me along the streets of South Boston, sat me down and leaned in close to say, “Katey, let me tell you a story about the tiniest part of you.”

[end]

[Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post – “Hiking One Mile in Alaska – as promised]

Catch Up - Day 18

8/16 Day 18

Life at the Wrangell Mountains Center in McCarthy, Alaska, is pretty sweet. That sweetness has as much to do with fine summer weather as it does the people who came to participate in this year’s annual writing workshop. Ranging in age from 20 to 83, participants included professors, students, outdoor writers, retired writers, mother writers, journalists, and one or two hobby writers. Our faculty leader was Scott Russell Sanders, who I describe as the Wendell Berry of contemporary American earth writing.

Besides communion as writers, the goal of this workshop is to provide enough inspiration and craft information to help the participants complete one full-length personal essay by the weeks’ end. As our days are packed with readings, exploration, talks, and prompts, this compression feels both challenging and inviting. Add in the backpacking, train ride, berry picking, fish eating experiences I had prior to arriving in McCarthy, and there have been time I’ve been just about ready to explode.

In that vein, here are some observations about the craft of writing that come as result of this trip:

1. When filled with loads of new information and very little time, the writer’s brain must find some way to compress and articulate what is being processed. I see this in my own work most notably in the use of categories (“Walking Into the Apartment of an Alaskan,” “Hiking One Mile in Alaska”), the use of images (incorporation of photos into the blog), and research (definitions from Home Ground and the topographical maps I’ve been studying). There is a fine line between too much and not enough, and the best residencies trust the wisdom of the tested schedule and stick to it, knowing that a well-shaped metaphorical container for the residency will allow the best work to emerge.
2. First and foremost, being a writer means living in a way that fosters a particular kind of seeing and listening. That’s right. It does not start on the page, folks. Exercising these seeing and listening muscles is just as important as the actual writing, reading, and revising work of the writer. Traveling to a new ecosystem, learning new words, meeting new people, and “getting off the mountain” as we say in NC, have all worked toward heightening my abilities to see and listen in this writerly way. Add in the fact that I’m surrounded by other writers, and the creative opportunities abound.
3. I can tell that I am constantly keeping part of myself reserved for an affair with the imagination. I can function in a conversation, for example, but when I’m at my best I confess that actually much of my attention is diverted to this other part of myself that is always imagining. The imagination is different than fantasy, because the imagination leads us to deeper truths and is wedded to the unknown whereas fantasizing is not bound by the constraints of reality. Do not be fooled here by the term imagination—in my case, what I’m trying to get at is this sense that a writer can at once be present in the moment and be wedded to her deepening work as a writer at the same time.
4. Place-based metaphor is the ultimate appropriation of location-specific writing and is very, very difficult to fake. This provides insurance against a writer speaking too soon and on this trip in particular is motivated me to research the areas I wrote about and use the correct terms. It may sound tiny, but language is such a powerful tool and if we can no longer use words to distinguish one mountain from the next, we have failed as a species. This is how mountaintops are removed, forests are cut down, oceans are littered, tundra is diminished, and wars are waged—because of a failure of the imagination, which is nothing more than a failure of language.

All of this and more influences my personal essay for the week at the Wrangell Mountains Center. See it all there, stewing and stirring in a pot of curiosity and fire. Smell it as it simmers, an idea here, a question there. Taste it and add to the mix until finally, you “find a first sentence you can believe in” (SRS).

The first sentence I can believe in comes to me on the fourth day of the writing workshop, and it is the window into my personal essay titled “What’s In A Name?” Here’s the line:
I am writing this because I do not own my last name, though by every document proving my existence, the name “Schultz” owns me. Keep in mind that a good personal essay reveals a changed narrator in the end and carries its readers along with it for a meaningful, pertinent journey.

Catch Up - Day 17 cont'd - On the Ice

Day 17 cont’d: Hike onto Root Glacier



Our hike began parallel to the colorful moraine shown here. This photo was taken just above the foss looking across the moraine where Root Glacier and Kennicott Glacier join. The distance from the vantage point to Fireweed Mountain across the moraine is about 4 miles. Fourth of July Creek pours from the lowest indentation skirting the northern edge of the mountain. Note the varying colors and layers, and the ice peaking through beneath coarse ground sands. Here, a more thorough definition from Home Ground might be fitting, as it defines moraine in the following excerpt:

“One could do worse than simply to quote Joseph Le Conte, from A Journal of Ramblings through the High Sierra of California, published in 1875. Le Conte, the first professor of geology at the University of California, was on a hiking and exploring trip in Yosemite with John Muir when he made the following notes: ‘On the surface, and about the foot of glaciers, are always found immense piles of heterogeneous debris consisting of rock fragments of all sizes, mixed with earth. These are called moraines. On the surface, the most usual form and place is a long heap, often twenty to fifty feet high, along each side, next to the bounding cliffs. These are called lateral moraines. They are ruins of the crumbling cliffs on each side, drawn out into a continuous line by the motion of the glacier…If glaciers have tributaries, then the two interior lateral moraines of the tributaries are carried down the middle of the glacier, as a medial moraine…All these materials, whether lateral or medial, are borne slowly onward by the motion of the glacier, and finally deposited at its foot, in the form of a huge, irregularly crescentic pile of debris known as the terminal moraine.’…We might add to this the term ground moraine, which refers to a thinner veneer of glacial till laid down over a broad area…” (Robert Hass)



Here you can see the foss—a narrow corridor between the moraine and the rising mountains on the near side of the glacier valley—a place safe enough to hike, for a few miles at any rate. Beyond the lateral moraine the slick ice of the glacier begins to show, and now we know we’re getting close.



With crampons tightly secured and our friendly glaciologist/writer to guide us, we make our way out onto the ice. Many of us wear gloves, as even the slightest fall onto the ice can cut our hands. While the glacier is slick, it is also uneven and sharp from all the melting and moving that happens at inconsistent rates. Where small lines of sand pool together, more heat is gathered in the day’s long light, and so deeper lines are melted into the glacier. It is not uncommon for a single leaf to fall on a glacier and then, over the course of several days, a hole the exact size and shape of the leaf will melt down into the glacier. In broad daylight, one can look down that leaf-shaped hole and see the leaf a few feet down, a still-in-tact harbinger of fall.



In the foreground, note the tiny blue waterfall, which is also shown in close up on this second photo. In the background, note Donoho Peak, a thin ridge that forms a tongue between the Root and Kennicott Glaciers and a prime location for Wrangell-St. Elias grizzly bears.



Here, I suppose, it is necessary to explain that dangerousness of glaciers. Indeed, a single slip and slide can be fatal, but that’s true in most places. What’s particularly precarious about glaciers are the inconsistent rates of melting, refreezing, and movement. Imagine walking on a 60-80 foot tall hunk of ice. Sometimes when you walk on this ice, it is supported by the solid earth below it. Other times when you walk on this ice, it is floating atop a lake. Still other times, it precariously straddles temporary streams and pools hidden below. Now up the scale of this imaginary ice form and picture the Kennicott Glacier, which runs for over 25 miles high up into Mount Blackburn, a peak in the Wrangells over 16,000 feet in elevation. Make it deeper and wider and add unforseen weather. Then maybe, just maybe, the look and feel of a glacier will overtake you.

In addition to the movement happening beneath the ice—movement that can’t be seen and can only occasionally be heard—there is plenty of movement above ground that one must pay attention to. In the photo above, our leaders tack into the side of a moulin and offer supportive hands as the writers walk in pairs up to the edge for a peak at the death trap below. And in the photo below is only a 5-foot wide section of the deep ice cavern we glimpsed over the edge:



Home Ground defines a moulin in the following excerpt:

“A moulin is a sinkhole forming a vertical shaft in the surface of a glacier. It is worn into the ice and sometimes into the rock beneath, by the circular movement of meltwater, swirling down it. The name, from the French word for mill, as in Moulin Rouge, comes from the motion of the water. The following observation by an experienced mountaineer may help one keep in mind the distinction between a crevice and a moulin: ‘Falls into crevices are often not serious, or at least are survivable (even unroped if you are lucky), but a fall into a Moulin is instant death.’” (Robert Hass)

Because they are always moving and changing, such formations are not on the topo maps of glaciers. Likewise, pools such as this which can eventually form into larger moulins are not mapped either. One moves cautiously on the ice, always with ears and eyes at full attention.



I would like to tell you that we hiked to the end of Root Glacier. I would like to tell you that this formation, for all its scale and beautiful destruction, is also among those things that humankind has evolved to experience. But this would not—and could not—be true. Five miles further along the face of Root Glacier and one encounters what can only be described as the end of the world as I’ve ever known it. There are indeed many places on this planet that no human has ever gone, and these places by and large are the ones that reach up mountains toward the sky or descend into the ocean depths toward the earthy innards of our planet.



Here, a wall of ice higher than a city building. A wall of ice so gnarled and knotted that even the world’s greatest climbers will not attempt it. Here, a wall of ice that marks the furthest I have ever been from my own bed in my entire life: Rewind 5 miles atop the ice, back 64 miles down the rugged McCarthy Road, back another 240 miles on the highway, back further still a 1,500 mile flight south to Seattle, then another 3,000 mile flight to Asheville, then 75 miles further in a car toward the Appalachian Trail, then finally the last 1/2 mile in a beat up old Ford Ranger. There’s no place like home, but in the face of such a humbling formation as this glacier, I might have stayed entranced on the ice for all of eternity—let that moving beast melt me down into a body-shaped sinkhole, tumble me down a Moulin and along under-glacier tributary, down further to some final, fantastic resting place where I could freeze that awestruck feeling and sleep with it for all of eternity.

***

[Stay tuned for a post on writing craft notes tomorrow…]

Catch Up - Days 14 & 15

Continuing to catch up with the blog…there are a lot of new posts lately so if you’ve been absent, scroll around and see the new images and stories. I’m back in NC and will be posting regularly again.

8/14 Day 16
Prompts, craft talks, and reading commentaries all day, then a public reading that night. Here are some pics from around McCarthy, at the bar, and in the classroom:













[Pics 1-6 around town]

8/15 Day 17
We’ve been working hard all week, beginning with a writing circle at 8am, breakfast and chores at 9am, then craft talks and open readings with critique from 10am-noon. Lunch is to-go on this day, though, and by 12:30 we’ve piled into vans and been driven four more miles to the true end of the famed McCarthy Road, still driving atop the abandoned train tracks. It’s here that the small town of Kennicott used to be, though today it is mostly a historical site managed by the National Park Service employees. Private residencies speckle the hillside but by and large the main feature is the 100+ year-old Kennicott Mill terraced into the side of the Wrangells.











[Pics 7-12 of mill]

It is amazing what humankind has done throughout the course of history to get what it wants. Here in The Last Frontier, here at what feels like the edge of our country’s ever-reaching arms, here in the middle of the wildest place I’ve ever been, lies artifact after artifact of man’s industrial endeavors. Just think of the efforts to get this machinery here, let alone the set up and repair (all of which happened on site), and then the many thousands of pounds of copper milled on site before being loaded onto the train and shipped to factories all over the country.







[Pics 13-15 mill metal]

Below, note the rotting foundation of the old copper mill. The logs on the left were harvested in the Wrangells a hundred years ago and were about 100 years old when they were cut. The logs on the right were hauled in by train—Douglas fir from Oregon also harvested about 100 years ago—that were only about 60 years old when they were cut. There is so much more to say about this fanscinating place -- old stories from the hospital that used to be there, descriptions of the caves and tunnels the miners lived int YEAR ROUND at 6,000 feet elevation, etc. -- but I only have so much time and so many brain cells left to organize my thoughts.



[Pic 16 foundation]

Half the writers opt for a formal tour of the mill while I head out with the group that opts for a glacier hike. With crampons and extra snacks packed, we follow the director of the Wrangell Mountains Center on a 5-mile excursion out onto the ice of Root Glacier where he teaches us the basics of glaciology. Tomorrow’s post will feature details of this excursion, along with exciting pictures!

Catch Up - Day 15

There are two posts today, so scroll around and check out all the pics and new writing!

8/13 Day 15

As I look around, I see the moraine floor in Technicolor. Glowing greens, deep reds, eggplant purple. Great parachutes of ivory erupt from dryas gone to seed. Lichens swaddle boulders in full spectrum, explosive blooms like fireworks across the granite. This landscape demands a glossary of words unfamiliar to my tongue. Massif, fjord, mudflat, nunatak, ogive. Even familiar words take on enhanced meaning in Alaska: sound, glacier, wilderness, bush.

It is a strange thing to feel nostalgia for a place that is not yours or protective of a watershed you have barely sipped. Strange, but not uncommon. We create space in our lives for such moments. Leave it to the poets for an explanation, as Wordsworth mused on the creative unconscious and decided that it feeds on an “overflow of powerful feeling recollected in tranquility.”



[Silt Flat]

I see the cracked silt flats near the base of the Kennicott-McCarthy Glacier and am reminded of Southeastern Oregon’s Alvord Desert, it’s pale brown scales stretching for twenty miles to the base of the Steens Mountains. I see caribou scat in the Talkeetnas and recall spending two weeks on the Olympic Peninsula where herds of them thundered through the old growth forest like so many droplets of rain. Images layer in mirage, metaphors misalign, the present moment is painted by the past and still, Wordsworth’s maxim holds true: this is the overflow.

Sometimes, I’m afraid of what happens next. It is like the beginning of a great love affair and the jury’s still out on whether this is a fling or the real deal. The creative conscious is feeding and you’ve got to get in there and make the most of it. Some days, that means listening to the voice. Other days, that means pushing it a beat more.





[House Rock, Local Art Cairn]

We walk further onto the glacier face where more stories await: each rock a specimen of history, each animal track a line in the plot, each gust of wind the build up to our denouement. This is when the urgency strikes. Elation as high as Fireweed Mountain couples with a sense of grief as low as the bottom of Lake Kennicott. The only way out is to pay witness.

This, I most deeply believe: That as a glacier moves with gravity by its own mass, so we humans carve our paths with equally grandiose impact. We walk the scarred moraine and read its story written in brails of rock and ribbons of water. We walk the scarred moraine until the veil is paper thin, our egos dimmed by the Technicolor of life and this “recollection of tranquility.”



[Moraine]

Catch Up - Days 13 & 14

[Continuing to catch up on the Alaska trip, today’s update explains the trip to McCarthy and entrance into the Wrangell Mountains writing experience. Tomorrow’s post will include an excerpt of an essay from my time there…]

8/11 Day 13
Anchored down in Anchorage.

8/12 Day 14
It’s about 300 miles from Anchorage to McCarthy, Alaska but don’t be fooled by Mapquest’s promise that the drive can be accomplished in fewer than seven hours. KB, an Alaska-born investigative reporter focusing on the Middle East, picks me up around 9:30am, and while our journey never feels it’s taking forever, we don’t get to the Wrangell Mountains Center until 6:30 that evening.

Heading north out of the city, the going is relatively smooth. We cut west into the Chugach Mountains and are slowed only slightly by high mountain passes in our 20+ year-old station wagon. Add in a few major construction stops and re-routes, tourists in rented RVs, however, and one starts to realize there’s no point rushing something beyond our control. We cruise along, the sound of the Subaru’s motor something akin to a washing machine running full speed in an airplane hangar (ie., L-O-U-D, echoing…tumbling, almost).

Most breathtaking, of course, is entering the Mat-Su Valley (where the Matanuska and Susitna rivers join) and seeing the Matanuska Glacier, as shown below. If you’ve never seen a glacier before, note the gray/brown/black areas of moraine filling the valley floor. The moraine is a mass of earth and rock debris carried by an advancing glacier and left at its front and side edges as it retreats.



[Matanuska Glacier]

The drive into the interior of the Copper River Valley is breathtaking. Forests of black spruce spread across wide, open expanses or low-laying boggy fields. These trees are Dr. Suess-like in nature, with angled trunks and curved tops, funny burls and warts, some barely hinting they are still alive. The widest black spruce along this drive are perhaps 12” d.b.h., but most are less than that. Their evergreen needles are often brown or black, with dark bark along the trunk and branches. Forests here appear miniature to my eye, which on this gloriously sunny August day is difficult to understand. But imagine temperatures of 55 below zero for weeks at a time. Imagine wind curling in the high alpine cirques of rim after rim of mountains, then collectively swooping into a valley and raking every millimeter of life with a cold snap that doesn’t let up for five solid months.



[Wrangells far off view]

Finally, we turn off AK1 at Glenallen and curve southeast down AK 4. Pass Copper Center, hang a left at Edgerton onto Route 10 and press on for another 25 miles to Chitina. We’re still following the Copper River, which here is fed by smaller low-level streams and creeks in this “less dramatic” area, but trace any one of these streams across the muskeg and up into the hills with your eyes, and soon enough you’ll see the gigantic toes of the high peak Wrangells stretching into the valley floor (shown above). Follow those toes higher, past the glaciers and into the white out of clouds, and imagine a row of 16,000-foot peaks cutting into the sky. The elevation change is so dramatic that in some places the landscape grows from 3,000 feet above sea level to 15,000 feet in a distance of only ten miles.

For almost 80 miles, we’ve been following the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve boundary line on our left, this park and preserve being the largest in the United States and also one of the youngest. Only 11 years old on the books, the Wrangell-St. Elias spans over 13 million acres, which is approximately twice the size of the Adirondack State Park in New York and nine times the size of Yellowstone National Park. Chitina is at the end of the line, so to speak, being the last “town” before the famed McCarthy Road. To put Chitina in perspective, the “town” has a single hotel and art gallery, a bar and restaurant, and a few scattered trailers. No doubt there are other homesites hidden in the foothills, but not many. In fact, in the past 80 miles we’ve seen only as many houses as one sees in downtown Bakersville, North Carolina.

KB and I stop to stretch in Chitina, sting our fingers in the silty Copper River—much wider now that the valley has poured itself out for so many miles and the Chitina River has joined it—then hop back in the Subaru to complete the last and most difficult part of the drive. The McCarthy Road sits atop an abandoned railroad bed. It is 60 miles long, all gravel, potholes, and washboard. Old railroad spikes jut from the road like land mines, waiting to kill tires and delay travelers. Re-routes to newer, better bridges over vast creeks (big enough to be called a river anywhere else in the country) help us safely along the way and a little over two hours later, we arrive at the footbridge crossing over the Kennicott River. Look closely beyond the parking lot and you’ll see the moraine of the Kennicott Glacier in the immediate background. Beyond that, the gigantic, looming, wall of white is the near edge of the glacier itself, a living animal moving slow and steady, carving its way with the language of water and ice.





[End of Road, Footbridge]

KB and I unload, haul our gear using hand carts over the footbridge, and are greeted by the cheery Wrangell Mountains Center staff on the other side. The vehicles they pick us up in were driven across the frozen Kennicott River during winter, the only way to get a car to this part of the Park. A few minutes down an old road, and we enter the small town. Here, at the end of a 60-mile gravel road in the middle of nowhere, further into the beginning of the middle of the Wrangells, a summer population of about 300 people reside in McCarthy. There is a bar, a hostel, a few old lodges and hotels, a gift shop, a river guide and pilots headquarters, and a mercantile. There is also one of the coolest places to write on the planet, and so our week of words begins.

[In order: The Commissioner’s Cabin where I stayed, the view of McCarthy Creek and Fireweed Mountain right next to the cabin, exterior of Wrangell Mountains Center – also called The Hardware Store, our gardens, and dinnertime at the Wrangell Mountains Center.]

Catch Up - Days 10-12 (Warning: Long Post)

I went off the radar again, this time to attend the residency at the Wrangell Mountains Center in McCarthy, Alaska—outdoor showers, solar power, no running water, etc. But I’ll be catching up on the trip through several long posts over the next few days, pictures included. The posts here pick up where I left off last week and chart my train ride and first sighting of Denali, along with a day trip to Prince William Sound and some epic berry picking. Thanks for reading, if you’re still out there, and sorry I haven’t been able to get online. I hope people are enjoying this. Here goes, picking up from the backpacking trip in the Talkeetnas and moving into the third portion of my trip:

8/8 Day 10
Day in Anchorage exploring the city.

8/9 Day 11
I need a down day to rest my backpacker’s muscles, reflect on my trip thus far, and mentally prepare for the coming writer’s workshop in McCarthy. After laundry and good food in Anchorage, I set out early the morning of Day 11 for the 2-hour drive north to Talkeetna, Alaska. This small town is halfway between Anchorage and Denali Park and the base site for many-a-famous expedition up the even-more-famous Denali peak.

There is one way out of Anchorage whether you’re traveling north or south, and that’s via the Glenn Highway, also known as AK 1, or to tourists, “the interstate.” Do no be fooled, however, by some notion of making any grand or swift exit from the city. This main way in or out is only four lanes and quickly narrows down to two. Further, do not attempt to find this highway by looking for state route or interstate logos, as it goes by so many different names in different places that rare is the common sign indicating the road as a main thoroughfare. Few and far between are actual exits, onramps, overpasses, or signs indicating the direction of travel (north or south).

“I know you won’t believe me,” says the gas station attendant I’ve asked for directions, “but there’s only one way out of this city and it’s right there.” He stops, points out the window the nearest intersection—an intersection that looks like all the others in most of downtown. “That’s 6th Avenue and it turns into the only highway. Just follow that for a few hours and you’ll drive right through Talkeetna.”

I leave the Chugach range behind, cross the moose-laden muskeg, pass signs for Palin’s Wasila and famous Palmer, and start seeing signs for Denali Park and Fairbanks. The Park is nearly 200 miles further, Fairbanks some 300 or so, and AK 1 whittled to a two-lane bumpy highway stacked with RV’s and rental cars this time of year. Traffic moves quickly this Sunday morning, though passing the slower cars proves difficult. The only indicators of location are mileposts and the occasional “For Sale” sign. At milepost 61.5 is a family clinic. Milepost 72 has a spray-painted FSBO sign, which I don’t figure out until milepost 80, when it dawns on me that this means “For Sale By Owner.” Every 20 miles or so there is a side road – No Sled Dogs Road, Answer Creek Way – but by and large the road stretches for miles without many signs of population.

I’ve come this far based on a recommendation from family friends who said the views on the Hurricane Turn train ride are spectacular. Three hours north from Talkeetna down the tracks following the Susitna River and on up toward the Alaska Range, then three hours back. After all that huffing and bushwhacking, it seems a perfectly luxurious thing to do and by lunchtime I’m at the depot, ticket in hand, following the engineer’s call for “All Aboard.”

All the tourists—twenty or so of them—have taken the first seats in the first car. I slide the doors to the next car and find I have the whole thing to myself.

An engineer enters the back of the train car, secures the rattling bathroom doors, and looks at me, then my ticket stub. He’s handsome—dark skin, clean cut, curly dark hair, and full lips. REI pants that hint at fit abs and tight, lean quads. A broad chest—firm but not too big, wide but not bear-like. His shirt bears the Alaska Rail Road logo and as my eyes follow the buttons up to the opening in his collar, then further to his clean shaven face, I think I must have blushed.

“We don’t usually do this unless you’re from Talkeetna,” the engineer says. He’s my age, maybe a year older. “But listen...follow me. I’ll show you the best view on the train.”

And with that he turns on his heels and slips into the next car. Without thinking, I toss my bag over my shoulder and follow him through a few more cars, all of them empty, and we arrive at the baggage car—a half-open air car with only chain-linked railing and to guard against tumbling out onto the tracks. There’s one other passenger back there (a local, I later learn), along with 2 other ARR employees.

I do not tell the handsome engineer that I am enamored with trains. I do not say that I have just written a book about footbridges that cross rivers and lead to trains. I do not tell him any of this because I am afraid I may give myself away, some wild sparkle in my eyes that says I’m here for the full Alaska experience, I’m here for the real deal, I’m here for just about anything.

Walking up to the chain, I place one hand on the duct-taped padding and one hand on the steel handle along the edge of the opening. The feeling is the opposite of fear, it’s elation. The engineer is right: This is the best view on the train, for in front of me is expansive, silky gray Susitna River pouring out of the mouth of the valley. I see fireweed, alder. Gravel bars, magpie. Bald eagles, muskeg. Black spruce, willow. The view is the size of a movie screen, the Alaska wild close enough to reach out and touch and all of it rolling by at a good clip. The engineer pulls up a chair so I can sit safely near the edge of the chain, leaning my head against a side steel beam. Though my perch is mighty chilly, it’s worth it and while I find the first few miles breathtaking, little do I know the best is to come.





[Susitna early 1-2]

What happens next would best be written by John McPhee and effectively already is, in Coming Into the Country, but what I see over the next few hours is the interior of Alaska at its best. Here on this flagstop train, the only way in or out for any of these residents is the train. Yes, there are canoes in the warmer months or ATVs and snowmobiles, but there are no roads. Everything these people need to live must come in in the train or a helicopter drop, and most of them have built their houses harvesting everything they needed from directly around them. From the baggage car, I watch residents literally step out of the woods in the middle of nowhere—no sign of a house or a road or a trail or a vehicle or ANYTHING in sight, and flag down this train.

The train stops, the resident gets on, sharing news:

“Ben got a grizzly yesterday across the river there, see that? Over there?” says one may to the handsome engineer. “Right there, shot him down. Says he was getting too close for comfort.”

Still another: “We’re prospecting up the Indian River, me and my boy, and we’ll be there till the river’s froze up. We're staying at Sheehan's cabin.”

More: “You going to see Wilson ten miles down the track? Tell him I’ve got the kerosene. Tell him I need to see him real soon. Tell him we’re expecting him.”

And celebration: “So good to see you all happy and healthy, yes it is. You are all looking great.” Families meet and greet, but only briefly – the train must continue on – and as fast as the engineers wave her forward, these people disappear back into the woods seamlessly, heading to cabins one can only imagine are tucked away in the woods.

Rare is the house that is visible from the tracks. Rare is the resident with much more to say than what’s necessary: news, good tidings, stories of current events in the woods, and well wishes to others along the tracks. Rare is the resident who does not need something in bulk or is not delivering something in bulk. Rare is the resident who gets on the train that doesn’t have some story of late to share. And all of them get on the train through the baggage car where I have been given special permission to ride. And all of them know each other and each other’s relatives. And all them help load and unload each other’s bulk belongings.

[Here, the prospector gets off and is handed his hand-packed supply of Ramen, toilet paper, tarps, and tuna fish. He knows the place along the tracks by look, I suppose, though I stare hard for a marker and see nothing. As the train rolls to a halt, the prospector’s’ son appears as if magically from the woods, two matching red beards dirty and beaming with the hope of gold flakes and nuggets. Have I emphasized this enough? We’re in the middle of nowhere.]





Heading further into the Susitna Valley, the views expand and we see expanses of muskeg, a rare homesite next the tracks, and a view of Indian Mountain:







[Muskeg, Homesite, Indian Mountain]

At the end of the line, the train rolls onto a bridge over the Indian River that is 300 feet above the ground. We sit there for ten minutes and I dangle my legs over the edge of the baggage car, high into the Alaska air. What happens next is not supposed to happen in August in Alaska, but it does: The wind blows somewhere in the distance where a cluster of white clouds seems stuck in the sky. For a moment the clouds lift and I see a brown rim of mountains, my first glimpse of the lower Alaska Range. More wind and the clouds lift further, and there, for no more than thirty seconds, is the mystic mountain Denali. A mountain so large she creates her own weather, shrouding herself in a shall of clouds most of the summer. My breath escapes me and then she is gone, clothed again in pure white air. I might have thought it was a mirage if the engineer himself hadn’t seen her as well. Indeed, something was in the air.





[View of Susitna, Bridge Shadow…]

The engineer, it turns out, will be my travel companion until I head to the Wrangells and the best fast friend I’ve ever met on an excursion. We’re attached at the hip for the next three days, driving hours in various directions across the state. We hike, we play, we talk, we sing, we play guitar, we tell stories, we read stories, we take pictures. We eat nothing but berries and fish for, I kid you not, three days solid. He's caught halibut, red salmon, you name it, and he cooks and catches it. In other words, we fall into some fantastic wrinkle in time in this Last Frontier and have the time of our lives.

[Read on for our day on the sound…]

8/10 Day 12
CDB is my new traveling companion and he suggests a berry-picking adventure that sends us 3 hours south of Talkeetna, through Anchorage and along Turnigan Arm, then 2 1/2 miles through a tunnel in the Chugach Mountains to the small town of Whittier.



[Whittier, AK]

We go berry picking in the coastal peaks at Prince William Sound. Along the shore is the small town of Whittier, which includes a few tourist shops and a pet reindeer. Its primary man-made features are the abandoned army barracks and a fish processing plant. We park in town and start walking, high, higher, above the smell of guts and rust, beyond the ghostly barracks and chipped-paint empty stores, higher to a tiny boardwalk jutting into the woods indicating a trail.

The woods are reminiscent of Oregon’s coastal forests: giant ferns, burgeoning berry bushes, nurse logs, and mossy tufts dangling from tree bark. The trees, however, are dwarfed in comparison to the gentler climates south of the sound. We follow the boardwalk, clunk, clunk, which leads us over boggy areas, over a few small inclines, and deeper into the woods of the Chugach Mountains. The huckleberries (commonly mistaken for blueberries up here) are ripe and ready, and CDB picks them with ease. “If I can’t get three with one grab, I’ll skip it and find a different branch,” he advises. Already, it seems, his gallon bag is one-third full.

We leave the trail and bushwhack further into the mossy woods. Without the whiplash of willows and the uneven hummocks of the tundra, this bushwhacking seems a cinch compared to the Talkeetnas. Traversing the slopes and working our way slowly upward, we climb at times using our hands, other times grabbing the roots of black spruce for balance. Up and down, up and down, we work the mountainside picking berries with ease. There are more than enough for the humans and the bears here, and all the while birds chirp and banter in the trees overhead.

The higher we climb, the more sunlight filters through the woods until finally we find the boardwalk again and follow it into the light, heading straight for an abundant patch of salmonberries. In the light, these knuckle-sized, glittering globes hang like jewels beneath the green bush leaves. There are no thorns to battle, no briers to untangle from—just the sweet decision of which direction to go, which cluster of berries to reach for. Here an orange one, there a red one. And so many of them are something in between; a sort of glowing burgundy, so plump and full it seems as though an artery of color will bleed across my hands with each berry that I pick.



[Berries – Sorry, I forgot to take a picture until we froze the surplus…]

We take stock at the summit: almost three gallons of berries in just a few leisurely hours. The boardwalk crosses one more wet area, then leads to a platform overlooking the sound. It is at once protected and open, like viewing some great secret cove alight with blues and grays in every shade. We can see the glacier, stretching its strong and slow arm through the valley and into the sound. Ice flows bob in the water, minty-green vessels atop deep, milky saltwaters. In Home Ground, Gretchen Legler defines “sound” in the following way:

“Sound, referring to a feature of coastlines, comes from the Middle and Old English sund, ‘to swim.’ The word in its modern guise evokes both this watery root, as well as the idea of soundlings—measurements of depth, quests, or probings, downward and inward. A sound is a waterway connecting two larger bodies of water or two parts of the same body, though the term can also refer to an arm of the sea forming a channel between a mainland and an island. Examples of sounds include Puget Sound on the northwest coast of the United States, and Long Island Sound on the east. Prince William Sound in Alaska is also a classic example. It was here that in 1989 the Exxon Valdez spilled more than 10.9 million gallons of crude oil into the ocean, creating an environmental catasrophe of unimaginable magnitude. American writer Marybeth Holleman, in her book The Heart of the Sound: An Alaskan Paradise Found and Nearly Lost, writes of Prince William Sound that it ‘is a world unto itself. It is delineated not just by the coastline, the way it indents at Cape Puget and at the Copper River Delta into what, upon his visit in 1899, John Burroughs called ‘the enchanted circle.’ It is contained by a string of mountain peaks, among them the highest coastal mountains in the world, some of them nunataks, jagged spires that jut through an ice field. These mountains enclose the Sound, hold clouds and rain in. They encircle it like sentries. The mountains, the water, the ice fields—it seemed to me they were all protecting this place, guarding it from harm.’”







[Prince William Sound 1-2, Higher peaks and glacier at Prince William Sound]

More soon...I fly to Seattle today and will be back in NC by 1am Saturday...

Days 6-9 Backpacking in the Talkeetnas

[I hesitate to post this since I'm feeling a little flatline today, but I'm going to go ahead and at least preserve these notes for now and maybe come back to them later on my own. The pictures, at least, should provide some inspiration if nothing else. Sorry for the absence, I met a traveling companion and had to go off radar for a little bit…]

We parked at the Craigie Creek trailhead just over Hatcher Pass in the Talkeetna Mountains. The first 4.5 miles traversed a decades-old mining road, now muddied and narrow for lack of use. Leading us through the valley toward Dogsled Pass, the road passed a few abandoned mining cabins and rusted equipment, scrap metal jutting from the earth like old dinosaur bones just waiting to be rediscovered. Little did I know this would be the easiest part of the trip. The sun was shining and although our packs were about 45 pounds a piece, the old road proved to be the best (and only) manmade footing we’d have all week. Little did we know the sunlight would be our last as well.







[Craigie View, Craigie Cabin View, Craige Cabin Inside]

Sumitting Dogsled Pass, I glimpsed my first view of a “tarn.” This word is used to describe high alpine bodies of water that are tucked between mountain peaks. Like hidden bowls, these tarns aren’t visible from the valley floor and many are not mapped because sometimes they are there and other times they aren’t. One of the best surprises to a backpacker in Alaska might be to come upon such a lake, its aqua-marine-slate surface flat enough to reflect your purely awestruck face.



[Tarn]

Leaving the old road behind, we began bushwhacking and bouldering our way down the mountain. I used to think that Alaskan’s used the term “bush” as opposed to “backcountry” as if to somehow imply that their wilderness was “more wild” than, say, the Rocky Mountain west. I now understand that Alaskan’s say “bush” because there simply are no trails to speak of. That we entered the valley on such a long road was in fact a unique feature, and one carefully selected by my hiking partner, Michael. That we also began the more difficult part of our journey at the headwaters of Purches Creek, just the other side of Dogsled Pass, was also Michael’s doing. Start high and you’ll have plenty of water, plenty of options, and perhaps a clearer view of how to navigate your next moves. Start low and you might be huffing it through willow thicket after willow thicket for a few miles before you can stake out a decent vantage point to decide your next big move.

What our first major vantage point showed us was that there was no way we were going to be able to cross the Purches Creek Valley and summit the next pass (unnamed) without heavy climbing gear. Our “plan” head been to camp at the headwaters of Purches Creek the first night, summit the unnamed pass, and descend into the Peters Creek Valley for the second night. It was this plan, along with phone numbers and names, that I emailed my parents about…but not three hours into the trip that plan drastically changed and there was no telling anybody about it. It’s easy to think we could have read about the unnamed pass in a guidebook. After all, that’s what I did every other time I backpacked in new terrain. But the only guidebook about this pass was written by a man who explored this area in the wintertime, sledding over passes made smooth by snowfall.



[Unnamed Pass in the distance]

Accepting that we had to move on, we navigated our way across and down a boulder field for upwards of two hours before finally hitting the soft, tundra mosses at the eastern most edge of the Purches Creek Valley. I will tell you that these boulders were as big as cars. And I will tell you that over a dozen kinds of lichen could grow across any small stretch exposed to enough sunlight. That the lichen was soft would be a lie. That the bouldering was easy would be a lie as well. But that we made it safe and sound would be a victorious truth and oh, did the valley floor feel soft beneath our boots when we finally arrived. Here, the wall on the right is due north, which means the sun arched directly overhead the entire day, running east to west, and finally “setting” as far as we could see down the valley each night.









[Bouldering shot 1 w/ mining claim, Bouldering 2-3, Purches Creek View]

Scouting the tundra for a place to set up camp and cook, I couldn’t help but compare how different this trip was compared to any backpacking I did “in the lower 48.” For instance, I’ve always purified my water with a pump or iodine. When I set up camp, I triangulate 100-200 yards from where I sleep, setting up a cooking area in one corner and a bathroom area in another. If you’re in bear or rodent country, make it a diamond shape for the forth point where you hang your food.

Not so in Alaska. Michael, who I guess to be somewhere between 54-60 years old, has never and will never purify his water in the bush. He’s the trip guru so I follow his lead, which leads to numerous complications as we set up camp. First and foremost, we’re at the headwaters of the creek and will be drawing water from this valley for the remainder of our creek. If we sully the waters camped up high, we’ll basically be drinking runoff from our own poop piles all week. We agree instead to only go to the bathroom on the south side of the valley and only take water from side creeks pouring down off the north side of the valley. We leave Purches Creek untouched which is a good move, it turns out, as a few miles downstream we find evidence of beavers (guaranteed giarda). Here, a spring bursts through the rocks and I took my first unfiltered drink of Alaskan waters.



[Spring]

An additional complication is what to do with the food. I grew up bear bagging, which means we hung our food packs from trees (another triangle is necessary there, as well, in order to get it far enough away from the trunk and high enough off the ground to avoid the reach of a bear’s arm). “What’s bear bagging?” Michael asks. I explain and then ask him to explain the “bear resistant food canister,” of which we only have one but needed two. In the end, we put the most odorous and tempting food in the canister and Michael stashes it beneath a dry boulder some hundred yards away. All other food, including bathroom supplies, get bear bagged and slung over just the right kind of boulder to keep it away from the arctic ground squirrels and voles that scurry about the tundra. It’s an insufficient system to my eyes, but it’s the best we can do without any trees to speak of and with bear scat all up and down the valley.

Our second morning, we woke to rain and 40-degree weather that didn’t let up for at least fifteen hours, and in sum total didn’t let up but for a few hours each day until Friday. I glanced up from a pot of bubbling grits to see the Purches Creek Valley filling in with clouds faster than you can say, “Which way now?” Before we’d finished our first servings we were completely whited out by clouds and sopped in by rain. All vanatage points—that of the high peaks on the north wall and the boulder fields along the south wall—were completely nondescript through the thick fog. I took these pictures less than five minutes apart from each other.







[Purches Creek white out 1-2, Wet Pack w/ fireweed]

There is really no way to put into words the kind of varying efforts and feats of balance necessary for walking across the uneven trundra, across the soggy muskeg, and through willow thickets knee-to-head-high for miles and hours on end. While I descended the boulder fields with relative ease, Michael moved through the thickets at seemingly lightning speed. Bear scat here, moose scat there. Wolf scat. Caribou scat. Lynk scat. More bear and moose scat. Pick any avenue through the thickets and the large mammals have beat you to it, nibbling on leaves, thrashing branches, and leaving palm-sized paw and hoof prints in their wake. I have never felt so utterly close to moose and bear, sensing that they were right there all along (and judging by the freshness of their scat, indeed they were) yet hardly ever seeing them.

Later, with a little forgiveness from the clouds lifting (though no forgiveness from the rain), we could see across the valley to the south wall, where the hillside eased up and most likely cradled a tarn just over the crest of this first hill. To the north, the highest peaks were visible again. Do not be fooled by these lush greens of August. Do no let yourself think for one moment that there is a square foot of even ground on this valley floor. The rocks are virtual colonies of lichen and mosses, soft—at times—but more often like sandpaper. The grasses are either soggy muskeg with hummocks and sinkholes or dense willow thickets with slippery roots and whipping leaves.









[Across, Into, For Joy: Specimen 1& Specimen 2]

We can’t be certain how many miles we hiked the second day, as we carved s’s and c’s along the valley floor, then up higher in some places, moving in such a way that one mile as the crow flies could easily be two as miles and the hiker bushwhacks. We bushwhacked for five or six hours, though, picking up the “moose highway” a few times and gaining speed like never before. However far we went, it was far enough into the Purches Creek Valley (which is some twenty miles long in total) to see black spruce groves, indicating we’d almost broken through tree line. For our second night, we set up camp within sight of those groves, but opted not to hike all the way into them. We set up when we grew tired, which was perhaps 1-2 miles from the groves, but it was a necessary decision. The clouds rolled back in, taking the trees and high peaks from view and replacing them with yet more rain.

The third morning we headed back out the valley the way we came in, hiking due east now and with the wisdom of the miles we had behind us. Our packs were lighter, the rain lessened a little, and we had high hopes of finding our way to a fine-looking mining cabin we’d spotted the second day some six (or so?) miles back up the valley. I ventured a guess that the cabin was along the 4200 contour, which is about the level we come out on after the boulder fields descending from Dogsled Pass. If we could get to that cabin on our third day, we’d not only have sweet sleeping and cooking, but we’d be in fine shape the next morning to contour the cirque of mountains at the headwaters and save ourselves a lot of up and down. When the cloud rolled in that first time, I noted a distinct waterfall across the valley from the mining cabin. Michael agreed we should use that to navigate our way to the cabin on our way back, and as we attempted to do so, more cloud rolled in.



[Lost in the Clouds]

After several hours of shimmying up the mountainsides, these slopes ascending 2000 feet in 1.5 miles, we’d lost all reference points for the cabin and were fully sopped in again. We knew we were close, but we couldn’t see more than thirty feet in front of us. High, high up in the true bear country, we could either push it a few hours further in hopes we’d spot the cabin through the clouds, or we could descent and make camp where we had two nights prior. Note the distinct “line” of clouds at the dew point along the north wall of the mountains pictured above. I believe we were hiking along that line (it’s much wider when you’re in it). As the sun set, the dew point failed to lift, and so it was we were shivering on the side of the mountain once again. The good thing, of course, was that through it all the rough and rumbling Purches Creek was audible through the clouds, and the valley was aligned in a relatively straightforward manner, so there was never any risk of getting too terribly lost. We descended all that we had climbed, at times sliding sideways down the grassy patches on the mountain slopes (rain pants make great sliding gear). As we reached our former campsite, the clouds lifted and we spotted the cabin in no time. Indeed, we had been close but not close enough, and by then we were both hungry and cold. Michael cooked, as always, while I set up our base camp and sorted out the food to prepare the canister and bags.



[Cabin]

The fourth morning we woke to sunlight, this great yellow ball shining through the morning clouds with hints of blue just beyond. As we ascended Dogsleg Pass with much more ease this time, we left the valley behind but not without stopping for a long last visit with the trundra mosses on the high rocks. We looked out over the valley that, for at least a few days, had felt like a close and complicated friend of ours. It was a difficult place to leave and not one I’ll soon forget.



[Final Ascent}

[More soon, folks…such as: Hiking One Mile in Alaska, Categories for Survival, Train Rides into the Country, and Berry Picking on Prince William Sound…Oh, each day here feels like a week!]

Day 5 Continued...

[Well, dear readers, I had 4 amazing days backpacking off trail in the Talkeetnas and am heading up north for a sightseeing train ride today. Meantime, I’ll play catch up on the blog as best I can before writing in the Wrangells. Many-an-essay has bloomed in my mind since the previous post. Bear with me as I sort my thoughts and update these pages in the coming days. Thanks to Joy for telling me how to put photos online…There will be many more to come in the following few days...Maybe even more tonight.]

EARLY OBSERVATIONS

Walking into the apartment of an Alaskan:
Compton lives near H Street just a short walk from the heart of downtown Anchorage. I follow three-paragraph instructions to find the right house, locate her downstairs apartment inside, and search out the spare key. The out door stairs are covered, a fact of the winter snow accumulation. Covered stairs means no shoveling stairs. Next to the doorstep? A cord of wood. Mind you, we are but a 15-minute walk from the business district of the city.

Entering, I note seven pairs of skis for one person, a handful of poles, and a literal wall of shoes upon walking in the front door. In the freezer is a trash bag full of frozen fish fillets—each individually wrapped, flash frozen, and in all varying shades of white, grey, and pink. The only other item in the freezer is a 10 lb. bag of chicken breasts. Space heaters are tucked inconspicuously in the corners of each room, a nod to the coming winter. Eleven o’clock at night looks like 5pm in the Appalachians. The neighbor is watering her garden as I’m trying to convince myself to fall asleep. Compton’s bedroom windows have black garbage bags taped over them from end to end. I take some sleep drugs and toss a pillow over my head.

Food:
First of all, my hiking partner and I are eating free-range, organic buffalo meat cooked-to-order at a local restaurant called Organic Oasis. Second, the salad comes with sweet yam vinegarette. Third, shopping for our backpacking trip, we weigh the pros and cons of traveling with “Alaska Chub” that contains “Real Reindeer Meat!” versus traveling with hard salami that contains “beef hearts.” In the end, we skip the meat altogether and opt for dried hummus, which is lighter and less attractive to bears. Fourth, Compton’s primary snack seems to be bite-sized King Salmon Jerky.

Oregon blackberries can be purchased in a can for $6. A grapefruit costs $2.99. The avocados are three times their natural size. Many people seem to enjoy dining on unique meats at restaurants that also feature full-mounted, stuffed heads of the animals on which they dine. Chocolate and espresso are, dare I say it, more abundant than in Portland, Oregon. Gluten-free products are in fact sold in Anchorage, however, one must be prepared to pay something close to $7 for five 2-oz. breakfast bars.

Gear:
First, I’m concerned about bear bagging and rope lines to hang the food because we’ll be above tree level every night. “What’s bear bagging?” asks Michael, my hiking partner. When I tell him, he says he’s already called the local outdoor gear store and rented a “bear-resistant food canister” for us. Note the use of the word “resistant” rather than the word “proof.” Bear bagging in Alaska is so ineffective and/or impossible that even a hiking enthusiast like Michael hadn’t heard of it.

Second, I am distressed because I can’t find extra triple AAA batteries for my headlamp. “It’s never going to be pitch black,” Michael says. “The sun won’t ‘set’ until after 11pm and it will ‘rise’ around 5am. Call it a sustained twilight.”

Third, Michael suggests bear spray. Thinking back to the speech given to me by the local hunting shop manager, the rack of bear spray options at REI is in an entirely different league. We opt for the basic, which is almost as large as a can of spray paint and costs over $50 with tax. Michael says he’ll buy it since I can’t take it back with me on the plane. I tell him if we get attacked and survive, I’ll pay him back. He laughs a little, nervous laugh.

The City that Never Sleeps
Here are three demonstrative photos. The first is facing east from downtown Anchorage, looking into the front folds of the Chugach Range. The second is facing east into Cook Inlet. I was told these colors were just about as much sunset as you get this time of year and this night was an especially good one at that. The third is some alley art, a shot I took peeking off one of the main drags of downtown Anchorage. All of these photos were taken at 11pm.







Onward!
Here I am the next morning in the Craigie Creek Valley, getting ready to head up an old mining road then into the bush of the Talkeetna Range. Four days in the backcountry, here we come!

Day 5

[Many thanks to the men who made me laugh until I cried all weekend. That may be the only wedding I ever attend where all the groomsmen are comedians. I highly recommend this for anyone who can pull it off. Even the waitstaff, caterers, and DJ were so highly entertained throughout the evening that at one point I saw two of them clutching each other in laughter while another was bent at the waist, bracing himself against his knees. The wedding was almost a mini college reunion and full of even more re-connections that I could have hoped for.]

[Enter: The Alaska part of the trip…]

My “home” was the urban landscape of a smartly-zoned city, Portland, Oregon. But the “home” that made me who I am ran in lines from that city, connecting to mountain ranges and bodies of water as far north as British Columbia, as far south as Mt. Shasta (California), as far east as Wyoming’s Wind River range, and as far west as the Pacific Ocean. When I reflect on growing up, I can say quite literally that my psycho-spiritual horizons broadened in direct correlation with my physical horizons, so that with each new terrain explored I came more and more into my own. That “growing up” picks up where it left off with each return trip to the region I have come to call “home.” Coming back to this place as an adult, a layer of trace paper is pressed over that corner of the United States and more lines are added, branching out from Portland, Seattle, and occasionally Walla Walla. In short, I cannot experience this terrain without a sense of biographical history.

Spending several weeks each summer from the ages of 9-18 on the trail with a frame pack on my back, I gained a solid appreciation of just how different one mile can feel from another. One mile along the Oregon Coastal Range in the old growth forest can be an easy stroll, for instance, with marionberries along the trail. The smell of fresh sap and seawater mingling with these unique berries has remained nameless to me my entire life if only for the fact that it is so precious, I prefer to let it live in the realm of the ethereal. Home Ground doesn’t have a word for it either, but does offer this definition of old growth forest: “Forest, as elder, where trees coexist in the full spectrum of their development—from seedling to sapling to ancient to snag and generative nurse log: old-growth forest features include thick duff, trees hoary with age, and certain indicator species that rely on the settled richness of variety in plant, insect, lichen, and other life forms…” (251).

One mile into the Llamar Valley of Yellowstone National Park feels like something akin to walking on water, though there it is not the wide water of the Llamar that lifts you up—it is the spaciousness of the valley itself, speckled with a few hundred buffalo. Add a double-rainbow in the aftermath of a storm and it is a sight so perfectly formed that the trail provides a bounce-back of weightlessness with each step you take.

In contrast, one mile into the Wallowa Mountains of northeastern Oregon ascending from the lake and small town may feel like some unholy version of an endless climb. One mile, and you still have two more to go before even glimpsing the Lostine River Valley. One mile and your blisters are already nickel-sized across the back of each heel. One mile and you have forgotten, it seems, the physics of balance. But oh, when you reach that V-shaped valley: “Water, depending on its velocity, cuts down into rock, engorges itself in rock, and keeps cutting…Some rivers tend to flow in a straight line; thus the sediments they carry quickly erode the rocks below and carve a classic V-shape…”378).

One mile on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State is immeasurable. All at once you are so small and utterly un-separate from the weeping rainforest, from the herds of elk, from the trailer-sized nurse logs, from the thousand unseen eyes that can see you, that time and distance fantastically escape you. Here, I suppose, William DeBuys definition of wilderness in Home Ground seems fitting and I will quote it almost in full:

“Wilderness is a cultural, not an ecological concept. While its meaning and the values that attach to it have shifted through the ages, it stands essentially for the land and space where culture is not, or at least where the impacts of human culture are minimal…[such as] the comparatively prosaic concepts of backcountry, bush, or the ‘high lonesome’ and the administrative designation conceived by Aldo Leopold as ‘a continuous stretch of country preserved in its natural state…big enough to absorb a two weeks’ pack trip, and kept devoid of…works of man.’ The most powerful of all definitions of wilderness is to be found in the 1964 Wilderness Act: ‘A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.’ The National Wilderness Preservation System, which the act established, now includes over 105 million acres of federal land, more than half of which is in Alaska. Irony necessarily abides in so protean a term: land that westering white Americans in the nineteenth century judged to be wilderness was home ground from the point of view of native tribes, and the birth of the wilderness preservation movement in the twentieth century occurred only after the lands on which it focused had been substantially tamed by the removal of the natives who in habited them. Today wilderness remains one of the most evocative concepts in American culture. It might be said to describe any place on land (or sea) where the powers of nature are paramount and where the call of the wild might be heard. Ed Abbey, among many others, has meditated on its meaning: ‘Wilderness. The word itself is music. Wilderness, wilderness…We scarcely know what we mean by the term, though the sound of it draws all whose nerves and emotions have not yet been irreparably stunned, deadened, numbed by the caterwauling of commerce, the sweating scramble for profit and domination.’”

A million ways to walk a mile through the wilderness and a million miles waiting to be walked. Today I glimpsed the far north Cascades (where they join the Coastal Range and curve on upward into Alaska).for the first time in my life. The flight from Seattle to Anchorage is 3 1/2 hours and we cruised above the range for more than 1,000 miles. Another line has been drawn on the map in my mind, the bravest arm reaching to the highest peaks and the “wildest” of places.

One hour off the plane, I’m eating lunch with Michael, who has it in mind to skip the day hikes altogether and set out tomorrow morning on a backpacking trip. We’re eating buffalo burgers with sweet yam dressing. A taxi driver has just told me, in response to my inquiry, “What time does the sun set?” that, “The sun will set next week, when the clouds roll back in.” Michael and I agree to leave tomorrow at 6am. I’ll be searching for the feel of one mile in Alaska and already I can tell I will have to walk many, many more before I can find it.

--WHERE WE'RE GOING--
Hatcher Pass at the Craigie Creek trailhead in the Talkeetna Mountains. Length of stay will be 3-4 days.

Day 4: A Day of Ecosystems

"Hey, did you take my camera? I have a blog to update!"



"What makes you think it was me?"

[Sorry for the delay, folks...here's the whirlwind portraits of today's 250 mile return trip from Walla Walla back to Seattle. T-minus 15 hours to Alaska!]



Sophomore year at Whitman, I lived in campus housing called an "interest house." We had the german house, the spanish house, the fine arts house, the outhouse, the asian studies house, etc. Rad, Thad, Robannie, Janelle, Rosy, Mike, and Jeremy and I comprised Whitman's inaugural writing house and we made the type-font sign hanging in this photo. With so many wedding details to attend to this weekend, I didn't have much time for campus nostalgia. The Writing House, however, was a mandatory stop on my exit tour this morning.





Car photos don't do the Yakima Canyon justice, but that's all I got. We took a side route on the way back this time, following the meandering Yakima River as it carves through this steep canyon. The water was flowing so quickly it was hard to find a place to stop and dip in, but once we did it was well worth it. 101 degrees outside but the water was a perfect 50 and fresh, fresh as can be.



I took this picture at Snoqualmie Pass for Joy, who would very much like to hike in the Pacific Northwest. You can't get any more quintessential than a fine espresso stand at the top of a pass with peaks like these as the backdrop. This spot is also a hot stop along the famed Pacific Crest Trail. Only in the PacNW can you get espresso at a place like this and have it made perfectly to order ("Hi, I'd like a single iced espresso with extra ice and a splash of soy, please.")



After saying goodbye to the Walla Walla wheat fields and vineyards, crossing the scablands, cutting through the Yakima Canyon, and crossing the Cascade Range, my day ended at the Puget Sound in West Seattle. Boy did it feel great to see the sun set over salt water again. The highest range you see in the distance are the snow-capped Olympics in the Olympic National Forest, a place near and dear to my heart.



Breaking news: Self proclaimed tree hugger spotted in West Seattle.

Day 3

Wedding day.
Exhausted. Overjoyed. Confused about which coast and time zone I am in.
Going to sleep.

Day 2

My bags arrive 12 hours behind me the next day. I catch a ride with other members of the wedding party and we’re out of Seattle by noon. We have a 5-hour drive and a rehearsal dinner to be at by 6pm. Cruising outside the city limits, we’re at Mount Sai in North Bend in no time at all. Kevin, ever safe and attentive at the wheel, manages to drive smooth and swiftly at 80mph up and over the Snoqualmie Pass and through the Cascade range.

In such a blur, my landscapes start to criss-cross. I see evergreens whose girth reminds me of the doublewide trailers that speckle the hillsides back home. The simile doesn’t add up and it has everything to do with sleep deprivation. I look out to see the mountains, out and across—only to remember that here in the Cascades one must look up to see the mountains. As for looking across, typically only one row of mountains can be taken in at a time from the roadside views here. Back in the Blue Ridge, looking across yields row upon row of purple-hued, soft peaks.

At long last we clear the range and cruise along the Yakima River. It is here that the gold yellow and iridescent beiges start to spread across the landscape in rolling hills and low-lying cerebral folds of the Yakima Valley. I like it, but I’m holding out for the true gold: that of a Walla Walla wheat field in summertime. We cross the Snake River and enter the scablands, one of my top land formations. I failed to copy the “scablands” definition from Home Ground, which is much more poetic and culturally revealing, but in a pinch this Wikipedia reference will do:

“The Channeled Scablands are a unique geological erosion feature in the U.S. state of Washington. They were created by the cataclysmic Missoula Floods that swept periodically across eastern Washington and down the Columbia River Plateau during the Pleistocene epoch. Geologist J Harlen Bretz coined the term in a series of papers in the 1920s. Debate over the origin of the Scablands raged for four decades and is one of the great debates in the history of earth science. River valleys formed by erosion normally have a 'V' cross section, and glaciers leave a 'U' cross section. The Channeled Scablands have a rectangular cross section and are spread over immense areas of eastern Washington. They exhibit a unique drainage pattern that appears to have an entrance in the northeast and an exit in the southwest. The eroded channels also show an anastomosing, or braided, appearance. There are also immense potholes and ripple marks, much larger than those found on ordinary rivers. When first studied, no known theories could explain the origin of these features.”

If my college professors at Whitman were the voices of reason during my four years as an undergraduate, the scablands were the voices of unreason. Everything about them beckoned me off campus, as though the old Missoula was going to burst again and take me right along with it. Gladly, I would have gone. And for every ounce of romanticism and nostalgia that the day’s drive across the state offered, comraderie and cheek-cracking laughter offered twice as much in return at the rehearsal dinner and ensuing reunion.




I arrived at 9pm to a 92 degree heat wave in The Emerald City.



The wedding rehearsal took place in direct sunlight at 6pm in 101 degree heat. Behind us were vineyards, ahead of us were freshly harvested wheat fields, and all around us the Blue Mountains sat like the gently rising edge of a shallow bowl.



This is the groom, and most importantly one of my best buddies from college and the man who asked me to officiate his wedding this weekend.



Just one of the reasons I love this guy.



Not the groom, but super cute. Let's just say the hat got passed around amongst the members of the comedy troupe (yes, they really were a comedy troupe). That's the short version.