\March 2, 2019 – Alaska Railroad
Hello, Alaska – I’ve missed you. I forget the beauty you have – the treasures you share. Thank you, Denali, for showing me, and us, your beauty this morning, gleaming in the sun’s new light. The landscape of snow and ice - chill and calm, mingling with a quiet, humming of the tracking, bouncing, shaking rhythm of the wheels. Are the tears, those of love, or memory, or regret, or joy – so glad to be here with my Jeno and my sister and brother-in-law. Is it missing my youth of 27 years ago – somehow, regretting all I didn’t know – couldn’t have known? Or is it being overwhelmed with beauty – the grandeur and magnificence of it all. . .
In going through Denali, we could oversee where I worked at the McKinley Chalets. It didn’t look that different, though there were some new buildings across the main roadway. I don’t’ know if many memories returned, but some did, like where we lived on the Nenana or the familiarity of the road out of Denali and toward Healy.
I didn’t see “Moose’s Ass*” as the train goes on the other side of the mountain to follow the Nenana into Healy’s Gorge. I had forgotten about the place where we hiked down a bit and came to a “ledge” and called it “Kara’s Point” or Lookout or something. I believe the ledge overlooked the Nenana, but I could be wrong because I searched for the place and couldn’t quite find it. I had forgotten about that ledge, and in remembering, an emotional importance attached to it welled within me. I really wanted to see it. Funny, the things to which we assign importance or significance. At 19, the idea that I could call something my own enticed me – the romance in a ledge never having a name before I named it my own.
(*a term a climber used for the rock formation in the summer of 1992)
March 5, 2019 - Coldfoot, AK
The expansiveness of the Alaskan interior is unparalleled to anything else in my experience. The initial jaggedness of the Talkeetna and Alaskan ranges gives way to rolling hills in the surrounding areas of Fairbanks before changing again to granite monoliths in the Brooks Range. Then the trees disappear and it is mountain and stone before flattening out again to the oil fields (at least that’s what I’m told). It’s all beautiful and *seemingly* untouched, but, of course, the pipeline runs alongside the length of the singular paved road leading this far north. The pipeline has only been around since Nixon (?) maybe or a little later. So definitely not untouched, but much of the land is pristine.
March 6, 2019 - Fairbanks, AK
As we sat at breakfast this morning, seeing the other travelers we’ve come to know, I became aware again of the magic of Alaska. We all came from disparate places: Texas, Illinois, Ohio, British Columbia, Missouri; but we formed some bonds and community when our cell phones didn’t work and there wasn’t TV and all we had were truck stop meals and bus tours on a gravel highway (sometimes paved, sometimes iced and grated). We also had 24 people with whom we traveled for 12 hours on a train, then 13 hours on a bus, then another seven hours on a tour, and overnight under the stars and in a cabin, watching the northern lights (lest I forget).
Maybe that’s why I love and miss travel – at least one reason – because of the community that can be formed by the mishmash of people and personalities that decide to take a common path to someplace. Of course, this would be different in a place with cell coverage and TV – it would be easy to isolate or simply continue to be caught in the flurry of cyber connections and distractions that only reflect ourselves and our interest and the tiny worlds that we inhabit. For me – as one looking for and longing for connection, this bit of travel has given me a taste of it and reminded me again how it is formed. Maybe that’s one reason I loved Alaska in the first place – in fact I know it is: The almost immediate connection I formed with other people and with people utterly different than me and with so many varied points of view. [Those interactions changed the course of my life.]
I’m glad to be back in Alaska – to see it in its snowy dress – to experience it again, but for the first time – with Jeno – in another place, at another season – to recognize all that I felt before, and to understand it better.
The neuroscience says that we are driven to experience new things while we are adolescents, that we need more stimulation to give us a jolt while all the neural connections reestablish themselves. I don’t know, but I’m not sure that adolescence is the only time we need/are driven to experience new things. What is midlife crisis, but the realization we need something more or different or new? Maybe we can reflect on it in a new way with our prefrontal cortex (hopefully) fully intact– but we need stimulation, something to keep us vibrant, active, exploring, growing. Maybe we don’t need it during the child rearing years – or maybe the sheer volume of activity stimulates enough – but I’d say even then something still yearns for growth and discovery – at least I haven’t had a period of my life where I did not experience the yearning.
March 7, 2019 - Chena Hot Springs
While I had several new experiences yesterday, the most unique was being outside in the springs, in my bathing suit, with snow covering my head, watching people in parkas and down jackets walk on the grounds around me. I sat for a moment with my eyes closed, feeling the slippery warmth of my body contrasted with the kisses of snowbits (not big enough for flakes!) on my shoulders and face. As I told April – it was quite the yin/yang experience – two opposites starkly opposed. . .
We went on an evening walk on the trail tonight. It wasn’t particularly light out, but the trail is snow-covered and meanders beside a stream. We walked for about an hour. . .The snow and mountains, the bubbly stream, the stars peek-a-booing around the clouds and the moments of stillness: I’m reminded of our hiking trip with Jen, crossing the McKinley Bar, and the deep stillness of the night – only the four of us – for miles as far as we knew – and whatever animals were close by… But the quiet was profound – as was the darkness of the sky. I had never been in such an isolated place, and I have not been since.
